CHAPTER XII.

CHARLES II. (CONTINUED.)

A. D. 1677-1685.

THIS reign presents the most amazing contrasts of levity and cruelty, of mirth and gloomy suspicion. Ever since the fatal league with France, the people had entertained violent jealousies against the court. The fears and discontents of the nation were vented without restraint; the apprehensions of a popish successor, an abandoned court, and a parliament which, though sometimes assertors of liberty, yet continued for seventeen years without change; these naturally rendered the minds of mankind timid and suspicious, and they only wanted objects on which to wreak their ill-humour.

When the spirit of the English is once roused, they either find objects of suspicion or make them. On the twelfth of August, one Kirby, a chemist, accosted the king as he was walking in the Park. "Sir," said he, "keep within the company; your enemies have a design upon your life, and you may be shot in this very walk." Being questioned, in consequence of this strange intimation, he offered to produce one doctor Tongue, a weak, credulous clergyman, who had told him, that two persons, named Grove and Pickering, were engaged to murder the king; and that sir George Wakeman, the queen's physician, had undertaken the same task by poison. Tongue was introduced to the king, with a bundle of papers relating to this pretended conspiracy, and was referred to the lord-treasurer Danby. He declared to him that the papers were thrust under his door, and that he knew the author of them, who desired that his name might be concealed, as he dreaded the resentment of the Jesuits.

This information appeared so vague and unsatisfactory, that the king concluded the whole was a fiction. However, Tongue was not to be repressed in the ardour of his loyalty; he went again to the lord-treasurer, and told him, that a packet of letters, written by Jesuits concerned in the plot, was that night

to be put into the post-house for Windsor, directed to one Bedingfield, a Jesuit, who was confessor to the duke of York, and who resided there. These letters had actually been received a few hours before by the duke; but he had shown them to the king as a forgery, of which he knew not the drift or the meaning. This incident tended to confirm the king in his incredulity. He desired, however, that it might be concealed, as it might raise a flame in the nation; but the duke, solicitous to prove his innocence, insisted upon a more deliberate discussion, which turned out very different from his expectations.

Titus Oates, who was the fountain of all this dreadful intelligence, was produced soon after, who, with seeming reluctance, came to give his intelligence. This man affirmed that he had fallen under the suspicion of the Jesuits, and that he had concealed himself in order to avoid their resentment. This Titus Oates was an abandoned miscreant, obscure, illiterate, vulgar, and indigent. He had been once indicted for perjury, was afterwards chaplain to a man of war, and dismissed for unnatural practices. He then professed himself a Roman catholic, and crossed the sea to St. Omer's, where he was for some time maintained in the English seminary of that city. The fathers of that college sent him with some despatches to Spain; but after his return, when they became better acquainted with his character, they would not suffer him to continue among them; so that he was obliged to return to London, where he was ready to encounter every danger for his support. At a time when he was supposed to have been intrusted with a secret involving the fate of kings, he was allowed to remain in such necessity that Kirby was obliged to supply him with daily bread.

He had two methods of proceeding; either to ingratiate himself by this information with the ministry, or to alarm the people, and thus turn their fears to his advantage. He chose the latter method. He went, therefore, with his two companions to sir Edmundbury Godfrey, a noted and active justice of peace, and before him deposed to a narrative dressed up in terrors fit to make an impression on the vulgar. The pope, he said, considered himself as entitled to the possession of England and Ireland, on account of the heresy of the prince and people,

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and had accordingly assumed the sovereignty of those kingdoms. This, which was St. Peter's patrimony, he had de livered up to the Jesuits; and Oliva, the general of that order, was his delegate. Several English catholic lords, whose names he mentioned, were appointed by the pope to the other offices of state lord Arundel was created chancellor, lord Powis treasurer, sir William Godolphin privy-seal, Coleman, the duke's secretary, was made secretary of state, Langhorne attorney-general, lord Bellasis general of the forces, lord Petre lieutenant-general, and lord Stafford paymaster. The king, whom the Jesuits called the Black Bastard, was solemnly tried by them, and condemned as a heretic. He asserted, that father Le Shee, meaning the French king's confessor La Chaise, had offered ten thousand pounds to any man who should kill the king. Ten thousand pounds had been offered to sir George Wakeman to poison him; but he was mercenary, and demanded fifteen thousand; which demand was complied with. Lest these means should fail, four Irish ruffians had been employed by the Jesuits, at the rate of twenty guineas for each, to stab the king at Windsor. Coleman was deeply involved in the plot, and had given a guinea to the messenger who carried orders for the assassination. Grove and Pickering, to make sure work, were employed to shoot the king, and that too with silver bullets. The former was to receive fifteen hundred pounds for his pains; the latter, being a pious man, thirty thousand masses. Pickering would have executed his purpose, had not the flint dropped out of his pistol at one time, and at another the priming. Oates went on to say that he himself was chiefly employed in carrying notes and letters among the Jesuits, all tending to the same end of murdering the king. A wager of a hundred pounds was made, and the money deposited, that the king should eat no more Christmas pies. The great fire of London had been the work of the Jesuits; several other fires were resolved on, and a paper model was already framed for firing the city anew. them Tewkesbury mustard-pills. in London were prepared to rise; two hundred thousand pounds to assist the rebels in Ireland. The crown was to be offered to the duke of York, in conse

