John Pollock

“ After a hard game of tennis the king took a chill in walking by the river-side at Windsor. Fever ensued, and a horrible fear that Charles lay on his death-bed struck at men’s hearts. The cry rose everywhere that he had been poisoned. The Duchess of Portsmouth was accused of having done the black deed. Amazement and horror were universal. People looked upon any ill that should happen to the king, said Sir William Temple, as though it were the end of the world. The privy council was obliged to take action to prevent an overwhelming rush of inquirers into the royal bedchamber. ”

“ It is due to their connection with these trials that posterity has branded the names of three453 judges with lasting infamy, and that fourteen men executed as traitors have earned the reputation of martyrs. Not only are they filled and brimming with the romance of life and death, but there lies locked within them the kernel of that vast mass of treason, intrigue, crime, and falsehood which surrounds and is known as the Popish Plot. ”

“ Where government is now looked on as a means of getting necessary business done, of ameliorating conditions of life, and directing the energy of the country to the highest pitch of efficiency, two centuries and a half ago it was anxiously watched as an engine of attack or defence of persons, property, and conscience. The first duty of government is to govern; to guard the tranquillity of the society over which it is set, to anticipate the efforts of malignants against the social security, and to punish crime, the commission of which it has been unable to prevent. ”

“ The example offered by the case of Coke was not left long in isolation. The government was engaged in the hopeless attempt to uphold the constitution of the Tudor monarchy at a time when the nation had outgrown it, and had opened a war to the death with the progressive tendency of Parliament. In such a struggle the judges were the king’s strongest weapon, and as a weapon that turns uselessly in the hand, the recalcitrant judge was discarded without scruple. When the better class of judges questioned the legality of acts of government they met with the same fate as their rugged predecessor. ”

“ For the doings of the society every one had now to suffer. In the midst of fierce trouble it was not against the government but against the Jesuits that Catholic resentment was shewn. Jesuits were everywhere scouted, railed at for their pernicious principles, scarce treated civilly in the company they sought. There was even rejoicing at their downfall. At last old scores would be paid off; at last all the juggles and intrigues at court would find their due reward in public shame. ”

“ I don’t tell you the Roman Catholic religion is a foolish business, for it is the faith I will die in, but ’tis the giddy madness of some of that religion I blame. I knew nothing on’t till my Lord Arundel, Mr. Coleman, and others told me the business could not miscarry, and that I should be looked upon as an ill man if I came not in in time, and truly I believed them. ”

“ He had attacked Warner’s religion, accused his friends, and brought to death those of his faith by false oaths. His confession of perjury would hardly weigh down the scale against this. At least he was not the man whom Warner would choose as a travelling companion on a journey in which detection might at any moment mean imprisonment and even death. The risk that Prance would turn coat again and denounce him was not inconsiderable. Prance’s conduct too was remarkable. Why should he fly from the Revolution? ”

“ Any one who plans a fundamental change of the constitution, to be effected by money or other means except by the constitutional action of Parliament, falls under the penalty for treason none the less because he may hope for assistance from the man who is king, since the king cannot be considered to assist an unconstitutional change. Any one planning such a change, though he intends to obtain the king’s assistance, acts against the king’s authority as much as if he did not so intend, and is therefore guilty of high treason. ”

“ The ignorance which was thus displayed of the proper nature of testimony has constantly been considered as a mark of atrocious ferocity and cowardly time-service in the judges of the period. Such a view is entirely erroneous. The evidence accepted at political trials did not differ in character from that acted upon at trials the causes of which were remote from politics. Fortunately there are means by which this can be proved exactly. It is fortunate, for it is improbable that the same type of perjured evidence should appear in any other than a political trial. ”

“ None has been able without fear of contradiction to answer the question, “What was the fate of Sir Edmund Godfrey?” On the answer to this question depends to a great extent the nature of the final judgment to be passed upon the Popish Plot. If Godfrey met his death at the hands of political assassins, the weight of the fact is obvious. If he was murdered by the Roman Catholics, much of the censure which has been poured on the Protestant party misses the mark; if by Protestant agents, that censure must be redoubled before the demands of justice are satisfied. ”

“ The surgeons and the jury who trusted them were perfectly right in their conclusion. There can be no substantial doubt that the wounds found on Godfrey’s body were not the cause of his death, but were inflicted at some time after the event. As a dead man cannot be supposed to thrust a sword through his own corpse, he had certainly been murdered. When this point was reached, the nature of his end was evident. The neck was dislocated and showed signs of strangulation. Clearly the magistrate had been throttled in a violent struggle, during which his neck was broken and his body hideously bruised. ”

