Page:History of England (Macaulay) Vol 3.djvu/533

 and who was one of the most active and cunning agents of the Jacobite faction, was entrusted with the duty of keeping him steady to the cause, and of rendering to him services from which scrupulous or timid agents might have shrunk. When the dreaded day came, Fuller was too ill to appear in the witness box, and the trial was consequently postponed. He asserted that his malady was not natural, that a noxious drug had been administered to him in a dish of porridge, that his nails were discoloured, that his hair came off, and that able physicians pronounced him poisoned. But such stories, even when they rest on authority much better than that of Fuller, ought to be received with great distrust.

While Crone was awaiting his trial, another agent of the Court of Saint Germains, named Tempest, was seized on the road between Dover and London, and was found to be the bearer of numerous letters addressed to malecontents in England. Every day it became more plain that the State was surrounded by dangers: and yet it was absolutely necessary that, at this conjuncture, the able and resolute Chief of the State should quit his post.

William, with painful anxiety, such as he alone was able to conceal under an appearance of stoical serenity, prepared to take his departure. Mary was in agonies of grief; and her distress affected him more than was imagined by those who judged of his heart by his demeanour. He knew too that he was about to leave her surrounded by difficulties with which her habits had not qualified her to contend. She would be in constant need of wise and upright counsel; and where was such counsel to be found? There were indeed among his servants many able men and a few virtuous men. But, even when he was present, their political and personal animosities had too often made both their abilities and their virtues useless to him. What chance was there that the gentle Mary would be able to restrain that party spirit and that emulation which had been but