Rye House, which he occupied in Essex, for the purposes of his trade as maltster; and from this circumstance was derived the name of the Rye House Plot.  Conscious of having done some acts which the law, if even fairly interpreted and equitably administered, might deem criminal, and certain that many which he had not done would be both sworn and believed against him, he made his escape, and passed the remainder of Charles’s reign in exile and obscurity; nor is his name, as far as I can learn, ever mentioned from the time of the Rye House Plot to that of which we are now treating.

It is not to be understood that there were no other names upon the list of those who fled from the tyranny of the British government, or thought themselves unsafe in their native country, on account of its violence, besides those of the persons above mentioned, and of such as joined in their bold and hazardous enterprise.  Another class of emigrants, not less sensible probably to the wrongs of their country, but less sanguine in their hopes of immediate redress, is ennobled by the names of Burnet the historian and Mr. Locke.  It is difficult to accede to the opinion which the first of these seems to entertain, that though particular injustices had been committed, the misgovernment had not been of such a nature as to justify resistance by arms.  But the prudential reasons against resistance at that time were exceedingly strong; and there is no point in human concerns wherein the dictates of virtue and worldly prudence are so identified as in this great question of resistance by force to established government.  Success, it has been invidiously remarked, constitutes in most instances the sole difference between the traitor and the deliverer of his country.  A rational probability of success, it may be truly said, distinguishes the well-considered enterprise of the patriot, from the rash schemes of the disturber of the public peace.  To command success is not in the power of man; but to deserve success, by choosing a proper time, as well as a proper object, by the prudence of his means, no less than by the purity of his views, by a cause not only intrinsically just, but likely to insure general support, is the indispensable duty of him who engages in an insurrection against an existing government.  Upon this subject the opinion of Ludlow, who, though often misled, appears to have been an honest and enlightened man, is striking and forcibly expressed.  “We ought,” says he, “to be very careful and circumspect in that particular, and at least be assured of very probable grounds to believe the power under which we engage to be sufficiently able to protect us in our undertaking; otherwise I should account myself not only guilty of my own blood, but also, in some measure, of the ruin and destruction of all those that I should induce to engage with me, though no cause were never so just.”  Reasons of this nature, mixed more or less with considerations of personal caution, and in some, perhaps, with dislike and distrust of the leaders, induced many, who could not but abhor the British government, to wait for better opportunities, and to prefer either submission at home, or exile, to an undertaking which, if not hopeless, must have been deemed by all hazardous in the extreme.