Concerning Coleman’s letters a curious point arose at the trial. In

opening the evidence for the crown Sergeant Maynard had remarked

that the correspondence found at the prisoner’s house extended only

“to some part of the year 1675; from 1675 unto 1678 all lies in

the dark; we have no certain proof of it, but we apprehend he had

intelligence until 1678.”[592] The Chief Justice took the subject up:

“Mr. Coleman, I will tell you when you will be apt to gain credit

in this matter.... Can mankind be persuaded that you, that had this

negotiation in 1674 and 1675, left off just then, at that time when

your letters were found according to their dates? Do you believe there

was no negotiation after 1675 because we have not found them?” The

prisoner replied, “After that time (as I said to the House of Commons)

I did give over corresponding. I did offer to take all the oaths

and tests in the world that I never had one letter for at least two

years; yea (that I may keep myself within compass), I think it was for

three or four.”[593] After he had delivered sentence on the next day,

Scroggs adjured the condemned man to confess that he had continued to

correspond with agents abroad during the last three years. “I am sorry,

Mr. Coleman,” he said, “I have not charity enough to believe the words

of a dying man; for I will tell you what sticks with me very much:

I cannot be persuaded, and nobody can, but that your correspondence

and negotiations did continue longer than the letters that we have

found, that is, after 1675.” “Upon the words of a dying man and the

expectation I have of salvation,” was Coleman’s answer, “I tell your

lordship that there is not a book or a paper in the world that I have

laid aside voluntarily.” Scroggs urged that he might have burnt them.

“Not by the living God,” returned the prisoner.[594] Coleman lied. The

correspondence which he carried on with Paris and Rome, even in the

fragmentary state in which it has been preserved, extended beyond the

end of the year 1675. Between December in that year and December 1676

he received fifty letters from St. Germain at Paris, and a letter from

the same quarter, dated October 5, 1678, was seized on delivery after

Coleman’s arrest. From January 1676 to January 1678 a correspondence

was steadily maintained between Coleman and Cardinal Howard at Rome

either personally or by his secretary Leybourn, and a letter from

Leybourn seized on its arrival bore the date October 1, 1678. Shortly

before, a “very dark, suspicious letter,” dated September 28, 1678, had

been seized on delivery. Coleman even received letters from Italy after

his arrest by the help of his wife. The last doubts on the subject

are resolved by the evidence of his secretary, Jerome Boatman, taken

before the committee of the House of Lords: “I was employed to write

home and foreign news. The correspondence was held on until my master

was taken. There came letters by post since my master was taken. I

delivered the letters to my mistress to carry to my master after he

was under the messenger’s hands.”[595] Belief in the dying vows of the

Jesuits and their friends is perhaps scarcely strengthened by Coleman’s

conduct in this matter. It is remarkable that the means taken for the

preparation of the case were so haphazard that the crown lawyers had

no knowledge of such valuable material as was in the hands of the

committee of the upper house; and it is small testimony to the capacity

of the noble lords who negotiated the business of the committee with

the Attorney-General[596] that the latter should have been entirely

ignorant of its existence.[597]

Throughout his trial Coleman was treated neither more nor less fairly

than any other prisoner in any crown case of the period. The practice

of the day weighed heavily against him. He did not receive nor could he

expect any favour from it. Neither was he met by any special disfavour

on political or any other grounds. One point of his defence however

should undoubtedly have received more consideration than it did. Oates

had charged him with paying a guinea as an extra fee for the king’s

murder, “about the 21st day of August.”[598] Almost at the end of the

trial, after the final speeches for the prosecution, Coleman announced

that if his diary were fetched from his lodgings he could prove that he

had been out of town from the 10th of August until the last day of the

month.[599] His servant was called, but was unable to do more than say

generally that he had been away from London during part of August. With

the book, said the prisoner, he would be able to prove his statement

exactly; but the Chief Justice would not allow it to be brought, on

the ground that even if what he said were true, little would be gained

to him.[600] This was no doubt true. Apart from the evidence of Oates,

the testimony of Bedloe and his own letters were enough to hang the

prisoner, and if Oates’ word had been shaken in this point it would

have been but little benefit to Coleman. But a great mistake was made

by the court. To have proved a perjury against Oates so early in

his career of witness would have inflicted a lasting injury on his

character and redoubled the force of the catastrophe which befell him

at the trial of Sir George Wakeman eight months later. This was not

however apparent at the time, and the Chief Justice’s determination,

due to the lateness of the hour and the small extent to which the

prisoner’s interest was actually involved, is easy to understand.

When he came up to receive judgment the next day Coleman produced the

diary,[601] but it was then too late and the chance was gone.

Scroggs proceeded at once to recapitulate the evidence to the jury.

What was important in his summing up was almost entirely concerned

with the meaning and weight of Coleman’s letters.[602] He pointed out

acutely that the construction which the prisoner put upon them and

the feeble explanation which he gave of his designs were repugnant

to common sense and could not be entertained. “For the other part of

the evidence,” he terminated abruptly, “which is by the testimony

of the present witnesses, you have heard them. I will not detain

you longer now, for the day is going out.”[603] The jury went from

the bar and returned immediately with the verdict of Guilty. On the

following day Coleman received sentence as usual in cases of high

treason, and five days after was executed at Tyburn. As the cart was

about to be drawn away he was heard to murmur, “There is no faith in

man.” A rumour spread throughout the town that until the end he had

expected to receive a pardon promised by the Duke of York, and that,

finding himself deceived, he had died cursing the master whom he had so

diligently served.[604]

Coleman was not the first man to suffer for the Popish Plot. On

November 26, the day Coleman was brought to trial, William Staley, a

Roman Catholic goldsmith, had undergone a traitor’s death at Tyburn.

Staley was accused by two scoundrels of having in a public tavern

uttered words which announced his intention of taking away the king’s

life. The chief witness was a wretch named Carstairs, who had eked out

a precarious livelihood by acting as a government spy on conventicles

in Scotland.[605] Two others of the same kidney corroborated his

evidence. They swore that Staley had entered a cookshop in Covent

Garden to dine with a French friend named Fromante, and had there

burst into a rage against the king; the old man, Fromante, his friend,

said “that the king of England was a tormentor of the people of God,

and he answered again in a great fury, ‘He is a great heretic and the

greatest rogue in the world; here is the heart and here is the hand

that will kill him.’... In French the words were spoken, he making a

demonstration stamping with his foot: ‘I would kill him myself.’”[606]

By an act passed early in Charles II’s reign, “malicious and advised

speaking” had been made an overt act of high treason, and on this

Staley was indicted. Over his sentence historians have gone into

ecstasies of horror, on the ground that it is impossible to believe

that “a great Roman Catholic banker” in the position of Staley should

have spoken such words.[607] Staley however was not the banker, but the

banker’s son, and was not therefore of the same highly responsible age

and position as has been supposed. “Young Staley,” as he is called in

a letter of the time,[608] is identified by Von Schwerin, ambassador

of the Great Elector to the court of Charles II. On November 19 he

writes: “Auch ist der Sohn eines sehr reichen Goldschmieds gefänglich

eingezogen worden, weil er bei einem Gelage—wiewohl in trunkenem

Zustande—Reden geführt hat: die Conspiration sei noch nicht ganz

entdeckt, so habe er noch Hände den König zu ermorden.”[609] But the

decisive evidence on the point is the fact that William Staley’s

father, the banker, was alive some three weeks after he should,

according to the received account, have been hanged and quartered. On

December 18 his clerk and cashier were examined before the committee

of the House of Lords on the subject of a reported connection between

their master and Sir George Wakeman. The cashier had been in his

service for seven years. The next day Mr. Staley, as ordered, himself

attended the committee, bringing with him “the books wherein he has

kept his accounts the last two years.”[610] Obviously this man had been

head of the firm for more than the previous month, and the account

given by the Brandenburg envoy is correct.[611]

To hold that the words attributed to Staley by the witnesses at the

trial were spoken “advisedly and maliciously” was undoubtedly to drive

the act as far as it would go against the prisoner; but that they were

spoken seems almost certain. He hardly denied that he had called the

king a rogue and a heretic.[612] His only explanation of the words to

which Carstairs swore was that instead of saying “I would kill him

myself,” he had said “I would kill myself.” The difference between

the words _Je le tuerais moi-même_ and _Je me tuerais moi-même_ is

small enough to account for an easy mistake made by a hearer, but it

was unfortunate for Staley that, as was pertinently remarked by the

Attorney-General, the latter would not make sense in the context. Still

more damning was the prisoner’s omission to call as a witness for his

defence Fromante, who had taken part in the conversation, and could,

if Staley had been innocent, have cleared the point in his favour;

but although every facility was given him for doing so, he refused

either to call his friend or to make use of the copy of his previous

examination, which the Attorney-General offered to lend him.[613]

The case was not terminated even by Staley’s sentence and death. In

consideration of his exemplary conduct in prison, where he “behaved

himself very penitently, from the time of his conviction until the time

of his execution, which was attested by the several ministers which

visited him during that time,” leave was given by the king that his

body should be delivered to his friends after execution for private

burial. With great want of tact, and “to the great indignity and

affront of his Majesty’s mercy and favour, the friends of the said

Staley caused several masses to be said over his quarters, ... and

appointed a time for his interment, viz. Friday, the 29th of November

1678, in the evening, from his father’s house in Covent Garden, at

which time there was made a pompous and great funeral, many people

following the corpse to the church of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, where

he was buried”: in consequence of which an order was given for the

disinterment of the body, and to vindicate the majesty of justice his

quarters were affixed to the city gates and his head set up to rot on

London Bridge.[614]

A fortnight after Coleman’s execution, Whitebread, Fenwick, Ireland,

Pickering, and Grove were brought to the bar of the Old Bailey. Thomas

White or Whitebread, alias Harcourt, was a man sixty years of age.

He had been educated at St. Omers, became a professed father in the

Society of Jesus in 1652, and was chosen provincial of the English

province at the beginning of the year 1678.[615] It was by his means

that Oates had entered the Jesuit College at St. Omers after expulsion

from Valladolid, and it was he who Oates swore had boxed his ears on

learning that the plot was betrayed.[616] Fenwick, less well known by

his real name Caldwell, was ten years his junior. He had joined the

English mission from Flanders in 1675, and was now the London agent

for the college at St. Omers. Both were noted in the society for their

success in the missionary field.[617] Ireland, alias Ironmonger, had

come into England in 1677 as procurator of the province.[618] All

five were accused by Oates of being principals in the plot and privy

to the king’s death. Pickering, a Benedictine, and Grove, a Jesuit

lay-brother, were named as the actual agents in one of the schemes

for his assassination. Oates’ evidence was long and highly coloured.

He had been sent over by the Jesuits to murder Doctor Tonge. He had

seen instructions for the murder of the Bishop of Hereford and Dr.

Stillingfleet. He had been in the thick of a scheme of Fenwick’s

contrivance to raise rebellion in Scotland and Ireland. Whitebread

had sealed commissions for the popish army under the seal of Johannes

Paulus de Oliva, general of his order. Fenwick had been present when

Coleman paid the famous guinea to quicken the message which was to be

fatal to the king. All the prisoners had been present at the consult

on April 24, 1678, when a resolution to kill the king was signed by

at least forty persons, Pickering was to have thirty thousand masses

and Grove £1500 for the deed. They had dogged the king in St. James’

Park, and had twisted the silver bullets of their carbines that the

wound made might be incurable. Charles would infallibly have been shot

had not the flint of Pickering’s pistol been loose, and Pickering had

undergone penance of thirty lashes for his carelessness. To use their

own words, “they did intend to dispose of the duke too, in case he did

not appear vigorous in promoting the Catholic religion.”[619] To all

this there was little to be said. The prisoners put some questions to

Oates, and were in turn slightly questioned by the court. All that

appeared was that Grove had known Oates more intimately than he wished

to represent, and that the witness had borrowed from both Grove and

Fenwick money which had naturally never been repaid.[620] Fenwick

however offered to bring a document from St. Omers, under the seal of

the college and attested by unimpeachable witnesses, that Oates had

been at the seminary at the time when he swore that he was present

in London at the consult at the White Horse Tavern. This was refused

by the court without hesitation. Fenwick exclaimed bitterly that the

judges seemed to think there was no justice out of England.[621]

But in supposing that a special piece of unfairness was directed

against himself and his friends he was mistaken. It was a regular and

unbroken rule of the court that no evidence could be brought, if such

an expression may be used, from outside the trial. Such evidence as

reports of other trials, the journals of the Houses of Parliament, the

minutes of the privy council was allowed to be used on neither side.

It was one of the points in which the practice of the day pressed

hardly on the accused, but the judges could not, as Scroggs truly

said, “depart from the law or the way of trial.” The theory of the law

was that the evidence at a trial might be disproved by the defence,

or its value might be destroyed if the witness were proved not to be

competent; but neither could it be shaken by such a document as Fenwick

proposed to produce,[622] nor could evidence afterwards be called

against it to shake the credit of a witness at a previous trial. To

effect this the witness must be indicted and convicted for perjury and

the record of his conviction proved. Every trial stood by itself, and

everything alleged at it had to be proved or disproved on the spot,

either by direct evidence or by judicial records sworn at the trial to

be correct.[623]

Bedloe was then called. He began by giving evidence of the Plot in

general, in pursuit of which he had been employed, he swore, for the

last five years to carry letters between Jesuits and monks in England,

Ireland, and France, and Sir William Godolphin and Lord Bellasis.[624]

But of the prisoners in particular he could only speak to Ireland,

Pickering, and Grove. Whitebread and Fenwick he knew by sight alone.

At the trial of Reading he confessed that this was a lie.[625] There

he explained that he would have borne witness before against the two

Jesuits had not Reading been intriguing with him at the time, and that

he kept back his evidence in order to lead the attorney deeper into the

business.[626] Not only was this admitted by the court as sufficient

justification of his conduct, but at their later trial, when Bedloe

gave decisive evidence against them, Whitebread and Fenwick hardly made

any objection to his credibility upon this ground.[627]

One witness having failed, the prosecution attempted to supply his

place by reading a letter written to summon a father of the society

to the Jesuit congregation which the provincial had fixed for April

24. But this the Chief Justice would not permit. The letter was from

Edward Petre, afterwards confessor to James II, to William Tunstall. It

had been found with Harcourt’s papers and did not mention Whitebread’s

name at all. The contents might substantiate Oates’ evidence as to the

date of the congregation, but they could not conceivably be construed,

as the crown lawyers suggested, into evidence touching the prisoners.

