Chapter VIII: REIGN OF CHARLES II. (continued) (3)

By the middle of June the plenipotentiaries at Nimeguen had settled all the preliminaries of peace, and were on the point of signing, when Louis started another difficulty--that he would continue to hold the six towns stipulated to be restored to Spain, till the Emperor of Germany had restored the conquests made from his ally, the King of Sweden. The confederates refused to admit any such condition, and preparations were again made for war. Charles sent over four thousand men under the Earl of Ossory to join the English forces in Flanders, and Temple hastened to the Hague, to complete a fresh treaty with the States, binding each other to prosecute the war against Louis unless he abandoned the claim for Sweden. This might have had effect with Louis, had he not convincing evidence that Charles was not in earnest. At the very moment of this apparent spirit, Charles was bargaining for more money with Barillon, in the chamber of his French mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth. At Barillon's instigation, one Ducros, a French monk, was sent to Temple, at Nimeguen, desiring him to persuade the Swedish ambassadors to concede their claims and make peace; and Louis, by giving a hint of this fact to the States General, so alarmed them at the perfidy of their pretended ally, that they hastened to sign the treaty with France, without any stipulation in favour of Spain. The Spanish Netherlands were at the mercy of Louis, and the coalition against him was completely broken up.

William of Orange, who was extremely mortified at having to treat for peace on such terms, and rightly attributing the necessity to the conduct of Charles, took the opportunity to give a parting chastisement to the French, though he had not, as has been asserted, knowledge of the conclusion of the treaty. On the 4th of August, four days after the signing of the peace by Beverning, the Dutch plenipotentiary at Nimeguen, he attacked the Duke of Luxembourg before Mons. Luxembourg had reduced the city to great distress, and had not relaxed his siege during the armistice; William, therefore, knowing nothing, or affecting to know nothing of the signing of the peace--though at that time it was known in London--fell on the duke with all the forces he could muster, Dutch, English, and Spanish, and a desperate battle took place. William took the abbey of St. Denis in front of the French camp; Villahermosa, the Spanish general, took the ruined fortress of Casteau, but was driven out of it again before night. The English troops under Lord Ossory did wonders. About five thousand men fell on one side or the other. At night the two armies resumed their places. It was expected that William the next day would utterly rout Luxembourg; and had the continuance of the war permitted, might have made his long-contemplated march into France. But the next day Luxembourg desired a conference, and informed William that the peace was concluded, and William retired towards Nivelles, and the French towards Ath. He had managed to prevent the important fortress of Mons falling into the hands of France.

Scarcely had these events taken place, when William was surprised by an overture from Charles, to unite with him, according to the treaty between them, to compel Louis to grant the Spaniards the terms formerly offered at Nimeguen. The motive for this does not appear clear. If he knew of its conclusion, as he must have done, he could not expect William immediately to violate the peace just made. Probably he wished to appear to the Spaniards to be anxious to keep his engagement to them, for he made the same professions to them, and on the faith of that the Spaniards demanded better terms; but equally probable is the idea that he wanted an excuse for not disbanding the army. William is said, however, to have exclaimed to Hyde, who brought the message, "Was ever anything so hot and so cold as this Court of yours? Will the king never learn a word that I shall never forget since my last passage to England, when, in a great storm, the captain all night was crying to the man at the helm, 'Steady! steady! steady!' If this despatch had come twenty days ago, it had changed the face of affairs in Christendom, and the war might have been carried on till France had yielded to the treaty of the Pyrenees, and left the world in quiet for the rest of our lives; as it comes now, it will have no effect at all." Louis resented the interference of Charles at this moment, and suspended the payment of his pension. He, however, receded from some of his terms, and referred the settlement of the differences with the Spaniards and the Emperor of Germany to the Dutch. Before the end of October peace was concluded with all parties. Holland had recovered all she had lost, and obtained an advantageous treaty of commerce with France. Spain had lost Franche-Comté, and twelve fortresses in Flanders; Germany had regained Philippsburg in exchange for Freiburg; Sweden recovered what it had lost to Denmark and the Elector of Brandenburg; and Louis was left with a power and reputation that made him the arbitrator of Europe.

We now come to one of the most extraordinary displays of a succession of plots, or pretended plots, which ever occurred in the history of any nation. From a small and most improbable beginning they spread and ramified themselves in all directions, involving the most distinguished persons of the State, ascending to the royal house, threatening the lives of the Duke of York, of the queen, and even of the king. Though defeated in their highest aims, they yet brought to execution a considerable number of persons of various ranks, including several noblemen and commoners of distinction. When they appeared to be extinguished for a short period, they broke out again with fresh force, and struck down fresh victims; and whilst much of the machinery of the agitators remained in the deepest obscurity, the mind of the nation was wrought up to a condition of the most terrible suspicion, wonder, and alarm. In the half-absurdity of the charges, the half-development of ominous truths, the public was thrown into a long fever of terror and curiosity, and seemed to lose its judgment and discretion, and to be ready to destroy its noblest citizens on the evidence of the most despicable of mankind.

