To start with, it is known that Coleman’s correspondence did not cease, as he stated, in the year 1675. On the contrary, it was maintained down to the day of his arrest and even beyond.[90] Among others it is almost certain that he continued his negotiation with Père de la Chaize.[91] The subject of this later correspondence is debatable. It may have been concerned with a design again to establish the Roman Catholic religion in England. Or it may not; and in this case Coleman’s letters may have been filled with matters of less importance, such as are to be found in those of Cardinal Howard. This alternative however is hardly tenable. Not only are there allusions in St. Germain’s letters inexplicable except on the supposition that they refer to the hopes of the Catholics for the re-establishment of their religion, but the position of Coleman and the Jesuits rendered a continuance of their schemes virtually necessary. Early in 1676 St. Germain wrote that he had urged on La Chaize the absolute necessity of “vigorous counsels ... to produce success in the traffic of the Catholics”; in these, he said, the Duke of York took the lead, and that by the inspiration of Coleman. A month later he added that Coleman was incurring reproof at Paris on account of the violent measures he was said to advocate. The secretary of the English ambassador tried to ingratiate himself with the Jesuit by professing great zeal for the duke; was he sincere, asked St. Germain, and “has the duke all along trusted him with the secret of his affair”? On Ruvigny’s return to Paris from his embassy St. Germain had an interview with him. Ruvigny expressed the opinion that the intrigues of Coleman and the Jesuits would prove fatal to James. Their conduct was detestable not only to Protestants and the government, but to a certain section of the Catholics also, “because,” said the ambassador, “they would introduce an authority without limits and push Mr. Coleman to make such strange steps which must precipitate them into destruction.”[92] Had the policy of which St. Germain was an agent been wholly without reproach, it would be hard to ascribe an adequate meaning to expressions like these. Coleman’s anxiety to deny his correspondence would be equally difficult of explanation. Curious too would be the comment of Pomponne, the French minister for foreign affairs; for he undertook to prove the absurdity of the charges against Coleman by remarking in ridicule that he had even been accused of intriguing with Père de la Chaize, a fact the truth of which was perfectly known to him.[93] The situation of affairs argues with still greater force. The Jesuits were beyond all others the most militant order of the church. They formed the advance guard in the march against heresy. They had already borne, and were again to bear, the brunt of the battle. It was their particular business to carry war into the enemy’s camp, for this was the reason as well as the excuse for their existence. They must work, fight, intrigue against the heretic and the heretic state, or leave their mission unfulfilled. And Coleman was in the same position. He was a pupil of the Jesuits, and under the guise of secretary to the Duchess of York maintained an active correspondence with agents abroad in the interest of their chief hope, the duke. Intrigue was his business, and his conduct of it was made more eager by the keenness of a convert. No one in the least acquainted with the history of the Jesuits and with the writings of their apologists can believe that their method of procedure was by conversion of individuals alone. The society has always been in its essence political, and in the troubled times of the seventeenth century political action of the exiled, the feared, the reputed traitor was seldom calculated to avoid the retribution of the laws by which those against whom it was directed were fenced. The penal laws were harsh, but harshness was of necessity; and the very necessity of their harshness begot retaliation; while retaliation completed the circle by driving into conflict with the law many who would have been glad to obey in peace and nurse conscience in quiet.
