Source.—Burnet's History of His Own Times. Pp. 156-164. Abridged edition, 1841.

On Michaelmas-eve Oates was brought before the Council, and entertained them with a long relation of many discourses he had heard among the Jesuits, and of their design to kill the King. He named persons, places, and times, almost without number. He said many Jesuits had disguised themselves, and were gone into Scotland, and held field conventicles there to distract the Government; that he was sent to St. Omer's, thence to Paris, and from thence to Spain; that there was a great meeting at St. Clement's; and that the result of their consultation was a resolution to kill the King by shooting, stabbing or poisoning him, and that Coleman was privy to the whole design. This was the substance of what he declared the first day; whereupon many Jesuits were seized that night and next day, and their papers sealed up.

There were many things in this declaration that made it look like an imposture. Oates did not know Coleman at first, but when he heard him speak in his own defence, he named him; he named Wakeman, the Queen's physician, though he did not know him at all; Langhorne who was the great manager for the Jesuits, he did not name; and when the King asked him what sort of man Don John (with whom he pretended to be intimate) was, he answered he was a tall, lean man, when the King knew him to be the very reverse. These were strong indications of a forgery. But what took away that suspicion was the contents of Coleman's letters, since by them it appeared that so many years ago the design of converting the nation and rooting out the northern heresy, as they called it, was so near its execution, since in them the Duke's great zeal was often mentioned with honour and many indecent reflections made on the King for his inconstancy and disposition to be brought to anything for money: and since by them their dependence was expressed to lie in the French King's assistance, and his expeditious conclusion of a general peace, as the only means that could finish their design.

A few days after this, a very extraordinary thing happened, that contributed more and more to confirm the belief of this evidence. Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was an eminent justice of peace who lived near Whitehall. He had stayed in London and had kept things in order in the time of the plague, which gained him great reputation and for which he was afterwards knighted. A zealous Protestant he was, and a true lover of the Church of England, but had kind thoughts of the nonconformists, was not forward to execute the laws against them, and to avoid doing that, was not apt to search for priests or mass-houses, so that few men of the like zeal lived on better terms with the Papists than he. Oates went to him the day before he appeared at the Council-board, and declared upon oath the narrative he intended to make, which Godfrey afterwards published a little imprudently, and was thereupon severely chid for seeming to distrust the Privy Council, and presuming to intermeddle in so tender a matter.

On Saturday, October 12th, he went abroad in the morning, was seen about one o'clock near St. Clement's Church, but was seen no more till his body was found, on the Thursday night following, in a ditch about a mile out of town near St. Pancras Church. His sword was thrust through him, but no blood was on his clothes or about him; his shoes were clean, his money was in his pocket; a mark was all round his neck, which showed he was strangled; his breast was bruised; his neck was broken, and there were many drops of white wax-lights on his breeches, which being only used by priests and persons of quality, made people imagine in whose hands he had been.

Oates's evidence was, by means of this murder, so far believed that it was not safe to seem to doubt of it; and when the Parliament met, he was called before the bar of the House of Commons, where he made a fresh discovery. He said that the Pope had declared England to be his kingdom, and accordingly had sent over commissions to make Lord Arundel of Wardour, Chancellor; Lord Powys, Treasurer; Sir William Godolphin, then in Spain, Privy Seal; Coleman, Secretary of State; Belasyse, General of the Army; Petre, Lieutenant-General; Ratcliffe, Major-General; Stafford, Paymaster-General; and Langhorne, Advocate-General; besides many other commissions for subaltern officers. And he now swore, upon his own knowledge, that both Coleman and Wakeman were in the plot; that Coleman had given eighty guineas to four ruffians to murder the King at Windsor; and that Wakeman had undertaken to poison him for £15,000; and he excused his not knowing them before by the fatigue and want of rest he had been under for two nights before, which made him not master of himself.

There were great inconsistencies in all this. That one man should not know another that was a principal in a plot wherein he himself was concerned; that one man should have £15,000 for a safe way of dispatching, and four but twenty guineas apiece for doing it openly; that he should love the King so well as he then pretended, and yet suffer these ruffians to go down to kill him, without giving notice of the danger—these and some other incongruities in the pretended commissions (for Belasyse was perpetually gouty, Petre was no military man, and Ratcliffe lived chiefly in the north), were characters sufficient of a fictitious discovery, had not some other incidents concurred to give it a further confirmation.

Bedloe, a man of a very vicious life, delivered himself to the magistrates of Bristol, pretending he knew the secret of Godfrey's murder, and accordingly was brought to London and examined by the Secretary. He said he had seen Godfrey's body at Somerset House, and was offered by Lord Belasyse's servant £4,000 to assist in carrying it away, whereupon he had gone out of town as far as Bristol, but was so pursued with horror that he could not forbear discovering it, but at the same time denied that he knew anything of the plot, till, on the next day, when he was brought to the bar of the House of Lords, he made a full discovery of it, confirming the chief points of Oates's evidence.

