Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/485

] behind. The Jesuits had held one of their triennial meetings at the duke of York's. This Tongue and Oates converted into a special meeting, for the prosecution of their great national plot, but fixed it at the White Horse in the Strand. They then forged their mass of letters and papers, purporting to be the documents and correspondence of these Jesuits, planning the assassination of the king. These were written in Greek characters by Oates, copied into English ones by Tongue, and communicated as a great discovery to Kirby. Such wore the apparent unravellers of the alleged plot; but these puppets had their strings pulled by far more masterly men, who were constantly extending their ground and linking up fresh machinery in the scheme. The weak part of the affair was, that on the testimony of Oates alone the whole rested. Those whom he criminated, to a man, steadily denied any knowledge or participation in any such plot as he pretended. It was necessary to have two witnesses for convicting traitors, and other tools were not long wanting. Government had offered a large reward and full pardon to any one who could discover the assassins of Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey, and in a few days a letter was received from one William Bedloe, desiring that he might be arrested in Bristol and brought to London to give evidence. The warrant for his apprehension was, singularly enough, sent to Bedloe himself, who caused his own arrest by delivering it to the mayor of Bristol. This Bedloe turned out to be as thorough a scoundrel as Oates himself. He had been employed as a groom by lord Bellasis, and afterwards in his house; had travelled as a courier on the continent, and occasionally passed himself off as a nobleman. He had been seized and convicted of swindling transactions in various countries, and was just released from Newgate, when his eye was attracted by the reward of five hundred pounds for the discovery of the murderers of Godfrey.

In his first examination by the king and the two secretaries of state, he disavowed all knowledge of the plot, but said he had seen the dead body at Somerset House, where the queen lived, and that Le Fevre, the Jesuit, told him that he and Walsh, another Jesuit, a servant of lord Bellasiss, and a waiter in the queen's chapel, had smothered him betwixt two pillows, and that they offered him two thousand pounds to assist in conveying the body away. The next day, before the house of lords, he contradicted himself dreadfully, for the story of the two pillows did not accord with the state of the body when found. Now he said that he was not smothered but strangled with a cravat. And so far from knowing nothing of the plot, he confessed to knowing all about the commissions offered to the lords Arundel, Powis, Bellasis, and others, and he added wonders and horrors of his own. Ten thousand men, he said, were to land from Holland in Burlington Bay, and seize Hull; Jersey and Guernsey were to be invaded by a fleet and army from Brest; an army from Spain of twenty or thirty thousand men were to land at Milford Haven, and there be joined by Powis and Petre with another army. There were forty thousand men ready in London, to kill all the soldiers as they came out of their lodgings. That he was to have four thousand pounds for a great murder, meaning no doubt that of the king, and the government was to be offered to, if he would hold it of the church. The king, Monmouth, Ormond, Buckingham, and Shaftesbury were to be killed. Lords Carrington and Brudenel were named as engaged in the plot, and were immediately arrested. When Charles heard this astounding story, so diametrically opposed to his former tales, ho exclaimed, "Surely the man has received a new lesson during the last four-and-twenty hours!" and no doubt he had. These additions and improvements were constantly going on, without regard to the most glaring self-contradictions; but the temper of parliament made them disregard obvious falsehoods of the most flagrant kind. So long as there was a chance of excluding the duke of York from parliament, these horrible stories were kept before the public imagination; but the moment the proviso passed in his favour, the attack was diverted into another and a higher channel. Buckingham had formerly endeavoured to induce Charles to divorce the queen: now a deadly attack was made upon her, and it was a pretty strong indication of the quarter out of which it came.

On the 23rd of November, a Mr. Lloyd sought an interview with the king, and informed him that Titus Oates was in possession of information that would criminate the queen. Charles, who had shown more sense than any one through the whole business, and might have crushed it in a short time if he had had half the active exertion that he had shrewdness, expressed his decided disbelief, yet admitted Oates to make his statement. It was this—That he saw a letter in July, in which Wakeman, the queen's physician, asserted that her majesty had given her consent to the murder of the king. That he himself was at Somerset House one day in August, with several Jesuits, and was left in the antechamber whilst they went into the queen. That the door being ajar, he heard a female voice exclaim, "I will no longer suffer such indignities to my bed! I will join in his death and the propagation of the catholic faith."

That when the Jesuits retired he looked into the room and saw there only the queen. Now Oates had repeatedly and distinctly declared that he knew of no other persons implicated except those he had informed of; and when he made the charge against Wakeman, had said not a word of this grave accusation. Charles was certain that it was altogether false, but to prove the man, sent the earls of Ossory and Bridgewater to make him point out the room and ante-chamber; but he could not do it. Charles again declared that the fellow had been instigated by some interested person, and ordered strict guard to be kept over him, and no one to be allowed to speak with him. Bedloe, however, was brought forward to confirm Oates's statement, and declared that he had overheard a conversation betwixt Catherine and lord Bellasis, Coleman, and some French gentlemen in the gallery of the queen's chapel, in which she, after shedding tears, consented to the king's murder. Bedloe had been careful not to point out any private rooms for this scene, because he had made a fatal blunder in laying the scene of Godfrey's murder in a room always occupied by the queen's footmen, and at the very time that the king was there; and not only was there a throng of persons all over the palace, but a sentinel was posted at every door, and a detachment of the guards was drawn out in the court.

Bedloe, however, delivered his charge in writing to the