From the moment that some obscure indications of a secret league between the king and Louis of France had emerged to the light, the people were haunted by fears and rumours of plots, and designs against the national liberty. Especially since the Duke of York had avowed himself a Catholic, and the king had a French Catholic mistress, and spent much time with the French ambassador, Barillon, in her apartments, there were continual apprehensions of an attempt to introduce Popery, and to suppress the public freedom by a standing army. The country was nearer the mark than it was aware of, and had it come by any chance to the knowledge of the full truth that their monarch was the bond-slave of France, to favour its ambitious designs of averting the balance of power on the Continent, and extending the French empire, at the expense of its neighbours, to the widest boundary of the Empire of Charlemagne, the immediate consequence would have been revolution, and the expulsion of the Stuarts a few years earlier. But as the real facts were kept in profound secrecy, all manner of vague rumours rose from the facts themselves, like smoke from a hidden fire.

There was a party, moreover, in Parliament, called the Country party, or, in our modern phrase, the Opposition, which now included several of the displaced statesmen of the Cabal, especially Buckingham and Shaftesbury. These men had no scruples to restrain them from embarrassing the Government, and in particular from denouncing their successful rival, the Lord Treasurer Danby. They knew well the secret which the public only suspected; but they had been too much mixed up with it to render it safe to reveal too much of it. But enough might be employed to destroy the Prime Minister, and to gain another end--the exclusion of the Duke of York and the prevention of a Papist succession.

To destroy Danby, who was thoroughly anti-Gallican in his policy; to exclude James from the throne and secure a Protestant succession; to compel the king to rule by a Protestant Government, and to have recourse to Parliament for support; there certainly appeared nothing more likely than to raise a terror of a Papist conspiracy, and to link it sufficiently with suspicious connection with France. This was done with marvellous success amid a wonderful exhibition of strange events, except that of excluding James from the throne, and even this was all but accomplished. Probably the conception of the scheme was due to the fertile mind of Shaftesbury, and its execution to the same master of chicane, assisted by the unscrupulous Buckingham.

On the 12th of August, as the king was walking in the park, one Kirby, a chemist, who had been occasionally employed in the royal laboratory, and was therefore known to Charles, approached and said, "Sir, keep within the company. Your enemies have a design upon your life, and you may be shot in this very walk." Charles stepped aside with him, and asked him the meaning of his words. He replied that two men, Grove and Pickering, had engaged to shoot him, and that Sir George Wakeman, the queen's physician, had agreed to poison him. Charles showed very little change of manner or countenance, but told Kirby to meet him that evening at the house of Chiffinch, his well-known procurer, and pursued his walk. In the evening Kirby repeated what he had said, and added that he received the information from Dr. Tongue, rector of St. Michael's, in Wood Street, who was well known to several persons about the Court. This Dr. Tongue was a singular mixture of cunning and credulity, who had long been an alarmist, and who had printed yearly and quarterly pamphlets against the Jesuits, "to alarm and awaken his Majesty and the two Houses." Tongue was sent for, and brought a mass of papers, divided into forty-three articles, giving a narrative of the conspiracy, which he pretended had been thrust under his door. Charles referred him to Danby, and to him Tongue repeated the story of Grove, otherwise called Honest William, and Pickering, and said he would find out their abode, or point them out when walking, according to their daily custom, in the park. Orders were given to arrest these assassins, but they did not appear, and Tongue gave various frivolous reasons for their non-appearance. It was said that they were gone to Windsor, but they could not be found there. Charles came at once to the conclusion that the whole was a hoax, and when Danby requested permission to lay the narrative before the Privy Council, he replied, "No, not even before my brother! It would only create alarm, and might put the design of murdering me into somebody's head."

The contempt which the king showed and expressed for the whole affair might have caused it to drop, but there was unquestionably a party at work behind, which would not suffer it to stop. Tongue informed Danby that he had met with the person whom he suspected of having drawn up the papers; that he had given him a more particular account of the conspiracy, but he begged that his name might be concealed, lest the Papists should murder him. He moreover assured Danby that on a certain day a packet of treasonable letters would pass through the post-office at Windsor, addressed to Bedingfield, the confessor of the Duke of York. Danby hastened to Windsor to intercept the packet, but found it already in the hands of the king. Bedingfield had delivered them to the duke, saying that the papers appeared to contain treasonable matter, and that they certainly were not in the hands of the persons whose names they bore. The duke carried them at once to the king.

These papers now underwent a close examination, and the result was that all were convinced that they were gross forgeries. One was clearly in the same hand as the papers presented before by Tongue; the rest, though in a feigned hand, bore sufficient evidence of being the work of the same person. The king was more than ever convinced that the whole was a hoax, and desired that no further notice might be taken of it. Kirby frequently made his appearance at Court, but Charles always passed him without notice. As there appeared no prospect of proceeding with the matter at Court, the person who had conveyed the papers to Dr. Tongue now went to Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, an active justice of the peace at Westminster, and made affidavit, not only of the truth of the former papers, but also of thirty-eight more articles, making altogether eighty-one articles. This mysterious person now appeared as one Titus Oates, a clergyman, and it was ascertained that he had been lodging at Kirby's, at Vauxhall, and that Dr. Tongue had also retired thither, on the plea of concealment from the Papists. Godfrey, on perceiving that Coleman, secretary to the late Duchess of York, and a friend of his own, was named in the affidavit as a chief conspirator, immediately communicated the fact to Coleman, and Coleman communicated it to the Duke of York.