“ His assurance and readiness had been such as to amaze the council. Charles himself was taken aback, and though he gave no credence to the informer’s story, felt that great care was necessary for the discovery of the truth. Falsehood has not been unknown in the seventeenth and other centuries as a prop to even a good cause. At all events persons, against whom serious charges, not disproved, had been made, could not be allowed to remain at large. So on the second night in succession Oates was sent his rounds with a guard, sleepless and defying the stormy weather. ”

“ In spite of this false step Bedloe was a man of some ingenuity and even moderation. In his evidence against Atkins he had left the way open to advance, if possible, and charge Pepys’ clerk more fully with being implicated in the murder, or to retreat, if necessary, and protest with a profusion of sincerity that he had been hoaxed. He was far too careful to run the risk of definitely accusing any one with having been in a certain place at a certain time until he was sure that his reputation would not be ruined by running upon an alibi. ”

“ The lead given in the speech from the throne was freely followed. It was a Jesuit plot, said the king. It was a Jesuit plot, cried Catholics who were not under the influence of the order. The society has seldom drawn the affection of many outside its own ranks in any age, and in the seventeenth century incurred the hatred of almost all parts of the English Catholic body. Constant intrigues set the secular priests, members of the other orders, and, it can hardly be doubted, a large number of laymen against its restless and selfish policy. ”

“ It is not even in our own day commonly known that the Duke of Monmouth, reputed the eldest of the sons of Charles II, had an elder brother. So well was the secret kept, that during the long struggle [26] to save the Protestant succession and to exclude the Duke of York from the throne, no man ever discovered that there was another whose claims were better than those of the popular favourite, and who had of his free will preferred the gown of an obscure clerk to the brilliant prospect of favour at court and the chance of wearing the English crown. ”

“ If he is successfully persuaded to take part in such an act, the persuasion must be regarded as tantamount to force, for persuasion of the king to commit treason against himself is absurd. And the position of a man declaring his intention to accomplish this change is exactly that of Coleman and the Jesuit party in England. There can be no doubt that the subjects who took part with Charles II in the treaty of Dover were guilty of high treason, none the less because the man who was king acted in concert with them. ”

“ On October 17 his corpse was found in the fields at the foot of Primrose Hill. From that moment belief in the Popish Plot was rooted in the mind of the nation. The excitement throughout the country rose to the mark of frenzy. Godfrey’s death seemed clear evidence of the truth of Oates’ sanguinary tales, and the prelude to a general massacre of Protestants. It became an article of faith that he had been murdered by the Catholics. To deny it was to incur the most awkward suspicion. No man thought himself safe from the same fate. Every householder laid in a stock of arms. ”

“ On the fourth day of this ponderous trial Lord Stafford closed his main defence. He pointed to the turpitude of Oates’ character, and spoke with emotion of his abhorrence that a man guilty of such immorality as to profess a change of religion which he did not [366] experience should be allowed to give evidence against a peer among his peers. “I appeal to your lordships,” he cried, “whether such ... is not a perjured fellow, and no competent witness? No Christian, but a devil, and a witness for the devil.” ”

“ Jesuit agents and the Duke of York’s confidential secretary, for such in fact Coleman was, had something more to do than to entertain themselves by writing at length and in cipher to all parts of Europe with no other intention than to express their hopes for the propagation of the Catholic faith in a manner quite detached from politics, or to discuss political schemes as matters of speculative interest; such things are not done for amusement. ”

“ The judges only followed their chief’s example. James appeared downcast and knew well what danger he ran. His adversaries seemed to be throwing off the mask, strong in the support of which they were assumed to be conscious. When it was told to Shaftesbury that the king had railed at him and his party as seditious rebels, he replied aloud and in public, “The king has nothing to do but take the pains to punish rebels and seditious persons. We will keep with the bounds of the law, and we shall easily find means by the law to make him walk out of the kingdom.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the future was dimly shaped to men in shadows of high misfortune, the fear of open strife and loss of all they had given so much to gain in recalling Charles II to the throne of his fathers weighed more heavily upon them. ”

“ In these latter days when a man comes to be tried, the jury are told that it is their first duty to believe him innocent until he is proved to be guilty. The burden of that proof lies heavily upon the shoulders of those who conduct the prosecution. Whatever doubt may exist is counted to the benefit of the accused. He is treated throughout with studied consideration. But when the fourteen men who died for the Popish Plot were brought to the bar, all this was unheard of. ”

“ The treasury was put into commission, and the Earl of Essex, whose austerity and popular sympathies could not but inspire some measure of confidence, named as first commissioner. Before Parliament assembled the Duke of York at his brother’s command had left the kingdom, and was watching events with wrath and foreboding, but with little influence, from across the Channel. Nothing that could betoken a conciliatory spirit in the court had been omitted. There followed a move still more important as a check to the unbridled Commons. ”

