In February, 1696, came to a head “the Assassination Plot,” the most dangerous of all the Plots formed against William III. The King was, according to custom, to go to hunt in Richmond Park on February 15. Advantage was to be taken of this to assassinate him. For some reason he did not go, and the execution of the scheme was deferred. But meanwhile one of the conspirators gave information to the Government. Numerous arrests were made, followed by trials and executions. On March 18 Robert Charnock, Edward King, and Thomas Keys were executed at Tyburn. They were followed on April 3 by Sir John Friend and Sir William Perkins. The populace of London flocked to Tyburn in numbers exceeding all precedent to witness the execution of Friend, found guilty by the Court of high treason, and by the people of a crime that touched them more nearly—the brewing of execrable beer. Three non-juring divines attended the condemned men to the scaffold, Jeremy Collier, and two of less note, Shadrach Cook and William Snatt, who absolved the criminals “in a manner more than ordinarily practised in the Church of England.” For this Cook and Snatt were committed to Newgate. Macaulay says that they were not brought to trial. It appears, however, that they were actually indicted, and found guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours (Luttrell, iv. 80) and imprisoned for a short time. Collier kept out of the way, and was in consequence outlawed, remaining under the sentence to the end of his days. Numerous tracts were written on the subject. On April 29 Brigadier Rookwood, Charles Cranburne, and Major Lowick were executed at Tyburn, they also having been condemned for the Plot. This completes the story of the executions at Tyburn for the Assassination Plot, but it is impossible to refrain from mentioning a case dismissed by Macaulay in a sentence referring to “Major John Bernardi, an adventurer of Genoese extraction, whose name has derived a melancholy celebrity from a punishment so strangely prolonged that it at length shocked a generation which could not remember his crime.” It is hardly fair to call Bernardi an adventurer. Apart from this, the reader would certainly not gather from Macaulay’s remark that no crime was ever proved against Bernardi. In writing of a shocked generation the historian probably referred to some very mild remarks of Dr. Johnson, in his “Life of Pope.” Pope wrote an epitaph on Secretary Trumball, who, from his official position, took a leading part in persuading Parliament to consent to the imprisonment of Bernardi. The concluding lines of Pope’s epitaph are:— Such this man was, who, now from earth remov’d At length enjoys the liberty he lov’d.