think that they could place, by force of arms, on the
English throne, had himself, on the morning after the rout of the Boyne,
reproached them with their cowardice, and told them that he would never
again trust to their soldiership. On this subject Englishmen were of one
mind. Tories, Nonjurors, even Roman Catholics, were as loud as Whigs in
reviling the ill fated race. It is, therefore, not difficult to guess
what effect would have been produced by the appearance on our soil of
enemies whom, on their own soil, we had vanquished and trampled down.

James, however, in spite of the recent and severe teaching of
experience, believed whatever his correspondents in England told him;
and they told him that the whole nation was impatiently expecting him,
that both the West and the North were ready to rise, that he would
proceed from the place of landing to Whitehall with as little
opposition as when, in old times, he returned from a progress. Ferguson
distinguished himself by the confidence with which he predicted a
complete and bloodless victory. He and his printer, he was absurd enough
to write, would be the two first men in the realm to take horse for His
Majesty. Many other agents were busy up and down the country, during the
winter and the early part of the spring. It does not appear that they
had much success in the counties south of Trent. But in the north,
particularly in Lancashire, where the Roman Catholics were more numerous
and more powerful than in any other part of the kingdom, and where there
seems to have been, even among the Protestant gentry, more than the
ordinary proportion of bigoted Jacobites, some preparations for an
insurrection were made. Arms were privately bought; officers were
appointed; yeomen, small farmers, grooms, huntsmen, were induced to
enlist. Those who gave in their names were distributed into eight
regiments of cavalry and dragoons, and were directed to hold themselves
in readiness to mount at the first signal. [252]

One of the circumstances which filled James, at this time, with
vain hopes, was that his wife was pregnant and near her delivery. He
flattered himself that malice itself would be ashamed to repeat any
longer the story of the warming pan, and that multitudes whom that story
had deceived would instantly return to their allegiance. He took, on
this occasion, all those precautions which, four years before, he had
foolishly and perversely forborne to take. He contrived to transmi