It is certain, that, whatever the private wishes of Charles may have been, he neither did nor durst interfere, by his royal prerogative, to prevent the execution of Stafford, Coleman, Langhorne, Plunket, and other Catholics of rank, who were condemned on account of the Popish Plot. Ireland, Fenwic, Gavan, Turner, and Harcourt, Jesuits, with Whitebread, the provincial of the order, were all tried, sentenced, and executed for the same conspiracy; persisting, to their last breath, in the most solemn and deliberate asseverations of innocence: But their dying testimonies only irritated the populace the more against a religion, which taught its votaries to go down to the grave with a manifest lie, as they supposed, in their right hand.
The Parliament, before whom Oates was examined, did not confine themselves to simple approbation of his conduct. He was treated in a manner suitable to the sense they had of his merit and importance. The charge of his personal safety was recommended by the House of Commons to the Lord General, the care of his lodgings and accommodation to the Lord Chamberlain, and that of supplying him with money to the Lord High Treasurer of England.
The state of Oates, in his splendour, is very well described by North: "He was now in his trine exaltation; his plot in full force, efficacy, and virtue; he walked about with his guards, assigned for fear of the Papists' murdering him. He had lodgings at Whitehall, and L. 1200 per annum pension; and no wonder, after he had the impudence to say to the House of Lords, in plain terms, that, if they would not help him to more money, he must be forced to help himself. He put on an episcopal garb, (except the lawn sleeves,) silk gown and cassock, great hat, sattin hatband and rose, long scarf, and was called, or blasphemously called himself, the Saviour of the Nation. Whoever he pointed at was taken up and committed; so that many people got out of his way as from a blast, and glad they could prove their last two years conversation. The very breath of him was pestilential; and if it brought not imprisonment or death over such on whom it fell, it surely poisoned reputation, and left good Protestants arrant Papists, and something worse than that, in danger of being put into the plot as traitors." Examen. p. 205.
Oates never would say he had told all he knew, but always reserved some part of his evidence to be changed or altered with the shifting wind of faction or popularity. According to his first narrative, the plot was laid against the persons of the king and Duke of York; and their assassination was to take place during the fire of London. But he had the impudence to say, in his picture of King James, that both his brother and he were in that very plot for firing the city, a secret which, he alleges, he could not discover at the time, on account of a promise to Prince Rupert; and is pleased to add, that the prince heartily repented of giving, and he of taking, that counsel. When he was asked, in the House of Commons, whether he had told all he knew of the conspiracy? this cautious witness, who was determined to have the whole credit of saving the kingdom his own way, instead of entrusting the House with the secret, told them a parable of a fox, who, having occasion to cross a frozen stream with a goose, and being unwilling to hazard his spoil, first carried over a stone of equal weight with the goose, to see if the ice would bear it. In short, neither he, nor any of his imitators, would say more, than that their immediate evidence was all which they as yet thought meet to declare.
This would have been tolerated no where but in England, and during that period of terror, suspicion, and infatuation, when these perjured caitiffs were as dear to the people as those who tell stories of Rawhead and Bloody-bones are to their nursery audience. The author has said, and with much truth,
The discovery of Coleman's letters, however irreconcileable with the tale of the witnesses, above all, the murder of Godfrey, gave such a bloody confirmation, that the people swallowed all that could be told them about the horrors of the conspiracy; and, to use the warm expression of the author of the "Examen," one might have denied his Redeemer with less contest than attainted the veracity of Oates.