James was now more than ever convinced that, whatever were the plot, its object was to bring the Catholics into odium, and lead to his exclusion from the throne, and demanded of Charles that it should be inquired into. Danby now seemed to favour the king's view of keeping it quiet, but this only led James to suspect that the minister wished to hold it back till Parliament met, when its disclosure might be useful in an impeachment with which he was menaced. Charles, at the duke's renewed entreaty, reluctantly ordered Tongue and Oates to appear before the Privy Council. Accordingly Titus Oates, soon to become so notorious, appeared before the Council on the 28th of September, 1678, in a clerical gown and a new suit of clothes, and with an astonishing assurance delivered in writing the following strange story. The Pope, he said, claimed Great Britain and Ireland, on the ground of the heresy of the prince and people, and had commanded the Jesuits to take possession of it for him. De Oliva, general of the Order, had arranged everything for this purpose, and had named under the seal of the Society, all the persons to fill the offices of the State. Lord Arundel was created Lord Chancellor; Lord Powis, Treasurer; Sir William Godolphin, Privy Seal; Coleman, Secretary of State; Lord Bellasis, General of the Army; Lord Peters, Lieutenant-General; Lord Stafford, Paymaster. All inferior offices, and all the dignities of the Church were filled up, many of them with Spaniards and other foreigners. Moreover, the Jesuits were dispersed throughout Ireland, organising insurrections and massacres; in Scotland they were acting under the guise of Covenanters; in Holland they were raising a French party against the Prince of Orange, and in England preparing for the murder of the king, and of the duke, too, if he did not consent to the scheme. They had no lack of money. They had one hundred thousand pounds in the bank, had sixty thousand pounds in yearly rents, had received from La Chaise, the confessor of the French king, a donation of ten thousand pounds, and a promise from De Corduba, the Provincial of New Castile, of as much more. In March last a man named Honest William, and Pickering, a lay brother, had been commissioned to shoot the king at Windsor, and had been severely punished for the failure of the attempt. On the 24th of April a consultation had been held by Jesuits from all parts, at the White Horse Tavern in the Strand, to decide on the mode of killing the king; when three sets of assassins were engaged--the two already mentioned, two Benedictine monks, Coniers and Anderton, and four Irishmen. Ten thousand pounds had been offered to Wakeman, the queen's physician, to poison the king, but he had refused to do it for less than fifteen thousand pounds, which was agreed to, and five thousand pounds had been paid down. He had often seen Wakeman since amongst the Jesuits. The Irish assassins were to receive twenty guineas each for stabbing the king. Honest William was to receive fifteen hundred pounds, and Pickering thirty thousand masses, valued at the same sum. They were to shoot the king with silver bullets. A wager, he said, was laid that the king should eat no more Christmas pies, and that if he would not become R.C. (Roman Catholic, or _Rex Catholicus_), he should no longer be C.R. Oates averred that he had gone to the Jesuits at Valladolid, thence with letters from them to Burgos, thence to Madrid, back to England, thence had gone to St. Omer, and back to England with fresh instructions. They made him cognisant of their plans for the murder, and he saw on their papers all the names signed. Since his return he had discovered that they set fire to London in 1666, and had used seven hundred fire-balls, familiarly called Tewkesbury mustard pills, as containing a notable biting sauce. Their success encouraged them to set fire to Southwark in 1676, by which they had gained two thousand pounds above their expenses, as they had by carrying off diamonds in the London fire made fourteen thousand pounds. They had now a plan to set fire to Wapping, Westminster, and the ships in the river. There were twenty thousand Catholics in London, who had engaged to rise in twenty-four hours or less, and could easily cut the throats of one hundred thousand Protestants. In Scotland eight thousand Catholics had agreed to take arms; a general massacre of Protestants was planned in Ireland; Ormond was to be murdered; forty thousand black bills were provided for the Irish massacre, and Coleman had sent thither two hundred thousand pounds. Poole, the author of the "Synopsis," Dr. Stillingfleet, and De Brunt were also to be put to death.

The recital of this astounding story was listened to with amazement and incredulity. The listeners looked at one another in wonder at the audacity of the man who could relate such horrible and improbable designs, and expect to be believed, after the account which he gave of the mode by which he professed to obtain his information. This was that he had feigned a conversion to discover the designs of the Jesuits; had been duly admitted to the priesthood and to their monasteries, and finally entrusted with the conveyance of their diabolical messages. The Duke of York declared the whole to be a most impudent imposture, but others thought no man in his senses would come forward with such a startling tale, and implicate so many persons of consideration without some grounds. Where, they asked, were his proofs? Where were the papers that had been confided to him, which would be evidence against the traitors? Oates confessed that he had no such papers, but that he would undertake to procure abundance if he were furnished with warrants and officers to arrest the persons whom he had accused, and seize their papers. This was granted, and the next day the inquiry went on. It was objected to the letters seized at Windsor, that they were written in feigned hands, and were full of orthographical errors. Oates replied that that was the art of the Jesuits, who gave such documents a suspicious look, that if discovered they might pretend that they were forged. But Charles, who became even more persuaded that the thing was got up, asked Oates what sort of a man Don John was, as he professed to have been introduced to him at Madrid. Oates replied at once that he was tall, dark, and thin. The king turned to the duke and smiled, for they both were well acquainted with Don John's person, which had more of the Austrian than the Spaniard, and was fair, stout, and short. "And where did you see La Chaise," added Charles, "pay down the ten thousand pounds from the French king?" "At the house of the Jesuits," replied Oates, unhesitatingly, "close to the Louvre." "Man!" exclaimed Charles, who knew Paris better than Oates, "the Jesuits have no house within a mile of the Louvre."