The class of Catholics whom Ruvigny found opposed to the Jesuit policy was large. At the close of the seventeenth century it probably comprised a majority of Roman Catholics in England. These were they who would take the oath of allegiance to their sovereign, holding it no bar to their faith, the followers of Blackloe, of Peter Walsh, of John Sergeant, the men who thought it no shame to liberalise belief by divorcing it from statecraft, the adherents of the church but not of the court of Rome.[94] The Jesuits had already once in the reign of Charles II interposed to prevent Roman Catholics in England from bettering their position, and when persecution fell on these in the evil days of Oates’ grandeur, they showed to the astonishment of the society that it had earned small gratitude from them.[95] On the question of the oath of allegiance the English Catholic body was divided throughout the century. Catholics were willing to prove their loyalty by taking the oath, but this proof they were not allowed to give. The fruitless concessions offered by Charles I showed conclusively that despite all protestations the papal party would not abandon the deposing power. Whenever the movement in favour of the oath seemed to be gaining strength, the whole weight of the papal court and of the Society of Jesus was thrown into the scale against it. It was probably the only point upon which the two were at this time in agreement. The Earls of Bristol, Berkshire, Cardigan, Lord Stafford, and Lord Petre actually took the oath, and of these, horrid thought to the Jesuits, two had for their confessors Benedictines; Lord Arundel, and for a time the Duke of York, stood firm in refusal.[96] The division between the Catholics was purely political; it marked those on whose loyalty reliance could be placed from those who must be suspected of disloyalty; and the former class suffered for what the latter alone undertook. The line lay between the Catholic and the Jesuit parties, between those who would be satisfied with liberty of conscience and those who would not. Undoubtedly the Catholic body in England was much weakened thereby, and government owed not a little to the moderate Catholics; but however much the execution of Catholic policy was hampered, its direction was not diverted. Abstinence from political action was the basis of the pure Catholic position. The Jesuits held the wires of politics in their hands and directed the policy. They too affirmed purity of faith to be their motive. “Prosecution for matters of conscience,” remarks Halifax, “is very unjust; but great care ought to be taken that private conscience is not pleaded against the security of the public constitution. For when private conscience comes to be a justifiable rule of action, a man may be a traitor to the state and plead conscience for treason.”[97]
Thus it may be accepted that Coleman’s correspondence between the years 1675 and 1678 was not of an entirely innocent character, but was concerned with matters of perilous import for the prosperity of the government and of the Church of England. Since it was not dropped, the negotiation must have proceeded either in the same line as that in which it lay at the end of 1675 or in another. Did the design drag on a weary course in the feeble hope of finding a parliament congenial to Roman Catholic ideas and of obtaining the king’s support in return for a substantial sum of money: or did the Catholic politicians change their tactics to discover a better opening? If the argument is thus far sound, answer can be made without hesitation. Early in that year Coleman and his party had found that in the event of a dissolution of Parliament they could not hope for a third declaration of indulgence and the reappointment of the Duke of York to the offices which he had formerly held. The design was thereupon altered to a scheme for bribing the existing parliament to petition for the recall to office of James, and to pass an act for general liberty of conscience. Coleman’s ideas were based on two miscalculations. He understood neither the temper of the English people nor the character of Charles II. The king was to him an amiable debauchee, caring only for his pleasures and his pocket. A sufficient present of money would induce him to retire from the management of affairs and console himself with his mistresses, leaving the reins of power for his brother to handle. As most men of his own and after times have thought the same, Coleman’s mistake is perhaps excusable. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not money, but power was what Charles wanted, and in the use of power, not of money, he was skilled. Any plan grounded upon this conception of his character was foredoomed to failure. Equally grave was the other miscalculation, and in this too Coleman was not peculiar. A man looking back on the history of the seventeenth century, and guided by the story of the Revolution, can say with assurance that any attempt in its latter half to restore Catholicism in England must have been hopeless of success. The nation which drove out James II would have driven out another for the like cause. Charles himself had learnt this in the best of schools. The fact may have been plain to clear-sighted statesmen, but to the mass a restoration of the old religion was looked on as among events that were more than possible. Here was the root of the deep hatred of Catholicism cherished by the English nation. Not only was the event hoped by the one side, but it was feared by the other. And the hopeful party had more reason to hope than the fearful to fear. Englishmen might with justice anticipate intrigues and even plots, but never their success. But the Jesuit, whose education was continental and whose ideas were traditional, was unaware of the change that had passed over England. He was still inspired by the genius and followed the example of the dead Robert Parsons. His mind was filled with the great instances of past times. Henry VIII, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth had drawn their subjects with them like sheep from one church into another. Within the memory of man a wave of Puritanism had swept over the country, tottered, and broken. There followed a loyal reaction and a court in which strong elements were Catholic. The people who had so willingly followed their leaders before might be expected to do so again. The hope of rebuilding the ruins of Jerusalem was strong in the belief of its possibility.