This popular ferment began to abate after the execution of Lord Stafford; and, as the witnesses sunk in reputation, the king began by degrees to discountenance Oates. He expelled him from Whitehall, withdrew his guards, and reduced his pension to L.600. Upon this Oates altered his dress, assumed a sword, and associated with the more desperate of the popular faction, such as Rumbold, Colledge, and Fergusson. In the reign of James II., his fortunes suffered a yet more melancholy reverse; for, being most satisfactorily convicted of perjury, by upwards of eighty witnesses, he was sentenced to two fines of 1000 merks each; to be whipped, on two different days, from Aldgate to Newgate, and from Newgate to Tyburn; to be imprisoned for life, and to be pilloried five times every year. James had the imprudence to exult in this cruel punishment. He told Sir John Reresby, that the Popish plot was now dead; and, when that courtier obsequiously answered, "and buried, please your majesty," he thought the jest worth repeating, which his brother would hardly have done. It is true, no punishment could be bad enough for the author of so many legal murders; but the severity of the sentence was an injury to the law of the land, though done through the person of so vile a criminal. The man's impudence supported him under the conviction; and his fortitude under the punishment was the means of regaining a share of his fallen credit. After the Revolution, he was pardoned, and received a pension of L.400, with the amount of which he was much dissatisfied, as well as with the refusal of the Parliament to reverse his sentence, and restore his capacity for his old trade of bearing evidence.
North, and other Tory writers, have affected to consider Shaftesbury as the original author of the Popish plot. Of this there is no proof whatever; and the internal evidence derived from the account of the plot itself, is altogether inconsistent with the very idea. Shaftesbury could never have given birth to such a heap of inconsistent fables; a plan which he had forged would have been ingenious, consistent with itself, accommodated to the circumstances of parties, and the times, and therefore, in all probability, being less suited to the vulgar palate, would not have made half the impression on the public. But we can easily believe the truth of what he is alleged to have said, "that whoever started the game, he had the full advantage of the chase." In fact, this wonderful tale, probably at first invented by two or three obscure knaves, with the sordid view of profiting by the credulity of the English nation, would have fallen to the ground, had it not been fostered and cherished by Shaftesbury, who very soon perceived it could be made the means of turning out Lord Danby, and driving matters to extremity against the Catholic faction. He might well indeed exult in his management in the former particular, since Danby was the first to introduce into the House of Commons that very discussion about the plot, to which, as Shaftesbury managed it, he himself fell a sacrifice.[411] But it was chiefly as a means of bringing forward the Bill of Exclusion, and of crushing for ever the hopes of his mortal foe the Duke of York,[412] that Shaftesbury became the patron of all investigations connected with the plot, pushed them on with vigour and vehemence, and dipped himself deep in the blood of the innocent persons who fell sacrifices to the popular clamour he had excited, and to evidence, which much less than Shaftesbury's abilities might easily have discovered to be inconsistent and fabulous.
A humorous pamphlet, already quoted, represents Shaftesbury as abandoning his pretensions to the crown of Poland, for the purpose of following up the discovery of the Popish plot. "In the very height of all this expectation, one night as his majesty elect lay musing upon his bed, restless with the thoughts and expectation of the approaching empire, there appeared to him, by the light of a lamp that was burning in his chamber, a dreadful and most monstrous vision. The shape and figure of it was very confused and irregular: sometimes it looked like the whore of Babylon, naked, and of immense privities; presently, in the twinkling of an eye, the form was changed, and it appeared like a justice of the peace, strangled by a crew of ruffians, who afterwards ran him through the body with his own sword, that it might be thought he hanged himself; on a sudden it was altered again, and seemed a troop of pilgrims, armed with black bills, that came the Lord knows whence, landed the Lord knows where, and are gone the Lord knows whither. His majesty seeing it vary so often, and so terribly, calling up all the faith he had to his assistance, boldly demanded 'In the name of, &c. what art thou?' Instantly, after a terrible clap of thunder, accompanied with several flashes of lightning, it contracted itself into the shape of a doctor of Salamanca, and, in a hideous tone, cried out, 'I am a Plot. Woe to England! farewell till 78;' and vanished. No sooner was it gone, but a stupid amazement seized upon the majesty of Poland, and cast him into a deep sleep, where he lay till morning, when, awakening, he found himself stript of all the high and aspiring thoughts that before had filled his mind; pity and compassion towards his native country utterly cooled his ambition, and from that moment he laid by all thoughts of converting the Turk, and resolved to stay at home for confounding the pope.
