A.D. 1678.]

TITUS OATES.

129

the war, which had raged for six years from the shores of the Baltic to those of the Mediterranean*. That the result so glorious to Louis, so alarming to the other princes of Europe, was in a great measure owing to the indecisive, vacillating, and contradictory conduct of the English cabinet, cannot be denied. But the blame must not be laid exclusively on the king: it ought to be shared with him by the leaders of the country party. If his poverty, his love of ease, his fear of the opposition in parliament, taught him to shrink from the cares and embarrassments consequent on a declaration of war, their desire of popularity, combined with party spirit, perhaps with more mercenary motives, led them to act in opposition to their professions, to urge the king to take part in the quarrel, and at the same time to prevent him from following their advice by denying him the necessary supplies. In truth, the jealousy of the two parties was so deeply rooted, their strength in the house of commons so nearly balanced, that the powers of government became paralysed, and the crown of England lost its legitimate influence in the counsels of Europe.

From continental politics the reader must now divert his attention to one of the most extraordinary occurrences in our domestic history, the imposture generally known by the appellation of Oates's plot; an imposture which, brought forward in a time of popular discontent, and supported by the arts and declamations of a numerous party, goaded the passions of men to a state of madness, and seemed for a while to extinguish the native good sense and humanity of the English character.

Its author and hero was Titus Oates, alias Ambrose, the son of a ribbon-weaver, who, exchanging the loom for the bible, distinguished himself as an anabaptist minister during the government of Cromwell, and became an orthodox clergyman on the restoration of the ancient dynasty. Titus was sent to Cambridge, took • Dumont, vii. 352. 368. 376.

VOL. XI.

orders, and officiated as curate in several parishes, and as chaplain on board of a man-of-war; but all these situations he successively forfeited in consequence of his misconduct, of reports attributing to him unnatural propensities, and of the odium incurred by two malicious prosecutions, in each of which his testimony upon oath was disproved to the satisfaction of the jury. Houseless and penniless, Oates applied for relief to the compassion of Dr. Tonge, rector of St. Michael's in Wood-street, a man in whom weakness and credulity were combined with a disposition singularly mischievous and astute. Tonge had proclaimed himself an alarmist: his imagination was haunted with visions of plots and conspiracies; and he deemed it a duty to warn his countrymen by quarterly publications against the pernicious designs of the Jesuits*. In Oates he found an apt instrument for his purpose; and, as the example of Luzancy held out a powerful invitation to informers against the catholics, it was arranged between them, that the indigent clergyman should feign himself a convert to the catholic faith, and under that cover should seek to worm himself into the more secret councils of his instructors. He was 1677. reconciled by a priest of the name of Berry, who obJune tained for the neophyte a place in the college under the

administration of the English jesuits at Valladolid in Spain. But the habits of Oates accorded not with the discipline of a college, and after a trial of five months he Oct. was disgracefully expelled. By the advice of Tonge he 30. made a second application; his tears and promises subdued the reluctance of the provincial; and the repentant sinner was received into the college at St. Omer. Dec. But Oates was still unable to govern his unruly disposi

10.

"

"As all a man of my rank could do, I resolved to oppose yearly and quarterly, if possible, some small treatises in print to alarm and awaken "his majesty and these houses." Tonge's information to the house of commons, in L Estrange, Brief History, ii. 53.

Berry, alias Hutchinson, was first a clergyman of the established church, then a jesuit, next a secular priest, afterwards a protestant and curate of Berking, and, last of all, a second time a catholic. It was generally understood that he was deranged.

A.D. 1678.]

A PLOT FORGED.

131

tion; again he suffered his real character to pierce the flimsy cover which his hypocrisy had thrown over it; and his petition to be admitted into the novitiate was 1678. answered by a peremptory order for his expulsion. From June St. Omer he repaired a second time to his patron: but 23. the information which he had been able to glean from the reports current among his fellow students was scanty and uncertain; and the only thing of seeming importance which he could communicate was the bare fact, that several jesuits had, in the month of April, held a private meeting in London. On this foundation, however, frail and slender as it was, the two projectors contrived to build a huge superstructure of malice and fiction. The meeting was in reality the usual triennial congregation of the order: they represented it as an extraordinary consult for a particular purpose: it was composed of the provincial, and the thirty-nine eldest members: they introduced into it almost every jesuit with whose name Oates was acquainted: it had been held with much secrecy, but imprudently enough, in the duke of York's palace at St. James's*; they fixed it at an inn in the Strand, the former inmates of which were no longer to be discovered: it had for its object the nomination of the treasurer, and the arrangement of the internal concerns of the society; they described it as a consultation on the most eligible means of assassinating the king, and of subverting by force the protestant religion. In support of this fable they subsequently invented an immense mass of confirmatory evidence, detailing the conveyance of treasonable letters, the subscription of monies, the distribution of offices, and the preparation of a military force; and when the narrative Aug. (so it was afterwards termed) had assumed the proper 1. shape, it was written in Greek characters by Oates, then copied in English characters by Tonge, and lastly communicated under a promise of secrecy to one Kirkby,

* Reresby, 195.

