As soon as he had reason to believe that the day of deliverance and retribution was at hand, he had, by a most dexterous and seasonable treason, earned his pardon.

During the three months which preceded the arrival of the Dutch armament in Torbay, he had rendered to the cause of liberty and of the Protestant religion services of which it is difficult to overrate either the wickedness or the utility.

To him chiefly it was owing that, at the most critical moment in our history, a French army was not menacing the Batavian frontier and a French fleet hovering about the English coast.
William could not, without staining his own honour, refuse to protect one whom he had not scrupled to employ.

Yet it was no easy task even for William to save that guilty head from the first outbreak of public fury.
For even those extreme politicians of both sides who agreed in nothing else agreed in calling for vengeance on the renegade.

The Whigs hated him as the vilest of the slaves by whom the late government had been served, and the Jacobites as the vilest of the traitors by whom it had been overthrown.