It was now apparent that the crown had only one witness against the two chief of the accused, which in a case of high treason was not sufficient to procure a conviction. Thereupon Scroggs, with the approval of the other judges, discharged the jury of Whitebread and Fenwick and recommitted them to prison.[629] Six months later they were again tried and executed for the same treason. Whitebread then urged that he had been given in charge once, that on the insufficient evidence he should have been acquitted, and that he ought not to be tried again; but the whole court held without hesitation that the objection was baseless.[630] Afterwards this decision was held up to scorn, and has since often been condemned;[631] but it was grounded upon good authority and supported by the general practice of the courts.[632]
The three remaining prisoners proceeded to make their defence. Beyond repeated assertions of their innocence this amounted, as far as Pickering and Grove were concerned, to little. Ireland made a better effort. Oates had sworn that he was in London in August of the year 1678 and present at a treasonable meeting in Harcourt’s rooms.[633] The prisoner now called evidence to contradict this. His mother and his sister testified that he had left town on August 3 and did not return until the middle of September. Sir John Southcot’s coachman swore that he had been at various places in Staffordshire and on the way thither, in company with his master, from August 5 until the third week in that month, and another witness gave evidence that he had seen Ireland at Wolverhampton shortly after St. Bartholomew’s day, and again on the 7th and the 9th of September.[634] To rebut this the prosecution called a woman who belonged to the household of Lord Arlington. She had once been in the service of Grove, the prisoner, and had at that time seen Ireland constantly and waited upon him with letters from her master. She now swore positively that she had seen him in London at the time when the king went to Windsor in August. By the evidence of Sir Thomas Dolman this was calculated to be the 13th of the month.[635] Oates again took the opportunity to swear that Ireland was in town on the 1st or 2nd of September. It was an unfortunate interruption, for it formed the perjury assigned in the indictment upon which he was convicted at his second trial six years afterwards.[636] Only one more witness was produced. Sir Denny Ashburnham, member of Parliament for the borough of Hastings, was called by Ireland to testify to Oates’ character. Instead however of damaging the informer’s credit, he came forward to say that, although he might have had little respect for Oates’ veracity in the days of his youth, the manifold circumstances by which his testimony was now supported had entirely convinced him of the truth of his statements; “and,” said he, “I do think truly that nothing can be said against Mr. Oates to take off his credibility”;[637] which was of small value from the point of view of the defence.
The prisoners complained bitterly that they had been allowed neither time nor facility to produce their witnesses. At Oates’ second trial for perjury on May 9, 1685 there were called for the prosecution no less than forty-five witnesses, who proved conclusively where Ireland had been on every day but one between August 3 and September 14, 1678, the dates when he left and when he returned to London.[638] Five months after Ireland’s execution, Whitebread, Fenwick, and Harcourt called at their trial, to prove the same points, ten witnesses, whose evidence covered a considerable part of the time in debate,[639] Had he been able himself to call even those ten, not to say the whole number afterwards collected, it can scarcely be doubted that their evidence must have procured his acquittal and have given birth to the reaction against Oates which every additional conviction postponed. As it was, there were for the defence only four witnesses, two of whom were intensely interested in the prisoner’s acquittal, against the hitherto unshaken credit of Oates himself and the testimony of a disinterested person called to support him. Scroggs put the point quite fairly to the jury,[640] and the jury chose to disbelieve the prisoner’s witnesses. The real hardship lay, not in the prejudice of the court or the violent speech which the Chief Justice appended to his summing up of the evidence,[641] but in the fact that the accused were kept wholly in the dark as to the evidence which was to be produced against them. The practice of the law, as it is still the theory,[642] made it impossible for the accused to defend himself with certainty against the evidence which might be brought against him. The preparation of his defence had to be undertaken in the dark and conducted at random.
On the same day Ireland, Pickering, and Grove received sentence of death from Jeffreys, as Recorder of London, in a speech which wavered between pure abuse and a sermon which would have done credit to the most strenuous divine.[643] More than a month later Ireland and Grove were executed at Tyburn. Had Ireland’s execution been postponed, an insurrection was feared. Pickering was respited by the king for so long that the indignant Commons on April 27, 1679 petitioned urgently that the law might take its course on the man who “did remain as yet unexecuted, to the great emboldening of such offenders, in case they should escape without due punishment;” and on May 25 Charles sent a message to the House by Lord Russell to say that the sentence should have effect.[644] All three died protesting their innocence to the last.
