Of the four previous years every one had been marked by some great disaster.  In 1690 Waldeck had been defeated at Fleurus.  In 1691 Mons had fallen.  In 1692 Namur had been taken in sight of the allied army; and this calamity had been speedily followed by the defeat of Steinkirk.  In 1693 the battle of Landen had been lost; and Charleroy had submitted to the conqueror.  At length in 1694 the tide had begun to turn.  The French arms had made no progress.  What had been gained by the allies was indeed not much; but the smallest gain was welcome to those whom a long run of evil fortune had discouraged.

In England, the general opinion was that, notwithstanding the disaster in Camaret Bay, the war was on the whole proceeding satisfactorily both by land and by sea.  But some parts of the internal administration excited, during this autumn, much discontent.

Since Trenchard had been appointed Secretary of State, the Jacobite agitators had found their situation much more unpleasant than before.  Sidney had been too indulgent and too fond of pleasure to give them much trouble.  Nottingham was a diligent and honest minister; but he was as high a Tory as a faithful subject of William and Mary could be; he loved and esteemed many of the nonjurors; and, though he might force himself to be severe when nothing but severity could save the State, he was not extreme to mark the transgressions of his old friends; nor did he encourage talebearers to come to Whitehall with reports of conspiracies.  But Trenchard was both an active public servant and an earnest Whig.  Even if he had himself been inclined to lenity, he would have been urged to severity by those who surrounded him.  He had constantly at his side Hugh Speke and Aaron Smith, men to whom a hunt after a Jacobite was the most exciting of all sports.  The cry of the malecontents was that Nottingham had kept his bloodhounds in the leash, but that Trenchard had let them slip.  Every honest gentleman who loved the Church and hated the Dutch went in danger of his life.  There was a constant bustle at the Secretary’s Office, a constant stream of informers coming in, and of messengers with warrants going out.  It was said too, that the warrants were often irregularly drawn, that they did not specify the person, that they did not specify the crime, and yet that, under the authority of such instruments as these, houses were entered, desks and cabinets searched, valuable papers carried away, and men of good birth and breeding flung into gaol among felons.536 The minister and his agents answered that Westminster Hall was open; that, if any man had been illegally imprisoned, he had only to bring his action; that juries were quite sufficiently disposed to listen to any person who pretended to have been oppressed by cruel and griping men in power, and that, as none of the prisoners whose wrongs were so pathetically described had ventured to resort to this obvious and easy mode of obtaining redress, it might fairly be inferred that nothing had been done which could not be justified.  The clamour of the malecontents however made a considerable impression on the public mind; and at length, a transaction in which Trenchard was more unlucky than culpable, brought on him and on the government with which he was connected much temporary obloquy.