Shrewsbury by Stanley J. Weyman

That the arrest of Sir John Fenwick, reported in London on the 13th of June, was regarded by all parties as an event of the first magnitude, scarce exceeded in importance by a victory in Flanders or a defeat in the Mediterranean, is a thing not to be denied at this time of day; when men, still in their prime, can recall the commotion occasioned by it. The private animosity, which was believed to exist between Sir John and the King, and which dated, if the gossip of Will's and Garraway's went for anything, not from the slight which he had put upon the late Queen, but from a much earlier period, when he had served under William in Flanders, aroused men's curiosity, and in a sense their pity; as if they were to see here the end of a Greek drama.

Nor, apart from the public and general interest, which Sir John's birth and family connections, no less than his share in the plot, considerably augmented, was there any faction which could view his arrest with indifference. He had been so deep in the confidence of St. Germain's that were he to make a discovery, not Tories and Jacobites only lay at his mercy, but all that large class among the Whigs who had stooped to palter with James. These, as they were the more culpable had also more to fear. Trembling at the prospect of a disclosure which must convict them of practices at variance with their most solemn professions, they were supported by none of those sentiments of loyalty, honourable if mistaken, which excused the others; while as each fondly thought his perfidy unknown to his neighbour, and dreaded nothing so much as detection by the rank and file of the party, he found the burden of apprehension weigh the more heavily, because he had none to share it with him.