Scroggs’ opposition prevented the manœuvre, and after a strong warning

to the jury he allowed the letter to be read, “to fortify the testimony

of Mr. Oates, that there is a general plot: it is not applied to any

particular person.”[628]

It was now apparent that the crown had only one witness against the

two chief of the accused, which in a case of high treason was not

sufficient to procure a conviction. Thereupon Scroggs, with the

approval of the other judges, discharged the jury of Whitebread and

Fenwick and recommitted them to prison.[629] Six months later they

were again tried and executed for the same treason. Whitebread then

urged that he had been given in charge once, that on the insufficient

evidence he should have been acquitted, and that he ought not to be

tried again; but the whole court held without hesitation that the

objection was baseless.[630] Afterwards this decision was held up to

scorn, and has since often been condemned;[631] but it was grounded

upon good authority and supported by the general practice of the

courts.[632]

The three remaining prisoners proceeded to make their defence. Beyond

repeated assertions of their innocence this amounted, as far as

Pickering and Grove were concerned, to little. Ireland made a better

effort. Oates had sworn that he was in London in August of the year

1678 and present at a treasonable meeting in Harcourt’s rooms.[633] The

prisoner now called evidence to contradict this. His mother and his

sister testified that he had left town on August 3 and did not return

until the middle of September. Sir John Southcot’s coachman swore that

he had been at various places in Staffordshire and on the way thither,

in company with his master, from August 5 until the third week in that

month, and another witness gave evidence that he had seen Ireland at

Wolverhampton shortly after St. Bartholomew’s day, and again on the 7th

and the 9th of September.[634] To rebut this the prosecution called a

woman who belonged to the household of Lord Arlington. She had once

been in the service of Grove, the prisoner, and had at that time seen

Ireland constantly and waited upon him with letters from her master.

She now swore positively that she had seen him in London at the time

when the king went to Windsor in August. By the evidence of Sir Thomas

Dolman this was calculated to be the 13th of the month.[635] Oates

again took the opportunity to swear that Ireland was in town on the 1st

or 2nd of September. It was an unfortunate interruption, for it formed

the perjury assigned in the indictment upon which he was convicted at

his second trial six years afterwards.[636] Only one more witness was

produced. Sir Denny Ashburnham, member of Parliament for the borough of

Hastings, was called by Ireland to testify to Oates’ character. Instead

however of damaging the informer’s credit, he came forward to say that,

although he might have had little respect for Oates’ veracity in the

days of his youth, the manifold circumstances by which his testimony

was now supported had entirely convinced him of the truth of his

statements; “and,” said he, “I do think truly that nothing can be said

against Mr. Oates to take off his credibility”;[637] which was of small

value from the point of view of the defence.

The prisoners complained bitterly that they had been allowed neither

time nor facility to produce their witnesses. At Oates’ second trial

for perjury on May 9, 1685 there were called for the prosecution no

less than forty-five witnesses, who proved conclusively where Ireland

had been on every day but one between August 3 and September 14,

1678, the dates when he left and when he returned to London.[638] Five

months after Ireland’s execution, Whitebread, Fenwick, and Harcourt

called at their trial, to prove the same points, ten witnesses, whose

evidence covered a considerable part of the time in debate,[639] Had he

been able himself to call even those ten, not to say the whole number

afterwards collected, it can scarcely be doubted that their evidence

must have procured his acquittal and have given birth to the reaction

against Oates which every additional conviction postponed. As it was,

there were for the defence only four witnesses, two of whom were

intensely interested in the prisoner’s acquittal, against the hitherto

unshaken credit of Oates himself and the testimony of a disinterested

person called to support him. Scroggs put the point quite fairly to the

jury,[640] and the jury chose to disbelieve the prisoner’s witnesses.

The real hardship lay, not in the prejudice of the court or the violent

speech which the Chief Justice appended to his summing up of the

evidence,[641] but in the fact that the accused were kept wholly in

the dark as to the evidence which was to be produced against them. The

practice of the law, as it is still the theory,[642] made it impossible

for the accused to defend himself with certainty against the evidence

which might be brought against him. The preparation of his defence had

to be undertaken in the dark and conducted at random.

On the same day Ireland, Pickering, and Grove received sentence of

death from Jeffreys, as Recorder of London, in a speech which wavered

between pure abuse and a sermon which would have done credit to the

most strenuous divine.[643] More than a month later Ireland and Grove

were executed at Tyburn. Had Ireland’s execution been postponed, an

insurrection was feared. Pickering was respited by the king for so

long that the indignant Commons on April 27, 1679 petitioned urgently

that the law might take its course on the man who “did remain as yet

unexecuted, to the great emboldening of such offenders, in case they

should escape without due punishment;” and on May 25 Charles sent a

message to the House by Lord Russell to say that the sentence should

have effect.[644] All three died protesting their innocence to the last.

Round the dying vows of the fourteen men who were executed for the Plot

controversy raged hotly. To Roman Catholics their solemn denials seemed

so conclusive that they fancied the effect must be the same on others

too.[645] When it became apparent that such earnest assertion was met

with frank unbelief, they attributed the fact to the black malice

and the wicked prejudice of heretical hearts. To Protestants, on the

other hand, the protestations of the Jesuits were clearly the logical

result of their immoral doctrines. If anything, they afforded a further

confirmation of guilt. Able pamphleteers undertook to prove that

according to the principles of their order “they not only might, but

also ought to die after that manner, with solemn protestations of their

innocency.”[646] Protestant pulpits reverberated with demonstrations

that the Jesuits would not “stick at any sort of falsehood in order to

their own defence.” Good Bishop Burnet was shocked at the violence of

his brother divines and “looked always on this as an opening of their

graves, and the putting them to a second death.”[647] Few however were

of his mind, and Algernon Sidney expressed the common opinion when he

wrote to his cousin: “Those who use to extol all that relates to Rome

admire the constancy of the five priests executed the last week; but

we simple people find no more in it than that the papists, by arts

formerly unknown to mankind, have found ways of reconciling falsehood

in the utmost degree with the hopes of salvation, and at the best have

no more to brag of than that they have made men die with lies in their

mouths.”[648] Party spirit could not fail to be aroused in its most

virulent form by the speeches of the condemned men, and to seize upon

them as evidence on either side. They were, in point of fact, evidence

for neither one party nor the other. Oaths sworn in such a manner were

wholly worthless.

As Bedloe lay on his death-bed in the autumn of 1680 he reaffirmed with

every protestation of truth, and as he hoped for salvation, the ghastly

mass of perjured evidence by which he had sworn away the lives of men.

His conscience was clear, he said, and “he should appear cheerfully

before the Lord of Hosts, which he did verily believe he must do in a

short time.”[649] Three years later the man who has been held up to

posterity as the most truthful of his age died, calling God to witness

his innocence of the treason for which he was condemned.[650] Yet Lord

Russell was a member of the Council of Six and had engaged actively in

the preparation of an extensive rebellion. He was an intimate friend of

the men who hatched the actual Rye House Plot. If he was unaware that

the king’s life was aimed at directly and indirectly, it was because

he had deliberately shut his eyes to the tendency of his own schemes

and those of his associates.[651] This must be the test of the value of

such declarations. The unbounded immorality with which the politics of

the reign of Charles II were stamped so clouded the minds of men that

truth became for them almost indistinguishable from falsehood. They had

only not reached the point of view of the native of Madras, who said

of the value of death-bed confessions: “Such evidence ought never to

be admitted in any case. What motive for telling the truth can a man

possibly have when he is at the point of death?”[652]

Mention has already been made of the trial of Reading.[653] This

was the first of a series of important cases which were conducted

in the course of the ensuing year. Briefly, they were trials of

Roman Catholics for fraudulent endeavours, in the words of the time,

to stifle the Plot. Not to speak of the notorious Meal Tub Plot,

the most determined and unscrupulous effort of the Roman Catholic

party to remove the accusation of treason from themselves to their

opponents,[654] there may be noticed four distinct attempts to impair

by fraudulent and criminal means the evidence offered for the crown.

As early as February 1679 information was laid before a committee of

the privy council that an Englishman named Russell, who belonged to the

household of the French ambassador, had endeavoured to suborn witnesses

to invalidate the credit of Oates and Bedloe, and had offered the sum

of £500 for the purpose. The council addressed to the ambassador a

request for the delivery of the accused to stand his trial; but the

case did not come into court, probably because Russell had either

absconded or been shipped abroad.[655] The incident was kept secret

and produced no consequences. But within twelve months three other

attempts of the same nature were proved against Roman Catholic agents

and exercised a considerable influence against their party. The trials

of Reading for a trespass and misdemeanour, of Knox and Lane for a

misdemeanour, and of Tasborough and Price for subornation of perjury

must not be overlooked in forming a judgment on the events of which the

courts of justice were the chief scene.

Nathaniel Reading was a Protestant attorney of some standing in his

profession. Thirty years before he had been secretary to Massaniello

in the insurrection at Naples, and was now living in London and

enjoying a fair practice. He had been the friend and legal adviser

of Lord Stafford for several years, numbered other gentlemen of title

and repute among his acquaintance, and was of a position to receive

an invitation to dinner from the Lieutenant of the Tower when he went

to visit his client in prison.[656] During the Hilary term of 1679

he had been engaged in procuring the discharge on bail of several

prisoners for the Plot, and had gone by leave of the secret committee

of the House of Lords to advise the lords imprisoned in the Tower on

the like subjects. In the course of his negotiations for them he had

become acquainted with Oates and Bedloe, and acted as counsel for the

latter in obtaining his pardon from the king. Bedloe was constantly

in his company, and the two talked frequently of the nature of the

Plot and the witness’ charges against the prisoners.[657] In public

Reading exhorted Bedloe to reveal all his knowledge and bring the

guilty to justice, but in private conversation suggested that it

might be profitable to reduce his evidence against certain of those

incriminated. The plot was blown to the winds, the king’s life out

of danger, Bedloe would be able to feather his own nest, and no harm

would be done. Bedloe promised to consider the matter and, as earnest

of his good intentions, withdrew his evidence against Whitebread and

Fenwick.[658] At the same time he carried the news of the intrigue

to the committee of secrecy. Prince Rupert, the Earl of Essex, and

Mr. Speke[659] were informed of the business, and Bedloe was advised

to continue his negotiation in the hope of extracting something of

importance. Reading had in the meantime gone to the lords in the Tower

and brought from them promises of ample reward if Bedloe would consent

to save them. A meeting was appointed for March 29, to make the final

arrangements.[660] Before Reading appeared, Speke and another witness

were hidden in the room in such a position that they could overhear

every word which passed between the two men. They heard Bedloe ask,

“What say my lords in the Tower now?” Reading replied that Lord

Stafford had promised to settle an estate in Gloucestershire on the

informer, and that he had orders to draw up a deed to that effect and

sign it ten days after Lord Stafford’s discharge from prison. The Earl

of Powis, Lord Petre, and Sir Henry Tichbourne also promised rewards if

Bedloe would procure their acquittal. Bedloe then drew up an abstract

of his evidence against the lords, and Speke saw Reading take the

paper to deliver to them in the Tower. Two days later the attorney met

Bedloe by appointment in the Painted Chamber at Westminster and gave

him in answer to this a corrected version of the evidence which the

accused had drawn up for his actual use at their trials. Bedloe without

looking at the paper handed it at once to Mr. Speke, who carried it to

a committee room in the House of Lords for examination.[661] This paper

was read in court, and proved to contain an amended version of Bedloe’s

testimony so vague and slight that it could not have possibly been of

any use to the prosecution.[662]

Reading’s defence was sufficiently feeble. He was treated by the

bench with the greatest indulgence and allowed to make a lengthy and

unsupported discourse on Bedloe’s character. It is noteworthy that he

objected to the witness not on the ground that he had perjured himself

in holding back evidence at the trial of Whitebread, Fenwick, and

Ireland, but on account of treasonable practices, which were covered

by his pardon. He protested that the first proposal of the intrigue

came from Bedloe, and that he only joined in it to prevent the shedding

of innocent blood. The estate in Gloucestershire spoken of had been

promised by Lord Stafford to himself, if he obtained his acquittal,

and not to Bedloe, though hardly it seemed without the understanding

that the informer was to have some share in it. He would have thought

it a crime not to engage in the business; it was a duty which he owed

to God and his country. By saying this he practically confessed to the

whole indictment, and after a concise summing up the jury immediately

returned a verdict of guilty. Reading was sentenced to be pilloried, to

pay a fine of £1000, and to imprisonment for one year.[663]

The case of Knox and Lane was a still more disreputable affair. Thomas

Knox was in the service of Lord Dumblane, the Earl of Danby’s son. John

Lane and one William Osborne were servants to Titus Oates. These two

were discharged by Oates in April 1679, Lane, who had some acquaintance

with Dangerfield, was lodged by him and Mrs. Cellier under an assumed

name at the house of the Countess of Powis.[664] At Dangerfield’s

suggestion they approached Knox on the subject of the charges which

Oates had made against the Lord Treasurer.[665] Knox agreed to their

suggestion, and together they arranged the details of the scheme.

Osborne and Knox lodged information that Oates had conspired with

Bedloe to bring false accusations against Lord Danby, while Lane

charged his master with using obscene language concerning the king and

with the commission of an unnatural crime. But under examination Knox

and Lane broke down, and all three were driven to confess that there

was not a word of truth in the story which they had concocted. Osborne

fled the country, and his two accomplices were clapped into gaol. News

however was brought to Lane as he lay in prison that Knox was prepared

to stand by his original story. He forthwith retracted his confession,

and on November 19, 1679 indictment was brought against Oates “for an

attempt to commit upon him the horrid and abominable sin of sodomy.”

The grand jury ignored the bill, and a week later the two miscreants

were brought to the king’s bench bar on the charge of “a conspiracy to

defame and scandalise Dr. Oates and Mr. Bedloe; thereby to discredit

their evidence about the horrid Popish Plot.” After a long trial, in

which the defendants were treated with all fairness and in which each

attempted to throw the blame on the other, the jury returned a verdict

of guilty without leaving the bar. The prisoners were sentenced to

fine and imprisonment, and Lane in addition to stand for an hour in

the pillory. The verdict was received with a shout of applause, “many

noblemen, gentlemen, and eminent citizens,” adds the account which was

drawn up under Oates’ direction, “coming with great expectations of the

issue of this trial, which was managed with that justice, impartiality,

and indifference between the king and the defendants, that some have

been heard to say they could never believe a plot before, but now they

were abundantly satisfied.”[666]

The labyrinthine nature of the intrigues connected with the Popish Plot

is amply illustrated by these two trials. The third case presents less

intricacy, but no less dishonesty. In January 1680 John Tasborough and

Anne Price were tried for subornation of perjury in having offered a

bribe to the informer Dugdale to retract the evidence which he had

given at the trial of Whitebread, Harcourt, and Fenwick. Mrs. Price

had been a fellow-servant with Dugdale in the household of the Roman

Catholic peer, Lord Aston. On the night before the trial of the five

Jesuits[667] she came to him and begged him not to give evidence

against Father Harcourt, who was her confessor. When the trial was over

she renewed her solicitations, offering him the reward of £1000 and the

Duke of York’s protection if he would recant what he had then sworn.

