A little time before Charles’s death he had indulged hopes of being recalled; and that his intelligence to that effect was not quite unfounded, or if false, was at least mixed with truth, is clear from the following circumstance:  —­From the notes found when he was taken, in his memorandum book, it appears that part of the plan concerted between the king and Monmouth’s friend (probably Halifax), was that the Duke of York should go to Scotland, between which, and his being sent abroad again, Monmouth and his friends saw no material difference.  Now in Barillon’s letters to his court, dated the 7th of December, 1684, it appears that the Duke of York had told that ambassador of his intended voyage to Scotland though he represented it in a very different point of view, and said that it would not be attended with any diminution of his favour or credit.  This was the light in which Charles, to whom the expressions, “to blind my brother, not to make the Duke of York fly out,” and the like, were familiar, would certainly have shown the affair to his brother, and therefore of all the circumstances adduced, this appears to me to be the strongest in favour of the supposition, that there was in the king’s mind a real intention of making an important, if not a complete, change in his councils and measures.

Besides these two leaders, there were on the continent at that time several other gentlemen of great consideration.  Sir Patrick Hume, of Polworth, had early distinguished himself in the cause of liberty.  When the privy council of Scotland passed an order, compelling the counties to pay the expense of the garrisons arbitrarily placed in them, he refused to pay his quota, and by a mode of appeal to the court of session, which the Scotch lawyers call a bill of suspension, endeavoured to procure redress.  The council ordered him to be imprisoned, for no other crime, as it should seem, than that of having thus attempted to procure, by a legal process, a legal decision upon a point of law.  After having remained in close confinement in Stirling Castle for near four years, he was set at liberty through the favour and interest of Monmouth.  Having afterwards engaged in schemes connected with those imputed to Sidney and Russell, orders were issued for seizing him at his house in Berwickshire; but having had timely notice of his danger from his relation, Hume of Ninewells, a gentleman attached to the royal cause, but whom party spirit had not rendered insensible to the ties of kindred and private friendship, he found means to conceal himself for a time, and shortly after to escape beyond sea.  His concealment is said to have been in the family burial-place, where the means of sustaining life were brought to him by his daughter, a girl of fifteen years of age, whose duty and affection furnished her with courage to brave the terrors, as well superstitious as real, to which she was necessarily exposed in an intercourse of this nature.