Round the dying vows of the fourteen men who were executed for the Plot controversy raged hotly. To Roman Catholics their solemn denials seemed so conclusive that they fancied the effect must be the same on others too.[645] When it became apparent that such earnest assertion was met with frank unbelief, they attributed the fact to the black malice and the wicked prejudice of heretical hearts. To Protestants, on the other hand, the protestations of the Jesuits were clearly the logical result of their immoral doctrines. If anything, they afforded a further confirmation of guilt. Able pamphleteers undertook to prove that according to the principles of their order “they not only might, but also ought to die after that manner, with solemn protestations of their innocency.”[646] Protestant pulpits reverberated with demonstrations that the Jesuits would not “stick at any sort of falsehood in order to their own defence.” Good Bishop Burnet was shocked at the violence of his brother divines and “looked always on this as an opening of their graves, and the putting them to a second death.”[647] Few however were of his mind, and Algernon Sidney expressed the common opinion when he wrote to his cousin: “Those who use to extol all that relates to Rome admire the constancy of the five priests executed the last week; but we simple people find no more in it than that the papists, by arts formerly unknown to mankind, have found ways of reconciling falsehood in the utmost degree with the hopes of salvation, and at the best have no more to brag of than that they have made men die with lies in their mouths.”[648] Party spirit could not fail to be aroused in its most virulent form by the speeches of the condemned men, and to seize upon them as evidence on either side. They were, in point of fact, evidence for neither one party nor the other. Oaths sworn in such a manner were wholly worthless.
As Bedloe lay on his death-bed in the autumn of 1680 he reaffirmed with every protestation of truth, and as he hoped for salvation, the ghastly mass of perjured evidence by which he had sworn away the lives of men. His conscience was clear, he said, and “he should appear cheerfully before the Lord of Hosts, which he did verily believe he must do in a short time.”[649] Three years later the man who has been held up to posterity as the most truthful of his age died, calling God to witness his innocence of the treason for which he was condemned.[650] Yet Lord Russell was a member of the Council of Six and had engaged actively in the preparation of an extensive rebellion. He was an intimate friend of the men who hatched the actual Rye House Plot. If he was unaware that the king’s life was aimed at directly and indirectly, it was because he had deliberately shut his eyes to the tendency of his own schemes and those of his associates.[651] This must be the test of the value of such declarations. The unbounded immorality with which the politics of the reign of Charles II were stamped so clouded the minds of men that truth became for them almost indistinguishable from falsehood. They had only not reached the point of view of the native of Madras, who said of the value of death-bed confessions: “Such evidence ought never to be admitted in any case. What motive for telling the truth can a man possibly have when he is at the point of death?”[652]
Mention has already been made of the trial of Reading.[653] This was the first of a series of important cases which were conducted in the course of the ensuing year. Briefly, they were trials of Roman Catholics for fraudulent endeavours, in the words of the time, to stifle the Plot. Not to speak of the notorious Meal Tub Plot, the most determined and unscrupulous effort of the Roman Catholic party to remove the accusation of treason from themselves to their opponents,[654] there may be noticed four distinct attempts to impair by fraudulent and criminal means the evidence offered for the crown. As early as February 1679 information was laid before a committee of the privy council that an Englishman named Russell, who belonged to the household of the French ambassador, had endeavoured to suborn witnesses to invalidate the credit of Oates and Bedloe, and had offered the sum of £500 for the purpose. The council addressed to the ambassador a request for the delivery of the accused to stand his trial; but the case did not come into court, probably because Russell had either absconded or been shipped abroad.[655] The incident was kept secret and produced no consequences. But within twelve months three other attempts of the same nature were proved against Roman Catholic agents and exercised a considerable influence against their party. The trials of Reading for a trespass and misdemeanour, of Knox and Lane for a misdemeanour, and of Tasborough and Price for subornation of perjury must not be overlooked in forming a judgment on the events of which the courts of justice were the chief scene.
