What if this consummate dissembler should cheat both the rival kings?  What if, when he found himself commander of the army and protector of the Parliament, he should proclaim Queen Anne?  Was it not possible that the weary and harassed nation might gladly acquiesce in such a settlement?  James was unpopular because he was a Papist, influenced by Popish priests.  William was unpopular because he was a foreigner, attached to foreign favourites.  Anne was at once a Protestant and an Englishwoman.  Under her government the country would be in no danger of being overrun either by Jesuits or by Dutchmen.  That Marlborough had the strongest motives for placing her on the throne was evident.  He could never, in the court of her father, be more than a repentant criminal, whose services were overpaid by a pardon.  In her court the husband of her adored friend would be what Pepin Heristal and Charles Martel had been to the Chilperics and Childeberts.  He would be the chief director of the civil and military government.  He would wield the whole power of England.  He would hold the balance of Europe.  Great kings and commonwealths would bid against each other for his favour, and exhaust their treasuries in the vain hope of satiating his avarice.  The presumption was, therefore, that, if he had the English crown in his hands, he would put in on the head of the Princess.  What evidence there was to confirm this presumption is not known; but it is certain that something took place which convinced some of the most devoted friends of the exiled family that he was meditating a second perfidy, surpassing even the feat which he had performed at Salisbury.  They were afraid that if, at that moment, they succeeded in getting rid of William, the situation of James would be more hopeless than ever.  So fully were they persuaded of the duplicity of their accomplice, that they not only refused to proceed further in the execution of the plan which he had formed, but disclosed his whole scheme to Portland.

William seems to have been alarmed and provoked by this intelligence to a degree very unusual with him.  In general he was indulgent, nay, wilfully blind to the baseness of the English statesmen whom he employed.  He suspected, indeed he knew, that some of his servants were in correspondence with his competitor; and yet he did not punish them, did not disgrace them, did not even frown on them.  He thought meanly, and he had but too good reason for thinking meanly, of the whole of that breed of public men which the Restoration had formed and had bequeathed to the Revolution.  He knew them too well to complain because he did not find in them veracity, fidelity, consistency, disinterestedness.  The very utmost that he expected from them was that they would serve him as far as they could serve him without serious danger to themselves.  If he learned that, while sitting in his council and enriched by his bounty, they were trying to make for themselves at Saint Germains an interest which might be of use