mated to the King of England that they were ready to treat upon that condition. Charles made haste to communicate secretly with Louis, and to ask a pension of 6,000,000 livres for the three following years, as the price of his guaranteeing the acceptance of the treaty by the allies; but Louis, flushed with his recent successes in the field, told Montague that he must have Ypres and Condé as well as Tournai and Valenciennes, and that he would satisfy his English majesty through orders he would send to Barillon; and, in effect, Barillon fully satisfied Charles with a new money-bargain. And another infamous treaty was concluded, wherein the King of England agreed, for 6,000,000 livres, to break with the States-General if they did not accept the terms offered by France; to recall his troops from Flanders; to observe a strict neutrality; to disband his army; and to prorogue, and then dissolve the present parliament. In the meantime, the commons had required that Charles should either pay off the troops that had been raised, or join the allies and declare war against France. On the 4th of June, they voted the sum of £200,000 upon condition that the troops should be paid off with it immediately. They also granted £200,000 for the navy; but they voted that no question of further supplies should be entertained that session. Charles summoned them before him in the House of Lords, and endeavoured to cajole them out of £300,000 per annum as an addition to his fixed revenue; but the commons were firm, and all that could be obtained from them was a new bill consolidating the grants they had made in a general supply. Then, on the 15th of July, he prorogued the parliament. The diplomatists at Nimeguen had settled a peace upon the conditions offered by Louis, and an armistice for six weeks was proclaimed, to allow the reluctant government of Spain time to make up its mind. But, on a sudden, the French commissioners declared that, their master being bound to see an entire restitution made by the emperor to his ally the King of Sweden of all he had lost in the war, he could not restore the towns in Flanders to the Spaniards till his ally the Swede was satisfied. The States-General, who had driven for a separate peace, sorely against the will of the Prince of Orange, were confounded by this pretension of making their frontier answerable for places which had been taken from the In all these transactions there was complicated trickery. Secretary Coventry was instructed to write a despatch directing Montague, the ambassador at Paris, to sound the French court, and to do nothing more. This despatch was probably submitted to the whole of the council. But, in addition to the despatch, there was a secret money-letter, to which Charles put a postscript in his own hand-writing, to assure the French king that the letter was written by his own order. Danby was the penman, and the letter was not forgotten in his impeachment. - Dalrymple. VOL. II. Swede by the emperor, the King of Denmark, and the Elector of Brandenburg; and not knowing to whom else they might address themselves, they applied to the King of England. Charles chuckled over the deepening game, fancying that he must get more money out of its difficulties. It was natural for one that associated so much with players to acquire some skill in acting. He put on a virtuous indignation at the bad faith and rapaciousness of his brother of France; while the Duke of York declared that Louis was seeking the dominion of all Europe, and that England alone could check him. More English troops were shipped for Flanders, and Sir William Temple was sent to the Hague, where, within a week, he concluded with the States a treaty binding England to enter upon the war instantly, if Louis did not give up his pretension of keeping the towns in Flanders as security for Sweden. But, while this was a-doing, Charles, in the apartments of his French mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth, was laughing, with his brother James and Barillon, at the credulity of those who believed that he was in earnest, and was telling Barillon to write for more French money; and shortly after he despatched the Earl of Sunderland to negotiate with Louis for the dissolution of the alliance just made by Temple, and for satisfaction to Sweden, moyennant subsidies to himself. But Louis, who was at least his match in cunning and duplicity, secretly revealed these proposals to the States-General, to show them what reliance they could place on such an ally as his English majesty; and then, impelled by the commercial impatience of Amsterdam and the other great cities, which were, moreover, jealous of the growing power of the Prince of Orange, which they fancied might subvert their liberties, the States hurried to sign a separate treaty with Louis, that completely broke the coalition. By this treaty the Spanish Netherlands the rampart by land of Holland-were left at the mercy of the French; but the Prince of Orange boldly resolved to do something with his sword in spite of the pen of Beverning and his colleagues at Nimeguen. The treaty between the States and France was concluded on the 10th of August; and as it was known in London, it must have been known in the neighbourhood of Brussels, where the prince then lay with his army. Yet, on that day, the not over-scrupulous William fell upon the French and gave them such a beating as they had not suffered for several years. The Duke of Luxembourg was besieging Mons, a most important frontier town of Flanders, and he had not, it appears, suspended his operations very strictly during the armistice. It was of the utmost importance to preserve the place; and the 4 Sir John Reresby, Memoirs; Dalrymple. 