These palpable blunders confirmed Charles in his opinion, and seemed to annihilate the veracity of Oates. The king, certain of the whole affair proving a sheer invention, went away to Newmarket, and left the duke and Danby to finish the inquiry. But they who had set Oates to work knew more than he did, and presently such confirmation was given to Oates's assertions as astonished every one. At first, the clue appeared broken. On examining the papers of Harcourt, the Provincial of the Jesuits, nothing bearing the slightest indications of a plot could be discovered; but not so with the papers of Coleman. This man was the son of a clergyman in Suffolk, who had turned Catholic, and was not only appointed secretary to the Duchess of York, but after her death was much in the confidence of James. Coleman was undoubtedly a great dabbler in conspiracy. He had maintained a correspondence with Father La Chaise, the confessor of Louis XIV., with the Pope's nuncio at Brussels, and other Catholics, for the re-establishment of the Catholic religion in England, and he made himself a centre of intelligence to the Catholics at home and abroad. He lived in great style, and his table was frequented by the Whig members during the sitting of Parliament. He sent weekly news-letters to the Catholics in various quarters, and made in them the severest remarks on the ambition of the French king and the conduct of the English Government. Yet all this time he was importuning Louis to furnish money for the establishment of the Catholic Church in England again. He obtained three thousand five hundred pounds from the bankers whom Charles had broken faith with on the shutting of the Exchequer, on pretence of influence with Parliament, and two thousand five hundred pounds from Barillon, to distribute amongst members of Parliament.

In 1675 a foreigner of the name of Buchateau, but who was called Louis Luzancy, had come to England, pretending to be a Catholic who was desirous of joining the English Church, and who gave information to some of the Opposition leaders that Father St. Germain, confessor to the Duchess of York, had threatened to murder him if he did not recant Protestantism. This made a great sensation, and he then said he had made the discovery of a Popish plot, in which the king was to be killed, and the streets of London were to run with the blood of massacred Protestants. Though it was soon shown by Du Maresque, a French Protestant clergyman, that Luzancy had fled from France for forgery, and a swindling transaction at Oxford soon proved that he was a great scoundrel, yet his story won him much patronage: he was ordained and presented to the living of Dovercourt, in Essex, during this present year. His pretended plot was very like this of Oates's, and might possibly be its model. He had accused Coleman of similar practices, but Coleman had boldly faced him and put him to silence. But now Coleman had fled, itself a sign of guilt; amongst his papers were found abundant evidence of his correspondence with the French Court in 1674, 1675, and 1676. In one letter he said to La Chaise, "We have here a mighty work upon our hands, no less than the conversion of three kingdoms, and by that, perhaps, the utter subduing of a pestilent heresy, which has for a long time domineered over a great part of this northern world. There never were such hopes of success since the days of Queen Mary." He declared the duke devoted to the cause and also to the French king. He said, "I can scarcely believe myself awake, or the thing real, when I think of a prince in such an age as we live in converted to such a degree of zeal and piety as not to regard anything in the world in comparison of God Almighty's glory, the salvation of his own soul, and the conversion of our poor kingdom." He declared that Charles was inclined to favour the Catholics, and that money would do anything with him. "Money cannot fail of persuading the king to anything. There is nothing it cannot make him do, were it ever so much to his prejudice. It has such absolute power over him he cannot resist it. Logic built upon money has in our Court more powerful charms than any other sort of argument." Therefore he recommended three hundred thousand pounds to be sent over on condition that Parliament should be dissolved.

These discoveries perfectly electrified the public. That there was a plot they now had no doubt whatever, and the information touching so close on the real secret of Charles's pension, must have startled even him. Coleman, in these letters, stated that Parliament had been postponed in 1675 till April, to serve the French designs, by preventing Holland from obtaining assistance from England. Yet when Oates had been confronted with Coleman before his flight, though Oates pretended great intimacy with him, he actually did not recognise him. Another proof, if any were wanted, that Oates was acting on the knowledge of others, not on his own. Whoever they were, they had become acquainted with Coleman's French correspondence, and who so likely as Shaftesbury and the Whigs who used to frequent this man's house, and who were themselves deep in a similar intrigue with the French Court?

