had been too indulgent and too fond of pleasure to give them much
trouble. Nottingham was a diligent and honest minister; but he was as
high a Tory as a faithful subject of William and Mary could be; he loved
and esteemed many of the nonjurors; and, though he might force himself
to be severe when nothing but severity could save the State, he was
not extreme to mark the transgressions of his old friends; nor did he
encourage talebearers to come to Whitehall with reports of conspiracies.
But Trenchard was both an active public servant and an earnest Whig.
Even if he had himself been inclined to lenity, he would have been urged
to severity by those who surrounded him. He had constantly at his side
Hugh Speke and Aaron Smith, men to whom a hunt after a Jacobite was
the most exciting of all sports. The cry of the malecontents was that
Nottingham had kept his bloodhounds in the leash, but that Trenchard had
let them slip. Every honest gentleman who loved the Church and hated
the Dutch went in danger of his life. There was a constant bustle at
the Secretary's Office, a constant stream of informers coming in, and of
messengers with warrants going out. It was said too, that the warrants
were often irregularly drawn, that they did not specify the person, that
they did not specify the crime, and yet that, under the authority of
such instruments as these, houses were entered, desks and cabinets
searched, valuable papers carried away, and men of good birth and
breeding flung into gaol among felons. [536] The minister and his agents
answered that Westminster Hall was open; that, if any man had been
illegally imprisoned, he had only to bring his action; that juries were
quite sufficiently disposed to listen to any person who pretended to
have been oppressed by cruel and griping men in power, and that, as
none of the prisoners whose wrongs were so pathetically described had
ventured to resort to this obvious and easy mode of obtaining redress,
it might fairly be inferred that nothing had been done which could
not be justified. The clamour of the malecontents however made a
considerable impression on the public mind; and at length, a transaction
in which Trenchard was more unlucky than culpable, brought on him and on
the government with which he was connected much temporary obloquy.

Among the informers who haunted his office was an Irish vagabond who had
borne more than one name and had professed more than one religion. He
now called h