Aug.

13.

who, having been occasionally employed in the royal laboratory, was personally known to the king *.

On the 13th of August, at the moment when Charles was preparing to walk in the park, Kirkby stepped forward, and in an under tone begged him not to separate from the company, because his life was in danger. The alarming intelligence made no sensible alteration in the royal manner; but it led to a private interview in the evening, when Tonge attended with a copy of "the nar"rative," divided into forty-three articles, and was im14. mediately referred by the king to the lord-treasurer; to whose inquiries he replied that the original narrative had been thrust under the door of his chamber; that he knew not the author, but was possessed of a clue, which might lead to the discovery; and that he would endeavour to learn the residence of Pickering and honest William who had undertaken to assassinate the king, or would point out their persons when they were walking, according to their custom, in the park. The coldness with which the discovery was received goaded the pro17. jectors to new exertions: additional articles were sent

in; the days when the assassins might be apprehended 20. at Windsor were named; and excuses, to account for their non-appearance, were successively framed. By 23. this time Charles had become incredulous; he laughed at the simplicity of Danby; and when that minister solicited permission to lay the narrative before the privy council, hastily exclaimed, “No, not even before my "brother! It would only create alarm, and may perhaps put the design of murdering me into the head of some individual, who otherwise would never have en"tertained such a thought +."

66

L'Estrange, Brief History, ii. 81. 91. 101. 102. The Shammer Shamm'd, p. 8. Preface to Tonge's Royal Martyr. Castlemaine's Apology, 57.63. "Vindication of the Inglish Catholiks from the pretended "conspiracy against the life & government of his sacred majesty, disco"vering the cheife lyes and contradictions contained in the narrative of "Titus Oates, M.DC.LXXX.," with an Appendix of twenty attestations or affidavits; and Florus Anglo-Bavaricus, Leodii, 1685, p. 93. 200.

Brief Hist. 104. Echard, 947. Vindication, 20. Kirkby's" Compleat

A.D. 1678.]

FIVE FORGED LETTERS.

133

Danby had insisted on the inspection of some of the numerous papers mentioned in the information. After repeated evasions, he was told that a packet, containing treasonable letters, would on a certain day arrive at the post-office, addressed to Bedingfeld, the confessor to the duke of York. To intercept it, the lord treasurer Aug. hastened to Windsor; but found the letters already in 31. possession of the king: for Bedingfeld had previously received them, and under the persuasion that they were forgeries, had delivered them to the duke. A rigorous examination took place. One was evidently written by the same person who had penned the information presented to the king by Tonge: the similarity of the other four, though in a feigned hand, plainly showed that they must have been the work of one individual. In addition, they all presented the same absence of punctuation, the same peculiarities of spelling and language, and the same ignorance of the real names of the supposed writers and their friends, though they purported to come from five different persons of good education, writing some from London, and others from St. Omer. It was impossible to doubt of the imposture, or of the office in which the letters had been forged *.

Soon after the transmission of these letters, Oates and True Narrative," with Danby's impartial state of his case, and his plea in the journals of the house of lords, xiii. 538.

See the letters in L'Estrange (Observator, ii. 150, 151, 152, 153, and Brief Hist. ii. 7): also James (Memoirs), i. 517–519. The fraud was so manifest, that the crown lawyers thought it proper to suppress the letters at the trials which followed. On October 16th, the letters, together with the other documents, were laid before sir William Jones, the attorneygeneral, with an order for him to make "a state of the evidence." His remark on the letters is singular. "If they can be so proved as to be be"lieved to be the hands of the several persons by whom they are said to be " written, they do fully make out the guilt of the writers, and do much "confirm all the rest that hath been deposed by Mr. Otes but against "the truth of the said letters there are many objections, some from the "prisoners, others from the letters themselves, and the way of their coming "to light: the particulars thereof, as they are many, and some resulting "from the inspection of the letters themselves, so I doubt not but the Isame are fully remembered by your majesty." Brief Hist. ii. 5, 6. Yet the man, who came to this lame and impotent conclusion, not only did not allow the prisoners the benefit of such objections, but repeatedly asserted to the court that, whoever doubted of the existence of the plot, must be an enemy to the king, and the religion of his country!