on August 12th, 1678, when, through one Christopher Kirby, he obtained an interview with the King, and declared his danger. King Charles distrusted the man and disbelieved the story. He was far too shrewd to be imposed upon so easily. But there were many who desired to profit by the public belief that such a plot really existed. It was, therefore, acceptable to the disaffected Members of Parliament, so soon as Drs. Tonge and Oates caused their information to be taken before the House. This was after the King had refused to consent to let "honest William " Groves and Pickering be arrested; and after the Duke of York had laid before the Council such letters as Bedingfield received to entrap him. The Council treating the letters contemptuously, Oates on the 6th September made his sworn depositions before a Justice of the Peace, Sir Edmondbury Godfrey. The story of the Plot now became public. The Council, being informed by the LordTreasurer, Earl Danby, examined Tonge and Oates (as also Christopher Kirby), and assigned them lodgings in Whitehall and weekly pay. A few arrests, of Jesuits and other denounced persons, followed. Then, on October 17th, the body of Sir Edmondbury was found, on Primrose Hill, and the excitement became overwhelming. It was evident that he had been murdered, and there were certain indications (mentioned in the ballad which follows) that not so much showed an attempt to give a deceptive appearance of suicide, as they showed a deliberate intention to demonstrate that it was not a case of suicide but murder, which the murderers had been unsuccessfully trying to disguise. No clever conspirators, if Papists, could have blundered thus. Evidently there was contrivance here to make it appear their work. Medals were struck (copies of which are in Knight and Macfarlane's Pictorial History of England) representing the No man durst thwart me; with desire of pelf, Few if any of the Plot-Discoverers long escaped retribution. Israel Tonge, Wm. Bedloe, and Shaftesbury died, in their beds, within a few months of one another; Dangerfield also perished, but with physical agony after punishment. Contrary to expectation, Titus Oates not only survived long enough to see the Revolution drive his enemy James II. away from the land, but also to be pensioned by William III., a thousand a year from the nation which he had scandalously deceived. The man's character, it is true, was so irretrievably blasted, by all that had come to light concerning his private infamies of conduct, as well as his public perjuries, that no Commons' vote or civic recognition could cleanse him. What was attempted, with this view, only cast disgrace on the government of the Revolution. Oates survived until 1705. Let a cairn mark his burying-place or let it be forgotten, as being too polluted for remembrance. murdered magistrate, whose stanch Protestantism was asserted to have been the sole cause of his death. The commotion increased. In November William Bedloe caine forward with evidence, for reward. The Commons made the most of everything to harass and destroy. Edward Coleman, Secretary to the Duke of York, tried and condemned for high treason, was executed on December 3rd (see the immediately-following "Plotter's Ballad," Bagf. Coll., iii. 50, with its important illustration). In the course of the month Miles Prance was arrested, examined, and found continually prevaricating under the torture of his imprisonment. Chiefly through his evidence, in the following February, on the 21st, Robert Green and Lawrence Hill were executed, asserting their innocence, for the murder of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey. In considering the bitter hatred and the unblushing falsehood shown by the denouncers of the apocryphal "Popish-Plot," we are compelled, after careful examination, to censure those who selfishly encouraged them. Thus we have not hesitated to reflect on the over-rated Russell, the egotistical and boastful Burnet, the faithless Monmouth, or one who was greater and more culpable than them all together-the Earl of Shaftesbury. But we write not, either now or ever, as an advocate of party. We would have gladly praised them, if we could have deemed them worthier of praise. Errors may honestly be charged against the first Anthony Ashley Cooper : Dark convict, seared by History's branding curse, father of the Weakness clung to his "unfeathered two-legged thing, a son: third Earl who wrote the Characteristics. Dull commonplace next weighed on several generations; even as mediocrity clung to the race of Russell. In our own day, a higher lustre of moral purity, religious faith, and unwearied labours to benefit mankind, distinguish the inheritor of Shaftesbury's name "One in whom ambition is chastened by the pure aims which make ambition virtue—who has uniformly employed his advantages of rank, wealth, and station to alleviate human misery, to improve the moral and material condition of the poor-who stands pre-eminent amongst British nobles for elevated, disinterested, untiring benevolence and philanthropy." This is the nobler fame. Such a contrast makes pale the glitter which had dazzled those who looked upon his ancestor, in the troubled days of civil war and sectarian intolerance. But the saddest point of contrast is in this, that, with such great powers at command, the shrewd counsellor of "Absolom" Monmouth was false to himself, both to his genius and to his duty. Selfishness marred the patriot, and thus condemned him with posterity. In one sense, like his prototype, "Achitophel went home, and hanged himself." [Wood's Collection, 417, ii. art. 18; 180 Loyal Songs, 1685, p. 42.] 