In this state of the public mind Parliament met on the 21st of October. Charles informed Parliament that he had obtained more favourable terms for Spain by his army in Flanders, but that the expense had been enormous; the supplies were not only exhausted, but the revenue of the next year was anticipated, and it would require a liberal grant even to disband the army. He alluded but passingly to the plot, for it touched too nearly on the tender ground of his French secret, but said he left the examination of the plot entirely to the law. But both Danby and the Opposition rushed into the question, contrary to the wish of Charles. Danby was anxious to divert the House from the threatened impeachment of himself, and the Opposition to establish a Popish plot, to damage the Duke of York's prospects in the succession.

Oates was called before both Houses, as well as Dr. Tongue, and such was the effect of their statements, that guards were placed in the cellars under the Parliament House, to prevent another gunpowder plot; and Charles was implored to order every Catholic, not a householder, to quit London, to dismiss all Papists from his service, and have his food prepared only by orthodox cooks. Committees were appointed to search the conspiracy to the bottom. Shaftesbury took the lead in that of the Lords, and there was busy work issuing warrants for searches and arrests, sending out informers and officers, examining and committing prisoners. In consequence of the charges made by Oates against Lords Arundel, Powis, Bellasis, Petre, and Stafford, as having received appointments from the Pope of the chief offices of State, they were arrested and committed to the Tower.

The Commons introduced a new Test Act to exclude every Catholic from Parliament. This had indeed been effected in the Commons in the preceding session by the Oath of Supremacy, and the declaration against Transubstantiation; but the present test went to exclude the Catholic peers from their House also. It prescribed the taking of the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance, and a declaration that the Church of Rome was an idolatrous church. Such a test had been frequently introduced before and thrown out, but in this public furore it rapidly passed the Commons, and reached a third reading in the Lords, when James, with tears in his eyes, entreated them to exempt him from so severe an exclusion, protesting that his religion should always remain a thing between God and his own soul. A proviso, exempting him from its operation, was added to the Bill; but in the Commons this passed by only two votes. Thus the Catholic peers were excluded by Titus Oates from their seats, and their successors did not regain them till 1829.

Under the stimulating effect of the repeated summonses of Oates before Parliament, and his continually augmenting disclosures, both Houses voted that "There had been and still was a damnable and hellish plot contrived and carried on by the Popish recusants for assassinating and murdering the king, and for subverting the Government, and rooting out and destroying the Protestant religion." Titus Oates was declared "the saviour of his country," and a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year was, at the instigation of Parliament, settled on him. To increase the effect of his disclosures, the funeral of the murdered Godfrey was conducted with every circumstance of public parade. He had been carried from Primrose Hill to his own house, and thousands had crowded thither to see the martyr of Protestantism. Seventy-two divines, in full canonicals, walked in procession to St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, where he was buried, and they were followed by a thousand gentlemen in mourning, including many members of Parliament. Dr. Lloyd, his friend and Rector of the parish, preached a sermon from the text, "As a man falleth before the wicked, so fellest thou." And he had two stout fellows in the pulpit with him, dressed as clergymen, to defend him from the Papists.

The fury against the Catholics now amounted to a frenzy. Two thousand suspected traitors were thrust into the prisons of the metropolis, and thirty thousand Catholics, who refused to take the obnoxious oaths, were compelled to quit their homes in London, and remove to twenty miles' distance from Whitehall. The train-bands and volunteers, to the number of twenty thousand, were occasionally kept all night under arms; batteries were planted, and every military precaution was taken to prevent a surprise. The terror spread over the whole country; orders were issued to disarm the Catholics everywhere, and every one was compelled to take the oaths, or give security for keeping the peace.

THOMAS OSBORNE, FIRST DUKE OF LEEDS. (From the Portrait by Van der Vaart.)

