of marrying an old woman for her money.  Russell proceeded to complain bitterly that the Whigs were neglected, that the Revolution had aggrandised and enriched men who had made the greatest efforts to avert it.  And there is reason to believe that this complaint came from his heart.  For, next to his own interests, those of his party were dear to him; and, even when he was most inclined to become a Jacobite, he never had the smallest disposition to become a Tory.  In the temper which this letter indicates, he readily listened to the suggestions of David Lloyd, one of the ablest and most active emissaries who at this time were constantly plying between France and England.  Lloyd conveyed to James assurances that Russell would, when a favourable opportunity should present itself, try to effect by means of the fleet what Monk had effected in the preceding generation by means of the army.63 To what extent these assurances were sincere was a question about which men who knew Russell well, and who were minutely informed as to his conduct, were in doubt.  It seems probable that, during many months, he did not know his own mind.  His interest was to stand well, as long as possible, with both Kings.  His irritable and imperious nature was constantly impelling him to quarrel with both.  His spleen was excited one week by a dry answer from William, and the next week by an absurd proclamation from James.  Fortunately the most important day of his life, the day from which all his subsequent years took their colour, found him out of temper with the banished King.

Godolphin had not, and did not pretend to have, any cause of complaint against the government which he served.  He was First Commissioner of the Treasury.  He had been protected, trusted, caressed.  Indeed the favour shown to him had excited many murmurs.  Was it fitting, the Whigs had indignantly asked, that a man who had been high in office through the whole of the late reign, who had promised to vote for the Indulgence, who had sate in the Privy Council with a Jesuit, who had sate at the Board of Treasury with two Papists, who had attended an idolatress to her altar, should be among the chief ministers of a Prince whose title to the throne was derived from the Declaration of Rights?  But on William this clamour had produced no effect; and none of his English servants seems to have had at this time a larger share of his confidence than Godolphin.

Nevertheless, the Jacobites did not despair.  One of the most zealous among them, a gentleman named Bulkeley, who had formerly been on terms of intimacy with Godolphin, undertook to see what could be done.  He called at the Treasury, and tried to draw the First Lord into political talk.  This was no easy matter; for Godolphin was not a man to put himself lightly into the power of others.  His reserve was proverbial; and he was especially renowned for the dexterity with which he, through life, turned conversation away from matters of state to a main of cocks or the pedigree of a racehorse.  The visit ended without his uttering a word indicating that he remembered the existence of King James.