Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography - Plot & Excerpts
The streets were deserted, an odd silence prevailed. Even the crowded alleyways of Westminster and the East End, usually shrill and raucous with noise, were unnaturally quiet. For a week or more there had been whispers of a papist plot to kill all Englishmen by poisoning the wells. Murrain had spread among the cattle in the vicinity of London, and it was unsafe to eat beef or even to drink milk. The epidemic was blamed on Jacobite conspirators—or, alternately, on government provocateurs hoping to turn the populace against the Jacobites. There were few ordinary citizens in the streets, but many guardsmen, prominently posted in the squares and open fields, massing at the City gates, busying themselves setting up alarm posts. An Irish officer in a French regiment who was brought to London in secret by smugglers at just this time found the city hushed and expectant. The great houses of the nobles were being watched, he was told; those who were in sympathy with the rebels expected either Charles and his army or the French to arrive any day.
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