This vigorous measure, though it might have been foreseen, excited such astonishment in the country party, as deprived them of all spirit, and reduced them to absolute despair. They were sensible, though too late, that the king had finally taken his resolution, and was determined to endure any extremity rather than submit to those terms which they had resolved to impose upon him. They found that he had patiently waited till affairs should come to full maturity; and having now engaged a national party on his side, had boldly set his enemies at defiance. No parliament, they knew, would be summoned for some years; and during that long interval, the court, though perhaps at the head of an inferior party, yet being possessed of all authority, would have every advantage over a body dispersed and disunited. These reflections crowded upon every one; and all the exclusionists were terrified, lest Charles should follow the blow by some action more violent, and immediately take vengeance on them for their long and obstinate opposition to his measures. The king on his part was no less apprehensive, lest despair might prompt them to have recourse to force, and make some sudden attempt upon his person. Both parties therefore hurried from Oxford; and in an instant that city, so crowded and busy, was left in its usual emptiness and tranquillity.
The court party gathered force from the dispersion and astonishment of their antagonists, and adhered more firmly to the king, whose resolutions, they now saw, could be entirely depended on. The violences of the exclusionists were every where exclaimed against and aggravated; and even the reality of the plot, that great engine of their authority, was openly called in question. The clergy especially were busy in this great revolution; and being moved, partly by their own fears partly by the insinuations of the court, they represented all their antagonists as sectaries and republicans, and rejoiced in escaping those perils which they believed to have been hanging over them. Principles the most opposite to civil liberty were every where enforced from the pulpit, and adopted in numerous addresses; where the king was flattered in his present measures, and congratulated on his escape from parliaments. Could words have been depended on, the nation appeared to be running fast into voluntary servitude, and seemed even ambitious of resigning into the king’s hands all the privileges transmitted to them, through so many ages, by their gallant ancestors.
But Charles had sagacity enough to distinguish between men’s real internal sentiments, and the language which zeal and opposition to a contrary faction may sometimes extort from them. Notwithstanding all these professions of duty and obedience, he was resolved not to trust, for a long time, the people with a new election, but to depend entirely on his own economy for alleviating those necessities under which he labored. Great retrenchments were made in the household: even his favorite navy was neglected: Tangiers, though it had cost great sums of money, was a few years after abandoned and demolished. The mole was entirely destroyed; and the garrison, being brought over to England, served to augment that small army which the king relied on as the solid basis of his authority. It had been happy for the nation, had Charles used his victory with justice and moderation equal to the prudence and dexterity with which he obtained it.
The first step taken by the court was the trial of Fitzharris. Doubts were raised by the jury with regard to their power of trying him, after the concluding vote of the commons: but the judges took upon them to decide the question in the affirmative, and the jury were obliged to proceed. The writing of the libel was clearly proved upon Fitzharris: the only question was with regard to his intentions. He asserted, that he was a spy of the court, and had accordingly carried the libel to the duchess of Portsmouth; and he was desirous that the jury should, in this transaction, consider him as a cheat, not as a traitor. He failed, however, somewhat in the proof; and was brought in guilty of treason by the jury.
Finding himself entirely in the hands of the king, he now retracted all his former impostures with regard to the popish plot, and even endeavored to atone for them by new impostures against the country party. He affirmed, that these fictions had been extorted from him by the suggestions and artifices of Treby, the recorder, and of Bethel and Cornish, the two sheriffs: this account he persisted in even at his execution; and though men knew that nothing could be depended on which came from one so corrupt, and so lost to all sense of honor, yet were they inclined, from his perseverance, to rely somewhat more on his veracity in these last asseverations. But it appears that his wife had some connections with Mrs. Wall, the favorite maid of the duchess of Portsmouth; and Fitzharris hoped, if he persisted in a story agreeable to the court, that some favor might, on that account, be shown to his family.
It is amusing to reflect on the several lights in which this story has been represented by the opposite factions. The country party affirmed, that Fitzharris had been employed by the court, in order to throw the odium of the libel on the exclusionists, and thereby give rise to a Protestant plot: the court party maintained, that the exclusionists had found out Fitzharris, a spy of the ministers, and had set him upon this undertaking, from an intention of loading the court with the imputation of such a design upon the exclusionists. Rather than acquit their antagonists, both sides were willing to adopt an account the most intricate and incredible. It was a strange situation in which the people at this time were placed; to be every day tortured with these perplexed stories, and inflamed with such dark suspicions against their fellow-citizens. This was no less than the fifteenth false plot, or sham plot, as they were then called, with which the court, it was imagined, had endeavored to load their adversaries.[*]
* College’s trial.
The country party had intended to make use of Fitzharris’s evidence against the duke and the Catholics; and his execution was therefore a great mortification to them. But the king and his ministers were resolved not to be contented with so slender an advantage. They were determined to pursue the victory, and to employ against the exclusionists those very offensive arms, however unfair, which that party had laid up in store against their antagonists. The whole gang of spies, witnesses, informers, suborners, who had so long been supported and encouraged by the leading patriots, finding now that the king was entirely master, turned short upon their old patrons and offered their service to the ministers. To the disgrace of the court and of the age, they were received with hearty welcome, and their testimony, or rather perjury, made use of in order to commit legal murder upon the opposite party. With an air of triumph and derision, it was asked, “Are not these men good witnesses, who have established the Popish plot, upon whose testimony Stafford and so many Catholics have been executed, and whom you yourselves have so long celebrated as men of credit and veracity? You have admitted them into your bosom: they are best acquainted with your treasons: they are determined in another shape to serve their king and country: and you cannot complain, that the same measure which you meted to others, should now, by a righteous doom or vengeance, be measured out to you.”
It is certain that the principle of retaliation may serve in some cases as a full apology, in others as an alleviation, for a conduct which would otherwise be exposed to great blame. But these infamous arts, which poison justice in its very source, and break all the bands of human society, are so detestable and dangerous, that no pretence of retaliation can be pleaded as an apology or even an alleviation of the crime incurred by them. On the contrary, the greater indignation the king and his ministers felt, when formerly exposed to the perjuries of abandoned men, the more reluctance should they now have discovered against employing the same instruments of vengeance upon their antagonists.
The first person on whom the ministers fell was one College, a London joiner, who had become extremely noted for his zeal against Popery, and was much connected with Shaftesbury and the leaders of the country party: for as they relied much upon the populace, men of College’s rank and station were useful to them. College had been in Oxford armed with sword and pistol during the sitting of the parliament; and this was made the foundation of his crime. It was pretended that a conspiracy had been entered into to seize the king’s person, and detain him in confinement, till he should make the concessions demanded of him. The sheriffs of London were in strong opposition to the court; and it was not strange, that the grand jury named by them rejected the bill against College. The prisoner was therefore sent to Oxford, where the treason was said to have been committed. Lord Norris, a courtier, was sheriff of the county; and the inhabitants were in general devoted to the court party. A jury was named, consisting entirely of royalists; and though they were men of credit and character, yet such was the factious rage which prevailed, that little justice could be expected by the prisoner. Some papers, containing hints and directions for his defence, were taken from him, as he was conducted to his trial; an iniquity which some pretended to justify by alleging, that a like violence had been practised against a prisoner daring the fury of the Popish plot. Such wild notes of retaliation were at that time propagated by the court party.