A Jacobite plot to assassinate King William III (William of Orange) on this day in 1696 and restore James II to the throne was foiled by Newcastle’s Thomas Prendergast.
Prendergast, a catholic landowner in Newcastle, was born around 1660. Initially an officer in King James’s Irish army, he was among those who entered William’s service after the surrender of Limerick in 1691.
By 1696, he was still evidently moving in Jacobite circles, where he was trusted enough to be invited to join in what became the best-known of the assassination plots against William. The main conspirators were George Barclay, a Scottish Jacobite, and Robert Charnock, an Oxford academic. They planned to assassinate William based on the king’s habitual movements on his return from hunting. Barclay calculated that on Saturday, 15 February, William would be travelling as he usually did along the lane that ran from Turnham Green to Brentford. There they planned to ambush and capture the king at a narrow point in the lane with the aid of some 40 assassins in order to fend off the king’s guards.
What the conspirators did not know as they lay in wait on 15th February 1696 was that they had already been betrayed, and the King had skipped the hunt that day. Once he was informed of the plot, Thomas Prendergast of Newcastle soon decided to inform the government of its existence. While he was not the only member of the conspiracy to betray it, he was the most convincing of the informers, and the one who profited most from the episode. His evidence at trials helped to obtain the conviction of other plotters. Robert Charnock was executed on 18 March 1696 while Barclay escaped to France.
Prendergast, still a catholic at the time of the plot, conformed to the established church shortly afterwards. Within weeks of the plot being foiled, he was given a £2,000 reward by the king and the Irish government was instructed to find an estate worth £500 pounds a year for him. In July 1699, he was made a baronet (a member of the lowest hereditary titled British order) and served in the army under William and Anne, gaining promotions that culminated in the rank of brigadier-general in February 1709. He was killed in September 1709 at the battle of Malplaquet in the War of the Spanish Succession.
Sources:
https://www.dib.ie/biography/prendergast-pendergrass-sir-thomas-a7479
https://www.executedtoday.com/2019/03/18/1696-charnock-king-and-keyes-frustrated-of-regicide/
Debbie Blake, The Little Book of Tipperary, (2018) p125
