For he had, in order to retain a lucrative office which he held in the Court of Chancery, sworn allegiance to the Prince against whose life he now conspired.
The design was imparted to Sir John Fenwick, celebrated on account of the cowardly insult which he had offered to the deceased Queen.

Fenwick, if his own assertion is to be trusted, was willing to join in an insurrection, but recoiled from the thought of assassination, and showed so much of what was in his mind as sufficed to make him an object of suspicion to his less scrupulous associates.

He kept their secret, however, as strictly as if he had wished them success.
It should seem that, at first, a natural feeling restrained the conspirators from calling their design by the proper name.

Even in their private consultations they did not as yet talk of killing the Prince of Orange.

They would try to seize him and to carry him alive into France.
If there were any resistance they might be forced to use their swords and pistols, and nobody could be answerable for what a thrust or a shot might do.