Page 330 - A Jacobite Exile

been found. He has been made to confess the whole matter. The case has
been heard by the council. Our fathers are free to return to England, and

their estates are restored to them; at least, the council recommends the
queen, and we know the queen is ready to sign. So that it is as good as

done."

"It seems too good to be true."

"It does, indeed, Charlie. They will be delighted across the water. I don't

think my father counted, at all, upon our finding Nicholson, or of our
getting him to confess; but I think he had hoped that the duke would
interest himself to get an order, that no further proceedings should be taken

in the matter of the alleged plot. That would have permitted them to return
to England. He spoke to me, several times, of his knowledge of the duke

when he was a young man; but Churchill, he said, was a time server, and
has certainly changed his politics several times; and, if a man is fickle in
politics, he may be so in his friendships. It was a great many years since

they had met, and Marlborough might not have been inclined to
acknowledge one charged with so serious a crime.

"But, as he said to me before I started, matters have changed since the death
of William. Marlborough stands far higher, with Anne, than he did with

William. His leanings have certainly been, all along, Jacobite, and, now
that he and the Tories are in power, and the Whigs are out of favour,

Marlborough could, if he chose, do very much for us. It is no longer a
crime to be a Jacobite, and indeed, they say that the Tories are intending to
upset the act of succession, and bring in a fresh one, making James Stuart

the successor to Anne.

"Still, even if we had succeeded so far, by Marlborough's influence, that
our fathers could have returned to England without fear of being tried for
their lives, I do not think that either of them would have come, so long as

the charge of having been concerned in an assassination plot was hanging
over them.