“ While Protestants and many Catholics demanded that the Jesuits should accept the situation and retire gracefully to win advantages for their brothers in religion, members of the society retorted that a conspiracy was on foot to divide the body Catholic against itself, and that it was not for the general good to accept favours at the price of sacrificing the most able and flourishing order of the church. ”

“ To our minds the dead weight of an oath seems to be of far less account in determining the trustworthiness of evidence than its intrinsic probability and the degree to which it is corroborated by other circumstances, but in the judgment of the seventeenth century an oath carried all before it. A remarkable illustration of this is received from the trial of the Five Jesuits in 1679. Fenwick objected that the evidence against him was wholly uncorroborated. ”

“ All persons pretending to have power to absolve the Queen’s subjects from their natural obedience and converting them to the church of Rome shall be guilty of high treason, and their aiders and maintainers of misprision of treason. None shall say mass under penalty of two hundred marks’ fine and a year’s imprisonment, or hear mass under penalty of one hundred marks’ fine and a year’s imprisonment. ”

“ So long as the duke remained at the king’s right hand there was the added terror that he would shape the royal policy in the direction whither he would direct it himself from the throne. Nothing could be devised to cure the distrust aroused by his attitude, except that he should return to the Protestant religion or withdraw from the king’s presence. ”

“ Bedloe was a man of evil character. He had been in the service of Lord Bellasis, and had subsequently held a commission as lieutenant in a foot company in Flanders.201 He was of a type not uncommon in the seventeenth century, one of the vast crowd who lived a roving life of poverty and dishonesty, travelling from one country to another, in many services and under many names, living [112] upon their own wits and other people’s money, men for whom no falsehood was too black, no crime too gross to be turned to profit, men without truth, without shame, without fear of God or man. ”

“ Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, was the first statesman to learn the art of organising support for policy from an entire nation. His course in life was determined by the belief that it is the business of a politician to succeed, and to that mass of mankind which is of the same opinion he should be at once apostle and martyr. ”

“ Other witnesses invariably put out feelers to try in what direction they had best develop their tales. The methods of Oates, Atkins, and Bedloe are notorious instances of this. Prance produced the flower of his full-blown. Its bouquet was as strong when it first met the air as at any later time. The evidence which he gave to Godfrey’s murder in his first confession was as decisive and consistent in form as after constant repetition, recantation, and renewed asseverance. Almost all the other witnesses at their first appearance told stories which were loose, haphazard, inconsequent. ”

“ The murder had taken place at Somerset House in the way which he related, but he fastened the crime upon men who were guiltless of Godfrey’s death. The extent of Bedloe’s information also can be calculated. On every point of time and place he had prevaricated and contradicted himself beyond measure. On none of these is his testimony of the slightest value. Nevertheless he was possessed of enough knowledge to accuse definitely a man who was actively concerned in the crime and could relate the facts as they happened. ”

“ By the suggestion of the Duke of Monmouth as commander-in-chief of the forces, the king gained his point. Shaftesbury had argued that English troops could not legally be sent to serve in Scotland. Glad to avail himself of the prestige his puppet would win from the campaign, he now consented to the arrangement, hoping that the duke would carry powers not only to beat but to treat with the rebels; more might perhaps be gained by negotiation than by arms. In this he was nearly successful. While the commission giving to Monmouth full powers was signed, Lauderdale sat silent. ”

“ Why should he be accounted innocent, to whose guilt at least twelve good men and true had positively sworn? The presumptive innocence of the accused is a modern fiction which has tacitly grown up in a society conscious that its strength is too firm to be shaken by the misdeeds of single offenders, and therefore willing that any individual suspected of offence against its laws shall retain all the advantages on his own side. ”

“ If he was unaware that the king’s life was aimed at directly and indirectly, it was because he had deliberately shut his eyes to the tendency of his own schemes and those of his associates.651 This must be the test of the value of such declarations. The unbounded immorality with which the politics of the reign of Charles II were stamped so clouded the minds of men that truth became for them almost indistinguishable from falsehood. ”

“ That Prance should confess himself perjured is easy to understand: to understand why Prance’s sentence was lightened, unless it was in reward for good service done, would be very difficult. All the reasons which had worked before for the exculpation of the Roman Catholics from the guilt of Godfrey’s murder were now redoubled in force. Oates had already suffered for his crimes. The Popish Plot, as Sir John Reresby told James, was not only dead, but buried. To overthrow the Protestant story of Godfrey’s death would be to throw the last sod upon its grave. ”