193 Prince of Orange, collecting the Spanish confederates under the Duke of Villahermosa, and some of the English auxiliaries commanded by the gallant Lord Ossory, and all very ready to fight the French, took Luxembourg by surprise, and forced him into a battle under the walls of Mons, and in the midst of his own beleaguer. After a dreadful conflict, in which 5000 brave and peace was restored to the Continent in the month of October.2 Before this temporary settlement of the affairs of the Continent, England became involved in fresh disgrace-in a plot which has not a parallel in the annals of civilized mankind. Many adroit politicians had long been convinced that the only lever by which to raise up a stern, popular MONS. From a print in the British Museum. men, of all sides, bit the dust, night separated the combatants. It was generally believed that if the Prince of Orange had been at liberty the next day to pursue his advantages, he might not only have relieved Mons, but have made a longdesired incursion into France. But on the morrow, Luxembourg, at a conference, announced the conclusion of peace between France and Holland; and William, "bound by a limited authority," was obliged to retire towards Nivelles. Charles now endeavoured to make the StatesGeneral break the treaty, and he invited his nephew to join him in a bona fide war. "Was ever any thing so hot and so cold as this court of yours?" said the Prince of Orange. "Will the king never learn a word that I shall never forget since my last passage to England, when, in a great storm, the captain was all night crying out to the man at the helm-Steady! steady! steady? If this despatch had come twenty days ago, it had changed the face of affairs in Christendom, and the war might have been carried on till France had yielded to the treaty of the Pyrenees, and left the world in quiet for the rest of our lives: as it comes now, it will have no effect at all." Charles then turned to Louis, who, for the present, suspended the wages of his infamy. The States-General stepped into his post of mediator, and, under their management, both Spain and the empire were included in the treaty, opposition to the encroachments and schemes of the court, was the old and sturdy hatred of Popery-that there would be no chance of keeping the people free, unless they could convince them that there was a design on foot to make them Catholics at all hazards, and at any cost of blood and crime. There had been one or two little preludes; but on the 12th of August, 1678, while the king was walking in St. James's Park, he was accosted by one Kirby, who told him that his enemies had a design upon his life, and that he might be shot in that very walk. Charles stepped aside, and appointed Kirby to meet him at the house of Chiffinch, where his majesty was accustomed to meet a very different kind of company-his panders and his women. There Kirby informed him that two persons named Grove and Pickering had engaged to shoot him, and that Sir George Wakeman, the queen's physician, had undertaken to poison him. All this intelligence Kirby said he had received from his friend, Dr. Tonge, a divine of the church of England, who was well known to several persons about the court. Charles agreed to see the doctor, and Tonge presented him with an immense roll of papers, which contained the full particulars of the plot drawn out under forty-three heads. This was too much for the patience of the king, who referred the parson with his papers to Danby, the treasurer and prime minister. Danby asked Tonge who had written the papers? The doctor answered that they had been secretly thrust under his door, and that, though he guessed, he did not exactly know by whom. After a few days, however, Tonge told the treasurer that he had ascertained his suspicions as to the author to be well founded; that he had met the individual in the streets, who had given him further particulars of the horrible conspiracy, desiring that his name might be concealed, lest the Papists should murder him. Danby went to 2 Temple; Bolingbroke: Dalrymple: Ralph. of Jesuits. 2. That the Jesuits had undertaken to expel this heresy, and re-establish the Catholic faith. 3. That in furtherance of this plan, some of the society were employed in Ireland, some in Scotland (under the disguise of Covenanters), some in Holland, and some in England, where they were not only plotting the murder of the king but of the duke also, if his highness should oppose their attempt or refuse his concurrence. 4. That these Jesuits had £100,000; that they were in the receipt of £60,000 a-year in rents; and had obtained £10,000 from the confessor to the French king, and the promise of an equal sum from the provincial of New Castile. 