While things were in this ferment at London, Carstairs came from Scotland to complain of Duke Lauderdale. He had brought up such witnesses as he always had by him to prove the thing,[11] and as he was looking about for a lucky piece of villainy, he chanced to go into an eating-house in Covent Garden, where one Staley, a Popish banker, was in the next room, and pretended that he heard him say in French that the King was a rogue, and persecuted the people of God, and that he himself would stab him if nobody else would. With these words he and one of his witnesses went to him next day, and threatened to swear them against him unless he would give them a sum of money. The poor man foresaw his danger, but he chose rather to leave himself to their malice than become their prey; so he was apprehended, and in five days brought to his trial. The witnesses gave full evidence against him to the purpose above mentioned, nor could he offer anything to invalidate their credit. All that he urged was, the improbability of his saying such dangerous words in a quarter of the town where almost everybody understood French; so he was cast, and prepared himself seriously for death, all along protesting that he knew of no plot, nor had ever said the words sworn against him, nor anything to that purpose.

There was one accident now fell in that tended not a little to impair Oates's credit. He had declared before the House of Lords that he had then informed concerning all persons of any distinction that he knew to be engaged in the plot, and yet after that he deposed that the Queen had a great share in it, and was, in his hearing, consenting to the King's death. But his pretence for not accusing her before was so lame and frivolous that it would not satisfy people, though Bedloe, to support his evidence, swore things of the like nature.

When Coleman was brought to his trial, Oates and Bedloe swore flatly against him what was mentioned before; and he, to invalidate their evidence, insisted on Oates's not knowing him when they were confronted; on his being in Warwickshire at the same time that Oates swore he was in town; and on the improbability of his transacting such dangerous matters with two such men as he had never seen before. His letters to PÈre la Chaise were the heaviest part of the evidence, and to these he did not deny but that he had intentions to bring in the Catholic religion, but only by a toleration, not by rebellion or blood, and that the aid he had requested from France for that purpose was meant only of the advance of some money and the interposition of that Court. After a long trial he was found guilty and sentence passed upon him to die as a traitor. He suffered with much composedness and devotion, and died much better than he lived, denying with his last breath every tittle of what the witnesses had sworn against him, though many were sent from both Houses, offering to interpose for his pardon if he would confess.

The nation was now so much alarmed that all people were furnishing themselves with arms, and a bill passed both Houses for raising the militia, and for keeping it together for six weeks, but the King rejected it, though he gave his consent to the disbanding the army; wherein the Commons were so diffident of him that they ordered the money to be brought, not into the Exchequer, but into the Chamber of London, and appointed a committee of their own members for paying it off and disbanding it.

The courts of justice in the meanwhile were not idle, for in December, Ireland the Jesuit, and Grove and Pickering, two servants in the Queen's Chapel, were brought to their trial. Oates and Bedloe swore home against Ireland that in August last he had given particular orders for killing the King; but he, in his defence, by many witnesses endeavoured to prove that on the 2nd of August he went into Staffordshire, and did not return till the 12th of September. Yet, in opposition to that a woman swore that she saw him in London about the middle of August; and so, because he might have come up post in one day and gone down in another, this did not satisfy. Against Grove and Pickering they swore that they undertook to kill the King at Windsor; that Grove was to have £1,500 for doing it, and Pickering thirty thousand masses, which at twelvepence a mass, amounts to the same money; that they attempted it three several times, but that once the flint was loose, at another time there was no powder in the pan, and at a third the pistol was only charged with bullets. This was strange stuff, but all was imputed to a Divine Providence. So the evidences were credited, and the prisoners condemned and executed, but they denied to the last every particular that was sworn against them.

This began to shake the credit of the evidence, when a more composed and credible person came in to support it. One Dugdale, who had been bailiff to Lord Aston, and lived in a fair reputation in the country, when he was put in prison for refusing to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, denied absolutely that he knew anything of the plot, but made afterwards great discoveries. He said that the Jesuits in London had acquainted Evers, Lord Aston's Jesuit, with the design of killing the King, and desired him to find out proper men to execute it; that Evers and Gavan, another Jesuit, had pressed him to undertake it; that they had promised to canonise him for it, and Lord Aston offered him £500 if he would set about it. And one instance to confirm the truth of what he asserted was his speaking in a public company (as several testified) of Godfrey's death, the Tuesday after he was missing, which he swore he saw in a letter written by Harcourt to Evers, which letter must have been sent on the very night that Godfrey was killed.