Dugdale was introduced to Tasborough, a gentleman belonging to the

duke’s household.[668] Meetings were held at the Green Lettice Tavern

in Brownlow Street and at the Pheasant Inn in Fullers-rents. Tasborough

confirmed the promises made by Mrs. Price. The informer was to sign

a declaration that all his evidence had been false, to receive £1000

in cash, and to be maintained abroad by the Duke of York. The name

of the Spanish ambassador was also mentioned. But Dugdale, as Bedloe

before him, had secreted witnesses at these interviews. The intriguers

were arrested, and the whole story was proved beyond the possibility

of doubt at their trial.[669] Tasborough was sentenced to the fine of

£100, Price to the fine of twice that sum. All parties at the trial

were at considerable pains to exonerate the Duke of York. There was

in fact no direct evidence against him; but it is improbable that the

culprits had been using his name entirely without authority. They must

have known that Dugdale would not put his name to the recantation

without substantial guarantee for the reward, and certainly neither was

in a position to pay any sufficient part of the sum mentioned from his

own resources.

The evidence which Dugdale should have retracted was considerable. His

reputation was still undamaged. He had been steward of Lord Aston’s

estate at Tixhall, in Staffordshire, was thought to have enjoyed a

fair reputation in the county, and to have been imprisoned in the

first instance for refusing to take the oaths of allegiance and

supremacy.[670] Although he had laid information before the privy

council as early as December 1678, it was not until the trial of the

Five Jesuits[671] on June 13 of the year following that he appeared

in court. The case for the prosecution was opened, as usual, with the

evidence of Oates, He reaffirmed the story which he had told at the

trial of Whitebread, Fenwick, and Ireland, and gave similar evidence

against Harcourt, Gavan, and Turner. Dugdale was then called. He

swore to treasonable consults held at Tixhall in September 1678,

where Gavan and Turner were present, to treasonable letters between

Whitebread, Harcourt, and others, and to a letter dispatched from

London by Harcourt on October 20, 1678, addressed to Evers, another

Jesuit, and containing the words “This night Sir Edmond Bury Godfrey

is dispatched.”[672] The death of the king was to be laid at the door

of the Presbyterian party. A general massacre of Protestants was to

follow, “and if any did escape that they could not be sure of were

papists, they were to have an army to cut them off.”[673] Bedloe

followed with the evidence which he had before suppressed against

Whitebread and Fenwick, and swore similarly to the treason of Harcourt.

Some trifling evidence from Prance closed the first part of the case

for the crown.[674] But almost more important than the oral testimony

were two letters which were read in court. The one was a note from

Edward Petre, containing a summons to the congregation fixed for April

24, 1678; the other a letter from Christopher Anderton, dated from

Rome, February 5, 1679, in which occurred the following sentences: “We

are all here very glad of the promotion of Mr. Thomas Harcourt; when I

writ that the patents were sent, although I guess for whom they were,

yet I know not for certain, because our patrons do not use to discover

things or resolutions till they know they have effect. And therefore

in these kind of matters I dare not be too hasty, lest some might say,

a fool’s bolt is soon shot.” Both had been found among Harcourt’s

papers several days after Oates was examined by the privy council.[675]

They seemed to confirm his evidence in a remarkable manner. He had

constantly spoken of the Jesuit design; the former of the letters

contained the same word and enjoined secrecy on the subject. The

latter seemed to refer to the patents which Oates had declared were

sent to the commanders of the popish army. The prisoners explained

that the “design” of the congregation was but to settle the business

of their order and to choose a procurator to undertake its management

at Rome. As for the patents, Anderton had meant to say _Literae

Patentes_, and referred only to Harcourt’s patent as new provincial.

_Literae Patentes_, contended the court, when used in reference to one

person, meant a patent; but when the phrase was translated patents, it

necessarily pointed at more than one. Oates, said the Chief Justice,

interpreted the matter more plainly than the accused.[676]

The Jesuits proceeded to make their defence. Sixteen witnesses were

called to prove that Oates had been at St. Omers from December 1677

to June 1678, and had not left the college at the time when he

swore that he was present at the consult in London. This was the

perjury upon which he was convicted at his first trial in 1685. Five

witnesses were called to testify that Gavan had not been in town in

April 1678; ten, that Ireland had been in the country in August and

September of the same year. Very similar evidence to that now given

was accepted six years later by the court to substantiate the charge

against Oates, but at the trial of Whitebread, Harcourt, and Fenwick

it was disbelieved. The witnesses were examined in detail and gave an

elaborate account of the life at the seminary. But the story which they

told was not altogether satisfactory. Under examination they shuffled

and prevaricated. Sometimes they contradicted one another on points of

time. They came prepared to speak to the date of the consult and the

time immediately before and after it. When questions were put about

dates less closely concerned, they seemed unwilling to answer. One,

who declared that he had left Oates at St. Omers on taking leave for

England to go to the congregation, was confounded when Oates reminded

him that he had lost his money at Calais and had been compelled to

borrow from a friend. Another confused the old and new styles. A

third stated that whenever a scholar left the college the fact could

not but be known to all his fellows. He was immediately contradicted

by Gavan, who said that care was taken that the comings and goings

of the seminarists should be unnoticed.[677] A rumour was spread

abroad that witnesses had been tutored, and was repeated by Algernon

Sidney in a letter to Paris.[678] For once rumour was not at variance

with truth. Sidney’s information was perfectly correct. Three of the

lads from St. Omers were arrested on their arrival in London by Sir

William Waller, and their examinations were forwarded by him to the

secret committee of the House of Commons. One of these was Christopher

Townley, alias Madgworth, alias Sands, who had been a student in the

seminary for six years. He admitted that “his instructions from the

superior was to come over and swear that Mr. Oates was but once from

the college at St. Omers, from December 1677 to June following.” Of

his own knowledge he could say no more than that he had been in the

seminary all the time during which Oates was there; “the said Mr. Oates

might be absent from St. Omers in that time for several days and at

several times, but not absent above one week at a time, this examinant

being lodged in the college where Mr. Oates was, but did not see him

daily.”[679] At the trial he did not scruple to say that he had seen

and talked with Oates on every day throughout April and May and that,

if Oates had ever been absent, he must certainly have known it.[680]

Nor was this all. At his examination he deposed that Parry, Palmer,

and Gifford were all absent from St. Omers while Oates was an inmate

of the college. At the trial Gifford, Palmer, and Parry were produced

to give evidence of their personal knowledge that Oates had been there

the whole of the time.[681] No credence whatever can be given to such

witnesses. It is worthy of remark that they were housed and entertained

by no other than Mrs. Cellier, who was afterwards deeply concerned

both in the Meal Tub Plot and in the case of Knox and Lane, and was

pilloried for an atrocious libel in connection with the murder of Sir

Edmund Berry Godfrey.[682] No doubt can exist on the subject of Oates’

repeated and astounding perjuries. It is as little open to doubt

that the witnesses who were opposed to him at this trial were almost

equally untrustworthy. They were in fact very cleverly parroted. If his

infamy remains undisturbed, the unctuous indignation with which it was

denounced by the Jesuits, at the very moment when they were employing

means as unhallowed as his own to controvert his statements, at least

entitles them to a place by his side in the pillory of history.

Even at this point the false evidence given at this terrible trial

was not ended. The crown produced seven witnesses to prove that Oates

had been in London at the end of April and the beginning of May 1678.

Of these the only two who gave evidence of any weight were Smith,

who had been Oates’ master at Merchant Tailors’ School, and Clay, a

disreputable Dominican friar, whom Oates had taken out of prison. Both

were afterwards proved to have been suborned by Oates and to have

perjured themselves.[683]

The Jesuits concluded their defence with speeches of real eloquence.

Scroggs summed up the evidence in an elaborate speech and strongly

in favour of the crown; and after a quarter of an hour’s absence

the jury returned to court with a verdict of guilty against all the

prisoners.[684]

On the next day Richard Langhorn was indicted at the Old Bailey for

practically the same treason as that for which the Five Jesuits were

convicted. Langhorn was a Roman Catholic barrister of considerable

eminence.[685] He was the legal adviser of the Jesuits, and

conducted for them much business which would now more naturally

pass through the hands of a solicitor. Oates consequently named him

as an active agent in the Plot and prospective advocate-general

under the new government.[686] His trial was a continuation of the

trial of Whitebread, Harcourt, and Fenwick, and exhibited all the

same characteristics, of perjury on the one side, on the other of

prevarication and falsehood. The same evidence was developed at

length, and with the same result. Two fresh points of importance alone

occurred. To Oates’ great alarm the hostess of the White Horse Tavern

in the Strand was called by the defence. Oates had sworn that as many

as eighteen or twenty Jesuits had met together there in one room at the

congregation of April 24. The woman now declared that no room in her

house would hold more than a dozen persons at the same time, and that

when a parish jury had once met there the jurors had been compelled

for want of space to separate into three rooms. This would undoubtedly

have produced an effect, had not three of the spectators in court

immediately risen to swear that there were two rooms in the inn which

were large enough to hold from twenty to thirty people without crowding

them unduly. An unfavourable impression concerning the evidence for

the defence was created, and the king’s counsel was able to score an

effective point.[687]

Of greater weight than this was a portion of Bedloe’s evidence. He

swore that he went one day with Coleman to Langhorn’s chambers in the

Temple, and from the outer room saw the lawyer transcribing various

treasonable letters brought by Coleman into a register at a desk in his

study within.[688] The nature of cross-examination was so imperfectly

understood at the time that Langhorn did not attempt to question the

witness on the shape of his rooms or to shake his credit by calling

evidence to the point. In his memoirs, which were published in the

course of the same year, he wrote the following comment on Bedloe’s

statement: “Every person who knows my said chamber and the situation

of my study cannot but know that it is impossible to look out of my

chamber into my study so as to see any one writing there, and that I

never had at any time any desk in my study.”[689] This was supported

by other evidence. When Oates and Bedloe exhibited in 1680 “articles

of high misdemeanours” against Scroggs before the privy council, they

charged him in one that at the previous Monmouth assizes he “did say to

Mr. William Bedloe that he did believe in his conscience that Richard

Langhorn, whom he condemned, died wrongfully.” To which the Chief

Justice answered “that at Monmouth assizes he did tell Mr. Bedloe that

he was more unsatisfied about Mr. Langhorn’s trial than all the rest;

and the rather, that he was credibly informed, since the trial, that

Mr. Langhorn’s study was so situated that he that walked in his chamber

could not see Mr. Langhorn write in his study; which was Mr. Bedloe’s

evidence.”[690]

This was not the first incident which shook the credit of the witnesses

in the Chief Justice’s mind. He had in the meantime received a still

more striking proof of their worthlessness. On July 18, four days

after the execution of Langhorn and nearly a month after that of the

Five Jesuits, Sir George Wakeman, in company with three Benedictines,

was brought to trial at the Old Bailey. Wakeman was accused of having

bargained with the Jesuits for £15,000 to poison the king. The other

three were charged with being concerned in the Plot in various degrees.

Feeling had run so high after the last two trials that the case was

postponed from the end of June for nearly three weeks, that it might

have time to cool.[691] Interests were at stake which had not been

present in the previous trials. In November of the year before, Oates

and Bedloe had accused the queen of high treason, and Oates had sworn

that Sir George Wakeman, who was her physician, had received from

her a letter consenting to the king’s death.[692] The queen was now

implicated with Wakeman, and the trial was regarded as the prelude to

an attack on herself.[693]

Before the crown lawyers opened the direct attack, witnesses were,

as usual, produced to testify to the reality of the plot. Prance and

Dugdale reaffirmed their previous evidence, and Jennison, himself the

brother of a Jesuit, swore that he had met Ireland in London on August

19, 1678, thus proving to the satisfaction of the court that Ireland

had died with a lie in his mouth.[694] The prosecution then came to the

prisoners. Oates told again the story how he had heard the queen at a

meeting at Somerset House consent formally to the plot for murdering

the king, and swore that he had seen a letter from Wakeman to the

Jesuit Ashby, which was occupied chiefly with a prescription for the

latter during his stay at Bath, but mentioned incidentally that the

queen had given her approval to the scheme. He had also seen an entry

in Langhorn’s register of the payment of £5000 made by Coleman as a

third part of Wakeman’s fee and a receipt for it signed by Wakeman

himself.[695] Bedloe gave evidence which would prove equally the guilt

of the queen and her physician, and both swore to the treasonable

practices of the other prisoners.[696] To rebut this, Wakeman produced

evidence to prove that he had not written the letter for Ashby himself,

but had dictated it to his servant Hunt. The letter was addressed to

Chapman, an apothecary at Bath, who read it and then tore off and kept

the part containing the prescription. Hunt proved that the letter was

in his handwriting and was corroborated by another servant in Wakeman’s

household. Chapman proved that the body of the letter was in the same

handwriting as the prescription, that it contained nothing about the

queen or any plan for the king’s murder, and that Oates had given an

entirely inaccurate account of the prescription, which was so far from

ordering a milk diet, as Oates had sworn that milk would have been

not far removed from poison for a patient who was drinking the waters

at Bath. Scroggs was afterwards accused of having grossly favoured the

prisoner in order to curry favour at court; but the manner in which

this evidence was received is an absolute proof to the contrary. The

bench held, in a way that now excites surprise, but at the time did

not, that Oates had meant that the milk diet was prescribed for Ashby

before he went to Bath, and was therefore not at all inconsistent

with drinking the waters while he was there; and that Wakeman might

easily have written two letters on the same subject. No doubt, said

the judges, the witnesses for the defence spoke the truth. What had

happened was that Sir George had dictated one letter, which consisted

of nothing but medical directions, and of which the apothecary and the

other witnesses spoke; but he must certainly have written another,

containing the treasonable words to which Oates swore. The court

treated the matter as if this were beyond a doubt. To the prisoner’s

objection that he was unlikely to have written two letters to convey

the same instructions, Mr. Justice Pemberton replied, “This might be

writ to serve a turn very well”; and Scroggs closed the discussion by

remarking, “This your witnesses say, and you urge, is true, but not

pertinent.”[697] Shortly before Wakeman turned to his fellow-prisoners

and said, “There is my business done.” He knew that in all human

probability he would be condemned. Suddenly, without any warning,

there occurred the most unexpected event, which, in a dramatic moment

unsurpassed by the most famous in history, shattered the credit of

Oates and produced the first acquittal in the trials for the Popish

Plot.[698] Sir Philip Lloyd, clerk to the privy council, was asked to

state with what Oates had charged the prisoner at his examination

before the council. The evidence deserves to be given in Sir Philip’s

own words: “It was upon the 31st of September,” he stated; “Mr. Oates

did then say he had seen a letter, to the best of his remembrance, from

Mr. White to Mr. Fenwick at St. Omers, in which letter he writ word

that Sir George Wakeman had undertaken the poisoning of the king, and

was to have £15,000 for it; of which £5000 had been paid him by the

hands of Coleman. Sir George Wakeman, upon this, was called in and told

of this accusation; he utterly denied all, and did indeed carry himself

as if he were not concerned at the accusation, but did tell the king

and council he hoped he should have reparation and satisfaction for

the injury done to his honour. His carriage was not well liked of by

the king and council, and being a matter of such consequence as this

was, they were willing to know further of it; and because they thought

this evidence was not proof enough to give them occasion to commit him,

being only out of a letter of a third person, thereupon they called in

Mr. Oates again, and my Lord Chancellor desired Mr. Oates to tell him

if he knew nothing personally of Sir George Wakeman, because they were

in a matter of moment, and desired sufficient proof whereupon to ground

an indictment; Mr. Oates, when he did come in again and was asked the

question, did lift up his hands (for I must tell the truth, let it be

what it will) and said, ‘No, God forbid that I should say anything

against Sir George Wakeman, for I know nothing more against him.’ And I

refer myself to the whole council whether it is not so.”

Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane Hill, marching against Macbeth, or

the duke uncloaking to Angelo could not create a greater sensation. “My

lord,” cried Sir George Wakeman, “this is a Protestant witness too.”

Oates began to bluster. He remembered nothing of all this. He did not

believe that any such question was asked him at the council board.

If there had been, he was in such a state of exhaustion after being

deprived of his rest for two nights in succession that he was not in a

condition to answer anything. “What,” returned Scroggs, “must we be

amused with I know not what for being up but two nights?... What, was

Mr. Oates just so spent that he could not say, I have seen a letter

under Sir George Wakeman’s own hand?” The informer swore that to his

best belief he had spoken of the letter; or if he had not, he believed

Sir Philip Lloyd was mistaken; or if not that, he was so weak that

he was unable to say or do anything. Then he completely lost control

of himself and broke out recklessly: “To speak the truth, they were

such a council as would commit nobody.” “That was not well said,” put

in Jeffreys quickly. “He reflects on the king and all the council,”

cried Wakeman. At this the wrath of the Chief Justice burst out on the

perjured miscreant. “You have taken a great confidence,” he thundered,

“I know not by what authority, to say anything of anybody”; and

becoming more grave, pointed out the decisive importance of what had

been proved against him, Oates did not open his mouth again during the

rest of the trial.[699]

The case still dragged on its weary length. Numerous other witnesses

were called to prove and disprove points of varying importance and

connection with the matter at issue. All the prisoners against whom

Oates and Bedloe had sworn made long speeches and discoursed on a

hundred irrelevant topics. Marshal, the Benedictine, lectured the court

and delivered an impassioned harangue on the injustice of the English

nation and on the future state. He was stopped and, beginning again,

drew down on himself from Scroggs a violent rebuke in which he declared

his belief that it was possible for an atheist to be a papist, but

hardly for a knowing Christian to be a Christian and a papist. When the

heated wrangle which followed was ended, the Chief Justice summed up,

setting the evidence on both sides in a clear light and pointing out

where its strength lay against the prisoners, but plainly intimating

his opinion that the revelation made by Sir Philip Lloyd went far to

invalidate Oates’ testimony. As the jury were leaving the box Bedloe

broke in: “My lord, my evidence is not right summed up.” “I know not

by what authority this man speaks,” said Scroggs sternly. After the

absence of about an hour the jury returned. Might they, they asked,

find the prisoners guilty of misprision of treason? “No,” replied

Jeffreys, the Recorder, “you must either convict them of high treason

or acquit them.” “Then take a verdict,” said the foreman; and returned

a verdict of not guilty for all the prisoners.

Scarcely was the trial over when a storm broke upon the head of the

Lord Chief Justice. He had already earned the hatred of the ferocious

London mob by accepting bail for Mr. Pepys and Sir Anthony Deane, who

were in prison on account of the Plot.[700] Now the feeling against

him amounted to positive fury. Sir George Wakeman, after visiting

the queen at Windsor, fled the country to escape the effects of the

popular rage.[701] Scroggs stood his ground. The London presses

teemed with pamphlets against him. _Some observations upon the late

trials of Sir George Wakeman_, etc., by Tom Ticklefoot; _The Tickler

Tickled_; _A New Year’s Gift for the Lord Chief in Justice_ are among

those which deserve to be remembered for their especial virulence.

The Portuguese ambassador had the egregious folly to call publicly

upon Scroggs the day after the trial and to thank him for his conduct

of the case.[702] It was immediately said that the Chief Justice had

been bribed. A barrel packed with gold had been sent to him. “Great

store of money” had been scattered about. The jury had been bribed.

A good jury had been impanelled, but was never summoned, and a set

of rascals was chosen in its place.[703] When Scroggs went on circuit

for the autumn assizes he was met in the provinces with cries of—A

Wakeman, a Wakeman; and at one place a half-dead dog was thrown into

his coach.[704] Early in the year following Oates and Bedloe exhibited

thirteen articles against the Chief Justice before the privy council,

and Oates declared that “he believed he should be able to prove that

my Lord Chief Justice danced naked.” On January 21 Scroggs justified

himself in a set reply of great skill and wit, and the informers met

with a severe rebuff.[705] His other traducers were treated with no

greater courtesy. At the opening of the courts for the Michaelmas term

of 1679 Scroggs made an able speech of eloquence, distinction, and

almost sobriety, in which he grounded his belief in the Plot on the

correspondence of Coleman and Harcourt and vindicated the integrity of

the judicial honour; and on May 20, 1680 one Richard Radley was fined

£200 for saying that the Chief Justice had “received money enough from

Dr. Wakeman for his acquittal.”[706] In September 1679 he was received

with great favour at the court at Windsor and in December caused horrid

embarrassment to Lord Shaftesbury and several other Whig noblemen,

whom he met at dinner with the Lord Mayor, by proposing the health of

the Duke of York and justifying his own conduct on the bench.[707] In

January 1681 he was impeached by the Commons. When the articles of his

impeachment were brought up to the House of Lords he was treated, to

the indignation of the Whig party, with great consideration and favour;

but although the lords refused even to put the question “whether there

shall now be an address to the king to suspend Sir William Scroggs from

the execution of his place until his trial be over?” he was absent

from court at the beginning of the Hilary term, and did not take his

place upon the bench during the rest of the term.[708] Three days after

the opening of the Oxford parliament Scroggs put in his answer to the

impeachment. He denied the truth of the articles exhibited against

him severally, and insisted that the nature of the facts alleged in

them was not such as could legally be made the ground for a charge

of high treason. He prayed the king for a speedy trial.[709] Copies

of his answer and petition were sent to the House of Commons, but

before further proceedings could be taken Parliament was dissolved on

March 28, and the impeachment was blown to the winds in company with

other Whig measures of greater importance and still less good repute.

The Chief Justice was not left long in the enjoyment of his triumph.

In April 1681 Charles removed him from the bench and appointed Sir

Francis Pemberton to be Chief Justice in his place. The move was no

doubt directed by the approaching trial of Fitzharris. For this was

undertaken in the teeth of the bitter opposition of the Whig party, and

it was expedient that a man who was already odious to Shaftesbury’s

adherents should not endanger the success of the crown by his presence

on the bench on so important an occasion. The late Chief Justice was

compensated by an annual pension of £1500 and the appointment of his

son to be one of “his Majesty’s counsel learned in the law.”[710]

Sir William Scroggs, Chief Justice of the court of king’s bench, was a

man of a type not uncommon in the seventeenth century. He was vulgar

and profligate, a great winebibber, stained by coarse habits and the

ignorant prejudices common to all of his day but the most temperate

and learned, but a man of wit, shrewdness, strong character, and

master of the talents which were necessary to secure success in the

legal profession as it then was.[711] The prominent position into

which he was brought by the trials for the Popish Plot has earned for

him a reputation for evil second in the history of the English law

courts only to that of Jeffreys. He has been accused of cowardice,

cruelty, time-service, of allowing his actions on the bench to be

swayed by party spirit, and of using his position with gross injustice

to secure the conviction of men who were obnoxious to the popular

sentiment. These charges cannot be substantiated. When the evidence

of interested partisans by whom he was lauded or abused is stripped

away, they rest on two grounds: the fact that he presided at trials

where men were condemned for the Popish Plot, and at one where men were

acquitted of similar charges; and the nature of his speeches in court

at those trials. It was said that he obtained the acquittal of Sir

George Wakeman because he realised that the king “had an ill opinion”

of the Plot, and because he had been told that the popular leaders

had no support at court; and that he had taken an opposite course at

the previous trials because he believed the contrary to be true.[712]

These statements have passed for truth ever since they were made, and

have been repeated by one writer after another. They were in fact

feeble attempts to explain what their authors did not understand. They

are contradicted not only by the statements of other contemporaries,

which are of small weight, but by the whole course of the Lord Chief

Justice’s action and the circumstances by which he was surrounded.

From the very outbreak of the Popish Plot it was notorious in official

circles that the king discredited the evidence offered by the

informers.[713] It is absurd to suppose that Scroggs was ignorant of

the fact. If anything, Charles was rather more inclined to believe in

the Plot in the spring of 1679 than on Oates’ first revelations.[714]

No judge could possibly have expected to gain favour at court by an

exhibition on the bench of zeal which was directed against the court.

Still more absurd is it to suppose that a man in the position of the

Lord Chief Justice should have imagined that the Earl of Shaftesbury

exercised a favoured influence over the king’s mind. Nor does Scroggs’

conduct on the bench afford good ground for these accusations. His

behaviour in the test case, the trial of Sir George Wakeman, was

exactly the same as it had been in all the previous trials, and exactly

the same as it was at the later trials over which he presided, whether

they were of priests charged with treason on account of their orders,

of persons charged with treason in the Plot, or for offences of a less

high character.[715] It is scarcely surprising to hear that after the

attack made on him by Oates and Bedloe, “whensoever either of them have

appeared before him, he has frowned upon them, spoke very frowardly

to them and reflected much upon them.”[716] Nevertheless he treated

their evidence quite fairly. The rule was that only a conviction of

perjury could disqualify a witness, and Scroggs enforced it without

prejudice.[717] Throughout he had the entire support of the other

judges, and not least that of Chief Justice North.[718] His mind was

filled, equally with theirs, with the fear and horror of popery, and as

the chief part of the speaking fell to his lot he expressed this more

often and more emphatically than his brethren. But he made up his mind

on the merits of each case in accordance with the evidence which was

then given and with the stringent and unjust rules of procedure which

had been handed down to him. Scroggs was neither a judge of remarkable

merit nor a lawyer of learning, but on the evidence which was brought

before him, and which was not then, as it would be now, rendered

incredible by its own character, he did in a rough manner sound justice.

For the violence and brutality of his speeches there can be no more

excuse than for the coarseness and violence of all speech and action

in the age in which he lived. But his words must not be judged alone,

nor must his manner of speech be considered peculiar. Language in the

latter half of the seventeenth century was harsh and exaggerated to a

degree hardly comprehended to-day. Scroggs constantly launched forth

into tirades against the Roman Catholic religion, full of heated abuse.

Sometimes he attributed to the Jesuits, at others to all papists,

the bloody, inhuman, abominable doctrine that murder, regicide, and

massacre were lawful in the cause of religion. “Such courses as these,”

he declared, “we have not known in England till it was brought out

of their Catholic countries; what belongs to secret stranglings and

poisonings are strange to us, though common in Italy.”[719] He told

Coleman, “No man of understanding, but for by-ends, would have left

his religion to be a papist.... Such are the wicked solecisms in

their religion, that they seem to have left them neither natural sense

nor natural conscience: not natural sense, by their absurdity in so

unreasonable a belief as of the wine turned into blood; not conscience,

by their cruelty, who make the Protestants’ blood as wine, and these

priests thirst after it; Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum?”[720]

The onslaught on Ireland, Pickering, and Grove was still more virulent:

“I would not asperse a profession of men, as priests are, with hard

words, if they were not very true, and if at this time it were not very

necessary. If they had not murdered kings, I would not say they would

have done ours. But when it hath been their practice so to do; when

they have debauched men’s understandings, overturned all morals, and

destroyed all divinity, what shall I say of them? When their humility

is such that they tread upon the necks of emperors; their charity such

as to kill princes, and their vow of poverty such as to covet kingdoms,

what shall I say to them?... This is a religion that quite unhinges

all piety, all morality, and all conversation, and to be abominated

by all mankind.”[721] Yet Scroggs’ language was no stronger than

that of his brothers on the bench. Jeffreys in sentencing Ireland,

Wild in sentencing Green, Jones in sentencing Tasborough attained an

exactly similar style. At the trial of Penn and Mead in 1670 the court

was at least equally ill-mouthed, and nothing ever heard in a court

of justice surpassed the torrents of venomous abuse which Coke, as

Attorney-General, poured upon the head of Raleigh at his trial in 1603.

One fact in judicial procedure exercised an immense influence on the

nature of speeches from the bench. The judges took no notes.[722] In

summing up the evidence they relied solely upon memories developed for

this purpose to an extent which seems almost marvellous. But another

result besides this remarkable mental training was that in his summing

up the judge had no set form by which to direct himself. There was not

the constraint which comes from the necessity of following a definite

guide on prosaic slips of paper. It followed that the whole of this

part of his work was far more loose and undefined than it has come to

be since the additional burden of taking notes has been imposed. Not

only could he, but it was natural that he should, break off from the

course of the evidence to interpose comments more or less connected

with it; and in the days of little learning and violent religious

prejudice, the judge’s comment was likely to take the form of abuse of

the creed which he did not profess.

