There have not been wanting either among his contemporaries or in later times some to assert that Oates was procured and his story directed by the Earl of Shaftesbury. Once and again the case has broken down. Neither is there the slightest evidence for the notion, nor has it the least intrinsic probability. So clear a head as Shaftesbury’s could never have been guilty of that monstrous stupidity. Clumsy forgery, feeble promises, lame excuses, bald melodrama characterised the informer’s entry into public life. The tale he told was full of gross improbabilities. And with what truth it contained Shaftesbury could not have been acquainted. But what makes certainty still more certain is that on his first appearance Oates was so little sure of support from any quarter that he not only exonerated the Duke of York from complicity in the plot, but was so disobliging to the Whigs as to name him for a possible victim. The king at first thought he saw traces of Shaftesbury’s hand, but was soon convinced that he erred. Before they had time to gauge the situation the Whigs laughed at the Plot as an artifice for keeping the army on foot.[405] Yet though he had no claim to be Oates’ tutor, Shaftesbury welcomed him with alacrity. Fortune as if from heaven had fallen at his feet, and he prepared to make the most of it, and at the same time to vindicate the penetration of Colbert Croissy, who had called him “le plus fourbe, le plus injuste, le plus malhonnête d’Angleterre.”
The wished occasion of the plot he takes,
Some circumstance he finds, but more he makes;
and, since the making of circumstance lies as well in the reception as in the invention of facts, justice must be admitted to the second line equally with the first. Circumstance was exactly what Shaftesbury could provide. He created the atmosphere for Oates to work in.
The miscreant who a few weeks before had been begging from the Jesuit fathers rose to an undreamed height of luxury and influence. Repeated addresses from the Commons obtained for him lodgings which he shared with Dr. Tonge in Whitehall.[406] The modest sum of £12 a week allotted him “for dyett and expenses” was eked out by occasional gifts of £50 “as of free gift and royal bounty” and the payment of long bills incurred for his witnesses at trials. Within twelve months the total amount made out to him reached the figure of £945 : 8 : 10. Yet Oates was but one of a host whom the popular fury enabled to batten on the royal resources; and during the same period the accounts of the secret service money, disbursed almost exclusively to informers, showed an expenditure of nearly £5000.[407] The Salamanca doctor made the most of his luck. Robed like a bishop and puffed with insolence he became the darling of the Whig party. He set up as “a solemn housekeeper” and kept a fine table. Each morning there waited at his lodgings to dress him two or three gentlemen who vied for the honour of holding his basin. He was received by the primate at Lambeth. The Bishop of Ely welcomed him as a frequent guest at dinner and was unable to set bounds to the brutality of his conversation, till Sir John Reresby administered a merited rebuke. He received the public thanks of the House of Lords. The House of Commons made the Duke of Monmouth responsible for his safety, the Lord Chamberlain for his lodging, the Lord High Treasurer for his nourishment. His sermons were public events, his person followed by admiring crowds. Popular odes were composed in his honour, popular dinners were given him in the city, designs represented him knocking the tiara from the head of “that infallible fop, the pope,” or more exalted still, as an angel looking down from heaven. Among English merchants abroad his health was drunk next to that of the king. Everywhere he was courted, fêted, acknowledged. “Whig peers,” writes Sir George Sitwell, “supported him by their subscriptions. Whig peers welcomed him to their houses in London and in the country. Whig peers rolled him down in their coaches to aid by his unblushing presence the election of Whig candidates, Whig peers defended him in council and flocked to support him at his trials, while their political followers were engaged in threatening and hustling the witnesses.”[408] Oates had become for the moment the representative of the aspirations of the Whig party.