5. That a man named Honest William and Pickering, a lay brother of the order, had been repeatedly commissioned to shoot the king, and had been punished for their neglect. 6. That, in the preceding month of April, a grand consult of Jesuits from all parts had been held at the White Horse Tavern in the Strand, and had there provided three sets of pistol-assassins; and had, besides, offered £10,000 to Sir George Wakeman, the queen's physician, if he would do the thing quietly by poison: Oates pretended not to know how Wakeman behaved, but swore that he had often seen him with the Jesuits since that meeting at the White Horse. 7. That he had been himself urged to shoot the king. 8. That a wager was laid that the king should eat no more Christmas pies; and that, if he would not become R. C. (Rex Catholicus), he should no longer be C. R. 9. That the Jesuits had been the authors of the great fire of London, and were now concerting a plan for the burning of Westminster, Wapping, and all the shipping in the river; and that he (Oates) had a post assigned the king, and proposed the instant arrest of the alleged assassins; but Charles, who is said to have believed from the beginning that the whole thing was a gross imposture, declined taking this step, and requested that the matter should be kept secret even from the Duke of York; saying that it would only create alarm, and might perhaps put the notion of murdering him into some head that otherwise would never have thought of it. But Tonge, the chief performer in this ante-piece, soon waited upon Danby with information that there was a terrible packet going through the post-office to Bedingfield, the Duke of York's confessor, then at Windsor. The lord- | treasurer posted down to Windsor to intercept this packet; but he found that the letters were already in the hands of the king. Bedingfield had shown them to his penitent, who had delivered them to his brother; and the king, the duke, and the Jesuit had examined them together, and his majesty had been convinced that they were forgeries, sent on design to be intercepted, to give credit to the revelations of Kirby and Tonge: but the duke's enemies, on the other hand, gave out that he had got some hints of the discovery of the real plot, and brought those badly forged letters as a blind to impose on the king, while the real Jesuit letters were destroyed as soon as received by his confessor and himself. Charles would still have treated the whole story as the awkward plot or intrigue of an ill-constructed comedy; but James, seeing that the Jesuits, and even his own confessor, were accused, insisted upon a searching inquiry. Kirby, who had first warned the king in the park, appeared repeatedly at court; and, failing to attract attention there, the mysterious friend of Dr. Tonge, who had written the forty-three articles, pre-him among the incendiaries. 10. That the pope sented himself to Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, a magistrate of Westminster, and not only made his affidavit to those charges, but also to thirtyeight more articles which had been added to the original list. The magistrate perceiving that Coleman, an agent and factotum of the duke's, and a personal friend of his own, was set down as a chief conspirator, immediately warned his friend, and Coleman communicated with his master, the Duke of York. It was now impossible to keep the business a secret; and Dr. Tonge, being summoned before the council, was commanded to produce his informant. Thereupon, on the 28th of September, TITUS OATES appeared before that board in a new suit of clothes and a clerical gown. With the most marvellous selfpossession and fluency he commenced and continued his incredible story. He stated-1. That the pope claimed possession of these kingdoms on account of the heresy of the people, and had delegated his supreme authority to the society had already, by a secret bull, filled up all the bishoprics and diguities in the church, and had appointed Lord Arundel to be his chancellor, Lord Powis treasurer, Sir William Godolphin privy seal, Coleman secretary of state, Langhorne attorney-general, Lord Bellasis general of the Papal army, Lord Petre lieutenant-general, Lord Stafford paymaster; and that other well-known Catholics, of less rank, had received inferior commissions from the provincial of the Jesuits. To account for the means by which he was let into all these dangerous secrets, Oates affirmed that, as a convert to the Catholic religion, he had been admitted into the Jesuits' houses abroad; and this part of the story was true. His real and infamous history appears to have been simply this:-TITUS OATES was the son of an Anabaptist preacher; his father had been chaplain to that Colonel Pride who purged the House of Commons, but Titus, when he saw how the restored government was purging the church and persecuting and impoverishing Nonconfor- the clerical gown and new suit in which he apmists, conformed forthwith, and got himself or- peared before the council. dained a minister of the Establishment. This was a time of sudden conversions: the timid and the unscrupulous took refuge from the tyranny of intolerance in cunning, lying, and perjury. The son was sent to Cambridge, and took orders in the Established church. Being obscure and friendless, he could