During the sitting of the parliament, and after its prorogation and dissolution, the trials of the pretended criminals were carried on; and the courts of judicature, places which, if possible, ought to be kept more pure from injustice than even national assemblies themselves, were strongly infected with the same party rage and bigoted prejudices. Coleman, the most obnoxious of the conspirators, was first brought to his trial. His letters were produced against him. They contained, as he himself confessed, much indiscretion: but unless so far as it is illegal to be a zealous Catholic, they seemed to prove nothing criminal, much less treasonable against him. Gates and Bedloe deposed, that he had received a commission, signed by the superior of the Jesuits, to be Papal secretary of state, and had consented to the poisoning, shooting, and stabbing of the king: he had even, according to Oates’s deposition, advanced a guinea to promote those bloody purposes. These wild stories were confounded with the projects contained in his letters; and Coleman received sentence of death. The sentence was soon after executed upon him.[*] He suffered with calmness and constancy, and to the last persisted in the strongest protestations of his innocence.
Coleman’s execution was succeeded by the trial of Father Ireland, who, it is pretended, had signed, together with fifty Jesuits, the great resolution of murdering the king. Grove and Pickering, who had undertaken to shoot him, were tried at the same time. The only witnesses against the prisoners were still Gates and Bedloe. Ireland affirmed, that he was in Staffordshire all the month of August last, a time when Oates’s evidence made him in London. He proved his assertion by good evidence; and would have proved it by undoubted, had he not most iniquitously been debarred, while in prison, from all use of pen, ink, and paper, and denied the liberty of sending for witnesses. All these men, before their arraignment, were condemned in the opinion of the judges, jury, and spectators; and to be a Jesuit, or even a Catholic, was of itself a sufficient proof of guilt. The chief justice,[**] in particular, gave sanction to all the narrow prejudices and bigoted fury of the populace. Instead of being counsel for the prisoners, as his office required, he pleaded the cause against them, browbeat their witnesses, and on every occasion represented their guilt as certain and uncontroverted. He even went so far as publicly to affirm, that the Papists had not the same principles which Protestants have, and therefore were not entitled to that common credence, which the principles and practices of the latter call for. And when the jury brought in their verdict against the prisoners, he said, “You have done, gentlemen, like very good subjects, and very good Christians, that is to say, like very good Protestants, and now much good may their thirty thousand masses do them;” alluding to the masses by which Pickering was to be rewarded for murdering the king. All these unhappy men went to execution, protesting their innocence; a circumstance which made no impression on the spectators.
* December 3.
* Sir William Scroggs.
1679
The opinion, that the Jesuits allowed of lies and mental reservations for promoting a good cause, was at this time so universally received, that no credit was given to testimony delivered either by that order, or by any of their disciples. It was forgotten, that all the conspirators engaged in the gunpowder treason, and Garnet, the Jesuit among the rest, had freely on the scaffold made confession of their guilt.
Though Bedloe had given information of Godfrey’s murder, he still remained a single evidence against the persons accused; and all the allurements of profit and honor had not hitherto tempted any one to confirm the testimony of that informer. At last, means were found to complete the legal evidence. One Prance, a silversmith and a Catholic, had been accused by Bedloe of being an accomplice in the murder; and upon his denial, had been thrown into prison, loaded with heavy irons and confined to the condemned hole, a place cold, dark, and full of nastiness. Such rigors were supposed to be exercised by orders from the secret committee of lords, particularly Shaftesbury and Buckingham; who, in examining the prisoners, usually employed (as it is said, and indeed sufficiently proved) threatenings and promises, rigor and indulgence, and every art, under pretence of extorting the truth from them. Prance had not courage to resist, but confessed himself an accomplice in Godfrey’s murder. Being asked concerning the plot, he also thought proper to be acquainted with it, and conveyed some intelligence to the council. Among other absurd circumstances, he said that one Le Fevre bought a second-hand sword of him; because he knew not, as he said, what times were at hand; and Prance expressing some concern for poor tradesmen, if such times came, Le Fevre replied, that it would be better for tradesmen if the Catholic religion were restored; and particularly, that there would be more church work for silversmiths. All this information, with regard to the plot as well as the murder of Godfrey, Prance solemnly retracted, both before the king and the secret committee: but being again thrown into prison, he was induced, by new terrors and new sufferings, to confirm his first information, and was now produced as a sufficient evidence.