[98] Such notions render the undertaking of Coleman and his party intelligible. But they were not blinded by prejudice to the obvious meaning of facts passing within range of their own observation. One scheme had already been abandoned: the second was to be abandoned now. For if the former had proved impracticable, much more so was the latter. To ask the House of Commons in the year 1676 to pass an act of religious toleration and to petition in favour of the Duke of York was to suggest that it should contradict its nature. The strongest characteristic of the Cavalier Parliament was its hatred of Roman Catholicism. It had already forced the retractation of two declarations of indulgence, and had on several occasions instituted proceedings against the Catholics. Coleman’s experience perhaps led him to ascribe an undue importance to the influence of money. Dishonest members of the country party might accept bribes from the French king when the course which they were asked to take would be to the embarrassment of government, but not all the gold of France would induce them to put a weapon of such strength into the grasp of the court as to petition for what they had repeatedly prevented it from accomplishing. Popery and tyranny, it was said, went hand in hand. It must soon have been seen by the Catholic managers that such a policy was hopeless. If this was not evident at first, it must have become more than plain when early in April 1676 the Duke of York took the momentous step of ceasing to go to the royal chapel, and all England knew that he was a Catholic. It was the first occasion for a long time on which he had acted not in consonance with the ideas of France. Rome was delighted and recognised him as a true son, but elsewhere the news was not hailed with such joy. James had obtained his brother’s consent only with difficulty. Pomponne marked the withdrawal of the declaration of indulgence as the beginning of the troubles that crowded on the royal authority in England. The duke’s declaration created a notable addition. The effect of his move was instantaneous. Throughout the country the feeling roused was intense, the penal laws were once more put into execution, and Charles told the French ambassador that if he were to die the duke would not be allowed to remain in the country eight days.[99] It is perhaps to this time that the abandonment of the second scheme sketched by Coleman to La Chaize should be referred.[100] There can at all events be no doubt that its impracticable nature soon became manifest. It was therefore along another line that the design proceeded from the summer of 1676 onwards.
Since the year 1670 various ways of procuring success for the Catholic religion have thus been considered, adopted, and abandoned. The policy of the Dover treaty had been led by Charles. Had it been successful he would have been left at the head of a Catholic state, controlled and compact. That had been blown to the winds. The declaration of indulgence, faint resemblance of the plan which was to have been put into execution, was the direct result of royal authority. With its failure the king’s leadership in the last movement of the counter-reformation ceased. Then followed the two schemes which Coleman related to La Chaize. In the one the motive power was to be the king, backed by the ministers and Parliament; in the other Parliament, working on the king and supported by him. When these were deserted, practically every arrangement in which the king could figure as chief had been tried. The game of the Dover treaty had been opened by the king, backed by French force; that of the declaration by the king’s move alone; Coleman had suggested action by the king and Parliament, by Parliament and the king. Unless one of these moves was made again, Charles would stand in the background of the game; none would be made again, for each had been proved ineffective. Even by the last two the object had been to raise the authority not of the king, but of the Duke of York. The only remaining possibility was that the duke should be not only the object, but the leader of the game. He was the piece with which the move had to be made.
In what direction then could the move be made? So far from being an assistance to the Catholic movement, Charles was now a direct hindrance to it. He had abandoned the Catholic interest as a political weapon, and had engaged in a policy of Anglican predominance. Undoubtedly the design must be conducted behind his back, but it was impossible not to take count of his position and influence in the state. Three courses were left open to the managers of the movement. The king might be forced to take action on their side, or he might be thrust away from it, or he might be gradually elbowed into a position where his personal action would be negligible. The last course had already been considered. During the winter of 1674 and spring of the next year Lord Berkshire and Sir William Throckmorton had submitted the advisability of adopting a platform, the chief planks in which should be the debauchery and political profligacy of the king and the sobriety and ability of the Duke of York. By this means they hoped that all the supporters of order and moderation would be drawn to the duke, James would be surrounded by a compact and influential party composed of Catholics and Protestants alike, the whole management of affairs would eventually fall into his hands, and the king would be left beyond the range of politics, ousted from their control, contented with the otiose life of a peaceful rake.[101] This however had been discarded for the plans submitted by Coleman to Père de la Chaize, in turn to be relegated to the domain of untried political suggestion. The scope for the design was therefore reduced to the alternatives: Charles must either be thrust on one side or be compelled to take action in it himself. As he had already been tried as a leader and had failed, the latter course would mean that the plan should run without him, until at the moment of success he should be forced by the necessity of events to throw in his lot with the movement. In the former case the course of events would be exactly similar, save that the king would not be taken into the scheme at any point, and the movement would be carried to completion without him. That both of these courses involved treasonable schemes is hardly open to doubt. The logical end of the negotiations in either case was a coup d’état, in whatever degree, a revolutionary measure.