At the same time, a particular discovery was made of Godfrey's murder. Prance, a goldsmith that wrought for the Queen's Chapel, was seized upon suspicion; and as Bedloe was accidentally going by, knowing nothing of the matter, was challenged by him to be one of those whom he saw about Godfrey's body. Prance denied everything at first, but made afterwards this confession; that Gerald and Kelly, two priests, engaged him and three others in this wicked deed—Green, who belonged to the Queen's Chapel; Hill, who had served Godden, one of their famous writers; and Berry, the Porter of Somerset House; that they had several meetings wherein the priests persuaded them that it was a meritorious action to dispatch Godfrey, in order to deter others from being so busy against them; that the morning before they killed him Hill went to his house to see if he was yet gone out, and spoke to his maid; that they waited his coming out, and dogged him all day, till he came to a place near St. Clement's, where he stayed till night; that as Godfrey passed by Somerset House water-gate two of them pretending to quarrel, another ran out to call a justice, and with much importunity prevailed with him to come and pacify them; that as he was coming along Green got behind him and threw a twisted cravat about his neck, and so pulled him down and strangled him; and that Gerald would have run his sword through him, but was hindered by the rest lest the blood might discover them; that when the murder was done, they carried the body into Godden's room (for he was in France) and Hill had the key of it; that two days after they removed it into a room across the upper court, but that being thought not so convenient, they carried it back to Godden's lodging; that on Wednesday night they carried it out in a sedan, and when they had got clear of the town Green carried it on horseback to the place where it was found.

This was a consistent story, which was supported in some circumstances by collateral proofs; and yet when he came before the King and Council he denied all he had sworn, and said it was a mere fiction; but when he was carried back to prison, he said all was true again, and that the horror and confusion he was in made him deny it. Thus he continued saying and unsaying for several times; but at last he persisted in his first attestation, and by this and what Bedloe brought in evidence against them, Green, Hill, and Berry were found guilty and condemned. Green and Hill died, as they had lived, Papists, and with solemn protestations denied the whole thing; but Berry declared himself a Protestant, though he had personated a Papist for bread, for which dissimulation he thought this judgment had befallen him. But he denied what was charged against him, and to the last minute declared himself altogether innocent; and his dying a Protestant and yet denying all that was sworn against him, was a triumph to the Papists, and gave them an opportunity to say that it was not the doctrine of equivocation, nor the power of absolution, but merely the force of conviction that made those of their religion do the same.

The Lord Chief Justice at this time was Sir William Scroggs, a man more valued for a good readiness in speaking well than either learning in his profession or any moral virtue. His life had been indecently scandalous, and his fortune very low; and it was a melancholy thing to see so bad, so ignorant and so poor a man raised up to that high post. Yet now, seeing how the stream ran, he went into it with so much zeal and heartiness that he became the people's favourite and strove in all trials even with an indecent earnestness to get the prisoners convicted. But their resolute manner of dying and protestations of innocence to the last began to make impression on people's minds, and impair the credit both of the judge and witnesses, till one Jennison, the younger brother of a Jesuit, and a gentleman of family and estate, but now turned Protestant, came in, as it were, to their relief; for in contradiction to what Ireland died affirming, i.e. that he was in Staffordshire at the time that Oates swore he was in London, he wrote a letter to a friend attesting that he was in company with Ireland on the 19th of August, and had much familiar talk with him, so that his dying affirmations were false. The letter was printed, and this use was made of it to vacate the truth of those denials wherewith so many ended their lives. But what afterwards destroyed the credit of the letter was the solemn protestation that the author made, as he desired forgiveness of his sins and hoped for the salvation of his soul, that he knew nothing of the plot; and yet the summer after he published a long narrative, wherein he said that himself was invited to assist in the murder of the King, and named the four ruffians who went to Windsor to do it.

While the witnesses were thus weakening their own credit, some practices were discovered that did very much support it. Reading, a lawyer of some subtlety, but no virtue, who was employed by the lords in the Tower to solicit their affairs, had offered Bedloe some money of his own accord (as it afterwards appeared) to mollify his evidence against the lords, and had drawn up a paper to show him by how small a variation in his depositions he might bring them off. But Bedloe was too cunning for him. He had acquainted Prince Rupert and the Earl of Essex with the whole negotiation, and placed two witnesses in his room, when he drew Reading into a renewal of the proposal so commodiously that the attempt of corruption was plainly proved upon him, and he was set in the pillory for it. Some that belonged to the Earl of Danby conversed much with Oates's servants, who told him that their master was daily speaking odious things against the King; and one of them affirmed that he had once made an abominable attempt upon him. But when Oates smelt this out, he soon turned the tables upon them; for he prevailed with his servants to deny all, and had the others set in the pillory as defamers of the King's evidence. And to bring things of the same sort all together, one Tashborough, who belonged to the Duke's Court, proposed to Dugdale, in the Duke's name, but without his authority, that he should sign a retraction of what he had sworn, and go beyond seas, and have a considerable reward for so doing. But the other outwitted him likewise, and proving such practices upon him, had him both fined and set in the pillory.

[11] I.e., his case against Lauderdale.