Hill, Green, and Berry were tried for Godfrey’s murder, all of them men of low stations. Hill was servant to a physician: the other two belonged to the Popish chapel at Somerset House. It is needless to run over all the particulars of a long trial: it will be sufficient to say, that Bedloe’s evidence and Prance’s were in many circumstances totally irreconcilable, that both of them labored under unsurmountable difficulties, not to say gross absurdities; and that they were invalidated by contrary evidence, which is altogether convincing. But all was in vain: the prisoners were condemned and executed. They all denied their guilt at their execution; and as Berry died a Protestant, this circumstance was regarded as very considerable: but, instead of its giving some check to the general credulity of the people, men were only surprised, that a Protestant could be induced at his death to persist in so manifest a falsehood.
As the army could neither be kept up nor disbanded without money, the king, how little hopes soever he could entertain of more compliance, found himself obliged to summon a new parliament. The blood already shed on account of the Popish plot, instead of satiating the people, served only as an incentive to their fury; and each conviction of a criminal was hitherto regarded as a new proof of those horrible designs imputed to the Papists. This election is perhaps the first in England, which, since the commencement of the monarchy, had been carried on by a violent contest between the parties, and where the court interested itself to a high degree in the choice of the national representatives. But all its efforts were fruitless, in opposition to the torrent of prejudices which prevailed. Religion, liberty, property, even the lives of men, were now supposed to be at stake; and no security, it was thought, except in a vigilant parliament, could be found against the impious and bloody conspirators. Were there any part of the nation to which the ferment, occasioned by the Popish plot, had not as yet propagated itself, the new elections, by interesting the whole people in public concerns, tended to diffuse it into the remotest corner; and the consternation universally excited proved an excellent engine for influencing the electors. All the zealots of the former parliament were rechosen: new ones were added: the Presbyterians, in particular, being transported with the most inveterate antipathy against Popery, were very active and very successful in the elections. That party, it is said, first began at this time the abuse of splitting their freeholds, in order to multiply votes and electors. By accounts which came from every part of England, it was concluded, that the new representatives would, if possible, exceed the old in their refractory opposition to the court, and furious persecution of the Catholics.
The king was alarmed when he saw so dreadful a tempest arise from such small and unaccountable beginnings. His life, if Gates and Bedloe’s information were true, had been aimed at by the Catholics: even the duke’s was in danger; the higher, therefore, the rage mounted against Popery, the more should the nation have been reconciled to these princes in whom, it appeared, the church of Rome reposed no confidence. But there is a sophistry which attends all the passions, especially those into which the populace enter. Men gave credit to the informers, so far as concerned the guilt of the Catholics: but they still retained their old suspicions, that these religionists were secretly favored by the king, and had obtained the most entire ascendant over his brother. Charles had too much penetration not to see the danger to which the succession, and even his own crown and dignity, now stood exposed. A numerous party, he found, was formed against him: on the one hand, composed of a populace, so credulous from prejudice, so blinded with religious antipathy, as implicitly to believe the most palpable absurdities; and conducted, on the other hand, by leaders so little scrupulous, as to endeavor, by encouraging perjury, subornation, lies, impostures, and even by shedding innocent blood, to gratify their own furious ambition, and subvert all legal authority. Roused from his lethargy by so imminent a peril, he began to exert that vigor of mind, of which, on great occasions, he was not destitute; and without quitting in appearance his usual facility of temper, he collected an industry, firmness, and vigilance, of which he was believed altogether incapable. These qualities, joined to dexterity and prudence, conducted him happily through the many shoals which surrounded him; and he was at last able to make the storm fall on the heads of those who had blindly raised or artfully conducted it.
One chief step which the king took towards gratifying and appeasing his people and parliament, was, desiring the duke to withdraw beyond sea, that no further suspicion might remain of the influence of Popish counsels. The duke readily complied; but first required an order for that purpose, signed by the king; lest his absenting himself should be interpreted as a proof of fear or of guilt. He also desired, that his brother should satisfy him, as well as the public, by a declaration of the illegitimacy of the duke of Monmouth.