In March of the year 1679 the Earl of Berkshire lay dying in Paris. A month later a man passing under the name of John Johnson landed at Folkestone, and was arrested at Dover on his way to London. He was a certain Colonel John Scott, for whose arrival the authorities had been on the watch for some time past. Whether or no he was the same Colonel Scott who acted as an English spy in Holland during the second Dutch war it is impossible to say. Latterly he had been attached to the household of the Prince de Condé, and had commanded a troop of horse in the French service.[102] Subsequent events make it seem likely that orders for the Colonel’s apprehension were issued by the secretary of state, owing to the belief that he had information of value to impart. To the officers at Dover he ascribed his return to England to a desire to see his native country, but when he reached London he told a different tale. As the Earl of Berkshire lay on his deathbed, he sent for Colonel Scott, who had vainly called a famous physician to his aid, and bade him take a message to the king. There had been a foolish and an ill design carried on in England, he said. He was a good Roman Catholic, and in the Catholic religion he was minded to die; but some of his faith were swayed by a giddy madness, and this he blamed. He was neither a contriver nor a great supporter of the business. He would not have had a hand in it but that Lord Arundel, Coleman, and others had told him that it could not miscarry, and that, if he did not stand with them, evil would be thought of him. That he ought long before to have disclosed what he knew he was well aware; personal duty and the allegiance of every man to his sovereign should have constrained him to speak; there were bad men in the matter, Lord Bellasis and others, who spoke ill of the king and very irreverently. But to his knowledge there was never talk of killing the king; if there had been, he would have spoken out. Then Colonel Scott asked who those others were; but Lord Berkshire begged for no questions, repeating, “If I had known of approaching dangers to the king, I should have told him.” Presently the sick man began to sigh and to weep. “Friend,” said he, “I see things will go as you will. For God’s sake promise me you will find some way to tell the king every word I say, and that though some passages in letters of mine may look a little oddly, I would have run any hazard rather than have suffered any injury to have been done to his Majesty’s person. ’Tis true I would have been glad to see all England Catholic, but not by the way of some ill men.” Let the king have nothing to do with those he had named, nor with Stafford, nor Powis, nor Petre. Yet he hoped and believed that matter would not be found against them to take away their lives.[103] If Colonel Scott spoke truth, then the foregoing argument is certainly not quite baseless. And reason may be given for supposing this to be the case. At the time when Scott gave his information the fact of Berkshire’s correspondence with Coleman was not publicly known. Coleman had already been tried and executed, and at the trial a number of his letters were read as evidence against him, but among them none from Lord Berkshire. Until the publication of the correspondence by order of the House of Commons this was the only channel by which particular knowledge of it reached the world at large. The other letters were not published until December 1680. It must therefore be supposed that Scott obtained his knowledge of the earl’s correspondence privately. The only persons who had private knowledge on the subject were Lord Berkshire, the officials in whose custody the letters lay, and Coleman. Coleman was dead before Colonel Scott came into England, and the secretary of state by whom he was examined would have been most unlikely to furnish him with materials. It must therefore have been from Lord Berkshire himself that he obtained his information. But, it may be suggested, Scott may have drawn his bow at a venture, knowing merely that Berkshire was a prominent Catholic, and using his name as likely to gain credence for his story. The weight against this suggestion is heavy. If Scott had been for all he knew inventing the letters of which he spoke, he would surely have said more about them than he did. To mention them in so casual a manner would have been useless. The simplicity and directness of his relation points in this matter to its substantial truth. Another proof of genuineness has still greater force, the extreme moderation of the whole narrative. A scoundrel following in the track of Oates and Bedloe would never have concocted such a story. So far from being to his advantage, what Scott said might actually put him into a most unpleasant predicament. The chief point of the plot which Oates had discovered was the king’s assassination. The chief agents in it were said to be the Jesuits. All the informers who came after spoke to the same effect and tried to spice their tales still more highly. Scott said not a word about the Jesuits. He stated on his sole authority, one of the men who might be expected to know, that no harm was intended to the king. To some extent what he said is borne out by Berkshire’s letters. Passages in them must certainly have looked “a little oddly” to the government, and perhaps contained matters technically treasonable, but in nothing do they suggest any personal danger to the king. No one looking for the rewards of a professional informer would have acted as Colonel Scott. Nor did he ever seek these. He never came forward to give evidence against those condemned for the Plot. His name does not appear in the list of secret service money, doled out to the shameless witnesses for the crown. Nothing more is known of him.[104] His information may be accepted as genuine. Clearly then there was some truth in the discovery of a Roman Catholic conspiracy in the year 1678. What Lord Berkshire said sketches its essence. Oates was not after all aiming shafts entirely at random. During his stay in the Jesuit seminaries in Spain and Flanders he must have obtained an inkling of what was in the air, and proceeded to act upon the information to his best advantage. That the whole truth had little resemblance to his tale of fire and massacre is certain, but the tale was not wholly devoid of truth. His vast superstructure of lies was not without a slight basis of solid fact.
