se of displeasure, he would be recalled to his native land,
and restored to all his high honours and commands. Animated by such
expectations he had been the life of the Hague during the late winter.
He had been the most conspicuous figure at a succession of balls in
that splendid Orange Hall, which blazes on every side with the most
ostentatious colouring of Jordaens and Hondthorst. [326] He had taught
the English country dance to the Dutch ladies, and had in his turn
learned from them to skate on the canals. The Princess had accompanied
him in his expeditions on the ice; and the figure which she made there,
poised on one leg, and clad in petticoats shorter than are generally
worn by ladies so strictly decorous, had caused some wonder and mirth to
the foreign ministers. The sullen gravity which had been characteristic
of the Stadtholder's court seemed to have vanished before the influence
of the fascinating Englishman. Even the stern and pensive William
relaxed into good humour when his brilliant guest appeared. [327]

Monmouth meanwhile carefully avoided all that could give offence in the
quarter to which he looked for protection. He saw little of any Whigs,
and nothing of those violent men who had been concerned in the worst
part of the Whig plot. He was therefore loudly accused, by his old
associates, of fickleness and ingratitude. [328]

By none of the exiles was this accusation urged with more vehemence and
bitterness than by Robert Ferguson, the Judas of Dryden's great satire.
Ferguson was by birth a Scot; but England had long been his residence.
At the time of the Restoration, indeed, he had held a living in Kent.
He had been bred a Presbyterian; but the Presbyterians had cast him out,
and he had become an Independent. He had been master of an academy which
the Dissenters had set up at Islington as a rival to Westminster School
and the Charter House; and he had preached to large congregations at
a meeting house in Moorfields. He had also published some theological
treatises which may still be found in the dusty recesses of a few old
libraries; but, though texts of Scripture were always on his lips, those
who had pecuniary transactions with him soon found him to be a mere
swindler.

At length he turned his attention almost entirely from theology to the
worst part of politics. He belonged to the class whose office it is
to render in troubled times to exasperated parties those services from
which honest men shrink