Ever since the death of Oliver, the exiled king had watched with intense interest the course of events in England; and each day added a new stimulus to his hopes of a favourable issue.  The unsettled state of the nation, the dissensions among his enemies, the flattering representations of his friends, and the offers of co-operation from men who had hitherto opposed his claims, persuaded him that the day of his restoration was at hand.  That the opportunity might not be forfeited by his own backwardness, he announced[a] to the leaders of the royalists his intention of coming to England, and of hazarding his life in the company of his faithful subjects.  There was scarcely a county in which the majority of the nobility and gentry did not engage to rally round his standard; the first day of August was fixed for the general rising; and it was determined[b] in the council at Brussels that Charles should repair in disguise to the coast of Bretagne, where he might procure a passage into Wales or Cornwall; that the duke of York, with six hundred veterans furnished by the prince of Conde, should attempt to land from Boulogne on the coast of Kent; and that the duke of Gloucester should follow

[Footnote 1:  Journals, passim.  Ludlow, ii. 197.  Declaration of Officers, 6.  Thurloe, 679.  Clarend.  Hist. iii. 665.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1659.  June 4.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1659.  July.]

from Ostend with the royal army of four thousand men under the Marshal Marsin.  Unfortunately his concerns in England had been hitherto conducted by a council called “the Knot,” at the head of which was Sir Richard Willis.  Willis, the reader is aware, was a traitor; but it was only of late that the eyes of Charles had been opened to his perfidy by Morland, the secretary of Thurloe, who, to make his own peace, sent to the court at Bruges some of the original communications in the writing of Willis.  This discovery astonished and perplexed the king.  To make public the conduct of the traitor was to provoke him to farther disclosures:  to conceal it, was to connive at the destruction of his friends, and the ruin of his own prospects.  He first instructed his correspondents to be reserved in their communications with “the Knot;"[a] he then ordered Willis to meet him on a certain day at Calais;[b] and, when this order was disregarded, openly forbade the royalists to give to the traitor information, or to follow his advice.[1]

But these precautions came too late.  After the deposition of the protector, Willis had continued to communicate with Thurloe, who with the intelligence