In this the influence of Shaftesbury is clearly visible. Though he did not procure Oates’ appearance, it cannot be supposed that the informer’s subsequent steps were without his knowledge and approval. At his first examination by the council Oates had declared that he knew no more than he had said against any person of what quality soever. Within two months he thought better of his memory in a way that points to refreshment from another source. The wife of one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber was entrusted with a message that, if the king would give way to it, Oates had somewhat to swear against no less a person than the queen. The royal leave was granted. On November 25 therefore Oates declared to the king in full council that if all other attempts upon his Majesty’s life had failed the queen was to have been employed to murder her husband. Three days later he appeared at the bar of the House of Commons and raised his strident voice with the words, “I do accuse the queen for conspiring the death of the king and contriving how to compass it.” It was a ludicrous invention of having heard the queen in conversation with certain Jesuits approve the plan for Charles’ assassination and promise to assist it. Bedloe had a similar story, which the Lords also heard as well as that of Oates. When they asked what the two had meant by keeping back their information, Oates replied that by “no other person of quality” he had meant none other of the peers. Bedloe said he had forgotten. The House of Commons, stirred by their deep affection and care for the royal person, voted an immediate address for the removal of the consort and her household from Whitehall, and sent to beg the Lords’ concurrence; but the Lords, dissatisfied with the depositions laid before them, refused, under protest of Shaftesbury and two of his followers, to join in the vote. Their consideration had been won by the queen’s behaviour on the subject of Godfrey’s murder, and they refused to allow her to be molested. In public she bore herself bravely, but her intimates knew how greatly she had been distressed by the attack. By an order from the king Oates was placed in strict confinement, his papers were seized, his servants dismissed, and free access to his rooms restrained. A strong remonstrance was prepared by the Commons, and Charles closed the incident by restoring the villain to his former liberty.[409]
The attack on the queen affords a clue to the ideas of both adversaries in the great battle that was being waged in the English state between authority and revolution. Mrs. Elliot, wife of Elliot of the bedchamber, had been the agent who took Oates’ message to the king. She had also spoken to Tonge, and in a significant statement to the House of Lords confessed she had been sent to him by Lady Gerard of Bromley. The mention of this lady’s name throws a ray of light on the doubtful intrigue, for she was in close connection with the Whig leaders; and were it in any case permissible to suppose that Oates had acted without assurance of support in bringing forward a charge of so delicate a nature, her appearance in the background would make it certain that this was not so. It may be taken that the move was directed from the headquarters of the Whig party. What then was the object? Catherine had never played any part whatever in politics. In obtaining favour for those of her religion she had held strictly to the terms of her marriage treaty. After the first shock at her husband’s faithless impudence she had passed her time in gaiety, dancing, and frivolity. Only one end could be served by attempting to prove her a party to the Plot. It was to obtain her divorce and to marry the king to a wife who should bear him Protestant children. The knowledge of Catherine’s childlessness had given rise before to talk of a similar project.[410] If it could actually be brought to completion and Charles beget a Protestant heir to the throne, there seemed a fair chance that the clouds which hung over the future of England would be dispelled. Desire for power alone did not then actuate Shaftesbury, but a purer hope for his country’s prosperity. For had the scheme of divorce borne fruit and the Duke of York, with all the unrest and insecurity that his presence denoted, been removed from the succession by the appearance of a child who could hardly have been educated except as a Protestant, Shaftesbury could not have hoped himself to exercise a decisive influence on the king’s policy. The storm gave Shaftesbury his power; when calm returned it would dissolve. This is his claim to real statesmanship. He was willing, it must be believed, to sacrifice power to principle, and to plan, though with odious implements, advantage to the nation, while he contemplated for himself a relapse into insignificance. What followed under Charles II’s successor justified his position. Swift changes transformed his schemes and drove him to counsels of extremity, but the Revolution suspends judgment against him. The principle he embodied was that which William the deliverer came to England to save from utter ruin, the reasoned liberty of thought and action. For that he worked and made others work without sparing, bribed while his own hands were clean of gold, joined while his private life was pure with profligates of unrestrained license; for that he planned murder and brewed rebellion; for that he “fretted the pigmy body to decay”;[411] for that he died. This particular proposal was not without recommendation. It was the simplest way out of the difficulty. It could cause no political commotion in the country. No principle would be overset by it nor any tradition overruled. It might be supposed to be not unpalatable to Charles. The English Reformation had followed one divorce; another might have rendered the English Revolution unnecessary. There was not however the smallest chance of success, for the king was unalterably opposed to anything of the sort. Badly as he had behaved to Catherine, he was not without gratitude and affection for her and was constant in his resolution not to add to his other faults the graver one of desertion.[412] Further, Charles was determined to let the royal power suffer injury in no respect. When the subject of the accusation prepared against the queen was first broached, he said privately that he was willing to give Oates line enough. It was the secret of the king’s whole policy during the agitation of the Plot. He was playing the Whig party as a skilful angler plays his fish. Each length of line run out seemed to be the last of his reserve. Throughout his reign Charles had been striving to restore the power of the monarchy in England. Now it looked as if all his efforts had been in vain. His opponents appeared about to gain the final victory. The king’s only chance was to let them exhaust themselves by the violence of their onslaught.