Nathaniel Reading was a Protestant attorney of some standing in his profession. Thirty years before he had been secretary to Massaniello in the insurrection at Naples, and was now living in London and enjoying a fair practice. He had been the friend and legal adviser of Lord Stafford for several years, numbered other gentlemen of title and repute among his acquaintance, and was of a position to receive an invitation to dinner from the Lieutenant of the Tower when he went to visit his client in prison.[656] During the Hilary term of 1679 he had been engaged in procuring the discharge on bail of several prisoners for the Plot, and had gone by leave of the secret committee of the House of Lords to advise the lords imprisoned in the Tower on the like subjects. In the course of his negotiations for them he had become acquainted with Oates and Bedloe, and acted as counsel for the latter in obtaining his pardon from the king. Bedloe was constantly in his company, and the two talked frequently of the nature of the Plot and the witness’ charges against the prisoners.[657] In public Reading exhorted Bedloe to reveal all his knowledge and bring the guilty to justice, but in private conversation suggested that it might be profitable to reduce his evidence against certain of those incriminated. The plot was blown to the winds, the king’s life out of danger, Bedloe would be able to feather his own nest, and no harm would be done. Bedloe promised to consider the matter and, as earnest of his good intentions, withdrew his evidence against Whitebread and Fenwick.[658] At the same time he carried the news of the intrigue to the committee of secrecy. Prince Rupert, the Earl of Essex, and Mr. Speke[659] were informed of the business, and Bedloe was advised to continue his negotiation in the hope of extracting something of importance. Reading had in the meantime gone to the lords in the Tower and brought from them promises of ample reward if Bedloe would consent to save them. A meeting was appointed for March 29, to make the final arrangements.[660] Before Reading appeared, Speke and another witness were hidden in the room in such a position that they could overhear every word which passed between the two men. They heard Bedloe ask, “What say my lords in the Tower now?” Reading replied that Lord Stafford had promised to settle an estate in Gloucestershire on the informer, and that he had orders to draw up a deed to that effect and sign it ten days after Lord Stafford’s discharge from prison. The Earl of Powis, Lord Petre, and Sir Henry Tichbourne also promised rewards if Bedloe would procure their acquittal. Bedloe then drew up an abstract of his evidence against the lords, and Speke saw Reading take the paper to deliver to them in the Tower. Two days later the attorney met Bedloe by appointment in the Painted Chamber at Westminster and gave him in answer to this a corrected version of the evidence which the accused had drawn up for his actual use at their trials. Bedloe without looking at the paper handed it at once to Mr. Speke, who carried it to a committee room in the House of Lords for examination.[661] This paper was read in court, and proved to contain an amended version of Bedloe’s testimony so vague and slight that it could not have possibly been of any use to the prosecution.[662]
Reading’s defence was sufficiently feeble. He was treated by the bench with the greatest indulgence and allowed to make a lengthy and unsupported discourse on Bedloe’s character. It is noteworthy that he objected to the witness not on the ground that he had perjured himself in holding back evidence at the trial of Whitebread, Fenwick, and Ireland, but on account of treasonable practices, which were covered by his pardon. He protested that the first proposal of the intrigue came from Bedloe, and that he only joined in it to prevent the shedding of innocent blood. The estate in Gloucestershire spoken of had been promised by Lord Stafford to himself, if he obtained his acquittal, and not to Bedloe, though hardly it seemed without the understanding that the informer was to have some share in it. He would have thought it a crime not to engage in the business; it was a duty which he owed to God and his country. By saying this he practically confessed to the whole indictment, and after a concise summing up the jury immediately returned a verdict of guilty. Reading was sentenced to be pilloried, to pay a fine of £1000, and to imprisonment for one year.[663]
The case of Knox and Lane was a still more disreputable affair. Thomas Knox was in the service of Lord Dumblane, the Earl of Danby’s son. John Lane and one William Osborne were servants to Titus Oates. These two were discharged by Oates in April 1679, Lane, who had some acquaintance with Dangerfield, was lodged by him and Mrs. Cellier under an assumed name at the house of the Countess of Powis.[664] At Dangerfield’s suggestion they approached Knox on the subject of the charges which Oates had made against the Lord Treasurer.[665] Knox agreed to their suggestion, and together they arranged the details of the scheme. Osborne and Knox lodged information that Oates had conspired with Bedloe to bring false accusations against Lord Danby, while Lane charged his master with using obscene language concerning the king and with the commission of an unnatural crime. But under examination Knox and Lane broke down, and all three were driven to confess that there was not a word of truth in the story which they had concocted. Osborne fled the country, and his two accomplices were clapped into gaol. News however was brought to Lane as he lay in prison that Knox was prepared to stand by his original story. He forthwith retracted his confession, and on November 19, 1679 indictment was brought against Oates “for an attempt to commit upon him the horrid and abominable sin of sodomy.” The grand jury ignored the bill, and a week later the two miscreants were brought to the king’s bench bar on the charge of “a conspiracy to defame and scandalise Dr. Oates and Mr. Bedloe; thereby to discredit their evidence about the horrid Popish Plot.” After a long trial, in which the defendants were treated with all fairness and in which each attempted to throw the blame on the other, the jury returned a verdict of guilty without leaving the bar. The prisoners were sentenced to fine and imprisonment, and Lane in addition to stand for an hour in the pillory. The verdict was received with a shout of applause, “many noblemen, gentlemen, and eminent citizens,” adds the account which was drawn up under Oates’ direction, “coming with great expectations of the issue of this trial, which was managed with that justice, impartiality, and indifference between the king and the defendants, that some have been heard to say they could never believe a plot before, but now they were abundantly satisfied.”[666]