deluded many of his contemporaries. Nothing would have induced him to
put poison into the food of the two princes, or to poinard them in their
sleep. But to make an unexpected onset on the troop of Life Guards which
surrounded the royal coach, to exchange sword cuts and pistol shots,
and to take the chance of slaying or of being slain, was, in his view,
a lawful military operation. Ambuscades and surprises were among the
ordinary incidents of war. Every old soldier, Cavalier or Roundhead,
had been engaged in such enterprises. If in the skirmish the King should
fall, he would fall by fair fighting and not by murder. Precisely the
same reasoning was employed, after the Revolution, by James himself and
by some of his most devoted followers, to justify a wicked attempt on
the life of William the Third. A band of Jacobites was commissioned to
attack the Prince of Orange in his winter quarters. The meaning latent
under this specious phrase was that the Prince's throat was to be cut
as he went in his coach from Richmond to Kensington. It may seem strange
that such fallacies, the dregs of the Jesuitical casuistry, should have
had power to seduce men of heroic spirit, both Whigs and Tories, into a
crime on which divine and human laws have justly set a peculiar note of
infamy. But no sophism is too gross to delude minds distempered by party
spirit. [351]

Argyle, who survived Rumbold a few hours, left a dying testimony to the
virtues of the gallant Englishman. "Poor Rumbold was a great support to
me, and a brave man, and died Christianly." [352]

Ayloffe showed as much contempt of death as either Argyle or Rumbold:
but his end did not, like theirs, edify pious minds. Though political
sympathy had drawn him towards the Puritans, he had no religious
sympathy with them, and was indeed regarded by them as little better
than an atheist. He belonged to that section of the Whigs which sought
for models rather among the patriots of Greece and Rome than among the
prophets and judges of Israel. He was taken prisoner, and carried to
Glasgow. There he attempted to destroy himself with a small penknife:
but though he gave himself several wounds, none of them proved mortal,
and he had strength enough left to bear a journey to London. He was
brought before the Privy Council, and interrogated by the King, but had
too much elevation of mind to save himself by informing against others.
A story was current among the Whigs that the King said, "You