obtain no living; and he pined on the scanty pay of a country curate. While in this condition he was twice convicted, of perjury. He was afterwards a chaplain on board a man-of-war; and from that situation he was dismissed with an increase of infamy. According to his own account, in the year 1676, he was admitted into the service of the Catholic Duke of Norfolk, and there became acquainted with one Byng, "that was a priest in the house," and with Kemish and Singleton, who told him "that the Protestant religion was upon its last legs," and that it behoved him and all men of his coat to hasten betimes home to the Church of Rome; and thereupon, he, having had strong suspicions of the great and apparent growth of Popery, to satisfy his curiosity, pretended some doubts in his mind. But, upon conversation with these men, he found they were not men for his turn. Afterwards he met with one Hutchin son, a saint-like man, or one that was religious for religion's sake; and him he found not for his turn either, "for his design was to deal with their casuists, that is, those of the society." But after Hutchinson had introduced him to a Jesuit, he found "they were the men for his turn, because they were the cunning, politic men, and the men that could satisfy him." He pretended to be convinced by the Jesuit's arguments, and he was reconciled to the Church of Rome on Ash Wednesday, 1677. But Oates laid his hand upon his breast, and said God and his holy angels knew that he had never changed his religion, but that he had gone among them on purpose to betray them. After his reconciliation with the Church of Rome, he was sent, as catechumen, over to the Continent, and was admitted into the Jesuits' college at Valladolid in Spain. There Oates stayed about five months, when he was disgracefully expelled. He re-crossed the Pyrenees, and appeared as a mendicant at the gate of the Jesuits' college at St. Omer, and was not only received but entertained there for some time, during which he lived among the students and novices. But he was again expelled with shame, and then he came home without coat or cassock, and either made or renewed an acquaintance with Dr. Tonge, rector of St. Michael's, in Wood Street, a great Protestant alarmist. This Tonge and Kirby clothed and fed him while he was writing out his plot; and they bought him The members of that board heard his revelations with silent astonishment; but the Duke of York pronounced them a most impudent imposture. There were, however, several members of the council, moved by different motives and feelings, that were resolved to proceed with the inquiry. They asked Oates for documents-for letters or papers of some kind. He, who pretended to have been the bearer of Jesuit despatches and letters innumerable, had not a scrap to produce; but he engaged to find abundance of documentary evidence, if they would assist him with warrants and proper officers; and the council agreed to let him have both. On the morrow, Oates was again brought before the council; and this time the king was there. Charles, who did not believe one word of the whole story, was afraid of opposing his ministers in such a matter as this; but on one or two occasions he could not wholly conceal his feelings. He desired that Oates might be made to describe the person of Don Juan, to whom, as he said, he had been introduced during his travels. The informer said that Don Juan was tall, thin, and swarthy. Here Charles turned to his brother, the duke, and smiled; for their old acquaintance, the Spanish bastard, showed the Austrian breed more than the Spanish, being short, fat, and fair. Charles also asked where Oates had seen the King of France's confessor pay down the £10,000? The informer replied, "In the Jesuits' house, just by the king's house." Here Charles, who knew Paris rather better than Oates, exclaimed, “Man, the Jesuits have no house within a mile of the Louvre.' But, notwithstanding all this, Charles posted off to Newmarket races, leaving the council to make what it would of the plot, and Oates to be lodged at Whitehall under his royal protection. It is maintained by most writers, upon a variety of contemporary authorities, that Danby, the prime minister, if he did not help to originate it, was anxious to encourage the ferment, which might absorb men's minds, and prevent or delay the impeachment with which he was threatened in the next session of parliament. In ordering the arrest of the denounced Coleman, the agent of the Duke of York, the minister gave instructions that his papers should be seized; and this measure, with a variety of additional circumstances which came out one upon the other, contributed to make up a strange body of presumptive evidence, and to convert what at first seemed a wild vision into something like a reality. Indeed, the framers of the Popish plot (supposing it to have been all an invention) must have felt, in the end, something like the conjuror, who, while attempting to delude some old women by raising a sham 1 Lloyd, the friend of the deceased, preached the funeral sermon, having "two other thumping divines standing upright in the pulpit, one on each side of him, to guard him from being killed while he was preaching by the Papists." And, at this time, so