He reached Taunton towards ten o'clock that night, having ridden hell-to-leather.

His first visit was to the Hare and Hounds, where Blake and Westmacott had overtaken the courier.

His next to the house where Sir Edward Phelips and Colonel Luttrell--the gentlemen lately ordered to Taunton by His Majesty--had their lodging.
The fruits of Mr.Trenchard's extraordinary behaviour that night were to be seen at an early hour on the following day, when a constable and three tything-men came with a Lord-Lieutenant's warrant to arrest Mr.
Richard Westmacott on a charge of high treason.

They found the young man still abed, and most guilty was his panic when they bade him rise and dress himself--though little did he dream of the full extent to which Mr.Trenchard had enmeshed him, or indeed that Mr.Trenchard had any hand at all in this affair.

What time he was getting into his clothes with a tything-man outside his door and another on guard under his window, the constable and his third myrmidon made an exhaustive search of the house.