Having failed in one direction, Shaftesbury’s attention was promptly turned to others. A difficulty confronting him in his hope of excluding the Duke of York from the succession was the choice of a substitute. The scheme of Charles’ divorce and second marriage would have overcome this, but when that was dashed it became necessary to pursue the question further. At the time when Clarendon was chief minister, his opponents and among them the Duke of Buckingham proposed, in order to remove his son-in-law James, whose influence was thought to support him, that the Duke of Monmouth, the eldest of Charles’ sons living in England, should be declared legitimate and heir to the crown.[413] The idea had created agitation at other times as well; and now Shaftesbury infused fresh life into it by adopting the bastard’s cause and supporting him with a powerful following. It was this which rent the Whig party and destroyed its chance of success. Up to a certain point Shaftesbury could carry the other leaders. Halifax was at one with him on the treatment of the Plot, for he said that it must be handled as if it were true, whether it were so or no, and told Sir William Temple that, unless he would concur in points so necessary for the people’s satisfaction, he would brand him everywhere as a papist. He demanded that Catholic priests should without receiving public warning be submitted to the rigours of a law unenforced since the reign of Elizabeth. He was willing to join with Shaftesbury in planning such steps as the French ambassador thought would tend to the entire annihilation of the royal authority and reduce England to a republic under kingly forms. But when it became apparent that Shaftesbury had adopted the cause of the graceful, popular, feather-headed Duke of Monmouth, Halifax drew away to the king’s side and took with him “the party volant,” which boasted with the proud title of Trimmers to hold the balance in the constitution. With them for the moment were also the more respectable of the old Presbyterian party under the lead of Lord Holles.[414] If the nation was divided by the Exclusion bill, those in favour of the project were divided among themselves by the problem in whose favour exclusion should be. Of the two claimants to consideration the Prince of Orange in virtue of his wife and his mother had obviously the better title. On the other hand it was thought that his father-in-law the Duke of York might have a dangerous influence over him; and there were fears that the republican party in Holland would in alarm cast itself into the hands of Louis XIV and thus ruin still more irretrievably the interests it was desired to preserve. The reasons against the Duke of Monmouth were evident. To alter the succession for the son of a prostitute, for the duke’s mother was a woman of low character, could not but cause offence to many. Still more would resent the violation of the rights of an heir who had done nothing to forfeit them but adhere to the dictates of his conscience. Henry VIII had more than once altered the succession by act of Parliament, but though he declared his children bastards, they had yet been got in lawful wedlock. When it came to the point of a struggle, the Duke of York would have a good rallying cry. Monmouth was nevertheless secure of a strong party; all who were opposed to James for religion’s sake, who were many, and all Scotland, which grew daily more exasperated under the unpopular government of Lauderdale. It may be believed that the weakness no less than the strength of Monmouth’s position appealed to Shaftesbury. The Whig power lay not in support of the right, but in the constituencies, above all in London, where the sentiments by which Monmouth found favour had their strongest hold. Monmouth was moreover a man open to influence. Were the Duke of York successfully excluded, Shaftesbury was more likely to find room for the exercise of his talents under the rule of James’ nephew than under that of his son-in-law, William of Orange. Of the two Monmouth gave far better promise to the earl that he would retain his power in the country and regain it in the government. Shaftesbury took his measures accordingly. Yet the Whig prospect looked by no means assured. Dissension in the party was widespread. “I must confess,” wrote Algernon Sidney, summing up the arguments on the one side and on the other, “I do not know three men of a mind, and that a spirit of giddiness reigns amongst us, far beyond any I have ever observed in my life.”[415]
