The Rye House Plot; or, Ruth, the Conspirator's Daughter, published originally in 1853, is a fictionalized account of the historical Rye House Plot of 1683 in which a group of frustrated republicans attempted to either kidnap or assassinate,—depending on who you believe—King Charles II and his brother, James, Duke of York. The plot, or at least the king, became relevant again in 2022 when the current Charles ascended to the throne and chose not to change his name as many people expected—in spite of Charles being a name held in ill repute by the royal family for the last three and a half centuries precisely because of Charles II's tarnished reputation as a flaming hedonist and poorly-disguised Roman Catholic. But the current Charles did not change his name, ironically making him Charles III—ironically because the mother of his children, Diana, was a direct descendant of one of Charles II's many (very many) illegitimate sons, meaning William, if he becomes king, will actually be the first descendant of Charles II to be king, not his father.
The author, George William MacArthur Reynolds (1814–1879) was a prolific writer of popular fiction who, during his lifetime, was more read than Dickens or Thackeray. He had a tendency to indulge in scenes of a somewhat macabre or magical nature at times, which shows up here in Rye House during his narration of a side plot on the Isle of Man. Included in this eBook are forty illustrations by the famous British artist Edward Henry Corbould (1815–1905).
Preparing old books for digital publication is a labor of love at Travelyn Publishing. We hold our digital versions of public domain books up against any others with no fear of the comparison. Our conversion work is meticulous, utilizing a process designed to eliminate errors, maximize reader enjoyment, and recreate as much as possible the atmosphere of the original book even as we are adding the navigation and formatting necessary for a good digital book. While remaining faithful to a writer's original words, and the spellings and usages of his era, we are not above correcting obvious mistakes. If the printer became distracted after placing an 'a' at the end of a line and then placed another 'a' at the beginning of the next line (they used to do this stuff by hand you know!), what sort of mindless robots would allow that careless error to be preserved for all eternity in the digital version, too? Not us. That's why we have the audacity to claim that our re-publications are often better than the originals.
