Ludlow, ii. 197. Declaration of Officers, 6.
Thurloe, 679. Clarend. Hist. iii. 665.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1659. June 4.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1659. July.]
from Ostend with the royal army of four thousand men under the Marshal
Marsin. Unfortunately his concerns in England had been hitherto conducted
by a council called "the Knot," at the head of which was Sir Richard
Willis. Willis, the reader is aware, was a traitor; but it was only of late
that the eyes of Charles had been opened to his perfidy by Morland, the
secretary of Thurloe, who, to make his own peace, sent to the court at
Bruges some of the original communications in the writing of Willis. This
discovery astonished and perplexed the king. To make public the conduct of
the traitor was to provoke him to farther disclosures: to conceal it, was
to connive at the destruction of his friends, and the ruin of his own
prospects. He first instructed his correspondents to be reserved in their
communications with "the Knot;"[a] he then ordered Willis to meet him on
a certain day at Calais;[b] and, when this order was disregarded, openly
forbade the royalists to give to the traitor information, or to follow his
advice.[1]
But these precautions came too late. After the deposition of the protector,
Willis had continued to communicate with Thurloe, who with the intelligence
[Footnote 1: Clar.
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