Bristol, and conveyed to London, where he declared before the council that he had seen the body of Sir Edmonsbury Godfrey at Somerset house, where the queen lived. He said that a servant of Lord Bellasis offered to give him four thousand pounds if he would carry it off; and finding all his information greedily received, he confirmed and heightened Oates's plot with aggravated horrors. Thus encouraged by the general voice in their favour, the witnesses, who all along had enlarged their narratives, in proportion as they were eagerly received, went a step farther, and ventured to accuse the queen. The commons, in an address to the king, gave countenance to this scandalous accusation; the lords rejected it with becoming disdain. Edward Coleman, secretary to the duke of York, was the first who was brought to trial. Bedloe swore that he had received a commission, signed by the superior of the Jesuits, appointing him papal secretary of state, and that he had consented to the king's assassination. After this unfortunate man's sentence, thus procured by these vipers, many members of both houses offered to interpose in his behalf, if he would make an ample confession; but, as he was in reality possessed of no treasonable secrets, he would not procure life by falsehood and imposture. He suffered with calmness and constancy, and to the last persisted in the strongest protestations of his innocence. The trial of Coleman was succeeded by those of Ireland, Pickering, and Grove. They were found guilty, but went to execution protesting their innocence, a circumstance which made no impression on the spectators; their being Jesuits, banished even pity from their sufferings. Hill, Green, and Berry, were tried upon the evidence of one Miles Prance, for the murder of Godfrey; but though Bedloe's narrative, and Prance's information, were totally irreconcileable, and though their testimony was invalidated by contrary evidence, the prisoners were condemned and executed. They all denied their guilt at execution; and as Berry died a protestant, this circumstance was regarded as very considerable. Whitbread, provincial of the Jesuits, Fenwick, Gavan, Turner, and Harcourt, all of them of the same order, were brought to their trial; and Langhorne soon after. Besides Oates and Bedloe, Dugdale, a new witness, appeared against the prisoners. This man spread the alarm still farther, and asserted, that two hundred thousand papists in England were ready to take arms. The prisoners proved, by sixteen witnesses from St. Omer's, that Oates was in that seminary at the time he swore he was at London. But as they were papists, their testimony could gain no manner of credit. A pleas availed them nothing; both the Jesuits and Langhorne were condemned and executed, with their last breath denying the crimes for which they died. The informers had less success on the trial of Sir George Wakeman, the queen's physician, who, though they swore with their usual animosity, was acquitted. His condemnation would have involved the queen in his guilt; and it is probable the judge and jury were afraid of venturing so far. The earl of Stafford, near two years after, was the last man who fell a sacrifice to these bloody wretches; the witnesses produced against him were Oates, Dugdale, and Tuberville. Oates swore that he saw Fenwick, the Jesuit, deliver Stafford a commission from the general of the Jesuits, constituting him paymaster of the papal army. The clamour and outrage of the populace against the prisoner was very great; he was found guilty: and condemned to be hanged and quartered; but the king changed the sentence into that of beheading. He was executed on Towerhill, where even his persecutors could not forbear shedding tears at that serene fortitude which shone in every feature, motion, and accent of this aged nobleman. This parliament had continued to sit for seventeen years without interruption, when a new one was called; in which was passed the celebrated statute, called the Habeas Corpus Act, which confirms the subject in an absolute security from oppressive power. By this act it was prohibited to send any one to prisons beyond the sea; no judge, under severe penalties, was to refuse to any prisoner his writ of habeas corpus, by which the gaoler was to produce in court the body of the prisoner, whence the writ had its name, and to certify the cause of his detainer and imprisonment. If the gaol lie within twenty miles of the judge, the writ must be obeyed in three days, and so proportionably for greater distances. Every prisoner must be indicted the first term of his commitment, and brought to trial the subsequent term. And no man, after being enlarged by court, can be re-committed for the same offence. The Meal-Tub Plot, as it was called, soon followed the former. One Dangerfield, a wretch who had been set in the pillory, scourged, branded, and transported for felony and coining, hatched a plot, in conjunction with a midwife, whose name was Cellier, a Roman catholic, of abandoned character. Dangerfield began by declaring, that there was a design on foot to set up a new form of government, and remove the king and the royal family. He communicated this intelligence to the king and the duke of York, who supplied him with money, and countenanced his discovery. He hid some seditious papers in the lodgings of one colonel Mansel; and then brought the custom-house officers to his apartment, to search for smuggled merchandize. The papers were found, and the council having examined the affair, concluded they were forged by Dangerfield. They ordered all the places he frequented to be searched; and in the house of Cellier the whole scheme of the conspiracy was discovered upon paper, concealed in a meal-tub, from whence the plot had its name. Dangerfield being committed to Newgate, made an ample confession of the forgery, which, though probably entirely of his own contrivance, he ascribed to the earl of Castlemain, the countess of Powis, and the five lords in the Tower. He said that the design was to suborn