1 The quarto pamphlet adds to this: "With a signal providence to this Nation in the Discovery of It, and the Plotters; To the Confusion of the wicked Papists, and to the great Comfort of all good Protestants." I. Ood People, I pray, give ear unto me,1 A Story so strange you have never been told, A most horrible thing! But first of Sir Godfrey his Death I must sing; For howe'er they disguise 't, we clearly can see Who murder'd that Knight, no good Christian cou'd be. 8 W' have witnesses ready to swear it all out. Lest such close Contrivements should at length take air, They quickly did find an invisible Chair, And set him on Horse-back to ride at So-hoe: 6 1 The quarto version reads "I pray you," but Loyal Songs omits "you." * Somerset House was named on purpose to suggest that Queen Catharine (whose chapel was there) was concerned in the murder of Godfrey; for which Hill, Green, and Berry, on Prance's equivocating evidence, were executed. Oates is made to say : : I told the Parliament, how that the Queen, And thankt them kindly for the pains they'd ta'en. 3 See Hill's Tryal, p. 16. 86 Loyal Poems, p. 303. 4 This burden follows every verse. 5 "The Sentinels saw none." At the trial of Hill, Berry, and Green, before Scroggs, 10th Feb., 1678-9, for the murder of Godfrey, the soldiers who had been sentinels at the gate testified "That no Sedan went out of the gate that night that the body was said to be carried off, though one did come in; and that they could not be mistaken in so plain a matter." It was also sworn that Berry, the accused porter, was in bed before midnight, and remained there. This, of itself, helps to disprove the assertion that the district of Soho was so named from Monmouth's watch-word at Sedgemoor fight (1685). "The Brickkilns, near Soho," are mentioned in St. Martin's rate-books, 1636. His own Sword to th' Hilt, To add to their Guilt, They thrust through his Body, but no Blood was spilt; T' have it thought he was kill'd by a Thief they did mean, IV. To shew now th' excess of Jesuitical Rage, With Fire and with Tow, Then pilfer your Goods, and 'tis well you 'scape so; V. By Bedlow's Narration3 is shown you most clear, 1 Dr. Oates's Narrative, p. 22. ? In Oates's Narrative he charges on the Jesuits, beside many other mischiefs, "the dreadful fire in 1666. which was principally managed by Strange, the Provincial; in which their Society employed eighty, or eighty-six men, he could not tell which, and spent seven hundred fire-balls, and over and above all their vast expense, they were fourteen thousand pounds gainers by the plunder, amongst which was a box of jewels, consisting of a thousand caracts of diamonds. He farther learnt, that the fire in Southwark, in the year 1676, was brought about by the like means," etc. Gilbert Burnet was more credulous of any such idle tales than some of us are likely to be (after experience) of his own solemn asseverations. He reports that he was informed, by Dr. Lloyd, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, that "one Grant, a Papist," had intentionally gone to Islington and stopped the water-supply, carrying off the turn-cock keys, the very day before the Great Fire broke out, Sept. 2nd. But as at that time it suited people to charge the incendiarism against the Republicans, so it became the fashion, in the Plot-terror, to accuse the Roman Catholics. Lord Wm. Russell (despite the pleadings of his amiable wife) descended so low as to do this in his 1680 motion against Popery. The civic inscriptions on the Commemorative Monument (during the Mayoralty of Sir Tho. Davies, 1677,) were an outrageous libel; telling that the fire was 66 begun and carryed on by ye treachery and malice of ye Popish faction:" "Sed fvror Papisticvs qvi tam dira patravit nondvm restingvitvr.' 3 66 Captain" Wm. Bedloe is too bad even for Burnet to countenance; at any rate, after the death of the informer. The Bishop writes, "Bedloe had led a very vicious life. He had gone by many false names, by which he had cheated many persons. He had gone over many parts of France and Spain, as a man of Quality. And he had made a shift to live on his wits, or rather by his cheats." Bedloe had been servant of Lord Bellasis, who was afterwards denounced. Then he had been an ensign in Flanders, and soon afterwards tried to ingratiate himself among the Jesuits. He, on the 12th November, deposed before the Lords, that he had been sent to Harcourt by the monks of Douay, and that the Jesuits told him of the powerful help expected; "ten thousand men from Flanders, twenty or thirty thousand religious men from St. Iago in Spain," etc.; and that a sacrament of secrecy had been administered to him. |