Men of the seventeenth century habitually expressed their thoughts with

a coarseness which is disgusting to the modern mind. A man named Keach,

who had taught that infants ought not to be baptized, was indicted for

“maliciously writing and publishing a seditious and venomous book,

wherein are contained damnable positions contrary to the book of common

prayer.”[723] At his speech at the opening of Parliament in 1679 Lord

Chancellor Finch likened the Roman Catholic priests and their pupils to

“the Sons of Darkness,” and declared that “the very shame and reproach

which attends such abominable practices hath covered so many faces with

new and strange confusions, that it hath proved a powerful argument

for their conversion; nor is it to be wondered at that they could no

longer believe all that to be Gospel which their priests taught them,

when they saw the way and means of introducing it was so far from being

Evangelical.”[724] Other parties were equally violent; and on two

separate occasions Shaftesbury swore that he would have the lives of

the men who had advised the king to measures obnoxious to his party.

The most notorious of all Scroggs’ utterances, an acrid sneer at the

doctrine of transubstantiation: “They eat their God, they kill their

king, and saint the murderer,” is paralleled almost exactly by Dryden’s

couplet:

Such savoury deities must needs be good.

As served at once for worship and for food;[725]

and Dryden, who at this time belonged to the court and high church

party, became within five years himself a Roman Catholic. The whole

literature of the time bears witness to the fact that such language

was scarcely beyond the ordinary. It was a convention of the age and

must be accepted as such. There would be no greater mistake than to

attribute to words of the sort too great an influence on action. The

results which attended them were unimportant. Of all Chief Justice

Scroggs’ harangues the most consistently brutal and offensive was that

directed at Marshal, at the trial of Sir George Wakeman.[726] Yet it

was followed immediately by a fair summing up and the acquittal of the

prisoners.

Only one other case demands attention in this review of the trials

for the Popish Plot. The trial of Elizabeth Cellier for high treason

belongs rather to the history of the Meal Tub Plot; those of Sir Thomas

Gascoigne, Sir Miles Stapleton, Thwing, and Pressicks to the provincial

history of the Plot; that of Archbishop Plunket to its history in

Ireland. The acquittal of Lord Castlemaine is chiefly important as

an episode in the infamous career of Dangerfield, the informer. The

proceedings against Fitzharris belong rather to the history of Whig

conspiracy against the crown, the transition to which they mark.[727]

But the trial of Lord Stafford calls for more lengthy notice. It was

the last of the treason trials for the main Popish Plot, and ranks in

importance with the weightiest of those which went before. More than

two years had now elapsed since the beginning of the ferment caused

by the Plot. During that time it had exercised a magic over men’s

minds. This influence was now suffering a decline. The acquittals of

Wakeman, Lord Castlemaine, and Sir Thomas Gascoigne had wrought the mob

to fury against the court and the Roman Catholics, but they had also

sown doubts in the judgment of intelligent persons as to the credit of

the informers and the truth of the facts to which they swore. At the

end of the year 1680 it was doubtful, said Sir John Reresby, “whether

there were more who believed there was any plot by the papists against

the king’s life than not.”[728] The situation of the Whig party was

critical. Their violent espousal of the Plot and the concentration of

all their efforts upon the propagation of ultra-Protestant designs had

brought about the result that, should the Plot be discredited before

they had gained their object in excluding the Duke of York from the

succession to the throne, their power would vanish into thin air. To

stave off a day of such evil and to re-establish on its former firm

footing the general belief in “the bloody designs of papists,” the

trial of Giles for the bogus attempt on Captain Arnold’s life had

been undertaken.[729] With the same object Lord Stafford was brought

to trial. His imprisonment had already lasted for two years and two

months.[730] He was now brought to the bar in preference to any of

the other four noblemen who had been imprisoned with him because, as

was believed at court, his advanced age and bodily infirmity rendered

him a more easy prey to the rancour of the House of Commons.[731] On

all sides the case was regarded as of the utmost importance. If the

prisoner were condemned the Whigs would gain a great advantage. If

he were acquitted, the prosecution of the Plot, which was their sole

weapon, would suffer a disastrous check.[732]

Stafford’s trial was conducted upon a scale befitting its consequence.

Seven days were occupied in its process, a length which was at the time

unprecedented. As many as sixty-one witnesses were called on the one

side and on the other. For those who appeared for the prosecution the

cost of summons and entertainment amounted to a hundred pounds.[733]

The court of the Lord High Steward was held in Westminster Hall. Round

the hall were arranged galleries, from which privileged persons watched

the proceedings with the keenest interest. From her seat in a private

box the Duchess of Portsmouth exerted her charms upon the members of

the House of Commons stationed near her, distributing “sweetmeats

and gracious looks.” Another box was reserved for the queen. In a

third sat the king, a constant attendant during every day of the

trial.[734] Opposite the bar was the seat of the Lord High Steward,

and near by were placed the managers of the prosecution, Sir William

Jones, Sergeant Maynard, Winnington, Treby, Trevor, Powle, the most

distinguished lawyers of the House of Commons.

On November 30, 1680, his sixty-ninth birthday, Thomas Howard, Lord

Viscount Stafford, was brought to the bar. That nothing might be

omitted against the prisoner, the managers called witnesses to prove

the reality and general designs of the Popish Plot. The whole story

was gone into at immense length. Oates, Dugdale, Jennison, a secular

priest named John Smith, and Bernard Dennis, a Dominican friar, gave

a volume of evidence to the point. The records of the conviction of

nineteen persons for treason and other charges connected with the

Plot, beginning with Coleman and ending with Giles, were proved and

the record of Coleman’s attainder was read. Thus the whole of one day

was occupied.[735] On the following morning the managers proceeded to

call witnesses to the treason of Lord Stafford. The mass of evidence

which they gave may be reduced to three points. Dugdale swore that

at a certain meeting held at Tixhall, in Staffordshire, about the

end of August or the beginning of September 1678, the accused had

given his full assent to the plot for taking away the king’s life,

and in September had offered him the sum of £500 to be the actual

murderer.[736] Oates swore that he had seen letters to various Jesuits,

signed Stafford, containing assurances of his zeal and fidelity to the

design; that the prisoner had in his presence received from Fenwick

a commission constituting him paymaster-general of the forces; and

that, in conversation with Fenwick, Lord Stafford had said he did

not doubt that “Grove should do the business,” adding with reference

to the king, “he hath deceived us a great while, and we can bear no

longer.”[737] Lastly Turbervile, a new witness, swore that after a

fortnight’s acquaintance with the prisoner in Paris, in the year 1675,

he had directly proposed to him to kill the king of England, who was

a heretic and a rebel against Almighty God.[738] Round these charges

the contest was waged hotly. Lord Stafford and his witnesses doing

battle against the managers and theirs. On the third day the attack was

directed on Dugdale. A servant of Lord Aston proved that the informer

had lived in bad repute at Tixhall, that he was discharged from his

post of steward, that he ran away to escape his creditors, was caught

and imprisoned for debt, and that he had sworn by God that he knew

nothing of any plot.[739] The last was confirmed by the magistrates

who had arrested Dugdale for debt. He had then been examined about

the Plot and denied all knowledge of it. Only two days later he made

a full confession.[740] Two servants of the accused were called to

prove the nature of the interview in which Dugdale swore that Lord

Stafford offered him £500 to kill the king. Every circumstance of it

was fully explained. The witnesses had been in the room the whole

time, and deposed that the conversation had turned upon nothing more

serious than the chances of a horse-race in the neighbourhood.[741]

Other Staffordshire men testified to Dugdale’s evil reputation, and two

artisans of Tixhall stated that Dugdale had offered them separately

money to swear against Lord Stafford.[742]

Of Oates’ evidence little could be made for the defence, but Stafford

was able to point out that after having solemnly declared to the House

of Lords that he could accuse no other persons “of whatsoever quality

they be,” he had proceeded to charge the queen herself with high

treason.[743]

Again Dugdale was called and cross-examined on his deposition of

December 24, 1678, which was read from the journal of the House of

Lords. In that he had said “that presently after one Howard, almoner

to the queen, went beyond seas, he was told by George Hobson (servant

to the said Lord Aston) that there was a design then intended for the

reformation of the government of the Romish religion.” He now swore

that he did not know Hobson before the latter came into Lord Aston’s

service in 1678. Stafford seized upon this as evidence either that

Dugdale was lying, or that his information, sworn two years before,

was false. Dugdale contended that the meaning of the clause “was that

Hobson told me that presently after almoner Howard went over, there was

such a design carrying on.” It is a testimony to the obscurity of the

style of ordinary English prose at the end of the seventeenth century

that the court held, in apparent opposition to common sense and common

justice, that the construction which Dugdale gave to the sentence was

not only possible, but the more probable.[744]

Turbervile, the third of the informers, was met in his evidence by

numerous contradictions. It was proved that in his original deposition

he had altered two dates the day after having sworn to their accuracy.

Both in his deposition of November 9, 1680 and at the trial in the

course of examination he had sworn that he had constantly seen Lord

Stafford in Paris during a fortnight in 1675 when Stafford was ill with

gout, and that the prisoner then pressed him to undertake the murder

of the king. Two of Lord Stafford’s servants who had been with him in

Paris now proved that they had never once seen Turbervile during that

time, and that their master had not been ill or lame with gout for

at least seven years.[745] Material evidence was brought against the

witness on other points. He had sworn that at the end of 1675 Lord

Stafford had returned to England by Calais, sending him by Dieppe. The

contrary was now proved by an independent witness. It was also proved

by a French servant belonging to the household of Lord Powis that

Turbervile had lodged with him in Lord Powis’ house in Paris at a time

when he professed to be in fear for his life of the earl himself, and

by his brother, John Turbervile, that whereas he had sworn that Lord

Powis threatened to have him disinherited, he had not at any time had

even a remote chance of any inheritance whatsoever.[746]

On the fourth day of this ponderous trial Lord Stafford closed his main

defence. He pointed to the turpitude of Oates’ character, and spoke

with emotion of his abhorrence that a man guilty of such immorality as

to profess a change of religion which he did not experience should be

allowed to give evidence against a peer among his peers. “I appeal to

your lordships,” he cried, “whether such ... is not a perjured fellow,

and no competent witness? No Christian, but a devil, and a witness for

the devil.” Even Oates himself was flustered and had to be restrained

by the managers from breaking into excesses.[747]

The prosecuting Commons however were undismayed. They called a swarm of

witnesses to set up the character of the informers and to destroy that

of witnesses for the defence. It was proved by word of mouth and the

production of letters that servants of Lord Aston, Lord Bellasis, and

Mr. Heveningham had attempted to suborn persons to give false evidence

against Dugdale.[748] The new witnesses were in turn contradicted by

the defence, and this wonderful series of contradictions was carried

still one step further when fresh evidence was called to corroborate

them.[749]

On the fifth day Lord Stafford summed up his defence. He laid special

stress on the infamous character of his accusers and his own clean

record, the points in which the witnesses had been contradicted,

and the general improbability of the charge. His speech was badly

received. The opportunity of a slight pause was seized by Lord Lovelace

to spring to his feet and denounce with indignation the presence in

court of a well-known Roman Catholic.[750] Moreover the prisoner

made a grave tactical mistake in proposing for argument a number of

points of law, of which some were frivolous and others had already

been authoritatively determined. Of these the only one which could be

considered material was the question whether or no in a case of high

treason two witnesses were necessary to prove each overt act alleged,

since the witnesses against Lord Stafford had sworn separately, and

never together, to the commission of several acts. This had in fact

been determined in the case of Sir Harry Vane,[751] but now with

remarkable consideration for the prisoner the opinion of the assembled

judges was taken: it was unanimous to the effect that the evidence of

two separate witnesses to two distinct acts constituted a proof of

high treason. The other points were easily disposed of by Jones and

Winnington.[752]

In a speech of great ability Sir William Jones answered the accused.

Here especially the professional training of the managers had weight.

With the ease and decision of a practised lawyer the leader ran over

the trial, setting the strong points of the prosecution in a clear

light and minimising the value of the defence. His zeal was evident,

but hardly unfair. If here and there a statement overshot the mark of

strict accuracy, the effect of his speech was only enhanced by the

patience with which he submitted to correction from the prisoner.

Concluding with a short but powerful address, he demanded that the

court should do “that justice to your king and country as to give

judgment against these offenders, which will not only be a security

to us against them, but a terror to all others against committing the

like offences.”[753] On the night of Saturday, December 4, Stafford

petitioned to be heard again in his defence. His request was granted,

but the rambling speech to which the court listened on the Monday

following was calculated to produce any effect rather than that of

advancing his cause. The managers only found it necessary to reply very

briefly before the court adjourned to consider its verdict.[754]

At eleven o’clock on the next morning the votes were taken. Thirty-one

peers pronounced Lord Stafford innocent, fifty-five guilty. The verdict

was not unexpected. Stafford had conducted his defence so feebly as

to make his acquittal improbable.[755] Physical weakness accounted

largely for this; but he had made the mistake of speaking as much as

possible, and his remarks were halting, nebulous, indecisive. On the

night before the verdict was delivered Barillon wrote that there was

every appearance that it would be adverse to the accused.[756] Sir

John Reresby was staggered by the evidence for the prosecution, and

only maintained his belief in Stafford’s innocence by fixing his mind

firmly on the depravity of the witnesses.[757] Anglesey, Lord Privy

Seal, afterwards pressed hard for Lord Stafford’s pardon, but at the

trial he felt constrained to vote against him, “secundum allegata et

probata.”[758] Even Charles, although he knew that Oates and his crew

were liars and publicly called them rascals, thought that the evidence

against the accused was strong, and that he might well be guilty;[759]

and the Countess of Manchester, who was present at the whole trial,

wrote to Lady Hatton before the verdict was known, that the charge “was

so well proved that I believe not many was unsatisfied, except those

that were out of favour with the party might wish it other ways.”[760]

Charles was present in Westminster Hall while the peers delivered

their verdict, and took notes of the sides on which they voted. When

it became evident that the majority were for condemnation, his face

to those who were near him shewed profound disappointment.[761]

Whether or no he believed in Stafford’s innocence, the conviction

was a blow to the king’s cause. But the votes were not directed by

political considerations alone. These would probably have ensured an

acquittal. If Charles had exerted his personal influence on the court,

an acquittal would have been certain.[762] The peers gave judgment on

what seemed to them the merits of the case. Three eminent members of

Lord Stafford’s family voted for the death.[763] The same verdict was

delivered by the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Privy Seal, the Earl of

Oxford, Lord Maynard, and the Duke of Lauderdale. Among the thirty-one

who found for the accused were such staunch Whigs as Lord Holles,

Lord Lucas, and the Earl of Clarendon. All these, had party spirit

directed the votes, must have determined to the contrary. The fact

must be faced that so late as December of the year 1680, more than

two years after Oates’ first revelations, and after the disclosure at

Wakeman’s trial had rendered certain the fact of his perjury, many

of the most honourable and intelligent men in the kingdom sincerely

accepted as credible the evidence offered against Lord Stafford, and as

earnest of their belief sent to the scaffold one of their own number,

a man bowed down with years and infirmity, the victim of miscreants

supported by the enemies of the king, for the false plot against whose

life he was now to die. It was a memorial to all time of the ignorance

of the principles of evidence and the nature of true justice which

characterised their age.

