The history of Sunderland's intrigues is covered with an obscurity which it is not probable that any inquirer will ever succeed in penetrating: but, though it is impossible to discover the whole truth, it is easy to detect some palpable fictions.

The Jacobites, for obvious reasons, affirmed that the revolution of 1688 was the result of a plot concerted long before.

Sunderland they represented as the chief conspirator.

He had, they averred, in pursuance of his great design, incited his too confiding master to dispense with statutes, to create an illegal tribunal, to confiscate freehold property, and to send the fathers of the Established Church to a prison.

This romance rests on no evidence, and, though it has been repeated down to our own time, seems hardly to deserve confutation.