The death of the Queen changed every thing.  If a dagger or a bullet should now reach the heart of William, it was probable that there would instantly be general anarchy.  The Parliament and the Privy Council would cease to exist.  The authority of ministers and judges would expire with him from whom it was derived.  It might seem not improbable that at such a moment a restoration might be effected without a blow.

Scarcely therefore had Mary been laid in the grave when restless and unprincipled men began to plot in earnest against the life of William.  Foremost among these men in parts, in courage and in energy was Robert Charnock.  He had been liberally educated, and had, in the late reign, been a fellow of Magdalene College, Oxford.  Alone in that great society he had betrayed the common cause, had consented to be the tool of the High Commission, had publicly apostatized from the Church of England, and, while his college was a Popish seminary, had held the office of Vice President.  The Revolution came, and altered at once the whole course of his life.  Driven from the quiet cloister and the old grove of oaks on the bank of the Cherwell, he sought haunts of a very different kind.  During several years he led the perilous and agitated life of a conspirator, passed and repassed on secret errands between England and France, changed his lodgings in London often, and was known at different coffeehouses by different names.  His services had been requited with a captain’s commission signed by the banished King.

With Charnock was closely connected George Porter, an adventurer who called himself a Roman Catholic and a Royalist, but who was in truth destitute of all religious and of all political principle.  Porter’s friends could not deny that he was a rake and a coxcomb, that he drank, that he swore, that he told extravagant lies about his amours, and that he had been convicted of manslaughter for a stab given in a brawl at the playhouse.  His enemies affirmed that he was addicted to nauseous and horrible kinds of debauchery, and that he procured the means of indulging his infamous tastes by cheating and marauding; that he was one of a gang of clippers; that he sometimes got on horseback late in the evening and stole out in disguise, and that, when he returned from these mysterious excursions, his appearance justified the suspicion that he had been doing business on Hounslow Heath or Finchley Common.592

Cardell Goodman, popularly called Scum Goodman, a knave more abandoned, if possible, than Porter, was in the plot.  Goodman had been on the stage, had been kept, like some much greater men, by the Duchess of Cleveland, had been taken into her house, had been loaded by her with gifts, and had requited her by bribing an Italian quack to poison two of her children.  As the poison had not been administered, Goodman could be prosecuted only for a misdemeanour.  He was tried, convicted and sentenced to a ruinous fine.  He had since distinguished himself as one of the first forgers of bank notes.593