A.D. 1678. Titus Oates and Bedloe were the infamous characters selected to swear away the lives of a large number of innocent persons.
Oates was the son of a weaver and preacher, and a villain of the deepest dye. If he had not been so brainless as to swear to a tissue of falsehoods too palpable to gain credence, rivers of blood would have been shed, and the disgraceful scenes that attended the St. Bartholomew massacre in France would have been repeated in England. But when the king questioned him and Bedloe, their statements as to the place and manner that the queen had used for declaring her intention of poisoning his majesty were so absurd that they stood self-convicted.
King Charles never for a moment suspected his wife of any attempt on his life; and he knew, besides, that although the Duke of York, his brother, had become a member of the Catholic church, it had not been through her instrumentality.
But the public mind was aroused to such a pitch by the daily inventions of Oates and his adherents that the business of life was interrupted, and the wildest statements were eagerly accepted as indisputable facts.
Catharine was even accused of having caused the murder of Godfrey, a city magistrate, whose body was found on the highway, pierced with his own sword. It was Shaftesbury who prompted Oates in all he said and did, though he was wily enough to keep himself in the background. It was he who secured from parliament, for the shameless perjurer, a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year for the information he had given, in consequence of which all the Roman Catholic peers were deprived of their seats in that body.
All this time Queen Catharine was surrounded by spies, ready to pounce upon any action of hers that might be perverted into an appearance of guilt; but her honesty and simplicity of character spoke so loudly in her favor that there was not a true-hearted man in the realm who was not assured of her entire innocence.
But she was aware of her danger, and expected nothing less than that she would be brought to the block, as Charles I. had been. She, therefore, sent a messenger, to her brother, Don Pedro, informing him of her situation, and asking his protection in case her life should be in jeopardy. Her adviser was Count Castelmelhor, a noble Portuguese exile, who proved of such service to Queen Catharine that she helped him to retrieve his lost fortune by purchasing a new estate for him, to which he gave the name of Santa Catarina, out of compliment to her.
King Charles offered five hundred pounds for the murderer of Godfrey. Tempted by so large a sum, Bedloe, Oates's colleague, and a discharged convict, swore that the deed had been done by the queen's popish servants; and that he had been offered two thousand guineas to assist in the removal of the body, which he saw lying on the queen's back stairs. When cross-examined, this rascal contradicted himself, and described the portion of the palace where he beheld the corpse so inaccurately as to prove conclusively that he had never been in it at all.
The members of the house of commons were paralyzed with astonishment at their next session, when Oates advanced to the bar, and, raising his voice, exclaimed: "I, Titus Oates, accuse Catharine, Queen of England, of high treason."