Sentence as usual in cases of high treason was pronounced on the

condemned man, but at the request of the peers the king commuted the

penalty to beheading alone. Efforts were made to obtain a pardon, but

without avail. Charles was determined to let the law take its course

that he might not be said to balk the ends of justice.[764]

The sheriffs disputed the validity of the warrant for Stafford’s

decapitation and requested the advice of the House of Commons on the

following questions: “Can the king, being neither party nor judge,

order the execution? Can the lords award the execution? Can the king

dispense with any part of the execution? If he can dispense with a

part, why not with all?” To the ingenuity of Sir William Jones was

due the studied insult offered to Charles in the answer of the House:

“The house is content that the sheriffs should execute William,

late Viscount Stafford, by severing his head from his body.”[765]

The excitement which prevailed in London was intense. Throughout

the trial Stafford had been hooted in the streets on his way to and

from the Tower. Angry brawls arose between the witnesses and the

crowd at the doors of Westminster Hall. When Dugdale swore that the

prisoner had offered him £500 to kill the king, a savage hum arose in

the precincts of the court itself and drew a severe rebuke from the

Lord High Steward.[766] On December 29, 1680 Stafford was led to the

scaffold. From the place of execution he read a lengthy speech, which

was published in print on the same afternoon, asserting his innocence

and vindicating his religion.[767] His words fell on deaf ears. A vast

crowd was assembled to witness his death. Almost all historians have

repeated the assertion that the spectators were touched and answered

with cries of, “We believe you, my Lord; God bless you, my Lord.”[768]

The story is a mere fable. Lord Stafford died with howls of execration

of the bigoted London mob ringing in his ears. The cries with which

he was met testify relentlessly that the belief in his guilt was

firmly fixed in the mind of the nation.[769] The Popish Plot was not

yet a thing of the past. But the result of Lord Stafford’s trial was

not altogether what was expected. Shaftesbury and his party indeed

gained a temporary victory, but the ultimate triumph was to the king.

His steadiness, restraint, and readiness for compromise contrasted

favourably with the intolerance and unconciliating attitude of the

Whigs. Their game was played for the crown and, when their rejection of

all offers short of that made their motive plain to the nation, Charles

had the nation at his back. The violence with which they attempted to

force the king’s hand alienated public feeling. He was able to dissolve

the Oxford Parliament in safety, and the Whigs were driven to plan open

rebellion and the treason of the Rye House Plot.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

LONGLEAT MSS. COVENTRY PAPERS xi. 393

April 29, 1679. Dover. Francis Bastwick to Henry Coventry.

This day I received advice of one Col. Scott coming from Folkestone to

take horse here for London, and on his arrival I seized him and sent

for the Comm. of the passage. His examination I send you enclosed, upon

which we found cause to commit him (which was accordingly done by the

deputy mayor) into safe custody until we had further orders from one

of his Majesty’s principal secretaries what to do with him. He owns

himself to be the same person we have had orders for several months

past to seize at his landing. Col. Strode, deputy formerly, had an

order to seize Col. Scott as I remember from Mr. Secretary Coventry,

but I am not certain but Col. Strode or his deputy are at present in

the place.

I am your most humble servant Fran. Bastwick. I desire your speedy

answer when you have acquainted my L^d. Sunderland. Col. Scott has been

found in many contrary tales, and went at his landing by the name of

John Johnson.

COVENTRY PAPERS xi. 396

From the examination of Colonel Scott at Dover, April 29, 1679. That

he is a pensioner to the prince of Condi, and hath formerly commanded

the prince of Condi’s regiment of horse in the French service. And that

the said prince of Condi sent him over in September last in order for

the surveying of several parcels of lands and woods in Burgandie and

Picardie was the occasion of his going over.

That the occasion of his return is to see his native country, and his

profession is a soldier. The said Colonel offered to take the oaths of

allegiance and supremacy and the test.

COVENTRY PAPERS xi. 397

Undated. Paper headed: An account of what the Earl of Barkeshire

desired Colonel John Scot to communicate to His Ma^{ty}. with

what passed before the discourse. (Endorsed by Coventry in the

same words.)

The Earl of Barkeshire, that had lain long of a languishing sickness

in Paris, was pleased to let me know he desired to advise with me

about a physician. This was in March last. I told his lordship I was

acquainted with an able man of our own nation, and one of the college

of physicians in London, but I was of opinion his Lordship’s Roman

Catholic friends would not approve of him because he was not only a

strict protestant, but one that did publicly defend the doctrine of the

church of England, and as publicly declare the English Roman Catholics

were prosecuted on just grounds. His Lordship said that mattered not,

he should not dispute that point with him, nor did he value any man

the worse for differing from him in judgment, and that he was not so

strait-laced as others of his opinion, and did commit himself to the

charge of the said Doctor Budgeon; but it did prove too late, for this

gentleman soon told his Lordship what condition he was in, and he came

to my lodgings and signified to me his Lordship’s great desire to speak

with me, telling me his Lordship in all human probability could not

live long; and I waited upon his Lordship the morning following, and he

having commanded his servants out of the chamber, and to suffer nobody

to come in till he called, spake to me as I remember these very words:—

Colonel Scot, you are my friend; I must commit a secret to you; there

has been a foolish and an ill design carried on in England: I don’t

tell you the Roman Catholic religion is a foolish business, for it

is the faith I will die in, but ’tis the giddy madness of some of

that religion I blame. I knew nothing on’t till my Lord Arundel, Mr.

Coleman, and others told me the business could not miscarry, and that I

should be looked upon as an ill man if I came not in in time, and truly

I believed them. I was none of the contrivers, I was not consulted with

till towards the latter end of the day, nor did I ever hear anything

mentioned about killing the king; if I had, I would have discovered it,

and so indeed I ought to have done what I did know, as well for the

personal obligations I had to his Majesty as that which my allegiance

obliges me to, and every man too; for my Lord Bellasis is an ill man;

he and others were accustomed to speak ill of the king, indeed very

irreverently.

Then I asked his Lordship who those others were; but he answered,

prithee, good Colonel, ask me no questions; if I had known of

approaching dangers to the king, I should have told him. He then

fetched a great sigh and wept, but presently said, Friend, I see things

will go as you will; for God’s sake promise me you will find some way

to tell the king every word I say, and that though some passages in

letters of mine may look a little oddly, I would have run any hazard

rather than have suffered any injury to have been done to his Majesty’s

person: ’tis true I would have been glad to have seen all England

Catholic, but not by the way of some ill men. My Lord Stafford was all

along a moving agent, and was here in France about the business; the

man of himself is not very malicious. My Lord Powis his covetousness

drew him in further than he would have gone. I believe and hope there

will hardly be found matter against them to take away their lives, but

pray the king from a poor dying man not to have to do with any of those

four Lords I have named, for they love not his person.

My Lord Peeter has always had a great love and reverence for the

king’s person; ’tis true this last wife of his is foolishly governed

by priests and influences him; but he was ever averse to all things of

intrigue in this matter. I need not desire you to be secret, your own

safety will oblige you. My Lord Cardigan and others being at the door

and calling to this Lord, the servants were ordered to let them in,

and before them he said, pray don’t forget the hundredth we spake of,

nor the business at Rohan. I was there once more with the Doctor, but

he grew exceeding deaf; he said only then to me: Colonel, don’t forget

what I said to you for God’s sake. This is the very manner he spake it.

JOHN SCOT.

COVENTRY PAPERS xi. 171

December 23, 1676. Hague. A letter, unsigned. Note by Coventry at

head—To one Johnson: at foot—shewed his Maj. 23rd of Dec. 76.

In my last I made some observations to you of the working of the old

spirit in the Popish party: at this time will now only add that the

same seemeth not to be restrained to England.... The popish humour

beginneth to spread itself over the English regiments, especially the

regiment lately Col. Tanwicke. One Wisely is made Col., being Lieut.

Col. before. Archer the major is made Lieut. Col., both Irish Papists,

and the rest of the officers are generally papists and mad Irish, and

for aught we know for the most part recommended by the Duke of York.

Now albeit this be true that this congregating of Papists together in

a body be in the dominion of another state, yet it is true they are

subjects of England and in regard to the ... circumstances of England

in my poor opinion worthy the public notice.

COVENTRY PAPERS xi. 506

Undated. Letter without address or signature; deciphered from numbers

written in very light ink in place of all important words, so

that all those in the decipher stand between the lines.

Col. Scot doth send his letters by way of Mons. Gourville, in whose

chamber he writes them, so that I see little hopes of doing what you

know, though the undertaker doth still insist for the contrary. I am

ready for the journey, hoping Mr. Secretary will be so just as to spare

naming me till that service is done, for I should be sorry to trust any

other who I do know to have contrived my being disliked in this court.

A lady of quality, my good friend, returned yesterday from Bretagne and

assures a great arming upon those coasts and an army of forty thousand

men ready to ship at Nantes, Brest, etc., whenever commanded to sea, to

save (as they report) the K. of England from destruction. The lady, if

there were no disguise in the outward state of things in England (which

many do think there is), might I think be brought to use her knowledge

for his Majesty’s service, but my hands are tied, and you know how

things stand with you.

COVENTRY PAPERS xi. 313

May 21 1678. St. Malo. Thomas Kelly to Mr. William Talbot in Corn

Market, Dublin.

I pray you to pay to Mr. John Plunket the sum of 89 pounds sterling by

the review of this letter; in doing so you will satisfy your creditor.

Made the 21st of May at St. Malo, 1678.

THOMAS KELLY.

[The above is in plain dark ink. What follows is light and indistinct;

the characters were evidently written in milk or lemon-juice, and made

visible by being held to the fire.]

When I came from Paris to St. Germaine where I stayed some time and

among other speeches I heard in dophin [_sic_] Chamber from some which

were there that if the English should make war against them they should

easily excite a rebellion both in Scotland and Ireland, and sending

by some Marshal of France 10 men of war with all things necessary for

to make up 2000 soldiers in Ireland and that, by the help of some

skillful Irishmen, and under their conduct all the Irish should be,

they may easily overcome all Ireland. This was the discourse of those

gentlemen in Dorphin [_sic_] Chamber, but whether it comes to effect or

not I cannot tell.... [Goes on to give particulars of the numbers and

strength of the French navy on the north coast.]

COVENTRY PAPERS xi, 310

July 6, 1678. Kimper. David Neal to John Plunket at sign of the Ship

in the Corn Market in Dublin.

[Of the same character as the last. The letter, in black ink, is

frivolous. Interlined in light writing as follows.]

I have been over all places where I was bound, but the fairest places

is Brest, and afterwards Havre and St. Malos for merchants. The names

of them that are capable to serve I did send long since. All other

places are nothing after these places neither is there any man of war

in them other places unless they should stay for a day or two expecting

to convoy others.... [Gives other particulars of ships and a list of

names of captains of French men of war. Concludes—]

If you please I intend to go home since the time is past whenever I was

engaged, neither will my friends have me to apply myself to it. Your

resolution hereupon I will willingly see as soon as possible, for I

have not much money to stay long in ... country as dear as this is.

COVENTRY PAPERS xi. 317

June 17, 1678. Rochford. Walter B—— à Monsieur Patric Roch à la place

au blé à Dublin. (Endorsed in Coventry’s hand): Mr. Burke.

[Of the same nature as the last two, and in the same handwriting.]

There is nothing here worthy of relation only that all the people of

this country is very desirous to have war against you, and specially

all the seamen desire no other thing but it.... [Further particulars

of French ships, mostly merchant vessels. One passage in the black ink

deserves to be noted.] This is the fourth letter which I did write to

your honour without receiving any answer.

COVENTRY PAPERS xi. 204

April 14, 1678. St. Omers. Sam Morgan to his father. (Copy of same

205.)

(Endorsed in Coventry’s hand.) Send to Doc^t. Lloyd to learn where

Morgan the father liveth, and how I may write to him.—Mr. Morgan the

father lives at Kilkin in Flintshire near the Bp. of Bangor.

Honoured Father! These are next to my humble duty unto yourself and my

mother to acquaint you with my present condition. I am here entered

in a College called Flamstead amongst good gentlemen, and am well

beloved of them all. The place is very good for meat and drink and

other necessaries, but my fear is and am in good measure satisfied

that my uncle intends me for a priest. He spoke nothing unto me as

yet, but I partly understand that he is of that opinion, which when I

considered on is clean against my conscience. I daily see and know what

they are, and am utterly dissatisfied with and condemn the principles

and practices of their diabolical opinions, for I dare not call it

religion. If you would be pleased to call for me home I think I should

be very well; for now (I thank God) I got more learning here since I

came than I should have gotten anywhere in Wales in 7 or 8 years. I

have competent skill in Greek and Latin, and can write a little of

both: if you would be pleased to take me home, I should thank my uncle

for my learning, and let him take whom he thinks fit for his priest.

I must stay here 18 years yet, and God knows who would be alive then;

and for all that, if I were like to be a comfort to my friends, I

would stay with all my heart, though I utterly abhor their ways. If

you intend to take me home it must be done within this two years

at furthest; otherwise it will be too late; and if you be of that

resolution put two strokes in the bottom of your letter; be sure you

mention it not publicly in my letter, for then the Reader, which is the

master of the house, will come to know it; for there is not a letter

that comes in or goes out of the house but he has the perusal of it,

but now I write this and deliver it privately to an honest man that set

out this day hence; so that the master knows nothing of it. No more but

that you would use some means to redeem me from this great captivity,

who am in extraordinary haste.

Your dutiful son,

SAM MORGAN.

JOSEPH LANE.

P.R.O. ROMAN TRANSCRIPTS. VAT. ARCH. NUNT. DI FRANCIA 332

December 2, 1678. L’Abb^e G. B. Lauri à S. EM^{za}.

