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The note was in the hand of Lord Byerdale, and to the following effect: "MY DEAR LORD DUKE, "Your grace's attachment to the government is far too well known to be affected by anything that such a person as Peter Cook could say. I permitted our dear young friend Wilton to tell you what the man had mentioned, more as a mark of our full confidence than anything else.
Wilton Brown but as the private secretary of the Earl of Byerdale HIS CLERK he called him to me one day who has nothing but a good person, a good coat, and two or three hundred a year. Mr. Wilton Brown to be the suitor for the only child of one of the first peers in the land, the heiress of a hundred thousand per annum! My dear sir, the thing was too ridiculous to be thought of.
"But I have this very day seen Cook myself I mean Peter Cook, the person that it is supposed will be permitted to turn king's evidence. He did certainly slightly glance at your grace; but I believe that the orders of Lord Byerdale will prevent him from implicating any persons but those who were actually engaged in the worst designs of the conspirators."
About ten days after this period, Wilton, as he went to the house of the Earl of Byerdale, remarked all those external signs and symptoms of agitation amongst the people, which may always be seen more or less by an observing eye, when any event of importance takes place in a great city.
Lord Byerdale was now as polite as he could be, assured the young gentleman that all his small interest could command should be at his service; and while he did so, he looked from his countenance to that of the Earl, and from the Earl's to his, as if he were comparing them with one another.
His recourse was immediately to Wilton, who was engaged to dine with him on that day, together with a large party. As Wilton's engagements, however, were always made with a proviso, that his official duties under the Earl of Byerdale permitted his fulfilling them, the Duke sent off a special messenger with a note beseeching him not to fail.
I ordered also such steps to be taken, that a nolle prosequi might be entered, so as to put his mind fully at rest. I told the Earl of Byerdale the day before yesterday, that I had done this at the request of the Duke of Shrewsbury, and I bade him take the warrant, which, signed by myself, and countersigned by Mr. Secretary Trumbull, was then lying in the hands of the clerk.
It is either in the clerk's hands still, or in those of Lord Byerdale. But that lord has committed a most grievous offence in suffering any of my subjects to remain in a prison when the order was signed for their liberation."
With the Earl of Byerdale he did not perhaps interchange ten words in three months, although when he was writing in the same room with him he had more than once remarked the eyes of the Earl fixed stern and intent upon him from beneath their overhanging brows, as if he would have asked him some dark and important question, or proposed to him some dangerous and terrible act which he dared hardly name.
His expectations were destined to be disappointed, however. Lord Byerdale was all smiles, although as yet he knew nothing more than the simple fact that Captain Churchill had acknowledged his presence at a scene in which he had certainly played no part.
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