all the counsels of the disaffected party, and could furnish
information of the highest value. He was informed that his fate
depended on himself. The struggle was long and severe. Pride,
conscience, party spirit, were on one side; the intense love of
life on the other. He went during a time irresolutely to and fro.
He listened to his brother Jacobites; and his courage rose. He
listened to the agents of the government; and his heart sank
within him. In an evening when he had dined and drunk his claret,
he feared nothing. He would die like a man, rather than save his
neck by an act of baseness. But his temper was very different
when he woke the next morning, when the courage which he had
drawn from wine and company had evaporated, when he was alone
with the iron grates and stone walls, and when the thought of the
block, the axe and the sawdust rose in his mind. During some time
he regularly wrote a confession every forenoon when he was sober,
and burned it every night when he was merry.14 His nonjuring
friends formed a plan for bringing Sancroft to visit the Tower,
in the hope, doubtless, that the exhortations of so great a
prelate and so great a saint would confirm the wavering virtue of
the prisoner.15 Whether this plan would have been successful may
be doubted; it was not carried into effect; the fatal hour drew
near; and the fortitude of Preston gave way. He confessed his
guilt, and named Clarendon, Dartmouth, the Bishop of Ely and
William Penn, as his accomplices. He added a long list of persons
against whom he could not himself give evidence, but who, if he
could trust to Penn's assurances, were friendly to King James.
Among these persons were Devonshire and Dorset.16 There is not
the slightest reason to believe that either of these great
noblemen ever had any dealings, direct or indirect, with Saint
Germains. It is not, however, necessary to accuse Penn of