widely and wildly had the panic spread, that all Protestants, clergy or laity, conformists or nonconformists, royalists or republicans, of the court party or of the country party, considered their lives in danger, and, in many instances, adopted the most ridiculous precautions against an unseen enemy. devil, suddenly saw the real fiend grinning at his Sir Edmondbury Godfrey had been barbarously elbow. Coleman, who had absconded after the murdered by some person or persons unknown. warning given to him by his friend Sir Edmond- To those who reflected coolly upon all the cirbury Godfrey, had destroyed or removed some of cumstances of the case, Godfrey's murder must his papers; but enough were left and secured to have appeared then, as it has ever since remained, prove that both he and his master, the duke, a perplexing mystery; but in that universal exhad been engaged in a dangerous correspondence citement few or none were cool, while there were with the French king, with that king's confessor, many who, for selfish or political ends, were reFather la Chaise, and with the pope's nuncio solved to fasten the murder upon the Catholics, at Brussels; and that they had solicited money and to make it a means of revolutionizing court from La Chaise at Paris, and from the pope at and government. The ghastly body was carried Rome, for the purpose of changing religion in from Primrose Hill to the habitation of the deEngland. A few days after this discovery, the ceased, and there exhibited to many thousands, popular ferment was increased tenfold by the dis- who shuddered and wept over the Protestant appearance of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, who had martyr. The funeral was attended by an imtaken the deposition of Oates, and who was sup-mense procession, having at their head seventyposed to have received confidential communica-two Protestant divines in full canonicals. Dr. tions from Coleman. This magistrate left his house at Westminster on the morning of the 12th of October, and never returned more. He had been for some time greatly depressed in spirits, and had entertained apprehensions that he would be the first martyr in this plot. As soon as he was missed, the people unanimously hurried to the conclusion that he had been trepanned and murdered by the Papists; and the Papists, in self-defence perhaps, but certainly to the injury of their own cause, gave out that he had run away for debt-that he had withdrawn to contract an indecorous marriage-that he had run away with a harlot-and, at last, that he had killed himself in an excitement, working upon an hereditary disposition to insanity. His brothers, who lived in the city, and his numerous friends, made search in all directions, but no traces of him could be found until the evening of the sixth day, when his body was discovered in a ditch by Primrose Hill, not far from Old St. Pancras Church. It was pierced through and through with his own sword, which came some inches out at the back, behind the heart. There was no blood on his clothes, or about him; his shoes were clean, as if he had not walked to that country spot; his money was in his pocket, and his rings were on his fingers. But there was nothing about his neck, and a mark was all round it an inch broad, which showed he was strangled; his breast, also, was marked all over with bruises, and his neck was broken. "All this," says Burnet, "I saw, for Dr. Lloyd and I went to view his body; and there were many drops of white wax on his breeches, which he never used him self; and since only persons of quality or priests use these lights, this made all people believe in whose hands he must have been; and it was visible he was first strangled and then carried to that place, where his sword was run through his dead body." The coroner sat for two whole days on the body; and the finding of the inquest was, that It was in this state of the public mind, when "reason could no more be heard than a whisper in the midst of the most violent hurricane," that (on the 21st of October) the parliament re-assembled. After explaining to the house why he had not yet disbanded the army, and why he was so much in debt as to require immediately fresh grants, Charles adverted to the Popish plot, stating that it was his intention to leave it to be investigated by the ordinary courts of law. Both houses, and some of his own ministers, were dissatisfied with this light mention of the plot; and they soon made up for the king's coolness by their own scorching heat. They called before them Titus Oates, who never appeared without making copious additions to his original disclosures; they committed the Catholic Lords Stafford, Powis, Petre, Arundel, and Bellasis to the Tower; they crammed the commoner prisons with Papists; they declared "that there hath been, and still is, a damnable and hellish plot, contrived and carried on by the Popish recusants, for assassinating the king, for subverting the government, and for rooting out and destroying the Protestant religion;" they proclaimed the great Titus the saver of the nation, and got him a pension of £1200 a-year. In these, and other proceedings of the kind, Shaftesbury was indefatigable, and his masterly hand was visible Roger North, Ecumen. 2 Hume. |