witnesses to prove a charge of perjury upon Oates, to assassinate the earl of Shaftesbury, to accuse the dukes of Monmouth and Buckingham, the earls of Essex, Halifax, and others, of having been concerned in the conspiracy against the king and his brother. Upon this information, the earl of Castlemain, and the countess of Powis were sent to the Tower, and the king himself was suspected of encouraging this imposture. The chief point which the present house of commons laboured to obtain, was the Exclusion Bill, which, though the former house had voted, was never passed into a law. Shaftesbury, and many considerable men of the party, had rendered themselves so obnoxious to the duke of York, that they could find safety in no measure but his ruin. Monmouth's friends hoped that the exclusion of James would make room for their own patron. The duke of York's professed bigotry to the catholic superstition influenced numbers; and his tyrannies, which were practised without controul, while he continued in Scotland, rendered his name odious to thousands. In a week, therefore, after the commencement of the sessions, a motion was made for bringing in a bill, for excluding him from the succession to the throne: and a committee was appointed for that purpose. The debates were carried on with great violence on both sides. The king was present during the whole deate; and had the pleasure of seeing the bill thrown out by a very great majority. Each party had now for some time reviled and ridiculed each other in pamphlets and libels; and this practice, at last, was attended with an incident that deserves notice. One Fitzharris, an Irish papist, dependent on the duchess of Portsmouth, one of the king's mistresses, used to supply her with these occasional publications. But he was resolved to add to their number by his own endeavours; and employed one Everard, a Scotchman, to write a libel against the king and the duke of York. The Scot was actually a spy for the opposite party; and supposing this a trick to entrap him, he discovered the whole to Sir Wil liam Waller, an eminent justice of peace; and to convince him of the truth of his information, posted him, and two other persons, privately, where they heard the whole conference between Fitzharris and himself. The libel composed between them was replete with the utmost rancour and scurrility. Waller carried the intelligence to the king, and obtained a warrant for committing Fitzharris, who happened at that very time to have a copy of the libel in his pocket. Seeing himself in the hands of a party, from which he expected no mercy, he resolved to side with them, and throw the odium of the libel upon the court, who, he said, were willing to draw up a libel, which should be imputed to the exclusioners, and thus render them hateful to the people. He enhanced his services with the country party, by a new popish plot, still more tremendous than any of the foregoing. He brought in the duke of York as a principal accomplice in this plot, and as a contriver in the murder of Sir Edmonsbury Godfrey. The king imprisoned Fitzharris; the commons avowed his cause. They voted, that he should be impeached by themselves, to screen him from the ordinary forms of justice; the lords rejected the impeachment; the commons asserted their right: a commotion was likely to ensue; and the king, to break off the contest, went to the house, and dissolved the parliament, with, a fixed resolution never to call another. This vigorous measure was a blow that the parliament had never expected; and nothing but the necessity of the times could have justified the king's manner of proceeding. From that moment, which ended the par namentary commotions, Charles seemed to rule with despotic power, and he was resolved to leave the succession to his brother, clogged with all the faults and misfortunes of his own administration. His temper, which had always been easy and merciful, now became arbitrary, and even cruel: he entertained spies and informers round the throne, and imprisoned all such as he thought most daring in their designs. He resolved to humble the Presbyterians, whom he divested of their employments and their places, which were given to such as held with the court, and approved the doctrine of non-resistance. The clergy began to testify their zeal and their principles by their writings and their sermons; but though among these the partizans of the king were the most numerous, those of the opposite faction were the most enterprising. The king openly espoused the cause of the former; and thus placing himself at the head of a faction, he deprived the city of London, which had long headed the popular party, of their charter. It was not till after an abject submission that he restored it to them, having previously subjected the election of their magistrates to his immediate authority. Terrors also were not wanting to confirm his new species of monarchy. Fitzharris was brought to his trial before a jury, and condemned and executed. The whole gang of spies, witnesses, informers, suborners, which had long heen encouraged and supported by the leading patriots, finding now that the king was entirely master, turned short upon their ancient drivers, and offered their evidence against those who had first put them in motion. The king's ministers, with a horrid satisfaction, gave them countenance and encouragement; so that soon the same cruelties and the same injustice were practised against presbyterian schemes, that had been employed against catholic trea sons. The first person who fell under the displeasure of the ministry was one Stephen College, a London joiner, who had become so noted for his zeal against popery, that Ire went by the name of the Protestant Joiner. He had attended the city members to Oxford, armed with sword and pistol; he had sometimes been heard to speak irreverently of the king, and was now presented by the grand jury of London as guilty of sedition. A jury at Oxford, after half an hour's deliberation, brought him in guilty, and the spec R |