Still more astounding events, however, followed close on this discovery. No sooner was this discovery in the letters of Coleman made, than Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, the magistrate before whom Oates had made his affidavit of the plot, who was a particular friend of Coleman's, and had warned him of his danger, was missing, and was found murdered amongst some bushes in a dry ditch between Primrose Hill and Old St. Pancras Church. Godfrey was of a sensitive disposition, which sometimes approached to insanity. On the apprehension of Coleman, Godfrey had been seized with great alarm, and expressed his conviction that he should be the first martyr of this plot. On the 12th of October he burnt a large quantity of papers, and that day he was seen hurrying about the town in a state of serious absent-mindedness. From that day he was missing, and it was not till the sixth day that his body was found. He lay forward, resting on his knees, his breast, and the left side of his face. His sword was thrust through his heart with such violence, that it appeared at his back. His cane was stuck upright in the bank, his gloves lay near it on the grass, his rings were on his fingers, and his money was in his purse. All these circumstances seemed to indicate suicide; and to confirm it, it was reported that when the sword was withdrawn, it was followed by a rush of blood. This, however, the doctors denied, and on being stripped, the purple mark round his neck showed that he had been strangled, and then thrust through, and his body, cane, and gloves so disposed as to persuade the parties that he had killed himself.

But who, then, were the murderers? This was never discovered, but the public, putting together all the circumstances, declared that the Papists had done it, and that Oates's story was all true. That Catholics, or at least such as were in the scheme of Coleman, had done it, appears very probable, although it has been argued that they had no motive. But it must be remembered that Godfrey was a friend and associate of Coleman's. He had always been a partisan of the Catholics; he gave Coleman warning to fly; he showed great alarm himself, and commenced burning papers. All these circumstances indicate complicity. That he was deep in the secrets of the party, and had dangerous papers in his possession, is clear. Coleman was in custody, and something might be drawn out of him. Godfrey might be arrested, and a man of his nervous temperament might reveal what concerned the lives of many others. There were the strongest motives, therefore, for those who had any concern in the dangerous conspiracy of Coleman, to have Godfrey at least out of the way.

The public mind was in the wildest state of alarm and fermentation. Every hour teemed with fresh rumours. Murders, assassinations, and invasions were the constant talk of the panic-struck public. The City put itself into a posture of defence; chains and posts were put up, and no man deemed himself safe.

In this state of the public mind Parliament met on the 21st of October. Charles informed Parliament that he had obtained more favourable terms for Spain by his army in Flanders, but that the expense had been enormous; the supplies were not only exhausted, but the revenue of the next year was anticipated, and it would require a liberal grant even to disband the army. He alluded but passingly to the plot, for it touched too nearly on the tender ground of his French secret, but said he left the examination of the plot entirely to the law. But both Danby and the Opposition rushed into the question, contrary to the wish of Charles. Danby was anxious to divert the House from the threatened impeachment of himself, and the Opposition to establish a Popish plot, to damage the Duke of York's prospects in the succession.

Oates was called before both Houses, as well as Dr. Tongue, and such was the effect of their statements, that guards were placed in the cellars under the Parliament House, to prevent another gunpowder plot; and Charles was implored to order every Catholic, not a householder, to quit London, to dismiss all Papists from his service, and have his food prepared only by orthodox cooks. Committees were appointed to search the conspiracy to the bottom. Shaftesbury took the lead in that of the Lords, and there was busy work issuing warrants for searches and arrests, sending out informers and officers, examining and committing prisoners. In consequence of the charges made by Oates against Lords Arundel, Powis, Bellasis, Petre, and Stafford, as having received appointments from the Pope of the chief offices of State, they were arrested and committed to the Tower.

The Commons introduced a new Test Act to exclude every Catholic from Parliament. This had indeed been effected in the Commons in the preceding session by the Oath of Supremacy, and the declaration against Transubstantiation; but the present test went to exclude the Catholic peers from their House also. It prescribed the taking of the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance, and a declaration that the Church of Rome was an idolatrous church. Such a test had been frequently introduced before and thrown out, but in this public _furore_ it rapidly passed the Commons, and reached a third reading in the Lords, when James, with tears in his eyes, entreated them to exempt him from so severe an exclusion, protesting that his religion should always remain a thing between God and his own soul. A proviso, exempting him from its operation, was added to the Bill; but in the Commons this passed by only two votes. Thus the Catholic peers were excluded by Titus Oates from their seats, and their successors did not regain them till 1829.

Under the stimulating effect of the repeated summonses of Oates before Parliament, and his continually augmenting disclosures, both Houses voted that "There had been and still was a damnable and hellish plot contrived and carried on by the Popish recusants for assassinating and murdering the king, and for subverting the Government, and rooting out and destroying the Protestant religion." Titus Oates was declared "the saviour of his country," and a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year was, at the instigation of Parliament, settled on him. To increase the effect of his disclosures, the funeral of the murdered Godfrey was conducted with every circumstance of public parade. He had been carried from Primrose Hill to his own house, and thousands had crowded thither to see the martyr of Protestantism. Seventy-two divines, in full canonicals, walked in procession to St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, where he was buried, and they were followed by a thousand gentlemen in mourning, including many members of Parliament. Dr. Lloyd, his friend and Rector of the parish, preached a sermon from the text, "As a man falleth before the wicked, so fellest thou." And he had two stout fellows in the pulpit with him, dressed as clergymen, to defend him from the Papists.

