CHAP. XII. 2. By the treaty with Spain (September 17th, 1678), France retained Franche Comté, and twelve important fortresses on the frontiers of the NetherSpanish. lands, with their territory; including Valenciennes, Condé, Cambray, Ypres, &c. 3. By the peace between France and the Empire (February 5th, 1679), the former retained Frieburg, in lieu of the right of holding a garrison in German. Phillipsburg, which she had acquired by the treaty of Westphalia, when she wrested Alsace from the Empire. The terms which affected the subordinate powers engaged, viz., Denmark, Sweden, and Brandenburg, were of no great importance, with the exception that Sweden lost her chief provinces on the south of the Baltic.* The great loss of the war was thus borne by the decaying monarchy of Spain. The aggrandisement of France alarmed the other princes of Europe, who attributed the results to the Degradation indecisive, vacillating, and contradictory policy of the of England. English cabinet. "England lost her national position in Europe, and became a byeword for despotic states, and a scandal to the few nations that were free. Her manifestations of weakness and dishonour were held to be inherent in her mixed constitution of king and parliament, and men were taught to think, that arbitrary power was a safer and more glorious thing than regulated freedom. Despotism is always ready to rejoice, when the due balance of representative government is disturbed by the violence or the corruption of selfish factions.”† 37. Lauderdale's persecution of the Covenanters. The troops which were despatched to Ostend, for service in Flanders, were drawn, chiefly, from Scotland; and, military occupation thus ceasing for a time in that country, the Presbyterian conventicles reappeared, especially in the Western Lowlands. Lauderdale spirit of the interdicted them, but his orders, unsupported by soldiers, were treated with contempt. Every Sabbath, crowds assembled, for Fanatical purpose of worship, around a lofty pole, fixed in a the Cove- glen, on a mountain, or in the midst of a morass; nanters. and the minds of the people were occupied, during the week, with conversation respecting the gifts and doctrines of the preachers, the dangers which they had escaped, the persecutions which they had suffered, and the place and time appointed for the next conventicle. A spirit of the most ardent and obstinate fanaticism animated the great mass of the population, and hostility to episcopacy was coupled with hostility to that government, by which episcopacy was maintained. The persecuted Covenanters firmly believed that their cause was that of God, and that their enemies acted under the guidance of the Evil Spirit. They attributed to them a charmed life, when in * Heeren's Hist. of the Political System of Europe, 141. † Knight's Pop. Hist., IV., 331. 1678 of the pursuit of their master's work; and John Graham, of Graham, of Claverhouse, who now began to distinguish himself as a Claverhouse. severe executor of the laws against the Wanderers, as the Covenanters were called, was said to be proof against common bullets, and that the black horse he rode upon was the special gift of Satan. Another of the men who distinguished themselves in these persecutions was Captain Creichton, who has left us his Memoirs of the scenes of rapine and violence in which he took part. Many are the melancholy tales which the peasantry still tell, of the strange escapes, hard encounters, and cruel Sufferings exactions of this period; the caverns and dens in which Wanderers. the Wanderers concealed themselves are still shown; the greenplover, or Pease-weep, which, by its instinct of following any human beings whom it sees in its native wilds, often led the soldiers to some remote conventicle, is still hated in Scotland, and its nest destroyed, when found by the shepherd; and, sadder memorial still, is the number of headstones, and other simple monuments, which were erected, after the Revolution, over the graves of the martyrs. Many years ago, an old man rode upon a white pony, throughout the persecuted districts, and made it his business to repair and clear these tombs of the sufferers. From the peculiarity of his appearance and occupation, "ola he acquired the nickname of Old Mortality, and he is the Mortality." hero of one of Sir Walter Scott's most charming novels. severities When Lauderdale found that, in spite of all his efforts, the conventicles only increased constantly, he sent to London for troops. Artillery and cavalry were immediately sent, and as if these were not sufficient for the work, he was authorised to employ the Highland clans who from time immemorial were the fierce enemies of their Lowland neighbours. These Increased barbarians fell upon the Presbyterian districts, devastating of the the cultivated lands, and carrying off the flocks and herds persecution. as in the old times. The Presbyterians opposed a vigorous resistance; Lauderdale summoned them to deliver up their arms; he called upon the richer classes to sign a bond promising never to attend the conventicles, or relieve intercommuned or outlawed persons; and when these failed, he applied the writ called lauburrows in a most oppressive way. By this writ, a man who was afraid of violence from his neighbour, upon making oath to that effect, could have the party bound over to keep the peace. Lauderdale caused application to be made for this writ, on the King's behalf, against all who refused to sign the bond, and thus accounted every man as a rebel. The Duke of Hamilton and CHAP. XII. several other distinguished noblemen went to Edinburgh for the purpose of remonstrating against these unjust proceedings; but their arrival threw Lauderdale into utter fury; and in full council, we are told, he tucked up his sleeves to the elbow, and Scottish noblemen go up to London to protest against them. swore what he would do. Hamilton, Athol, Perth, and others then went up to London to supplicate Charles himself. The English parliament was sitting when the Scottish lords arrived, and it received their complaints with warm sympathy. The time had gone by when Englishmen were indifferent to these persecutions. They saw in the Covenanters, a people upon whom experiments of tyranny were being made, which it was not as yet thought advisable to attempt in England. A gloomy stupor took possession of the popular mind; alarming reports of a foreign invasion to destroy the national National church and liberties were circulated; and the nation was this crisis. in such a temper, that the smallest spark might raise a flame. At this conjuncture, fire was set to the vast mass of combustible matter, by the avowed discovery of a Popish Plot; and the whole nation was at once in a blaze.