Rye House Plot

The muster of zealous wigs was strong.

As soon as the bill had been reported, Sacheravelle, renowned in the stormy parliaments of the late reign of charles the second as one of the ablest and keenest of the exclusionists stood up and moved to add a clause providing that every municipal functionary who had in any manner been a party to the surrendering of the franchises of a borough should be incapable for seven years of holding any office in that borough THE CONSTITUTION OF ALMOST EVERY CORPORATE TOWN IN ENGLAND HAD BEEN REMODELED DURING THAT HOT FIT OF LOYALTY WHICH FOLLOWED THE DETECTION OF THE RYE HOUSE PLOT, AND IN ALMOST EVERY CORPORATE TOWN THE VOICE OF THE TORIES HAD BEEN FOR DELIVERING UP THE CHARTER, AND FOR TRUSTING EVERYTHING TO THE PATERNAL CARE OF THE was to make some thousands of the most opulent and highly considered men of the kingdom incapable, during seven years, of bearing any part in the government of the places in which they resided, and to secure to the Whig party, during seven years, an overwhelming influence in borough elections.

The minority exclaimed against the gross injustice of passing, rapidly and by surprise, at a season when London was empty, a law of the highest importance, a law which retrospectively inflicted a severe penalty on many hundreds of respectable gentlemen, a law which would call forth the strongest passions in every town from Berwick to St. Ives, a law which must have a serious effect on the composition of the house itself.

common decency required at least an adjournment an adjournment was moved but the motion was rejected by a hundred and twenty seven votes to eighty nine the question was then put that sacheuvel's clause should stand part of the bill and was carried by a hundred and thirty three to sixty eight Sir Robert Howard immediately moved that every person who, being under Sacherville's clause disqualified for municipal office, should presume to take any office, should forfeit five hundred pounds, and should be for life incapable of holding any public employment whatever.

Few persons stood higher in the estimation of the Tory party than Sir Robert Sawyer.

He was a man of ample fortune and aristocratic connections, of orthodox opinions and regular life, an able and experienced lawyer, a well-read scholar, and, in spite of a little pomposity, a good speaker.

He had been Attorney General at the time of the detection of the Rye House plot, he had been employed for the Crown in the prosecutions which followed, and he had conducted those prosecutions with an eagerness which would, in our time, be called cruelty by all parties, but which in his own time, and to his own party, seemed to be merely laudable zeal.

His friends indeed asserted that he was conscientious even to scrupulosity in matters of life and death, but this is an eulogy which persons who bring the feelings of the nineteenth century to the study of the state trials of the seventeenth century will have some difficulty in understanding.

As well might the pole star be called inconstant because it is sometimes to the east and sometimes to the west of the pointers.

To have defended the ancient and legal constitution of the realm against a seditious populace at one conjecture and against a tyrannical government at another To have been the foremost defender of order in the turbulent Parliament of 1680, and the foremost defender of liberty in the servile Parliament of 1685, to have been just and merciful to Roman Catholics in the days of the Popish Plot, and to Exclusionists in the day of the Rye House Plot, to have done all in his power to save both the head of Stafford and the head of Russell, this was a course which contemporaries, heated by passion and deluded by names and badges, might not unnaturally call fickle, but which deserves a very different name from the late justice of posterity.

There is one, and only one, deep stain on the memory of this eminent man.

It is melancholy to think that he, who had acted so great a part in the Convention, could have afterwards stooped to hold communication with Saint-Germain.

When the republican troops were disbanded, Rumbold became a maltster and carried on his trade near Hodston.

In that building, from which the Rye House Plot derives its name, it had been suggested, though not absolutely determined, in the conferences of the most violent and unscrupulous of the malcontents, that armed men should be stationed in the Rye House to attack the guards who were to escort Charles and James from Newmarket to London.

In these conferences, Rumbold had borne a part from which he would have shrunk with horror if his clear understanding had not been overclouded and his manly heart corrupted by party spirit.

A more important exile was Ford Grey, Lord Grey of Wark.

He boasted that he had contrived to scatter lampoons about the terrace of Windsor, and even to lay them under the royal pillow.

In this way of life he was put to many shifts, was forced to assume many names, and at one time had four different lodgings in different corners of London.

He was deeply engaged in the Rye House plot.

There is indeed reason to believe that he was the original author of those sanguinary schemes which brought so much discredit on the whole Whig party.

He was told to stay in his house, and then he was followed around.

But eventually, he ended up in England, and he was involved in the Rye House Plot of 1683, of which he was unfortunately, um, executed.

But perhaps, as someone said, maybe he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But it certainly s- gives the impression that he was up to somebody, up to no good.