those sentences in which the Church expresses her gratitude for the second great deliverance wrought on that day.280 Such a man, possessed of a plentiful income, of a seat in the House of Lords, of one agreeable house among the elms of Bromley, and of another in the cloisters of Westminster, was very unlikely to run the risk of martyrdom.  He was not, indeed, on perfectly good terms with the government.  For the feeling which, next to solicitude for his own comfort and repose, seems to have had the greatest influence on his public conduct, was his dislike of the Puritans; a dislike which sprang, not from bigotry, but from Epicureanism.  Their austerity was a reproach to his slothful and luxurious life; their phraseology shocked his fastidious taste; and, where they were concerned, his ordinary good nature forsook him.  Loathing the nonconformists as he did, he was not likely to be very zealous for a prince whom the nonconformists regarded as their protector.  But Sprat’s faults afforded ample security that he would never, from spleen against William, engage in any plot to bring back James.  Why Young should have assigned the most perilous part in an enterprise full of peril to a man singularly pliant, cautious and selfindulgent, it is difficult to say.

The first step which the ministers took was to send Marlborough to the Tower.  He was by far the most formidable of all the accused persons; and that he had held a traitorous correspondence with Saint Germains was a fact which, whether Young were perjured or not, the Queen and her chief advisers knew to be true.  One of the Clerks of the Council and several messengers were sent down to Bromley with a warrant from Nottingham.  Sprat was taken into custody.  All the apartments in which it could reasonably be supposed that he would have hidden an important document were searched, the library, the diningroom, the drawingroom, the bedchamber, and the adjacent closets.  His papers were strictly examined.  Much food prose was found, and probably some bad verse, but no treason.  The messengers pried into every flowerpot that they could find, but to no purpose.  It never occurred to them to look into the room in which Blackhead had hidden the Association:  for that room was near the offices occupied by the servants, and was little used by the Bishop and his family.  The officers returned to London with their prisoner, but without the document which, if it had been found, might have been fatal to him.

Late at night he was brought to Westminster, and was suffered to sleep at his deanery.  All his bookcases and drawers were examined; and sentinels were posted at the door of his bedchamber, but with strict orders to behave civilly and not to disturb the family.