apprised that some of his friends in England meditated a deed of blood, and that they were waiting only for his approbation.  They had importuned him to speak one word, to give one sign.  He had long kept silence; and, now that he had broken silence, he merely told them to do what ever might be beneficial to himself and prejudicial to the usurper.  They had his authority as plainly given as they could reasonably expect to have it given in such a case.657

All that remained was to find a sufficient number of courageous and trustworthy assistants, to provide horses and weapons, and to fix the hour and the place of the slaughter.  Forty or fifty men, it was thought, would be sufficient.  Those troopers of James’s guard who had already followed Barclay across the Channel made up nearly half that number.  James had himself seen some of these men before their departure from Saint Germains, had given them money for their journey, had told them by what name each of them was to pass in England, had commanded them to act as they should be directed by Barclay, and had informed them where Barclay was to be found and by what tokens he was to be known.658 They were ordered to depart in small parties, and to assign different reasons for going.  Some were ill; some were weary of the service; Cassels, one of the most noisy and profane among them, announced that, since he could not get military promotion, he should enter at the Scotch college and study for a learned profession.  Under such pretexts about twenty picked men left the palace of James, made their way by Romney Marsh to London, and found their captain walking in the dim lamplight of the Piazza with the handkerchief hanging from his pocket.  One of these men was Ambrose Rockwood, who held the rank of Brigadier, and who had a high reputation for courage and honour; another was Major John Bernardi, an adventurer of Genoese extraction, whose name has derived a melancholy celebrity from a punishment so strangely prolonged that it at length shocked a generation which could not remember his crime.659

It was in these adventurers from France that Barclay placed his chief trust.  In a moment of elation he once called them his Janissaries, and expressed a hope that they would get him the George and Garter.  But twenty more assassins at least were wanted.  The conspirators probably expected valuable help from Sir John Friend, who had received a Colonel’s commission signed by James, and had been most active in enlisting men and providing arms against the day when the French should appear on the coast of Kent.  The design was imparted to him; but he thought it so rash, and so likely to bring reproach and disaster on the good cause, that he would lend no assistance to his friends, though he kept their secret religiously.660 Charnock undertook to find eight brave and trusty fellows.  He communicated the design to Porter, not with Barclay’s entire approbation; for Barclay appears to have thought that a tavern brawler, who