The prorogation of Parliament in May 1679 filled the nation with ill humours. Members rode down to their country seats in high discontent. Alarm was general and, wrote Sidney significantly, “they begin to look more than formerly unto the means of preserving themselves.”[416] Scarcely were they clear of Westminster before news came that the Scottish Covenanters were up in arms and in possession of Glasgow. The outbreak was not unwelcome. Nor was it unexpected. As early as the beginning of the month Sidney had information that a rising might be expected at any moment. A few weeks before an inflammatory speech was delivered by Shaftesbury in the House of Lords; he charged the government with fomenting discord in Scotland by its evil rule, and declared that in England popery was to have brought in slavery, but in Scotland, while slavery went before, popery was to follow. By the next post, it was said, forty copies of his speech were carried up north to hearten the malcontents by the knowledge that they were favoured by a party in England. The subject was freely discussed by the Whigs in London. Even if they were not in direct communication with the rebels, there can be no doubt that they had let it be known on which side their sympathies lay,[417] The events of the ill-fated rebellion of Bothwell Brigg do not belong to this story. It did not fail for want of effort on the part of those who had encouraged its authors. Lauderdale had been attacked by an address of the Commons, and a deputation under the Duke of Hamilton now arrived to plead against him before the king. Charles remarked that “they had objected many damned things he had done against them, but there was nothing objected that was done against his service.” When the revolt came up for discussion at the council, Lord Russell rose and expressed his wonder that war had not begun long ago rather than that it should have come at last, “since his Majesty thought fit to retain incendiaries near his person and in his very council.” Lauderdale begged leave to retire, but the king turned to Russell with the words, “No, no. Sit down, my Lord. This is no place for addresses.”[418] Charles, who boasted with some justice that he understood Scotch affairs better than any of his advisers, was for the immediate suppression of the rising by force. He was opposed by those who felt their interest advanced by its continuance. The Duke of Hamilton and his friends gave assurance that peace might be restored without bloodshed if only such men were employed as were acceptable to the nation. Shaftesbury did not conceal his desire that the rebels might at least be successful in obtaining a change of government. The Presbyterians and other sectaries were united in their hopes for their brethren in Scotland, and pamphlets were strewn about the town inciting the people to prevent the court from making preparations of war. By the suggestion of the Duke of Monmouth as commander-in-chief of the forces, the king gained his point. Shaftesbury had argued that English troops could not legally be sent to serve in Scotland. Glad to avail himself of the prestige his puppet would win from the campaign, he now consented to the arrangement, hoping that the duke would carry powers not only to beat but to treat with the rebels; more might perhaps be gained by negotiation than by arms. In this he was nearly successful. While the commission giving to Monmouth full powers was signed, Lauderdale sat silent. As the council rose he followed the king into his bedchamber and begged him, unless he wished to follow his father, to rescind that part of the commission which might be used to encourage rebellion in Scotland and raise another in England. “Why did you not argue this in council?” asked Charles. His gross but able administrator answered with emphasis, “Sire, were not your enemies in the room?” To the great disappointment of Monmouth and the Whigs as well as the Covenanters, peremptory orders were sent after him that he should not treat but fall on them at once. Shaftesbury’s party discovered that they had been tricked. Lord Cavendish and Lord Gerard refused to serve under their commissions; Mr. Thynne declined to receive one; Lord Grey of Werke resigned his command of the horse. Even after Monmouth had started an attempt was made to obtain his recall and, had time allowed, a monster petition in favour of the rebels, to be signed by many peers and gentlemen and all the principal householders of London, was prepared for presentation to the king. Charles made use of the event, by an order which had the additional advantage of creating a difference between the Earls of Essex and Shaftesbury, to raise a troop of two hundred guards to be about his person.[419]