Fire-balls were called among Twenty thousand catholics. and Coleman had remitted

quence of the success of these probable schemes, on condition of extirpating the protestant religion. Upon his refusal—“ To pot James must go," as the Jesuits were said to express it.

In consequence of this dreadful information, sufficiently marked with absurdity, vulgarity, and contradiction, Titus Oates became the favourite of the people; although, during his examination before the council, he so betrayed the grossness of his impostures, that he contradicted himself in every step of his narration. While in Spain, he had been carried, he said, to Don John, who promised great assistance to the execution of the catholic designs. The king asked him what sort of a man his old acquaintance Don John was. Oates replied, that he was a tall lean man; which was directly contrary to the truth, as the king well knew. Though he pretended a great intimacy with Coleman, yet he knew him not when placed very near him, and had no other excuse than that his sight was bad by candle-light. He was guilty of the same mistake with regard to sir George Wakeman.

But these improbabilities had no weight against the general wish, if I may so express it, that they should be true. The violent animosity which had been excited against the catholics in general, made the people find a gloomy pleasure in hoping for an opportunity of satiating their hatred. The more improbable any account seemed, the more unlikely it was that any impostor should invent improbabilities, and therefore it appeared more like truth.

A great number of the Jesuits mentioned by Oates were immediately taken into custody. Coleman, who was said to have acted so strenuous a part in the conspiracy, at first retired; but next day surrendered himself to the secretary of state, and some of his papers, by Oates's directions, were secured. These papers, which were such as might be naturally expected from a zealous catholic in his situation, were converted into very dangerous evidence against him. He had without doubt maintained, with the French king's confessor, the pope's nuncio at Brussels, and other catholics abroad, a close correspondence, in which there was a distant project on foot for bringing back popery, upon the accession of the duke of York, But these letters contained nothing that served as proof in the present information; and their very silence in that respect,

though they appeared imprudent enough in others, was a proof against Oates's pretended discovery, However, when the contents of those letters were publicly known, they diffused the panic which the former narrative had begun. The two plots were brought to strengthen each other, and confounded into one. Coleman's letters showed there had actually been designs on foot, and Oates's narrative was supposed to give the particulars.

In this fluctuation of passions, an accident served to confirm the prejudices of the people, and put it beyond a doubt that Oates's narrative was nothing but the truth. Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, who had been so active in developing the whole mystery of the popish machinations, after having been missing some days, was found dead in a ditch near Primrose hill, in the way to Hampstead. His own sword was thrust through his body; but no blood had flowed from the wound; so that it appeared he was dead some time before this method was taken to deceive the public. He had money in his pockets; and there was a broad livid mark quite round his neck, which was dislocated. The cause of his death remains, and must still continue, a secret; but the people, already enraged against the papists, did not hesitate a moment to ascribe it to them. All doubts of the veracity of Oates vanished; the voice of the whole nation united against them; and the populace were exasperated to such a degree, that moderate men began to dread a general massacre of that unhappy sect. The body of Godfrey was carried through the streets in procession, preceded by seventy clergymen ; and every one who saw it, made no doubt that his death could be caused by the papists only. Even the better sort of people were infected with this vulgar prejudice; and such was the general conviction of popish guilt, that no person, with any regard to personal safety, could express the least doubt concerning the information of Oates, or the murder of Godfrey.

It only remained for the parliament to repress these delusions, and to bring back the people to calm and deliberate inquiry. But the parliament testified greater credulity than even the vulgar. The cry of "plot" was immediately echoed from one house to another: the country party would not let slip such an opportunity of managing the passions of the people;