Ancor che lo stato presente d’Inghilterra, e la risposta datami la

settimania passata dal Sig^r di Pomponne non mi facessero sperare cos’

alcuna di buono intorno all’ assistenza richiesta a favore del Sig^r

Duca di Yorch; nondimeno a proporzione della premura di N.S. e dell’

importanza dell’ affare, ne rimovai le instanze al suddetto ministro

Martedì passato, nel qual giorno per questi e per altri negozii

pendenti mi portai à Varsaglia; egli soggiunsi che il credito talvolta

e l’assistenza del Re di Francia avrebbe potuto ristabilire il partito

del Sig^r Duca di Yorch e de’ Catholici di quel regno, quando S. M^{ta}

si fosse dichiarata per loro. Rispose tuttevia il Sig^r di Pomponne

che tutti i Catholici d’Inghilterra ò erano imprigionati ò erano stati

discacciati di Londra. Il med^{mo} Sig^r Duca di Yorch restava escluso

dall’ essercizio delle sue cariche, e tutti indifferemente venivano

osservati in maniera che il dichiararsi nello stato presente per loro

altre non sarebbe stato che un accrescergli le persecuzioni, e finir di

ruinare il partito Catholico di quel regno; per queste ragioni avere

stimato S. M^{ta} che non sia tempo di prestar l’assistenza richiesta,

mentre il cambiamento delle cose faceva ogni conoscere che tal

consiglio non era pin utile, come ragionevolmente avra per altro potuto

stimarsi prima che succedessero le mutazioni accennati. Io dunque

essendo cosi cambiate di faccia le cose d’Inghilterra, ed incontrando

que le scritte difficoltà, tralascierò di fare altre istanza per quest’

affare finche da V.S., informata che sia delle cose che passano, mi

vengano nuovi comandamenti.

APPENDIX B

LONGLEAT MSS. COVENTRY PAPERS xi. 237

October 28, 1678. Copy of the letter sent to Mr. Sec. Coventry

subscribed T. G. Concerning the murder of Sir Edmond Bury Godfrey.

This is to certify you that upon his Majesty’s Declaration I have been

both at Whitehall and at your own house these three days together, and

never can be admitted to come to the speech of your worship. Whereupon

I thought fit to give you an account what it is I can declare, which

is as follows:—Being on Tuesday the 15th, of this instant October, in

a victualling house in White Friars I chanced to hear two persons a

discoursing, the one saying to the other that if he would go down to

Billingsgate he would treat him there with wine and oysters, whereupon

the other replied and said: “What you are uppish then are you?” Upon

which words he swore, God dampe him (_sic_), he had money enough,

and draws a bag out of his pocket and says. There were fifty pounds.

Whereupon the other party was very inquisitive to know how he came by

it, and did importune him very much, and at the last he told him that

if he would swear to be true to him and never discover, he would tell

him. Whereupon he did make all the imprecations and vows that could

possibly be that he would never discover, whereupon he told him that

the last night he with three men did murder Sir Edward Bury Godfrey and

he had that £50 for his pains, and said that he believed he could help

him to some money if he would go along with him on the morrow night

following. Upon these words the other asked him where it was done and

who the other three was that was with him, and he told him that he

murdered him at Wild House, and the other three that was concerned with

him was gentlemen. Two belonged to my Lord Bellasis, and the other to

my Lord Petres, but of the Monday before, there was a court held at

Wildhouse and there they tried him, and there was a man like a priest

who passed sentence of death upon him; and likewise he asked him how

he came to be concerned in it, and he told him that there was a broker

that lodged in Eagle Court in the Strand that spoke to him of it: so

this is all I can testify of, but only that I can give some account in

what a barbarous manner they murdered him. This man’s name is Hogshead,

he liveth (?) at the Temple and Whitefriars very much. So, Sir, if you

please to give orders to your servant, and let me come to the speech of

you, I will come and make oath of it, and with this proviso that I may

have the liberty to make a fuller discovery of it, I not being anything

out of pocket myself; I desire your answer to-morrow morning to be left

at the place mentioned in my former letter, and withal desire it may be

more private than the last.

Your humble servant to command,

T. G.

From the Temple this

28th instant 1678.

COVENTRY PAPERS xi. p. 235. Coventry’s answer to this.

October 28, 1678. To his very loving friend T. G. these.

(Note added by Coventry below the address): This letter was sent to the

Rainbow Coffee House, but never called for, and was brought back by

Col. Vernon.

I have yours, and am abundantly satisfied with it, but know not how to

answer it at large. Will you tell me by what name I shall subscribe

it to you; whether your own or another it matters not so you are sure

to receive it. If you enquire for one Mr. Evans at my house to-morrow

or any morning he shall bring you to me, when I will give you my best

advice and assistance in what you desire.

I am,

Your humble servant,

HENRY COVENTRY.

BRIT. MUS. ADD. MSS. 11058: 244

Nov. 7, 1678. Mr. Bedloe’s confession before his Majesty of the

murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey.

He saith that the Saturday Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was missing, about

two in the afternoon as he (Godfrey) was going home, two or three

gentlemen met him and said they could discover some persons near the

Strand Bridge that were agitators in the Plot, upon which Sir E.

Godfrey showed great readiness, but they desired him to walk into

a houseyard till a constable was got ready; but Sir E. Godfrey had

scarce made two or three turns but several people rushed out upon him

and stopped his mouth; two friars and some of Lord Bellasis’ servants

executing the same, and having carried him into an inner chamber

demanded of him Mr. Oates his deposition, promising they would save his

life if he would render it to them; yet their design was to have taken

away his life though he had given them that satisfaction. Sir Edmund

Berry told them that the king and council had them, and therefore he

could not possibly do what they desired. Upon which expression they

began to use him inhumanly and barbarously, kneeling upon his breast

till they thought he was dead; but they opened his bosom and found his

heart panted; then they took a cravat and tied it hard about his neck,

and so ended his life. He says further that he came too late to be

assistant in the murder, for he found him strangled and lying dead on

the floor, but presently received an account from the actors in what

manner it was performed. His corpse was laid at the high altar of the

Queen’s chapel, and continued there till they had consulted a way for

removing the same secretly from thence.

He further saith that two guineas were the reward promised among the

undertakers, and on Wednesday following the corpse was conveyed in a

sedan to Lord Bellasis’ house, and from thence carried in a coach to

the place where it was found. He also acquainted the Lords that he

had several things to communicate to them which related to the Plot,

and that he was able to confirm several passages which Mr. Oates had

discovered concerning the plot, but he desired leave to give his

testimony in writing, that so he might make no other discovery than

what he could be able to testify.

Actors: Mr. Eveley, Mr. Leferry, Jesuits; Penchard and Atkins, laymen;

the keeper of the Queen’s chapel and a vally de chambre to the Lord

Bellasis.

P.R.O. S.P. DOM. CHARLES II 407: ii. 29. LONGLEAT

MSS. COVENTRY PAPERS xi. 272–274.

7th Nov. 1678. Before his Majesty.

Mr. Bedloe informs,

A contrivance between Charles Wintour and the governour of Chepstow

Castle, and Mr. Charles Milbourn and Mr. Vaughan of Cont ... and his

son, to be in arms when my Lord Powis would in Cardiganshire, to give

up the castle to Mr. Charles Wintour and army of 20^m men.

Mr. Thimbleby in Lincoln: under Lord Bellasis was to have 20^m men.

20^m religious men were to meet at S^{t.} Jago to come over into Wales

from the Groin, and meet Lord Powis and the aforesaid gentlemen in arms.

20^m out of Flanders to meet Lord Bellasis and Mr. Thimbleby: to land

at Burlington Bay. Has known this by being four years among them.

Qu. What proofs.

Resp. Has lived among the Jesuits four years, and had all he had from

them, etc.

Has been in Spain. Employed from five Jesuits to Sir W. Godolphin,

Stapleton, Latham, Le Fere, Cave and Sheldon.

Cave and Le Fere sent him to Doway last summer 12 months. 20 months

since, and thence by Paris, etc., to Madrid.

Le Fere told him of this design.

Lodges where Captain Atkins lodges, where Walsh the priest lodges, near

Wild House.

Mr. Selvyns at the back door of the Palgrave’s Head will show where

Captain Atkins lodges, and consequently where Le Fere.

Le Fere is an Englishman, calls himself a Frenchman. The passage of the

20^m men from Flanders was to be from Newport.

As to Sir Edmond Godfrey; was promised 2000 guineas to be in it by Le

Fere, my Lord Bellasis’ gentleman, and the youngest of the waiters in

the Queene’s chapel, in a purple gown and to make the people orderly.

They did not tell him at first who was to be killed nor till he was

killed.

They murdered him in Somerset House in the corner room, the left hand

as you come in, near Madame Macdonnel’s lodgings, and near the room

where the duke of Albemarle lay in state.

Stifled him with a pillow, then he struggling they tied a cravat about

his neck and so strangled him.

Le Fere told him so, having sent for him by a footman in a blue livery

to Somerset House in the walk under the dial. ’Twas done in hopes the

examinations he had taken would never come to light.

Obj. The King. The parties were still alive to give the informations.

Resp. In hopes the second informations taken from the parties would not

have agreed with the first, and so the thing would have been disproved

and made it not be believed. For this reason the Lord Bellasis advised

it. Coleman and my Lord Bellasis advised to destroy him.

The informant was born at Chepstow, bred up an indifferent scholar. His

friends all protestant since the world began. Went into the Prince of

Orange’s army, where finding the religious houses kind and obliging,

he hearkened to their arguments, etc., and so was persuaded.

Was never an officer in the Prince of Orange’s army. Was designed to be

lieutenant to Vaudepert, a captain. Employed some time to make levies

in England from Holland, etc.

My Lord Bellasis’ gentleman is he that waits on him in his chamber, and

none other dresses him but he. Middle stature. Little whiskers like a

Frenchman.

The Trappan. They persuaded Godfrey that if he would go a little way

into the Strand they would make out a great discovery to him. He called

a constable and appointed him to meet him at Strand bridge with power,

in the interim of which they persuaded him, Godfrey, to walk into

Somerset House, where walking with two of them, the Lord Bellasis’

gentleman and a certain Jesuit whom he knows not, others came and with

gloves stopped his mouth and hurried him into the room.

The Informant escaped yesterday fortnight by the coach from the Talbot

in the Strand to Bristol. Coming to Bristol sent for his mother, and

upon her blessing she charged him to discover whatever he knew. Will

take his oath and the Sacrament of all this. Has had racks of all

this for a year in his conscience. Would have gotten from them three

months ago when the king was at Windsor, they about the time whispering

something, but not so as to let him know it.

Conyers is a Jesuit, and Pridgeot, and Lewis. Sir John Warner was in

the Plot. Le Fere, Keimes, Welsh, Lewis, Pridgeot.

Keimes is in the north of Scotland or beyond the sea. Went two months

ago into the north; was with Le Fere the night before. He went to

Ernham to Mr. Thimbleby and so northwards.

Mr. Welsh, the chapel-keeper, Le Fere, my Lord Bellasis’ servant,

strangled him.

The Chapel keeper carried him off. They carried him off in a chair

about Piccadilly and so on to the fields.

He did not see him after he was dead.

Le Fere sent to him by a foot-boy immediately afterwards to tell him of

it.

Wintour told him two years ago that if he would keep private so great

a design, he should be governour to Chepstow Castle, etc. My Lord of

Worcester has kept a very ingenious gunsmith, one David Winkett, in his

house for many years to make arms. Mr. Charles Price, steward to my

Lord of Worcester, took them off from time to time and disposed of them

to my Lord Powis. Mr. Christall, my Lord Powis’ servant, told him my

lord had the finest arms of that man’s making, etc. Mr. Jones, a sugar

baker on College Hill, can tell where his the informant’s brother is.

His brother was with him in Spain, and wondered how he could live as he

did.

Le Fere.

Lord Bellasis’ gentleman.

The usher of the Queen’s chapel, etc.

LORDS JOURNALS xiii. 343

Bedloe’s statement at the bar of the House of Lords. Die Veneris

8 die Novembris.

The Lord Treasurer reported by his Majesty’s directions, “That

yesterday one William Bedlowe was examined at Whitehall concerning

the discovery of the murder of Sir Edmond Bury Godfrey, and that his

Majesty had given order he should be brought to give this house an

account thereof.”

Who being brought to the Bar and had his oath given him, made a large

narrative to this effect.

“That he was born in Monmouthshire and was of the Church of England

till within these two years, that by Persuasion and Promises from

the Jesuits he was drawn over to them: that he is not in orders. He

knows that Sir E. B. Godfrey was murdered in Somerset House, on the

Saturday, by Charles Walsh and—Le Fere Jesuits, and two laymen, one a

gentleman that waits on the Lord Bellasis, the other an underwaiter in

the Queen’s Chapel. That he saw the body of Sir E. B. Godfrey, after

he was murdered, before he was carried out, and Le Fere told him ‘He

was stifled between two pillows,’ and he was offered 2000 guineas to

be one of the three to carry out the body, which was kept either in

the room or the next where the D. of Albemarle lay in state: That the

Chairmen who carried out the body on Monday night at nine of the clock

are retainers to Somerset House; but he knows them not.”

He saith “That Walsh and Le Fere and Pritchard told him ‘that the Lord

Bellasis employed them in this business.’”

He said further “That Walsh and Le Fere informed him ‘That the Lord

Bellasis had a commission to command Forces in the North, the Earl of

Powis in S. Wales, and the Lord Arundell of Warder had a commission

from the Pope to grant commissions to whom he pleased’: That Coleman

had been a great agitator in the design against the King; And that he,

asking the Jesuits ‘Why they had not formerly told him what they had

designed concerning the king’s death?’ they answered him ‘That none

but whom the Lord Bellasis gave directions for were to know of it.’

He desired he might have time to put the whole narrative into writing

(which he had begun).

“And being asked if he knew Titus Oates, he denied it.”

P.R.O. S.P. DOM. CHARLES II 408: ii. 47

Prance’s examination before the Council. The notes are in Sir Joseph

Williamson’s handwriting. Dec. 24, 78. Prance called in, etc.

On a certain Monday—with a twisted handkerchief—in the corner near the

stables. Carried him into a house in the dark entry, leading up out of

the lower court into the upper. Left at that house where Hill lived

then, two days, in the dark entry—by the water-gate. There Hill and

Gerald and the cushion-man (Green) carried him away. About ten Hill

told this informant to go to the other side of the house. Green told

him that he thought he had broke his neck before he was carried into

Hill’s house. After that, 4 days after. Hill carried him and shewed

him the place where he lay with a dark lanthorn about 9 o’clock—and

Hill brought him back to his house. Green and Gerald were there—and not

having conveniency for keeping him in his own house, conveyed him into

another house on the other side.—Hill procured a sedan, and had him

carried in a sedan from Hill’s out at the end gate of the upper court.

This was Wednesday night.—Was carried as far as the Greyhound in the

Soho. He was one that carried him. Green and Gerald and Irishman who

lay over the stables in certain lodgings that Green has there.—From

Hill’s house first he was carried somewhere to the other side of the

house, towards the garden, and Hill met them about the new church with

a horse, and he was set upon that horse and carried away, and the

sedan was left in one of the new houses when they came back. He came

back to his house, and Hill went with the body. Green, Gerald, and

the Irishman went also with the body.—Gerald said to him that my Lord

Bellasis engaged them to the thing, and said there would be a reward,

not yet. Does not know my Lord Bellasis.—Killed him because he loved

not the Queen or her servants, therefore Green and Hill, etc.—One Owen

in Bloomsbury was in the shop where he changed £100.—Two or three went

to his house to ask after him, the maid answered he was not within,

etc. They found him out and dogged him, till he came over against the

water-gate, came from St. Clement’s, about 9 o’clock, etc. Hill, etc.,

dogged him. He was not there.—Two feigned a quarrel in the gate, and

he was called in to appease the quarrel.—He knew Gerald a year and a

half. Hill upon five years. Green about a year, etc.—Hill was without

and prayed Godfrey to walk in to quiet the quarrel. He walks within the

gate (?) and the upper Court.—Knows not if any guard at the gate. Knows

not if any company. About 9 at night—He was strangled in the upper

court on the stable side in a corner that is railed (?). He struggled.

Carried in at the water-gate.—He had the £100 in gold from Owens in

Bloomsbury. Being to go out of town as a papist he got this informant

to get it for him. It was nothing to this ... [a line very indistinct].

He stood at the water-gate while he was strangled. Bury the porter

stood the other way, he watched also there.—Hill dwells in Stanhope

Street, keeps a victualling house.

As to the Plot. Was in Ireland’s chamber. Groves, Fenwick were there.

Ireland said there would be 50^m men in arms. So Fenwick. Two or three

days after Groves came to his house to buy two swords.—Said my Lords

Powis, Bellasis, Peters, Arundell should become councillors.—That

Bellasis, Powis, Arundell were to govern the army.... [Some words

indistinct].

One Le Fere came to his shop to ask for a silver sword hilt. Knows not

who he is more than that he is.—Knows not Walsh, Pritchard, nor Le Fere

not by the names.—50^m men.—They hoped Cath. Rel. would be established

in a little time, etc.—Heard nothing of the killing of the King,

etc.—Godfrey was kept from the time of his being killed in a sitting

posture, etc.—One Mr. Moore, servant to the D. of Norfolk, being on

a great horse, etc., would we had 10^m of them, etc.—His ill-will to

Godfrey (that the Queen could not protect her servants)—Knows nothing

of the plot nor of any person in it.—That one—a Messenger belonging to

Lord Arundell said—He hoped the R. C. Rel. would before long flourish

in England.

Has declared everything he knows, everything, etc.—Green, Hill, etc.,

said Godfrey had used some Irishman ill—Owen knows nothing of all this

that he learns (?).—Saw Ireland last at Will’s coffee house in Covent

Garden and Dr. Southwell were drinking with him in his own house the

night before Pickering was taken, etc.

APPENDIX C

LONGLEAT MSS. COVENTRY PAPERS xi. 148

Lord Windsor to Henry Coventry. July 8, 1676.

I was yesterday at the trial of Studesbury of Broadly at Worcester

assizes, where Judge Atkyns sat upon the bench. The treason was fully

proved against him according to that information I did send you. The

judge took occasion by advice of those justices which were upon the

bench to make the trial long, the better to discover whether he were

distracted or not: upon the whole examination and by the answers he

made to the many questions that were asked him, it was the opinion of

all that sat upon the bench (which were many) that he was very sensible

and in no way mad, but in justifying Venner’s action and holding the

worst of the fanatic opinions, and often using their ranting way of

talking; he said he held a halberd at the trial of the late King, and

repeated some of his words with Bradshaw’s answers to them, and said

the putting of Venner and his associates to death was murder. The chief

witness against him (besides his own confession) was one Harrington, an

anabaptist mentioned in the first examination, which Harrington being

asked if he did judge Studesbury mad upon the first discourse he had

with him (which held near an hour) when he would have advised him to

take arms against the King, he declared he found nothing of that mind

in him, but thought he designed to ensnare him; yet notwithstanding all

this the jury found him a madman. Upon that the judge told them that he

and all that sat with him were of a contrary opinion and desired them

to withdraw and consider better of’t, which they did do and came in

again of the same opinion, one of them saying that if he were not mad

he would not have said what he did.

BRIT. MUS. ADD. MSS. 28042: 19

Memorandum by the Marquis of Danby. (Endorsed) Mem^{d.} (7–8/9.)

To put forth a declaration. To examine the present state of the

revenue: to consider about stop of payment and when: what is yet to

come in upon the accounts and at what times: To know what is due to

the ships abroad: at what times those ships are expected: in what

state the victualling is. In what hands the militia; the justices

of the peace: the judges. When the dissolution ought to be: what

preparation for a new Parliament and when: About the sheriffs: the

next Lord Mayor: the Cinque Ports: the Port towns by the commissioners

of the customs, of treasury, of Navy: who have a particular interest

in Borrows. To consider what grateful things may be done in this

interval of Parliament: what should be said in the declaration

upon the dissolution: for these q^e Sir R. W. (Weston) and let the

journals of the Commons be searched for their proceedings in this

last session: To consider wherein they have exceeded all the due

limits of their own power as in imprisonment of men who are not their

members, etc., and meddling with the King’s prerogatives and private

accounts, etc.: To keep Lord Roberts by some encouragement: About

another Attorney-General, viz.: Sir R. W. (Weston) (which is of main

importance): what change of Councillors. In what condition all the

garrisons are as to their fortifications: what number of forces and

where placed after the disbanding: to inquire into the riots at the

last elections. How conventicles should be inquired after, and what

penal laws should be put in execution: who to be in the Treasury and

in the treasury of the Navy: what can be done for the suppressing of

seditious prints and papers: About directing somebody to write both

about the present state of things to give the world a better impression

of them than they are now possessed with and to give constant weekly

accounts of what is done at any time which may be for the satisfaction

of men’s minds. Q. Whether the Plot not triable out of Parliament.

Q. About securing the arms of all who have been officers in the late

Rebellion. To take their names and abodes in all counties. Q; how

for to take notice of them and dissenters from the Church how busy

they have appeared of late and what reasonable cause of danger to the

government from them. Parliament to be called to some other place: the

King to reside out of London: Tower to be well secured: L^d Ossory

sent to the Navy: that to be officered so as to have influence upon

their men: To have a control to know justly when the army is all

disbanded and whether there be any remains. About the Tower in case

of insurrection: To take some course about the reasons of the Commons

which are printed, (?) to suppress them and to have something writ to

satisfy the people.

BRIT. MUS. ADD. MSS. 32095; 196

(Paper endorsed) Popish Plot. This paper was presented to the King by

the D. of York, Oct. 20^{th} 1679.

That in or about May or June last Col. Fitzpatrick delivered to the

Pope’s internuncio at Brussels a letter or paper subscribed by four R.

C. bishops, two of which were Plunket archbp. of Armagh, and Tyrel bp.

of Clogher, recommending the said Fitzpatrick for the only person fit

to be entrusted general of an army for establishing the R. C. religion

in Ireland under the French sovereignty, which paper after coming to

the internuncio’s hands was seen by several clergy and laymen, known to

Father Daly, procurator, F. O’Neill, commissary. F. Macshone, guardian

of the Irish Franciscans, and F. Macmahone alias Matthews, Prior of

the Dominicans in Lovain, among whom ’tis also said that Fitzpatrick

carried such another instrument into France, where he first arrived

from Ireland and whence he went into Flanders, where he resolved to

settle at Brussels. But he was forced to remove thence by his R.H.

commands, which he obeyed not without much regret and murmuring.

P.R.O. ROMAN TRANSCRIPTS. VAT. ARCH. NUNT. DI FIANDRA 66

Di Brusselles dal Sig^r Internuncio, May 24/June 3, 1679.

In Ibernia, dove il numero de’ Cattolici è molto maggiore che quello

de’ Protestanti, ha gran seguito e autorità il Colonello Fitzpatrice,

onde il Duca d’Jorch a mostrato haverlo veduto malvolontieri venire à

Brusselles, per dubbio che il Parlamento pigliando gelosia del ricorso

di lui à S. A. Reale prenda motivo di maggiormente inasprirsi contro la

medesima, contro di essa, e contro il Duca d’Ormond. N’è perciò egli

partito per Olanda à titolo di veder quel paese, ma precedentemente ha

tenuta una segreta conferenza col Sig^r Duca d’Jorch, dopo la quale mi

ha lasciato intendere soffrirsi troppo patientemente da S. A. Reale

l’audacia de’ Parlamentarii, e doversi di gia pensare almeno à modi di

respingerla quando la temerità loro e la debolezza del Rè d’Inghilterra

passasse à porre in esecutione il projetto della sua diseredatione.

Toccante l’Ibernia ha detto chiaramente essere insofferibile il

giogo sotto l’oppressione del quale gemono quei Cattolici, e ha

aggiunto che apprendendosi per massima naturale il difendersi in

qualsivoglia maniera, non dubita egli che non fussero per commoversi

tutti concordemente, non solo se il Sig^r Duca d’Jorch ma se qualunque

barbaro Principe con qualque denaro, e con assistenza di pochi vascelli

si accostasse alle spiaggie dell’ Isola, e portasse armi e munitioni da

guerra à quelli habitanti.

APPENDIX D

“The trial of John Giles at the Old Bailey, for assaulting and

attempting to murder John Arnold, Esq.,” is a case which presents some

difficulty.[770]

Arnold’s character for activity against the Roman Catholics has already

been mentioned. The way in which this trial is regarded materially

affects the answer to the question whether or no he exceeded the

legitimate bounds of his magisterial duty. If Giles was rightly

convicted, the excess was not great; if wrongly and the attempt on

Arnold’s life was a sham, not only did Arnold lend himself to a

criminal and most disreputable intrigue, but all his other actions must

be more severely judged. The case was as follows. Arnold had accused

Mr. Herbert, a Roman Catholic gentleman of Staffordshire, of speaking

seditious words against the king and government.[771] They were both

ordered to appear before the privy council on April 16, 1680.[772] On

the day before that date it was alleged that Giles, who was a friend

of Herbert,[773] attempted to murder Captain Arnold. For this Giles

was tried on July 7, before Jeffreys, the Recorder of London, and

convicted after what seemed to be a singularly fair trial. The case

for the prosecution was that, as Arnold was going between ten and

eleven o’clock on the night of April 15 to see his solicitor, he was

assaulted in Bell-yard, Fleet Street, by the accused and one or two

other persons, and but for the appearance of the neighbours would have

been murdered. Giles had spoken disrespectfully of the Plot and the

Protestant religion, had been seen to dip handkerchiefs in the blood of

the Jesuit Lewis who was executed the year before at Usk,[774] and was

supposed to have attacked Arnold in revenge for the part he had played

in the capture of Evans. Arnold himself gave evidence of the fact. He

swore that he had been dogged by two or three men into Bell-yard. One

of these went by him and then stood still while the magistrate passed.

By the light of a candle which a woman was holding at the door of a

neighbouring house Arnold saw the man whom he afterwards recognised

to be the prisoner. As he crossed a lane which ran into the yard, a

cloak was thrown over his head and he was knocked down into the gutter,

though not before he had time to draw his sword. As he lay on the

ground the men stabbed at him with their swords. He was cut in the

face, the arm, and the stomach, but the men were unable to pierce the

bodice of whalebone which he wore under his coat. One of them cried,

“Damme, he has armour on; cut his throat.” A light in Sir Timothy

Baldwin’s house, hard by, and a boy coming into the yard with a link

disturbed the murderers and they made off. As the cloak was pulled from

his head, Arnold again recognised the prisoner by the light of the

link. The men swaggered away and one turned back to call, “Now, you

dog, pray for, or pray again for the soul of Captain Evans.”[775]

The evidence called to support and to oppose this was very

contradictory. It was sworn that, talking about the affray at a tavern

next day, Giles said, “God damn him, God rot him, he had armour on”;

but the witness admitted that he might have said, “God rot him, he had

armour on, they say.”[776] The prisoner declared that he merely told it

as a common piece of news that Arnold would have been killed had he not

worn armour, and called a witness who affirmed that this was so, that

Giles had called the attempt “a cruel assassination” of which he was

sorry to hear, and had made use of no oaths at all.[777] Evidence was

given for the crown that Giles had hurried through Usk on May 5, saying

that he was afraid of being arrested for the assault on Arnold, and at

a cutler’s shop where he went to have a sword mended said he had been

fighting “with damned Arnold.”[778] This was contradicted by the Mayor

of Monmouth, who proved that Giles had not hurried through Usk, but

stayed there several hours; and by the cutler’s apprentice, who proved

that when the prisoner was asked, “How came your sword broke? Have you

been fighting with the devil?” so far from speaking the words alleged,

he had answered, “No, for I never met with Arnold.”[779] A great deal

of evidence was given concerning the prisoner’s movements on the night

of April 15. He had passed the evening in company at various taverns,

and had finally gone to sleep at the King’s Arms in St. Martin’s Lane;

but as the witnesses arrived at the times o’clock to which they deposed

by guess-work alone, their evidence was naturally contradictory; and it

seems now quite impossible to know certainly whether Giles was, as the

prosecution contended, seen last at ten o’clock and did not go to bed

till one in the morning, or, as the witnesses for the defence stated,

had been in company till the hour of eleven or twelve.[780] According

to the evidence therefore, which Jeffreys summed up at length and with

moderation,[781] it was open to the jury to find either for or against

the prisoner, and after deliberating for half an hour they returned a

verdict of guilty. Giles was sentenced to the fine of £500 and to be

pilloried three times. On July 26 he was pilloried in Lincoln’s Inn

Fields and was pelted so severely that his life was in danger; and

when the remainder of the sentence was carried out in Holborn and the

Strand, he had to be protected from the mob by a guard of constables

and watchmen.[782]