This conclusion can in some degree be supported from other sources. Any attempt to reconstruct the part played by the Catholic reformation in the years preceding the appearance of Oates must be chiefly conjectural. Scarcely any evidence on the subject is known, but what more comes to hand points in the same direction. In December 1680, as he lay in the Tower under sentence for high treason, Lord Stafford sent a message by Dr. Burnet and the Earl of Carlisle to the House of Lords that he would confess all he knew of the Catholic intrigues. He was admitted to speak from the bar of the House. Unfortunately his statement does not refer at all to the later years of the movement, for when he came to describe the project debated between Shaftesbury and the Duke of York for a coalition between the Catholic and country parties to obtain a dissolution of Parliament and general toleration, Stafford was stopped hastily at the mention of the great Whig leader’s name. To a few more questions put he simply answered no, and was presently sent back to the Tower. Cut short as it was, his account is of some value. He admitted that he had endeavoured to alter the established faith, and gave some details of the meeting held early in Charles II’s reign at the Earl of Bristol’s house to discuss the oath of allegiance. He had always disapproved the policy of the declarations of indulgence, and marked them as causes of the downfall of his religion. At one time he almost decided to leave England and live beyond sea. Others however were not of his opinion. The Papists and Jesuits had been far too open in their conduct, he said, and he had even seen a priest in the House of Lords standing below the bar. All his fellow peers, excepting the Earl of Bristol, were in favour of toleration for the Catholics. There was even talk of a restitution of the church lands, but Stafford warned the Duke of York that they were in so many hands as to render any attempt of the kind impracticable.[105] All this does not amount to much; nevertheless it shows a drift in one direction. Other straws are floated down the same stream. In the summer of 1678, when it was doubtful whether or no England would declare war on Louis XIV, Catholics in Ireland were discussing the chances in that event of a rebellion in their country aided by France. Calculations were made on the strength of the French navy, and there was talk of a rising in Scotland as well.[106] There were Jesuit missioners in Scotland, poor and hard worked, and it is possible that Jesuit influence had been concerned in organising the rebellion there in the year 1666;[107] while in 1679 there was serious consideration of a movement in Ireland under Colonel Fitzpatrick, who crossed to Brussels during the Duke of York’s exile there to consult with him.[108] More definite information can be obtained from the case of Père de la Colombière. The celebrated Jesuit preacher, famed for his propagation of the cult of the Sacred Heart, was living in England at the time of the Popish Plot panic, and acting as confessor to the Duchess of York, Two Frenchmen, Olivier du Fiquet or Figuère and Francois Verdier, accused him to the House of Lords of extraordinary activity in spreading the Catholic religion. La Colombière had concealed himself, but was discovered, arrested, and shipped out of the country. Besides the general charge of caring for the growth of his faith, he was accused of a close connection with Coleman and Père de la Chaize. In attempting the conversion of Fiquet, who was a Protestant, he had used as an argument that the Duke of York was openly, and the king in secret, Catholic by faith. Parliament, he said, should not always be master; in a short time all England would be changed.[109] Supposing that these men had wished to make their accusation a source of gain, they would have charged the confessor with being a party to the king’s assassination, or at least to the plot in general. Since they did not, their statements may be taken as true. Nothing dishonourable was alleged against La Colombière, but he plainly harboured the expectation of seeing England before long Catholic. His hope was shared by others; for in advising on the establishment of a nunnery by the Yorkshire baronet, Sir Thomas Gascoigne, the Jesuit John Pracid wrote on June 9, 1678 to suggest the insertion of a clause in the deed, depending on the condition: “If England be converted.”[110] At most the evidence is slight, but it seems clear that the Jesuit party was indulging in hopes considerably more active than they could naturally have been if wholly unsupported by any plan of action.