"Thus has this good man, (for he is no more his majesty,) again refused the highest promotion that perhaps any subject of England was ever raised to, merely to stand in a gap here, and slay the plague that was coming upon us."[413]
In 1679, the national discontent running exceedingly high, both on account of the Popish plot, and for other reasons, the king, by the advice of Sir William Temple, summoned a council of thirty persons, fifteen of whom were the great officers of the crown, and fifteen chosen from the country party. Shaftesbury was made president of this council, against the opinion of Temple; and quickly found the means of pressing his favourite measure of the Exclusion Bill. Monmouth, upon whose interest in the king's affections he had great reliance, was the person whom he proposed to nominate as successor, either by a law to be passed for the purpose, or by prevailing on the king to declare him legitimate. For this purpose, the interest of Shaftesbury was exerted to have the duke sent down to Scotland, to oppose the insurgent Covenanters, whom he defeated at Bothwell Bridge. The king's illness, and the sudden revolution which took place in his councils, upon the unexpected return of the Duke of York from Flanders, ruined this project, and occasioned the disgrace of Monmouth, and the dismissal of Shaftesbury.
Sir Robert Clayton, alderman of London, and one of the representatives of the city during the two last parliaments of King Charles II., was warmly attached to the Whig party. He took an active concern, as a magistrate, in examining the sham-plotter, Fitz-Harris; and was charged by the Tories with an attempt to suborn that person to swear, that he had been hired by the court to fix a plot upon the Protestants. The examination of Fitz-Harris, who swore, and counter-swore, in many different ways, besides avouching that he was bribed to concoct a sham-plot, and to ascribe it to the Whigs, (a base manœuvre, too often played off by both parties to be incredible,) added a thousand improbable falsehoods about a Papist plot against the Protestants. When removed from the city jail, and committed to the Tower, he told another story: He was then in the power of the king, and alleged, that Howard, and others, were in a plot to seize the king's person, and that they had employed him to contrive the aforesaid sham-plot, in order to charge upon the court the crime of subornation, &c. He added, that Clayton, Bethel, Cornish, and Treby, the city-recorder, extorted from him, by threats, his previous declaration concerning the Popish plot, and used the most urgent means to compel him to impute the guilt of Godfrey's murder to Danby, and to fix an accession to the Popish conspiracy on the queen and Duke of York. The man was executed adhering to this last story. Clayton, and the others accused of such infamous practices, exculpated themselves in a pamphlet, entitled, "Truth Vindicated," in which they showed many objections to Fitz-Harris's final declaration. We must be contented to leave the affair in mystery; and to regret there ever was a time in England, when the character and common practices of both the leading parties in the kingdom were by no means pure enough to exempt either from such foul suspicions.
Sir Robert Clayton, with the other London members, all of whom were zealous Whigs, and whose re-election was hailed by the acclamations of their party,[414] attended the Oxford Parliament in formidable array; they were escorted by a numerous band of armed partizans, who wore on their hats ribbons, bearing the label, "No Popery, no Slavery," and were obviously prepared for something more than an usual attendance upon their duty in the House of Commons. According to Dugdale's evidence, Sir Robert Clayton was present at a carousal at Lord Lovelace's, near Oxford, where Colledge, one of their principal myrmidons, sung the unlucky ballad, which went so far towards his condemnation.[415]
The story, that Sir Robert Clayton wished to purchase a peerage, seems to have become popular. In the last will and testament of the Charter of London is this, among other jocular bequests; "To Sir Robert Clayton I bequeath all that the chamberlain has left of the common stock, to purchase Paddington manor, with the demesnes and appurtenances thereto, since there are now no dukedoms to be purchased; and it is thought that Tyburn, paying his arrears next year to the city, will yield a better rate than 20l. per cent. in the banker's hands."—Somers' Tracts, p. 185. His usury is also hinted at in a poem called, "The Duke of Buckingham's Litany," and its consequences are enumerated among the other follies of that prodigal peer: