Elliot was not brought to trial.  The evidence against him was not quite so clear as that on which his associates had been convicted; and he was not worth the anger of the government.  The fate of Preston was long in suspense.  The Jacobites affected to be confident that the government would not dare to shed his blood.  He was, they said, a favourite at Versailles, and his death would be followed by a terrible retaliation.  They scattered about the streets of London papers in which it was asserted that, if any harm befell him, Mountjoy, and all the other Englishmen of quality who were prisoners in France, would be broken on the wheel.13 These absurd threats would not have deferred the execution one day.  But those who had Preston in their power were not unwilling to spare him on certain conditions.  He was privy to all the counsels of the disaffected party, and could furnish information of the highest value.  He was informed that his fate depended on himself.  The struggle was long and severe.  Pride, conscience, party spirit, were on one side; the intense love of life on the other.  He went during a time irresolutely to and fro.  He listened to his brother Jacobites; and his courage rose.  He listened to the agents of the government; and his heart sank within him.  In an evening when he had dined and drunk his claret, he feared nothing.  He would die like a man, rather than save his neck by an act of baseness.  But his temper was very different when he woke the next morning, when the courage which he had drawn from wine and company had evaporated, when he was alone with the iron grates and stone walls, and when the thought of the block, the axe and the sawdust rose in his mind.  During some time he regularly wrote a confession every forenoon when he was sober, and burned it every night when he was merry.14 His nonjuring friends formed a plan for bringing Sancroft to visit the Tower, in the hope, doubtless, that the exhortations of so great a prelate and so great a saint would confirm the wavering virtue of the prisoner.15 Whether this plan would have been successful may be doubted; it was not carried into effect; the fatal hour drew near; and the fortitude of Preston gave way.  He confessed his guilt, and named Clarendon, Dartmouth, the Bishop of Ely and William Penn, as his accomplices.  He added a long list of persons against whom he could not himself give evidence, but who, if he could trust to Penn’s assurances, were friendly to King James.  Among these persons were Devonshire and Dorset.16 There is not the slightest reason to believe that either of these great noblemen ever had any dealings, direct or indirect, with Saint Germains.  It is not, however, necessary to accuse Penn of deliberate falsehood.  He was credulous and garrulous.  The Lord Steward and the Lord Chamberlain had shared in the vexation with which their party had observed the leaning of William towards the Tories; and they had probably expressed that vexation unguardedly.  So weak