While the schemes of which these traces are to be found were in the air, Oates was studying and being expelled from Valladolid and St. Omers. There were in Flanders twenty-seven English Roman Catholic seminaries; five belonged to the Jesuits, and of these the establishment at St. Omers was the largest. It contained some thirty professed fathers and a hundred and twenty scholars.[111] Probably the best education in Europe was provided for the boys, and life there was comfortable; but to the unwilling the seminary became a prison. Pressure was put upon them to become priests, and communication with the outside world was carefully restricted. In a letter preserved from this time a Welsh boy, placed in the college by a wicked uncle, wrote secretly to his father begging piteously to redeem him from his great captivity.[112] Here, unless he made a prodigious guess, the most fortunate in history, Oates must have acquired hints dropped on the subject of the movement in England. It is not very profitable to speculate on the question exactly how much truth his vivid imagination concealed. Possibly a demonstration of force was suggested, organised by the great Catholic nobles and relying on support for the Duke of York to be gained in the navy. The fleet was at the moment being strengthened by the addition of several capital ships, and in the spring of 1678 was at full strength in sea service, with complete stores for six months.[113] If this were the case, if Arundel, Bellasis, and Stafford were implicated in the affair, but nothing definitely arranged so soon as the autumn of 1678, Oates’ diffident denunciation of these peers and the evident falsehoods which he, Bedloe, and Dugdale afterwards told in their statements regarding the Popish army, would be sufficiently accounted for. Or again, it is possible that the design included help from France in money, and perhaps the use of the English regiments employed in the French service. Many of their officers were Irishmen, and most Catholics.[114] For this it would be necessary to wait until peace was definitely concluded in order that both men and money might be liberated from the calls on them. Such a supposition would go some way to explain the “dark, suspicious letter” seized at Coleman’s house after his arrest, and bearing the date September 18, 1678. The writer, posting from Paris, informed Coleman that the peace had broken all their plans, for the French pretended that since its conclusion they had no need of his party. Yet there was hope from another quarter. Let an agent known to him be sent over. “To put our traffic afoot,” continues the letter, “it’s absolutely necessary that my friend come speedily over to you, to converse with you and our other friends, because his measures are so well taken in Italy, that we can’t miss to establish this commodity better from those parts than from any here at present, tho’ hereafter we may find means and helps from hence too. But it’s most certain, now is the time or never to put things in order to establish it with you.”[115] The letter seems to point to hopes of early aid from France, since disappointed. In this case Père de la Chaize, or whoever managed the affair in France, may have thought that the gold of French Catholics could be put to better purpose than to assist their fellows of the faith in England in a forlorn hope. The likelihood of such a desertion is to some extent supported by the refusal of the French government in November 1678 to take any steps to assist the Duke of York or his party.[116] But from the scraps of evidence obtainable it is plain that the design, supposing it to have been such as is here sketched, had not advanced beyond the stage of negotiation, ready to be construed into immediate action.
According to the information which Lord Berkshire gave to Colonel Scott, no harm was intended to the king; at least he knew of none. This may well have been; but at the same time it is necessary to remember that Charles was at the moment the greatest impediment to the chance of Catholic success. He was little older than his brother, and enjoyed far better health. As far as could be judged, he was by no means likely to be the first to die. He had definitely adopted a policy adverse to the Catholics. If he were to die, the charge of revolutionary dealing would lie at the door of those who should attempt to keep the Duke of York from the throne. So long as he lived, any attempt to restore the Roman Catholic religion in England, certainly any attempt made behind his back, would be a matter of high treason and against the interests of peace and established order. This much only can be said with safety, that the brothers hated each other,[117] that the death of the king was talked of in Jesuit seminaries on the continent,[118] and that James was not above tolerating, if he did not direct, an attempt to murder the husband of his daughter.[119]