* dread at Tonge, and Kirby, the originators II. THE POPISH PLOT. 38. Origin of the plot. One Titus Oates, a clergyman of the Church of England, and formerly an Anabaptist, had been compelled, in consequence of his infamous character, to resign his benefice and go abroad, where he became a Roman Catholic, and obtained admission into the Jesuits' college at St. Omer. In this Oates, and other seminaries, he heard much wild talk about the best means of bringing England back to the true church, of the plot. and from the hints thus furnished, he constructed, in conjunction with Dr. Tonge, rector of St. Michael's, the Popish Plot. The scheme was communicated to one Kirby, a chemist, who was known to the King. On the 12th of August, 1678, this Kirby accosted the King as he was preparing to walk in the park, and begged him not to separate from the company, because his life was in danger. This led to a private interview in the evening, when Dr. Tonge attended, with a copy of the narrative which Oates had drawn up, and accused two men of a conspiracy to murder the King. Danby insisted on the inspection of the papers mentioned in the information, and was told that on a certain day five letters, revealing the details, would arrive at the post-office, addressed to Bedingfield, confessor to the Duke of York, who when he received them, said they were forgeries. *Macaulay, I., 241. 1678 After this, Oates made affidavit of the truth of his statements before Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, a zealous Protestant and an eminent justice of the peace, who, surprised to discover in the list of conspirators the name of his friend Coleman, secretary to the Duke of York, immediately revealed the secret to him. The next day (September 28th), Oates appeared before the council, and made the following statement. The Pope had entrusted the government of England to the Jesuits, who had, by commissions under the seal of their society, appointed Roman Catholic Oates's clergymen, noblemen, and gentlemen, to all the highest offices in church statement. and state. The papists had burnt down London once; they had tried to burn it again in 1676, by setting fire to Southwark; and they were at that moment planning a scheme for setting fire to all the shipping in the Thames. They were to rise at a signal, and massacre all their Protestant neighbours; a French army was, at the same time, to land in Ireland, and all the leading statesmen and divines of England were to be murdered. Three sets of assassins were provided for the murder of the King; and for the due performance of all this, a grand consult of Jesuits, from all parts, had met at the White Horse tavern, in the Strand, in the previous April, and fixed all the arrangements of the conspiracy. The public mind was so sore, that all these lies readily found credit with the vulgar; and two events which speedily followed, led even some reflecting men to suspect, that the tale had some foundation. 39. Discovery of Coleman's papers. Murder of Godfrey. Search was immediately made among the papers of Coleman, who had already destroyed the greater portion; but the few which had escaped, contained passages which seemed to confirm the evidence of Oates. There were two letters addressed to Pere La Chaise, the confessor of Louis XIV., which spoke of "a mighty work," "no less than the conversion of three kingdoms," "and the utter subduing of a pestilent heresy," of which "there were never such hopes, since the days of Queen Mary, as now in our days," when there was a prince "zealous of being the author and instrument of so glorious a work." These passages, when candidly construed, appear to express little more than the hopes which the posture of affairs, the predilections of the King, the still stronger predilection of his brother, and the relations existing between the French and English courts, might naturally excite in the mind of a Roman Catholic strongly attached to the interests of his church. But the country was not then inclined to construe the letters of papists candidly; and it was reasonably urged, that if these papers had been passed over by the duke's secretary as unimportant, some great mystery of iniquity must have been contained in those documents he had destroyed.* * Macaulay, I., 143. CHAP. XII. This discovery had only just been made when the popular ferment was wrought to a higher pitch, by the sudden and extraordinary disappearance of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, whose corpse was found, after a few days' search, in a dry ditch, on Primrose Hill, pierced through the heart with his own sword, and having, on the neck, marks of strangulation. The papists were, of course, suspected of his murder; although the motive was altogether a mystery. The capital and the whole nation went mad with hatred and fear. The penal laws, which had begun to lose something of their edge, were sharpened anew. Everywhere, justices were busied in searching houses and seizing papers. All the gaols were filled with papists, and those who were not householders were banished from London. The capital had the aspect of a city in a state of siege; the train bands were called out, and kept on permanent duty; preparations were made for barricading the streets; patrols marched up and down; cannon were planted round Whitehall; and no citizen thought himself safe unless he carried, under his coat, a small flail, loaded with lead, to brain the popish assassins. The corpse of the murdered magistrate was publicly exposed, for several days, and was then interred with strange and terrible ceremonies, which indicated rather fear, and the thirst of vengeance, than sorrow, or religious hope. The houses, which had re-assembled (October 21st), insisted that a guard should be placed in the vaults over which they sat, in order to secure them against a second Gunpowder Plot, and all their proceedings were of a piece with this demand.* King's 40. Proceedings in parliament in connection with the plot. Although, in his examinations before the council, Oates betrayed his impostures in the grossest manner, by the ignorance he Rage of the manifested of the persons he accused, and the seminaries parliament he professed to have visited, the Earl of Danby, who was disbelief in the opponent, at court, of French influence and Catholic the plot. interest, strongly advised Charles to proclaim to the parliament his entire belief in the plot. But the King refused to do so, and freely told that assembly what he thought of Oates's disclosures. The parliament did not agree with his opinion. They demanded a public fast; the Commons examined Oates, who enlarged upon his disclosures amidst the frantic applause of the house; and they resolved that, from the evidence they had heard, there had been, and was at that moment, a damnable plot, on the part of the papists, for * Macaulay, I., 244. |