The fury against the Catholics now amounted to a frenzy. Two thousand suspected traitors were thrust into the prisons of the metropolis, and thirty thousand Catholics, who refused to take the obnoxious oaths, were compelled to quit their homes in London, and remove to twenty miles' distance from Whitehall. The train-bands and volunteers, to the number of twenty thousand, were occasionally kept all night under arms; batteries were planted, and every military precaution was taken to prevent a surprise. The terror spread over the whole country; orders were issued to disarm the Catholics everywhere, and every one was compelled to take the oaths, or give security for keeping the peace.

And who was this Titus Oates, who had been able to conjure up such a storm? One of the most loathsome of mankind. His real name was Ambrose. He was the son of a ribbon weaver, who turned Anabaptist preacher during the Commonwealth, and managed to secure an orthodox pulpit at the Restoration. Titus was sent to Cambridge, where he took orders, and became a curate in different parishes, and afterwards chaplain on board a man-of-war. But wherever he went, the worst of characters pursued him, as addicted to a mischievous and litigious temper, and to the most debased and disgraceful vices. Out of every situation he was expelled with infamy, and was convicted twice of perjury by a jury. Reduced by his crimes to beggary, he fell into the hands of Dr. Tongue, and by him was engaged to simulate the character of a convert to Catholicism, so as to be able to discover all that he could of the secret views and designs of the Papists. He was reconciled, as the Catholics term it, to the church by a priest of the name of Berry or Hutchinson, who was first of one religion and then of another, and nothing long, and sent to the Jesuits' College at Valladolid, in Spain. But he was successively ejected both from that college and from St. Omer, with accumulated infamy. Returning to England he became the ready tool of Tongue, who no doubt was also the tool of deeper and more distinguished agitators behind. The Jesuits had held one of their triennial meetings at the Duke of York's. This Tongue and Oates converted into a special meeting, for the prosecution of their great national plot, but fixed it at the White Horse in the Strand. They then forged their mass of letters and papers, purporting to be the documents and correspondence of these Jesuits, planning the assassination of the king. These were written in Greek characters by Oates, copied into English ones by Tongue, and communicated as a great discovery to Kirby. Such were the apparent unravellers of the alleged plot; but these puppets had their strings pulled by far more masterly men, who were constantly extending their ground and linking up fresh machinery in the scheme. The weak part of the affair was, that on the testimony of Oates alone the whole rested. Those whom he incriminated, to a man, steadily denied any knowledge or participation in any such plot as he pretended. It was necessary to have two witnesses for convicting traitors, and other tools were not long wanting. Government had offered a large reward and full pardon to any one who could discover the assassins of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, and in a few days a letter was received from one William Bedloe, desiring that he might be arrested in Bristol and brought to London to give evidence. The warrant for his apprehension was, singularly enough, sent to Bedloe himself, who caused his own arrest by delivering it to the Mayor of Bristol. This Bedloe turned out to be as thorough a scoundrel as Oates himself. He had been employed as a groom by Lord Bellasis, and afterwards in his house; had travelled as a courier on the Continent, and occasionally passed himself off as a nobleman. He had been seized and convicted of swindling transactions in various countries, and was just released from Newgate, when his eye was attracted by the reward of five hundred pounds for the discovery of the murderers of Godfrey.

In his first examination by the king and the two Secretaries of State, he disavowed all knowledge of the plot, but said he had seen the dead body at Somerset House, where the queen lived, and that Le Fevre, the Jesuit, told him that he and Walsh, another Jesuit, a servant of Lord Bellasis's and attendant in the queen's chapel, had smothered him between two pillows, and that they offered him two thousand pounds to assist in conveying the body away. The next day, before the House of Lords, he contradicted himself dreadfully, for the story of the two pillows did not accord with the state of the body when found. Now he said that he was not smothered, but strangled with a cravat. And so far from knowing nothing of the plot, he confessed to knowing all about the commissions offered to the Lords Arundel, Powis, Bellasis, and others, and he added wonders and horrors of his own. Ten thousand men, he said, were to land from Holland in Bridlington Bay, and seize Hull; Jersey and Guernsey were to be invaded by a fleet and army from Brest; an army from Spain of twenty or thirty thousand men was to land at Milford Haven, and there be joined by Powis and Petre with another army. There were forty thousand men ready in London, to kill all the soldiers as they came out of their lodgings. He was to have four thousand pounds for a great murder, meaning no doubt that of the king, and the Government was to be offered to _one_, if he would hold it of the Church. The king, Monmouth, Ormond, Buckingham, and Shaftesbury were to be killed. Lords Carrington and Brudenel were named as engaged in the plot, and were immediately arrested. When Charles heard this astounding story, so diametrically opposed to his former tales, he exclaimed, "Surely the man has received a new lesson during the last four-and-twenty hours!" and no doubt he had. These additions and improvements were constantly going on, without regard to the most glaring self-contradictions; but the temper of Parliament made them disregard obvious falsehoods of the most flagrant kind. So long as there was a chance of excluding the Duke of York from Parliament, these horrible stories were kept before the public imagination; but the moment the proviso passed in his favour, the attack was diverted into another and a higher channel. Buckingham had formerly endeavoured to induce Charles to divorce the queen: now a deadly attack was made upon her.

