A conspiracy against the government had been lately discovered. In the latter end of December, the master of a vessel who lived at Barking, in Essex, informed the marquis of Carmarthen that his wife had let out one of his boats to carry over some persons to France, and that they would embark on the thirteenth day of the month. This intelligence being communicated to the king and council, an order was sent to captain Billop to watch the motion of the vessel and secure the passengers. He accordingly boarded her at Gravesend, and found in the hold lord Preston, Mr. Ashton, a servant of the late queen, and one Elliot. He likewise seized a bundle of papers, some of which were scarce intelligible; among the rest, two letters supposed to be written by Turner, bishop of Ely, to king James and his queen, under fictitious names. The whole amounted to an invitation to the French king to assist king James in re-ascending the throne upon certain conditions, while William should be absent from the kingdom; but the scheme was ill laid, and countenanced but by a very few persons of consideration, among whom the chiefs were the earl of Clarendon, the bishop of Ely, lord Preston, his brother Mr. Graham, and Penn the famous quaker. Notwithstanding the outcries which had been made against the severities of the late government, Preston and his accomplice Ashton were tried at the Old Bailey for compassing the death of their majesties king William and queen Mary; and their trials were hurried on without any regard to their petitions for delay. Lord Preston alleged in his defence that the treasons charged upon him were not committed in the county of Middlesex, as laid in the indictment; that none of the witnesses declared he had any concern in hiring the vessel; that the papers were not found upon him; that there ought to be two credible witnesses to every fact, whereas the whole proof against him rested on similitude of hands and mere supposition. He was, nevertheless, found guilty. Ashton behaved with great intrepidity and composure. He owned his purpose of going to France in pursuance of a promise he had made to general Worden, who, on his death-bed, conjured him to go thither and finish some affairs of consequence which he had left there depending, as well as with a view to recover a considerable sum of money due to himself. He denied that he was privy to the contents of the papers found upon him; he complained of his having been denied time to prepare for his trial; and called several persons to prove him a protestant of exemplary piety and irreproachable morals. These circumstances had no weight with the court. He was brow-beaten by the bench, and found guilty by the jury, as he had the papers in his custody; yet there was no privity proved; and the whig party themselves had often expressly declared, that of all sorts of evidence that of finding papers in a person’s possession is the weakest, because no man can secure himself from such danger. Ashton suffered with equal courage and decorum. In a paper which he delivered to the sheriff, he owned his attachment to king James; he witnessed to the birth of the prince of Wales; denied his knowledge of the contents of the papers that were committed to his charge; complained of the hard measure he had met with from the judges and the jury, but forgave them in the sight of heaven. This man was celebrated by the nonjurors as a martyr to loyalty; and they boldly affirmed, that his chief crime in the eyes of the government was his having among his baggage an account of such evidence as would have been convincing to all the world concerning the birth of the prince of Wales, which by a great number of people was believed supposititious.* Lord Preston obtained a pardon; Elliot was not tried, because no evidence appeared against him; the earl of Clarendon was sent to the Tower, where he remained some months, and he was afterwards confined to his own house in the country—an indulgence which he owed to his consanguinity with the queen, who was his first cousin. The bishop of Ely, Graham, and Penn, absconded; and a proclamation was issued for apprehending them as traitors.