Taaffe now confidently expected to be recompensed for his services; but he found a cold reception at the Treasury.  He had gone down to Lancashire chiefly in order that he might, under the protection of a search warrant, pilfer trinkets and broad pieces from secret drawers.  His sleight of hand however had not altogether escaped the observation of his companions.  They discovered that he had made free with the communion plate of the Popish families, whose private hoards he had assisted in ransacking.  When therefore he applied for reward, he was dismissed, not merely with a refusal, but with a stern reprimand.  He went away mad with greediness and spite.  There was yet one way in which he might obtain both money and revenge; and that way he took.  He made overtures to the friends of the prisoners.  He and he alone could undo what he had done, could save the accused from the gallows, could cover the accusers with infamy, could drive from office the Secretary and the Solicitor who were the dread of all the friends of King James.  Loathsome as Taaffe was to the Jacobites, his offer was not to be slighted.  He received a sum in hand; he was assured that a comfortable annuity for life should be settled on him when the business was done; and he was sent down into the country, and kept in strict seclusion against the day of trial.540

Meanwhile unlicensed pamphlets, in which the Lancashire plot was classed with Oates’s plot, with Dangerfield’s plot, with Fuller’s plot, with Young’s plot, with Whitney’s plot, were circulated all over the kingdom, and especially in the county which was to furnish the jury.  Of these pamphlets the longest, the ablest, and the bitterest, entitled a Letter to Secretary Trenchard, was commonly ascribed to Ferguson.  It is not improbable that Ferguson may have furnished some of the materials, and may have conveyed the manuscript to the press.  But many passages are written with an art and a vigour which assuredly did not belong to him.  Those who judge by internal evidence may perhaps think that, in some parts of this remarkable tract, they can discern the last gleam of the malignant genius of Montgomery.  A few weeks after the appearance of the Letter he sank, unhonoured and unlamented, into the grave.541

There were then no printed newspapers except the London Gazette.  But since the Revolution the newsletter had become a more important political engine than it had previously been.  The newsletters of one writer named Dyer were widely circulated in manuscript.  He affected to be a Tory and a High Churchman, and was consequently regarded by the foxhunting lords of manors, all over the kingdom, as an oracle.  He had already been twice in prison; but his gains had more than compensated for his sufferings, and he still persisted in seasoning his intelligence to suit the taste of the country gentlemen.  He now turned the Lancashire plot into ridicule, declared that the guns which had been found were old fowling pieces,