Parson Kelly by A.E.W. Mason

From this time until Saturday, May 19, the world seemed to go very well for those concerned in the Bishop of Rochester's plot, which was a waiting plot; and in the other scheme, the scheme for an immediate rising, which was a hurrying scheme, and not at all known to the good Bishop. There was a comforting air of discontent abroad; the losses from the South Sea made minds heavy and purses light. Mr. Walpole had smoked nothing of what was forward, so far as a man could see; and within a month the country was to rise. Mr. Wogan from Paris travelled to Havre-de-Grace, whence James Roche, an Irishman, settled in that port, and a noted smuggler upon the English coast, set him across the Channel, and put him ashore at the Three Sheds and Torbay near Elephant Stairs in Rotherhithe.

Mr. Wogan took his old name of Hilton, and went about his business, paying a visit now and again to the Cocoa Tree, where amongst other gossip he heard that Lady Oxford was still on the worst of friendly terms with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and the best of loving terms with Colonel Montague. There was more than one jest aimed at Mr. Kelly on this last account, since a man who has been fooled by a woman is ever a fair mark for ridicule; and when James Talbot began to talk of the Parson with a mock pity, Wogan could no longer endure it.