[744] It was deposed by a respectable witness, that Godfrey entertained apprehensions on account of what he had done as to the plot, and had said, "On my conscience, I believe I shall be the first martyr." State Trials, vii. 168. These little additional circumstances, which are suppressed by later historians, who speak of the plot as unfit to impose on any but the most bigoted fanatics, contributed to make up a body of presumptive and positive evidence, from which human relief is rarely withheld.
It is remarkable that the most acute and diligent historian we possess for those times, Ralph, does not in the slightest degree pretend to account for Godfrey's death; though, in his general reflections on the plot (p. 555) he relies too much on the assertions of North and l'Estrange.
[745] State Trials, vii. 259; North's Examen, 240.
[746] State Trials, vol. vii. passim. On the trial of Green, Berry, and Hill, for Godfrey's murder, part of the story for the prosecution was, that the body was brought to Hill's lodgings on the Saturday, and remained there till Monday. The prisoner called witnesses who lodged in the same house, to prove that it could not have been there without their knowledge. Wild, one of the judges, assuming, as usual, the truth of the story as beyond controversy, said it was very suspicious that they should see or hear nothing of it; and another, Dolben, told them it was well they were not indicted. Id. 199. Jones, summing up the evidence on Sir Thomas Gascoigne's trial at York (an aged catholic gentleman, most improbably accused of accession to the plot), says to the jury: "Gentlemen, you have the king's witness on his oath; he that testifies against him is barely on his word, and he is a papist" (Id. 1039): thus deriving an argument from an iniquitous rule, which, at that time, prevailed in our law, of refusing to hear the prisoner's witnesses upon oath. Gascoigne, however, was acquitted.
It would swell this note to an unwarrantable length, were I to extract so much of the trials as might fully exhibit all the instances of gross partiality in the conduct of the judges. I must, therefore, refer my readers to the volume itself, a standing monument of the necessity of the revolution; not only as it rendered the judges independent of the Crown, but as it brought forward those principles of equal and indifferent justice, which can never be expected to flourish but under the shadow of liberty.
[747] State Trials, 119, 315, 344.
[748] Roger North, whose long account of the popish plot is, as usual with him, a medley of truth and lies, acuteness and absurdity, represents his brother, the chief justice, as perfectly immaculate in the midst of this degradation of the bench. The State Trials, however, show that he was as partial and unjust towards the prisoners as any of the rest, till the government thought it necessary to interfere. The moment when the judges veered round, was on the trial of Sir George Wakeman, physician to the queen. Scroggs, who had been infamously partial against the prisoners upon every former occasion, now treated Oates and Bedloe as they deserved, though to the aggravation of his own disgrace. State Trials, vii. 619-686.
[749] State Trials, 1552; Parl. Hist. 1229. Stafford, though not a man of much ability, had rendered himself obnoxious as a prominent opposer of all measures intended to check the growth of popery. His name appears constantly in protests upon such occasions; as, for instance, March 3, 1678, against the bill for raising money for a French war. Reresby praises his defence very highly. P. 108. The Duke of York, on the contrary, or his biographer, observes: "Those who wished Lord Stafford well were of opinion that, had he managed the advantages which were given him with dexterity, he would have made the greatest part of his judges ashamed to condemn him; but it was his misfortune to play his game worst, when he had the best cards."—P. 637.
[750] I take this from extracts out of those sermons, contained in a Roman catholic pamphlet printed in 1687, and entitled "Good Advice to the Pulpits." The protestant divines did their cause no good by misrepresentation of their adversaries, and by their propensity to rudeness and scurrility. The former fault indeed existed in a much greater degree on the opposite side, but by no means the latter. See also a treatise by Barlow, published in 1679, entitled, "Popish Principles pernicious to Protestant Princes."
[751] Parl. Hist. 1040.