CHAPTER I.
We resume the thread of our History, and return to notice the progress of the anti-Popish excitement.
1678.
Perhaps, in the history of the civilized world, there never occurred a period when the passions of men were more deeply moved, than in the autumn of the year 1678, when England was startled from side to side by the following extraordinary story. The Jesuits had formed a project for the conversion of Great Britain to the Roman Catholic faith; and £10,000 had been procured to assist in carrying out their plans. With this project was blended a conspiracy to assassinate the King, who was to be poisoned by the Queen’s physician; failing which, he was to be shot with bullets; and, if that did not succeed, he was to be stabbed with a large knife. With a feeble attempt at wit it was said, if he would not become R.C., a Roman Catholic, he should be no longer C.R., Charles Rex. Twenty thousand Catholics in London were to rise within twenty-four hours, and cut the throats of the Protestant inhabitants; eight thousand were to take up arms in Scotland; and, of course, in Ireland the professors of the ancient religion, possessed of enormous influence, meant to have it all their own way. The Crown was to be offered to the Duke of York, upon certain conditions; and if James refused, then, it was elegantly said, “to pot he must go also.” Amongst other means certain Jesuits were instructed to “carry themselves like Nonconformist ministers, and to preach to the disaffected Scots, the necessity of taking up the sword for the defence of liberty of conscience.” Seditious preachers and catechists were to be sent out, and directed when and what to preach in private and public conventicles, and field meetings. The Society in London intended to knock on the head Dr. Stillingfleet and Matthew Pool, for writing against them; and Croft, Bishop of Hereford, was doomed to death as an apostate. A second conflagration in the City of London formed an element in this scheme of wholesale destruction; and, in anticipation of the success of the design, the Pope had prepared a list of the priests to succeed the Bishops and other dignitaries, who were to be so speedily swept away. The author of this intelligence was the notorious Titus Oates, who professed to have picked it up at St. Omer’s, at Valladolid, at Burgos, and at a tavern in the Strand, where, owing to his pretended conversion and zeal in the Catholic service, the Jesuits had entrusted him with their deepest secrets.
The first communication of the story staggered everybody. The King did not know what to make of it. Danby, though inclined to use anything he could for party purposes, hardly credited this amazing revelation. Yet, incredible as it may appear, no means seem to have been used at the outset to sift the matter to the bottom.[1] Therefore the tale came to be looked at as credible, and, when Oates, on Michaelmas Eve, came before the Council, and began his unprecedented story, he found ready listeners. The items which he specified, with names and dates minutely mentioned, certainly wore a plausible appearance; and, presently, two circumstances occurred, which, at the time, obtained for his reports all but universal credence.
POPISH PLOT.
The first of these circumstances was the sudden death of a magistrate, Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, to whom Oates had made some of his statements before divulging the whole to the Council. This magistrate was found dead in a ditch near Primrose Hill, with a sword plunged in his body, and marks of strangulation on his neck. A cry instantly rose, and ran through London and the country, that Sir Edmondbury, who was famed for his Protestant zeal, had been murdered by the Papists on account of his receiving Oates’ deposition. The plot, it was argued, must be real, or such a deed would not have been committed by the Roman Catholics. What could the object of the murder be, but to take revenge on the exposers of the conspiracy? The next circumstance which aided the prevalent belief is found in the discovery of certain letters, in the handwriting of one Coleman, addressed to Père la Chaise—the famous Jesuit, who has given his name to the Cemetery at Paris—in which letters, unmistakable allusions occur to designs for overthrowing Protestantism in this country; and Coleman’s plans were at once identified with the plot related by Titus Oates.[2]
1678.
POPISH PLOT.
Believed by Parliament, not only by the Country party, but by the Court party as well, believed also by the Ministers of State, and by the dignitaries of the Church, the plot came to be regarded by almost everybody as an unquestionable fact. The higher circles would not tolerate any doubt of Oates’ veracity; even Burnet, with all his Protestantism, inasmuch as he hesitated to accept Oates’ evidence, raised against himself “a great clamour:” and the Earl of Shaftesbury, who threw himself with all his energy and eloquence into the prosecution, declared “that all those who undermined the credit of the witnesses were to be looked on as public enemies.”[3] In the lower circles a conviction of the truthfulness of the accuser, and of the guilt of the accused, prevailed to the last degree; and the narrative related to the Council and the House of Commons, circulated amongst eager and credulous groups, in thousands of chimney corners during those autumn evenings. The King and the Duke of York seemed not to believe what other people admitted. Yet the former felt obliged to act as if he did. The reader who remembers the agitation attending the Popish aggression more than twenty years ago, must not take even that as a measure of the feeling awakened in 1678: perhaps nothing we have ever seen could be a parallel to what our fathers experienced at that time. Even the heavens were imagined to sympathize in the abounding alarm: a fog, after Godfrey’s death, gave to the day on which it occurred the name of Black Sunday; and a respectable Nonconformist speaks of it growing so dark, all on a sudden, about eleven in the forenoon, that ministers could not read their notes in their pulpits without the help of candles,—no uncommon occurrence, one would think, in the month of November. Not a house, he informs us, could be found unfurnished with arms, nor did anybody go to bed without apprehensions of something tragical which might happen before the next morning.[4] People gave the martyred magistrate—for so they considered Godfrey—a public funeral, after having for two days publicly exhibited his wounded remains in his own house. An immense crowd followed him to the grave, the corpse being preceded by seventy-two clergymen in their robes; and, on its arrival at the church of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, the Incumbent, Dr. Lloyd, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, delivered a sermon in honour of the slain confessor. A Protestant festival had long been kept on the 17th of November, Queen Elizabeth’s birthday; and this year an effigy of the Pope with the Devil whispering in his ear—and models of Godfrey’s dead body, and of Romish Bishops and priests in mitres and copes—were carried through the streets, to inflame to the highest pitch the prevalent indignation against the Church of Rome. Daniel Defoe was then a mere boy, and looked with wonder upon what passed before him; and, in after years, told how old City blunderbusses were burnished anew; how hats and feathers, and shoulder belts, and other military gear, came into fashion again; how the City train-bands appeared rampant, and how soldiers disturbed meeting-houses, even murdering people, under pretence that they would not stand at their command.[5] Justice, or injustice, showed itself swift in apprehending Roman Catholics. Two thousand suspected persons are said to have been imprisoned, the houses of Roman Catholics were searched for arms, and it is computed that as many as 30,000 recusants were driven to a distance of ten miles from Whitehall. Within little more than two months of the first whisper of the conspiracy, Stayley, a banker, accused of sharing in it, died on the gallows at Tyburn, and Coleman perished on the scaffold about a week afterwards.[6] Three more victims followed the next month, all of them to the last declaring their innocence. Oates at the same time went about dressed in gown and cassock, wearing a large hat with a silk band and rose, and attended by guards to secure him from Popish violence. Lodgings at Whitehall were assigned for his use; he received a pension of £1,200 per annum, and was welcomed at the houses of the rich and great.[7] A large number of pamphlets containing accounts of the plot issued from the press, whilst pulpits rung with impassioned declamation against Popery and rebellion.