The flight of Shaftesbury, whose bustling and
politic brain had rendered him the sole channel of communication
betwixt these parties, as well as the means of uniting them in one
common design, threw loose all connection between them; so that
each, after his retreat, seems to have acted independantly of, and
often in contradiction to the other.
7. The reader may judge, whether some distant and obscure allusion to
the trimming politics of Halifax, to whom the Duke of York, our
author's patron, was hostile, may not be here insinuated. During
the stormy session of his two last parliaments, Charles was much
guided by his temporising and camelion-like policy.
8. That is by fire. See next note.
9. The allegory of the one-eyed Archer, and the fire arising betwixt
him and Albion, will be made evident by the following extracts from
Sprat's history of the Conspiracy. In enumerating the persons
engaged in the Rye-house plot, he mentions "Richard Rumbold,
maltster, an old army officer, a desperate and bloody Ravaillac."
After agitating several schemes for assassinating Charles, the
Rye-house was fixed upon as a spot which the king must necessarily
pass in his journey trom Newmarket, and which, being a solitary
moated house, in the actual occupation of Rumbold, afforded the
conspirators facility of previous concealment and subsequent
defence.
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