The copies of Shaftesbury’s speech intended for such fatal use in Scotland were said to have been made in the Green Ribbon Club.[420] That famous society, founded in the year 1675, quickly acquired ascendency over the Whig party. To-day it has been almost forgotten; its influence was unknown to the classic historians of England, who were in politics mostly Whig; but during seven tumultuous years of English history it played a part that can only be compared to the work of the more notorious Jacobin organisation of a century later across the Channel. The club met at the King’s Head Tavern at the corner of Chancery Lane and Fleet Street. Its character may be known at once from the fact that its members organised and paid for the imposing ceremonies of pope burning, by which the most fiendish lies of Oates were yearly sustained and the worst passions of the London mob, a word, it may be noted, itself derived from the club, systematically inflamed. Oates himself was a member, and Aaron Smith, his legal adviser; and under the leadership of Shaftesbury the club was filled with men of the same kidney, who crowded on to the balcony with pipes in their mouths and wigs laid aside to witness the papal holocaust with which each great procession ended opposite their windows. Here was the fountain of the inner counsels of the Whig party and the seat of its executive. Within the walls of the club the decision had been taken to agitate for the dissolution of Parliament after the long prorogation of 1677; here a few years later the Rye House conspiracy was schemed; here the actual assassination plot was hatched. Over the country the Green Ribbon Club enjoyed a profound influence. It was the centre of the party pamphleteers who devoted keen ability to incite the nation and defame the government, and their productions were scattered far and wide by means of a highly effective service of correspondents. While policy was debated and action resolved by the chiefs of the club, their agents at the coffee-houses in London and throughout the country obeyed orders from headquarters. At the elections their activity was unparalleled. Tracts poured into the constituencies. Industrious agents attacked the character of the court candidates and firmly organised the national opposition. It was the Green Ribbon Club which introduced the “Protestant flail” to London and clothed the town in silk armour as a defence against the expected daggers of papists. The club almost usurped the functions of Parliament. Many members of that body belonged to it, attended its consultations, took their cue from its decisions. Agents thronged the lobby of the House of Commons, posting members with arguments for debate, whipping in sluggards to a division, carrying the latest news back to the club. Men of all classes and various character belonged to the society, broken scoundrels and wealthy statesmen, pious enthusiasts and tired profligates, the remains of the Cromwellian party, the forerunners of the Revolution, poets, aldermen, country gentlemen, assassins, bound together in a common league of animosity against Charles II and his government, not a few traitors to that bond itself. Scarcely a name of note on the Whig side is absent from the list, which contained Shaftesbury and Monmouth, Buckingham, Ireton, Slingsby Bethel, Sir William Waller, the Spekes, the Trenchards, Howard of Escrick, Sir Robert Peyton, Russell, Holles, and Algernon Sidney. With the lapse of time the counsels of the club became more violent; and the most infamous of political tracts, “An Appeal from the Country to the City,” which spread deliberate and abominable lies to incite the nation to rebellion, and urged the Duke of Monmouth to strike with force for the crown, not because he had a right to it, but because he had none, was written by Robert Ferguson, nicknamed the Plotter, himself a member, Shaftesbury’s âme damneé.[421] More than a third of the whole number of members of the club were concerned in the Rye House Plot. Sixteen or eighteen took an active part in Monmouth’s invasion. After the Revolution they obtained their reward. Shadwell, the poet of the club, was made laureate in place of Dryden. Aaron Smith became Chancellor of the Exchequer to King William. Lord Grey of Werke, basest of traitors, was given office and an earldom. Sir John Trenchard was made secretary of state. Dukedoms were conferred upon the Earls of Bedford and Devonshire and a marquisate upon Lord Mulgrave. Ireton became lieutenant-colonel of dragoons and gentleman of the horse to the king. Oates was pilloried and pensioned. Speake, Ayloffe, Rouse, Nelthrop, and Bettiscomb were hanged.[422]