Allen, Admiral Lawson, Major John Wildman, Lord Grey of Groby, Carew, and even Bradshaw, Hasilrig, and Henry Marten, were, or were said to be, more or less involved.  The aim seems to have been a combination of the Anabaptist Levellers with the more eminent Republicans,—­the Levellers, or some of them, quite willing to combine also with the Royalists, and indeed in confidential negotiation with them.  How the scheme, or medley of schemes, would have turned out in the working, was never to be known.  It was frustrated by the arrest, in January and February, of most of the suspected.  The most important arrest was that of Major Wildman, the undoubted chief of the Levelling section of the conspiracy.  When arrested in Wiltshire, he was found in the act of dictating a “Declaration of the Free and Well-affected People of England now in arms against the tyrant Oliver Cromwell, Esq.”  He was imprisoned in Chepstow Castle.  Sexby, the most active man after Wildman in the Levelling or Anabaptist section of the conspiracy, escaped and went abroad.  Adjutant-General Allen, and others less deeply implicated, were dismissed from their posts in the Army.  Harrison was confined in the Isle of Portland, Carew in St. Mawes, in Cornwall, and Lord Grey of Groby in Windsor Castle.  None of all the Republicans, higher or lower, it was remarked, suffered any punishment beyond such seclusion or dismissal from the service.  Clemency on that side was always Cromwell’s policy.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Godwin, IV. 158-165; Carlyle, III. 66-70 and 98-99; Whitlocke, IV. 182-188 (Wildman’s Proclamation); Life of Robert Blair, 319.]

Much sharper was Cromwell’s method of dealing with the attempted invasion and insurrection of the Royalists independently.  Hopes had risen high at the Court of the Stuarts, and the preparations had been extensive.  Charles himself had gone to Middleburg, with the Marquis of Ormond and others, to be ready for a landing in England; Hull had been thought of as the likeliest landing-place; commissioned pioneers of the enterprise were already moving about in various English counties.  Of all this Thurloe had procured sufficient intelligence through his foreign spies, and the precautions of the Protector and Council had been commensurate.  The projected Overton revolt in Scotland and the Wildman-Sexby plot in England having been brought to nothing, the Royalists had to act for themselves.  Two abortive risings in March, 1654-5, exhausted their energy.  One was in Yorkshire, where Sir Henry Slingsby and Sir Richard Malevrier appeared in arms, but were immediately suppressed.  The other was in the West, and was more serious.  On the night of Sunday, the 11th of March, a body of 200 Cavaliers, headed by Sir Joseph Wagstaff, one of Charles’s emissaries from abroad, took possession of the city of Salisbury, The assizes were to be held in the city the next day, and Chief Justice Rolle, Judge Nicholas, and the High Sheriff, had arrived and were in their beds.  They were seized; and