On the 23rd of November, a Mr. Lloyd sought an interview with the king, and informed him that Titus Oates was in possession of information that would incriminate the queen. Charles, who had shown more sense than any one through the whole business, and might have crushed it in a short time if he had had half the active exertion that he had shrewdness, expressed his decided disbelief, yet admitted Oates to make his statement. It was this, that he saw a letter in July, in which Wakeman, the queen's physician, asserted that her majesty had given her consent to the murder of the king; that he himself was at Somerset House one day in August, with several Jesuits, and was left in the antechamber whilst they went in to the queen; that the door being ajar, he heard a female voice exclaim, "I will no longer suffer such indignities to my bed! I will join in his death and the propagation of the Catholic faith;" that when the Jesuits retired he looked into the room and saw there only the queen. Now Oates had repeatedly and distinctly declared that he knew of no other persons implicated except those he had informed of; and when he made the charge against Wakeman, had said not a word of this grave accusation. Charles was certain that it was altogether false, but to prove the man, sent the Earls of Ossory and Bridgewater to make him point out the room and antechamber; but he could not do it. Charles again declared that the fellow had been instigated by some interested person, and ordered strict guard to be kept over him, and no one to be allowed to speak with him. Bedloe, however, was brought forward to confirm Oates's statement, and declared that he had overheard a conversation between Catherine and Lord Bellasis, Coleman, and some French gentlemen, in the gallery of the queen's chapel, in which she, after shedding tears, consented to the king's murder. Bedloe had been careful not to point out any private rooms for this scene, because he had made a fatal blunder in laying the scene of Godfrey's murder in a room always occupied by the queen's footmen, and at the very time that the king was there; and not only was there a throng of persons all over the palace, but a sentinel was posted at every door, and a detachment of the Guards was drawn out in the court.

Bedloe, however, delivered his charge in writing to the House of Commons, and then Oates appeared at the Bar, and, with a front of brass and in a loud voice, exclaimed, "I, Titus Oates, accuse Catherine, Queen of England, of high treason." The astounded Commons immediately sent an address to Charles, requesting that the queen might be removed from Whitehall, and desired a conference with the Lords. The Lords, however, were not so precipitate; they desired first to see the depositions made before the Council, then summoned Oates and Bedloe, and strictly examined them. They particularly pressed them to explain why this monstrous charge had not been produced before, and as they could give no sufficient reason, they declined any conference on the subject. Shaftesbury exerted himself to overrule this conclusion, but in vain; and the charge was dropped, the king observing, "They think I have a mind for a new wife; but for all that I won't see an innocent woman abused." Impeachments, however, were received by the Lords against the peers whom these miscreants had accused.

And now began the bloody work which these villains had remorselessly elaborated for a number of innocent persons, to serve the great end of their employers. The first victim, however, was one whom a third base wretch, thirsting for blood-money, a broken-down Scotsman, of the name of Carstairs, had accused. This was Stayley, a Catholic banker, whom the man said he had heard telling a Frenchman of the name of Firmin, of Marseilles, in a tavern in Covent Garden, that the king was the greatest rogue in the world, and that he would kill him with his own hand. Carstairs had gone to Stayley and told him what he professed to have heard, but offered to suppress the fact for two hundred pounds. Stayley treated him with deserved contempt, but he was arrested within five days and tried for his life. Burnet, on hearing the name of the accuser, hastened to Sir William Jones, the Attorney-General, and told him that this Carstairs was a man of the vilest character, and not to be believed on his oath; but Jones asked him who had authorised him to defame the king's witness, and Burnet timidly withdrew. Firmin could have decided what Stayley had really said, but he was kept in custody and not allowed to appear on the trial, and Stayley was condemned and hanged.

Coleman perished next, on the evidence of Oates and Bedloe, that he had been plotting with the French Court; but he contended it was only to obtain money for restoring Catholicism, and not to injure any person. It was clear that he had received money from the French king, and therefore was guilty of a serious crime, but it was equally clear that both Oates and Bedloe fabricated much falsehood against him. His own letters, however, were insurmountable evidence of his guilt. Next came Ireland, Fenwick, Grove, Whitbread, and Pickering. Ireland, a Jesuit priest, was accused of having signed, with fifty other Jesuits, a resolution to kill the king, and the others of having engaged to assist in the design. Oates swore to the guilt of the whole, Bedloe only to that of Ireland, Grove, and Pickering, who were condemned, and died protesting that they, before their apprehension, had never heard of such a thing as a plot, much less had any concern in one. Bedloe claimed to be the chief witness respecting the death of Godfrey; but though he had unscrupulously seconded the evidence of Oates, Oates would not support him in this case. He was obliged, therefore, to look out for a second witness, and it was two months before he could find one. At length, on the 21st of December, one Prance, a silversmith, who had worked in the queen's chapel, was apprehended on suspicion, he having absented himself from his house for several days about the time of Godfrey's murder. The moment Bedloe saw him, he exclaimed, "That man is one of the murderers." It was in vain that he denied it, equally vain that he brought witnesses to prove that he did not leave home at the time of Godfrey's death, but a week before. He was thrown into Newgate, and loaded with irons; some say he was tortured, others that he was worked upon by threats and promises. He confessed, and accused three others--Hill, Green, and Berry, three servants in Somerset House. But scarcely had he done so, when he entreated to be brought before the king and Council again, and there on his knees, and with every sign of agony and remorse, protested that all that he had said was false, that he knew nothing whatever of either the murder or the murderers. Afterwards, in prison, where he was chained to the floor, the horror of his feelings was such, that Dr. Lloyd, who preached Godfrey's funeral sermon, and now was become Dean of Bangor, said that he was occasionally bereft of his reason. When urged to confess, he again, however, repeated his former statement, but with various strange additions; then Dr. Lloyd declined to have anything more to do with it, but left him to Boyce, the gaoler. Prance afterwards said that Boyce wrote many things that he copied after him, and he could see that Boyce had been with Bedloe and Lord Shaftesbury, and that he was told he must make his evidence agree with Bedloe's, or he would be sure to be hanged. The first story of Prance was that they had killed Godfrey because he was an enemy to the queen's servants; that Green strangled him with a handkerchief, and punched him on the breast with his knee: but finding him not dead, wrung his neck; that on the following Wednesday night, about twelve o'clock, the body was put into a sedan chair and taken to the Soho, and there conveyed on horseback before Hill to the place in the fields where he was found, and where they thrust his sword through him.

