in and progress of
that rebellion by which the deliberations of the Houses were suddenly
interrupted.

CHAPTER V.

TOWARDS the close of the reign of Charles the Second, some Whigs who had
been deeply implicated in the plot so fatal to their party, and who knew
themselves to be marked out for destruction, had sought an asylum in the
Low Countries.

These refugees were in general men of fiery temper and weak judgment.
They were also under the influence of that peculiar illusion which seems
to belong to their situation. A politician driven into banishment by a
hostile faction generally sees the society which he has quitted through
a false medium. Every object is distorted and discoloured by his
regrets, his longings, and his resentments. Every little discontent
appears to him to portend a revolution. Every riot is a rebellion. He
cannot be convinced that his country does not pine for him as much as
he pines for his country. He imagines that all his old associates, who
still dwell at their homes and enjoy their estates, are tormented by
the same feelings which make life a burden to himself. The longer his
expatriation, the greater does this hallucination become. The lapse of
time, which cools the ardour of the friends whom he has left behind,
inflames his. Every month his impatience to revisit his native land
increases; and every month his native land remembers and misses him
less. This delusion becomes almost a madness when many exiles who
suffer in the same cause herd together in a foreign country. Their chief
employment is to talk of what they once were, and of what they may yet
be, to goad each other into animosity against the common enemy, to feed
each other with extravagant hopes of victory and revenge. Thus they
become ripe for enterprises which would at once be pronounced hopeless
by any man whose passions had not deprived him of the power of
calculating chances.

In this mood were many of the outlaws who had assembled on the
Continent. The correspondence which they kept up with England was, for
the most part, such as tended to excite their feelings and to mislead
their judgment. Their information concerning the temper of the public
mind was chiefly derived from the worst members of the Whig party, from
men who were plotters and libellers by profession, who were pursued by
the officers of justice, who were forced to skulk in disguise through
back streets, and who sometimes lay hid for weeks together in co