[735] Id. 4th Dec. 1680.
[736] Lords' Journ. March 24, 1681. The very next day the Commons sent a message to demand judgment on the impeachment against him. Com. Journ. March 25.
[737] Shower's Reports, ii. 335. "He was bailed to appear at the Lords' bar the first day of the then next parliament." The catholic lords were bailed the next day. This proves that the impeachment was not held to be at an end.
[738] Lords' Journals, May 22, 1685.
[739] Upon considering the proceedings in the House of Lords on this subject, Oct. 6 and 30, 1690, and especially the protest signed by eight peers on the latter day, there can be little doubt that their release had been chiefly grounded on the act of grace, and not on the abandonment of the impeachment.
[740] Bishop Parker is not wrong in saying that the House of Commons had so long accustomed themselves to strange fictions about popery, that, upon the first discovery of Oates's plot, they readily believed everything he said; for they had long expected whatever he declared. Hist. sui temp. p. 248 (of the translation).
[741] Parl. Hist. 1024, 1035; State Trials, vii. 1; Kennet, 327, 337, 351; North's Examen, 129, 177; Ralph, 386; Burnet, i. 555. Scroggs tried Coleman with much rudeness and partiality; but his summing up in reference to the famous passage in the letters is not deficient in acuteness. In fact, this not only convicted Coleman, but raised a general conviction of the truth of a plot—and a plot there was, though not Oates's.
[742] Examen, p. 196.
[743] R. v. Farwell and others; State Trials, viii. 1361. They were indicted for publishing some letters to prove that Godfrey had killed himself. They defended themselves by calling witnesses to prove the truth of the fact, which, though in a case of libel, Pemberton allowed. But their own witnesses proved that Godfrey's body had all the appearance of being strangled.
The Roman catholics gave out, at the time of Godfrey's death, that he had killed himself; and hurt their own cause by foolish lies. North's Examen, p. 200.