The whole train was ready to take fire; but was prevented by the caution of Lord Russel, who induced Monmouth to delay the enterprise.

Shaftesbury, in the mean time, was so much affected with the sense of his danger, that he had left his house, and secretly lurked in the city; meditating all those desperate schemes which disappointed revenge and ambition could inspire.

He exclaimed loudly against delay, and represented to his confederates, that having gone so far, and intrusted the secret into so many hands, there was no safety for them but in a bold and desperate prosecution of their purpose.

The projects were therefore renewed: meetings of the conspirators were appointed in different houses, particularly in Shephard's, an eminent wine-merchant in the city: the plan of an insurrection was laid in London, Cheshire, Devonshire, and Bristol: the several places of rendezvous in the city were concerted; and all the operations fixed: the state of the guards was even viewed by Monmouth and Armstrong, and an attack on them pronounced practicable: a declaration to justify the enterprise to the public was read and agreed to: and every circumstance seemed now to render an insurrection unavoidable; when a new delay was procured by Trenchard, who declared that the rising in the west could not for some weeks be in sufficient forwardness.
Shaftesbury was enraged at these perpetual cautions and delays in an enterprise which, he thought, nothing but courage and celerity could render effectual: he threatened to commence the insurrection with his friends in the city alone; and he boasted, that he had ten thousand brisk boys, as he called them, who, on a motion of his finger, were ready to fly to arms.

Monmouth*[**missing comma] Russel, and the other conspirators, were during some time in apprehensions lest despair should push him into some dangerous measure; when they heard that, after a long combat between fear and rage, he had at last abandoned all hopes of success, and had retired into Holland.