[[See larger version]]

And who was this Titus Oates, who had been able to conjure up such a storm? One of the most loathsome of mankind. His real name was Ambrose. He was the son of a ribbon weaver, who turned Anabaptist preacher during the Commonwealth, and managed to secure an orthodox pulpit at the Restoration. Titus was sent to Cambridge, where he took orders, and became a curate in different parishes, and afterwards chaplain on board a man-of-war. But wherever he went, the worst of characters pursued him, as addicted to a mischievous and litigious temper, and to the most debased and disgraceful vices. Out of every situation he was expelled with infamy, and was convicted twice of perjury by a jury. Reduced by his crimes to beggary, he fell into the hands of Dr. Tongue, and by him was engaged to simulate the character of a convert to Catholicism, so as to be able to discover all that he could of the secret views and designs of the Papists. He was reconciled, as the Catholics term it, to the church by a priest of the name of Berry or Hutchinson, who was first of one religion and then of another, and nothing long, and sent to the Jesuits' College at Valladolid, in Spain. But he was successively ejected both from that college and from St. Omer, with accumulated infamy. Returning to England he became the ready tool of Tongue, who no doubt was also the tool of deeper and more distinguished agitators behind. The Jesuits had held one of their triennial meetings at the Duke of York's. This Tongue and Oates converted into a special meeting, for the prosecution of their great national plot, but fixed it at the White Horse in the Strand. They then forged their mass of letters and papers, purporting to be the documents and correspondence of these Jesuits, planning the assassination of the king. These were written in Greek characters by Oates, copied into English ones by Tongue, and communicated as a great discovery to Kirby. Such were the apparent unravellers of the alleged plot; but these puppets had their strings pulled by far more masterly men, who were constantly extending their ground and linking up fresh machinery in the scheme. The weak part of the affair was, that on the testimony of Oates alone the whole rested. Those whom he incriminated, to a man, steadily denied any knowledge or participation in any such plot as he pretended. It was necessary to have two witnesses for convicting traitors, and other tools were not long wanting. Government had offered a large reward and full pardon to any one who could discover the assassins of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, and in a few days a letter was received from one William Bedloe, desiring that he might be arrested in Bristol and brought to London to give evidence. The warrant for his apprehension was, singularly enough, sent to Bedloe himself, who caused his own arrest by delivering it to the Mayor of Bristol. This Bedloe turned out to be as thorough a scoundrel as Oates himself. He had been employed as a groom by Lord Bellasis, and afterwards in his house; had travelled as a courier on the Continent, and occasionally passed himself off as a nobleman. He had been seized and convicted of swindling transactions in various countries, and was just released from Newgate, when his eye was attracted by the reward of five hundred pounds for the discovery of the murderers of Godfrey.

In his first examination by the king and the two Secretaries of State, he disavowed all knowledge of the plot, but said he had seen the dead body at Somerset House, where the queen lived, and that Le Fevre, the Jesuit, told him that he and Walsh, another Jesuit, a servant of Lord Bellasis's and attendant in the queen's chapel, had smothered him between two pillows, and that they offered him two thousand pounds to assist in conveying the body away. The next day, before the House of Lords, he contradicted himself dreadfully, for the story of the two pillows did not accord with the state of the body when found. Now he said that he was not smothered, but strangled with a cravat. And so far from knowing nothing of the plot, he confessed to knowing all about the commissions offered to the Lords Arundel, Powis, Bellasis, and others, and he added wonders and horrors of his own. Ten thousand men, he said, were to land from Holland in Bridlington Bay, and seize Hull; Jersey and Guernsey were to be invaded by a fleet and army from Brest; an army from Spain of twenty or thirty thousand men was to land at Milford Haven, and there be joined by Powis and Petre with another army. There were forty thousand men ready in London, to kill all the soldiers as they came out of their lodgings. He was to have four thousand pounds for a great murder, meaning no doubt that of the king, and the Government was to be offered to one, if he would hold it of the Church. The king, Monmouth, Ormond, Buckingham, and Shaftesbury were to be killed. Lords Carrington and Brudenel were named as engaged in the plot, and were immediately arrested. When Charles heard this astounding story, so diametrically opposed to his former tales, he exclaimed, "Surely the man has received a new lesson during the last four-and-twenty hours!" and no doubt he had. These additions and improvements were constantly going on, without regard to the most glaring self-contradictions; but the temper of Parliament made them disregard obvious falsehoods of the most flagrant kind. So long as there was a chance of excluding the Duke of York from Parliament, these horrible stories were kept before the public imagination; but the moment the proviso passed in his favour, the attack was diverted into another and a higher channel. Buckingham had formerly endeavoured to induce Charles to divorce the queen: now a deadly attack was made upon her.