One thought, one passion alone—terror and hatred of the Catholics—filled the breasts of the new members. Some months before the downfall of Lord Danby a terrible and unparalleled piece of news had overwhelmed the mind of the nation, clouded the strongest judgments, and impelled the most moderate to violence. King Charles, while taking a walk in St. James's Park, received from a certain Captain Kirby, an unknown and insignificant personage, the revelation of a plot stated to have been hatched against his life. The informer, Kirby, referred to Dr. Tonge, an ecclesiastic of the Church of England, and known to some persons of the court. Tonge affirmed the existence of a great Papist conspiracy. Letters were seized; the king and the Duke of York judged them to be forgeries. Tonge produced his principal witness, Titus Oates, son of an Anabaptist preacher, but in holy orders, a chaplain in the navy, thence soon dismissed, a convert to Catholicism, and twice ignominiously expelled from the College of the Jesuits. As audacious as he was corrupt, he maintained with effrontery that his relations with the Jesuits had given him occasion to discover the entire plot; that documents had passed into his hands; the Pope had assigned the government of England to the Jesuits, who were spread over all parts of the three kingdoms in order to labor in the work of the general conversion; the life of the king was threatened, as well as that of all obstinate Protestants; the Fire of London had been the work of the Jesuits; a second fire was preparing for the port of London; all the ships were to be delivered to the flames; the Pope had already named the ministers who were to govern England for him. The good sense of the king, favored by his secret confidence with regard to the Catholics, enabled him at once to reject this monstrous tissue of falsehoods and calumnies. Some persons, however, were mentioned, and public opinion began to be excited. The papers of Coleman, who had been occasionally employed by the Duke of York, were seized at the moment when he was beginning to burn them. Enough remained to furnish evidence, not of a plot properly so called, but of the hopes which the Catholicism of the heir to the throne, as well as the personal inclinations of the king, had engendered in the Church of Rome. "We have a great work in hand," wrote Coleman to Father La Chaise, confessor to Louis XIV.; "it is a question of nothing less than the conversion of the three kingdoms, and perhaps by this means of the destruction of that odious heresy which has so long prevailed over the people of the North. Never have such hopes been able to flourish since the death of our Queen Mary. God has given us a prince who has, by a miracle, become ardently desirous of being the author and the instrument of this glorious enterprise; but we are certain to meet with so many obstacles and so much opposition, that it is important to afford us all the help that one can." Coleman fled the country.
This was more than was wanted to inflame the minds and excite the fears of all the members of the council, before which Oates and Tonge appeared. A terrible incident came to add to the public anxiety and indignation. Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey, a magistrate of London, who had received the depositions of Titus Oates, and perhaps even the confessions of Coleman, whose friend he was, disappeared from his house for some days, then was found murdered in a ditch not far from the church of St. Pancras. His sword was plunged into his breast. An attempt was made to represent this as a case of suicide, but both the medical examination and popular feeling denounced the murderers. The body remained exposed for two days. "Many went to see it," says Burnet, "who went away much moved by the sight, and indeed men's spirits were so sharpened upon it that we all looked on it as a very great happiness that the people did not vent their fury upon the Popish about the town." An immense crowd gathered at the interment of Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey; he was regarded as a martyr to Protestantism.
The fears of Parliament were as great as those of the people of London. The king had announced an intention of bringing the affair before the ordinary tribunals. The Houses of Parliament had summoned Titus Oates before them; voted him their thanks and a pension of £1,200 sterling; they indicted all the Roman Catholic lords named by the renegade; the prisons were crowded with Papists; for the first time the question of the succession to the throne was agitated in Parliament. The Duke of York had ceased to take his place in the Privy Council; this prudent course secured him an exemption from the general measure which soon afterwards forbade the Catholic Peers to sit in Parliament. The Test Act had already excluded Papists from the House of Commons. The denunciations continued, and to Titus Oates was now added one Bedloe: the executions commenced; a few obscure Catholics had already paid with their lives for the terrors of England when the new Parliament assembled at Westminster.
The state of parties had undergone an important change. The great divisions which were destined so long to distinguish opinions in England, began to appear in the legislature of 1675: the Tories, under the direction of Lord Godolphin and Lawrence Hyde, second son of Lord Clarendon, occupying the place of the court party, and remaining devoted to the royal authority; the Whigs, who had for their leaders Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Essex, and Lord William Russell, and forming the country party, more concerned for the rights of the nation than for the prerogatives of the crown; and an intermediate group, distinguished under the insulting name of "Trimmers," inclining, sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, according to the impulse of the lively, penetrating, and critical mind of their chief, Lord Halifax. Lord Sunderland, clever and unpopular, was as a rule in accord with Halifax. Nearly all formed part of the new council of thirty members which Sir William Temple had proposed to the king as a constitutional experiment. That wise diplomatist also hoped, by thus engaging in the royal council the Parliamentary leaders, to protect the crown against the encroachments of Parliament, and to secure in equal degree the nation against the pretensions of the crown.
The nature of things and the necessities of affairs were not slow in prevailing over the scheme thus ably planned; the new council had scarcely entered upon its duties when an inner council began to direct all its deliberations, and found itself alone in charge of the government. Sir William Temple, Lord Essex, Lord Halifax, and Lord Sunderland were the real members. Lord Shaftesbury was president of the council.
It was the latter who placed himself at the head of the Protestant party in Parliament. The nation had become alive to the danger which threatened its faith as well as its liberties under the future reign of the Duke of York. The king had in vain removed his brother, who had retired to Brussels. The House of Commons solemnly voted his exclusion from the throne. Before the Bill could be carried to the House of Lords, Charles prorogued Parliament.
The indignation was profound. "I will bring to the block those who have advised the prorogation," cried Shaftesbury in a transport of anger. The chief of the Whigs had, however, on that day obtained the success of a measure which he had long cherished; the royal assent had been accorded to the Habeas Corpus Bill, securing the personal liberty of every English subject, and the right to be released on bail from the prisons of detention. This guarantee of the rights rendered sacred by Magna Charta was hailed with enthusiasm by the people, who justly attributed the credit of it to the president of the council. This title was not destined to be long accorded to him. In July, 1679, the king dissolved Parliament. Some months later he recalled his brother from Brussels and dismissed Lord Shaftesbury. The friends of the latter suffered his fate; Lord William Russell, Lord Cavendish, and Lord Essex retired from the council. Sir William Temple, disgusted by the failure of his new plan of government, returned to his country-house to cultivate his beautiful gardens, which he had never wished to leave. Halifax and Sunderland alone remained in power. Lawrence Hyde and Sidney Godolphin were soon associated with them. Under the presidency of the chief of the Trimmers the power passed once more into the hands of the Tories. [Footnote 2]
[Footnote 2: The appellations Whig and Tory were originally given to the fanatical Covenanters and Catholic Outlaws in Scotland and Ireland. From them they passed to the political parties.]