Hill, Green, and Berry stoutly denied the whole affair, and pointed out the gross contradictions between the evidence of Bedloe and Prance; but Chief Justice Scroggs, who presided at all these trials, and showed himself a most brutal and unprincipled judge, overruled all that. Mrs. Hill, who brought witnesses into court in favour of her husband, complained vehemently that they were browbeaten and laughed at. "My witnesses," she exclaimed, "are not rightfully examined; they are modest, and are laughed at." The unhappy victims were all condemned, and died still protesting their innocence. Berry, who was a Protestant, was respited a week, with a promise of pardon if he would confess; but he would not--a sufficient proof of the man's innocence, who would not purchase life by a lie.

These victims having suffered, the drama of plots now produced a new act. It was one of the great objects, as we have said, not only to damage the succession of the Duke of York and to alarm the king, but to ruin the Prime Minister, Danby, who had superseded the Cabal. Intrigues were entered into with Montagu, the ambassador at Paris, for this purpose. Montagu was, of course, in the secret of the money transactions between the English and French Courts, and could, if it were his interest, produce enough to destroy Danby, without letting too much light in upon the whole foul business; for not only the king on one side, but the patriots and the Opposition on the other, were equally implicated. A fortunate incident facilitated their plans. Montagu and Danby were at feud, and Danby only wanted a fair pretext to remove Montagu from his post at Paris. In this position of things Montagu furnished ample ground for his recall. He had made love to Charles's famous mistress, the Duchess of Cleveland, now superseded by the Duchess of Portsmouth. Cleveland was living in Paris a life as little creditable as her life had been in England. But Montagu deserted her for her daughter, and, on her resenting this, threatened if she continued to annoy him, to expose her intrigues in the French Court, for she was become a great political tool of Louis in his practices on England. But Cleveland was not a woman to submit to be snubbed and menaced even by a king, much less by a minister: she wrote at once to Charles a furious letter against Montagu, for she had still great influence with the king. She alleged that Montagu, who had been employed by Charles to find out an astrologer, who had foretold accurately Charles's restoration and entry into London on the 29th of May, 1660, had bribed this man to give such answers to the king as suited his own purposes. He had often told her that both the king and the duke were fools--one a dull, governable fool, and the other a wilful fool; that he wished the Parliament would send them both on their travels again; that the king always chose a greater beast than himself to govern him, and much of the like kind.

Montagu did not wait for the blow which was sure to follow this missive, but suddenly, without notice or permission, left Paris and appeared in England. He put himself in communication with Shaftesbury and his party, and also with Barillon, who would be only too glad to get Danby dismissed from office. Danby watched the movements of Montagu with anxiety, knowing that he had the power to make fatal disclosures. To secure himself from the attack of the Government, and at the same time to enable him to effect his own purpose, Montagu offered himself as a candidate for Parliament at Grinstead, but was defeated by the influence of Danby. At Northampton he was returned by the mayor, Sir William Temple, while the Government nominee was returned by the sheriff; but the popular party defended his election, and Montagu gained his seat. It was agreed with the Opposition that he should lay a charge against Danby of treasonable correspondence with France, and other offences, and that they should move for his impeachment on these grounds. Besides this, Montagu had made a bargain with Barillon that one hundred thousand livres should be paid to the most powerful of the Opposition, for their endeavours to crush Danby, and one hundred thousand livres to himself, or forty thousand livres of _rentes_ on the Hôtel de Ville, or a pension of fifty thousand livres--according to the decision of the king--if Danby were excluded from office.

Danby was not ignorant of the storm brewing, and it was thought best not to wait for its bursting; but the king sent and seized Montagu's papers, on pretence that he had been intriguing with the Pope's nuncio in Paris; and Erneley, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced this fact to the House. It was a very adroit proceeding, but Montagu soon discovered that the precious casket containing the most important papers had been overlooked in the search. Montagu stated to the House that Danby had missed his aim, that the papers were safe, and a deputation was despatched to fetch them. They returned with a small despatch box, and from this Montagu produced two letters of Danby, one of them the letter in which Danby solicited a pension of six million livres, on condition that he procured a peace from the allies, and to which Charles had added the words, "This is writ by my order.--C. R."