Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/224

Her ministers where every where silenced: Cargill and Cameron, the only two that remained of the intrepid band that had so long kept up the preached gospel in the fields, had both fallen, the one on the scaffold by an iniquitous sentence, the other on the open heath by the hand of violence. Her nobles were either the slaves of arbitrary royalty, or they had already expatriated themselves, or were just about to do so, while the body of her people, Issachar-like, were crouching beneath their burdens in the most hopeless dejection. Finding no encouragement in Scotland, where the few individuals that felt any of the true aspirations of liberty, were seriously engaged in a project for purchasing lands and transporting themselves, their families, and their friends to Carolina in North America, Mr Carstairs determined to return to Holland, where, under a rational and indulgent government, he had enjoyed a liberty which he found to his grief was not to be obtained at home. He, however, probably not without instructions, took London in his way, where he arrived in the month of November, 1683, at the very time when Shaftesbury, Monmouth, Sydney, Essex, Russell, Hampclen, and Howard were engaged in what has been called Shaftesbury's plot, or more generally, from a forged story of a design to murder the king and the duke of York at a farm called the Rye, possessed by colonel Rumbold, the Ryehouse plot These gentlemen were actuated by very different views. Monmouth had probably no object but the crown; Russell arid Hampden were for restraining the prerogative and securing the nation's liberties, civil and religous; Sydney and Essex were for restoring the republic, while Howard, a man without principle, seems to have had nothing in view, but to raise a tumult, whereby he might by accident promote his private interest All of them, however, agreed in soliciting the co-operation of those Scotsmen, who, no longer able to subsist under the impositions of a government whose sole object seemed to be not the protection, but the entire ruin of its subjects, were about to transport themselves to a distant and desert country. Most of the conspirators having some previous knowledge of Carstairs, he was employed to negotiate between the parties; and he was empowered by a letter from Sir James Stewart, afterwards lord advocate for Scotland, to assure the English conspirators that, upon furnishing a certain sum of money for the purchase of arms and ammunition, the Scottish refugees in Holland were ready to co-operate with them by an immediate descent upon the west coast of Scotland. This letter he communicated to Russell and Sydney, seconding its contents by a fervent eulogium upon the influence, the talents, and the particular merits of Argyle, whose numerous vassals, extensive jurisdictions, as well as his past sufferings, pointed him out as the most proper person to head an insurrection in that country. All this must have been self-evident to the whole party; yet they do not seem to have been so cordial as might have been expected. Though Carstairs ceased not to press the object of his mission, he was put off from time to time till he was at length told by Shepherd, an eminent wine-merchant in London, who was one of the subaltern conspirators, that he had heard Sydney declare that he would have nothing to do with Argyle, being well aware that, whatever his present circumstances might prompt him to undertake, he was too strongly attached to the reigning family and to the present government, both in church and state, to unite cordially with them in the measures they had determined to pursue. At the same time, he was told both by Shepherd and Ferguson that the party were jealous of Sydney as driving a secret design of his own, and Ferguson took the opportunity to hint to Mr Carstairs, that there might be an easier method of attaining their point than by an open rebellion, as by taking the lives of at most two men, they might spare the lives of thousands, evidently, hinting at what must have been spoken of among the inferior members of this