The same conspirators, together with Essex and Salisbury were determined to continue the Oxford parliament, after the king, as was daily expected, should dissolve it; and they engaged some leaders among the commons in the same desperate measure.

They went so far as to detain several lords in the house, under pretence of signing a protest against rejecting Fitzharris's impeachment; but hearing that the commons had broken up in great consternation, they were likewise obliged at last to separate.
Shaftesbury's imprisonment and trial put an end for some time to these machinations; and it was not till the new sheriffs were imposed on the city that they were revived.

The leaders of the country party began then to apprehend themselves in imminent danger; and they were well pleased to find that the citizens were struck with the same terror, and were thence inclined to undertake the most perilous enterprises.

Besides the city, the gentry and nobility in several counties of England were solicited to rise in arms.

Monmouth engaged the earl of Macclesfield, Lord Brandon, Sir Gilbert Gerrard, and other gentlemen in Cheshire; Lord Russel fixed a correspondence with Sir William Courtney, Sir Francis Rowles, Sir Francis Drake, who promised to raise the west; and Trenchard in particular, who had interest in the disaffected town of Taunton, assured him of considerable assistance from that neighborhood.
Shaftesbury and his emissary Ferguson, an Independent clergyman and a restless plotter, managed the correspondence in the city, upon which the confederates chiefly relied.