solely to the manner of procuring signatures, and threatened with the utmost rigour of punishment all who should subscribe their own names, or procure the subscriptions of others contrary to the common and known laws of the land. A more unmeaning document could not have been published, and yet it produced an effect which its framers had never anticipated. It turned the popular current into the opposite direction. Numbers, who from the similarity of the late proceedings to those of the year 1641 had foretold a second revolution, were awakened by it from their apathy; the cavaliers and the churchmen, the majority of the gentry and of the merchants, suddenly came forward; and multitudes in every quarter crowded to subscribe addresses to the king, expressing in the most forcible terms their reliance on his wisdom, and their abhorrence of the practices of the petitioners. Westminster set the example; Essex, Middlesex, Surrey, Somerset, Shropshire, and Norfolk followed; and the last county ventured even to offer thanks to the king for the recall of the heir apparent from Flanders *.

By Charles these addresses were received with joy and gratitude. They dispelled the doubt and apprehension which hung over his mind; they convinced him that he still retained a strong hold on the affections of his subjects; and they encouraged him to adopt a measure as unexpected by his friends as it was by his

North, 342. James, i. 581. Bulstrode, 310. Macpherson, i. 100. Here it may be observed that the licensing act, an act which was incompatible with the liberty of the press, had not been renewed in the last session of parliament, and therefore expired of course at the prorogation on the 27th of May, 1679. Authors and printers hastened to avail themselves of their freedom, and publications of every description were poured without intermission from the press. The judges, however, undertook to check what they considered an evil. They resolved, without a dissentient voice, that not only books reflecting scandalously on the government and private persons may be seized, and the authors and publishers punished, but that no man could lawfully print and publish books of news without authority, and that whoever did so, was answerable for the falsehoods contained therein. State Trials, vii. 929. 1127; viii. 187. 198. In conformity with this resolution, the printing of news without licence was prohibited. See Gazette, May 17, 1680.

A.D. 1680.] RECALL OF THE DUKE OF YORK.

225

28.

opponents. Entering the council chamber, he stated 1680 that he had derived little benefit from the absence of his Jan. brother; that he could not understand the justice of taking from a prince, whose rights were assailed, the opportunity of defending them in his place in parliament; and that he had therefore ordered the duke of York to quit Edinburgh, and to return to his former residence at St. James's. This declaration revealed to the lords Russell and Cavendish, and to Capel and Powle, the degraded situation to which they had been insensibly reduced. When they accepted seats in the council, they probably cherished the hope of gaining the ascendency through the easy disposition of the king, and the preponderance of their party in the two houses. But time had dispelled the delusion. The parliament was not permitted to sit; Shaftesbury, their leader, had been dismissed; they themselves were no more than nominal counsellors; their presence served only to give a sanction to measures which they never advised, and which, had the opportunity been given, they would have strenuously Jan opposed. They tendered their resignation, and Charles 31. replied that he accepted it" with all his heart*”

In a short time the duke of York returned to the capital, and had reason to be gratified with his reception. The recorder presented to him a congratulatory address Feb. in the name of the city; a sumptuous entertainment 24. was given to the royal brothers by the lord mayor; and a general illumination testified the public joy at his presence. To check these demonstrations of reviving attachment in the people, his enemies began to circulate new rumours respecting the king's pretended marriage with the mother of Monmouth. It was said that the witnesses of the ceremony were still alive; that the contract itself, enclosed in a black box, had been entrusted by the late bishop of Durham to the custody of his sonin-law sir Gilbert Gerard; and that several persons were

• Kennet, 379. James (Memoirs), i. 587. Macpherson, 108. VOL. XII.

ready to depose that they had both seen and perused the important document. By order of Charles every individual named in these reports was sent for, and interrogated before the council, and each disclaimed all knowledge whatsoever of the box, the contract, or the marriage. April In conclusion two royal declarations were published in 26. the Gazette, in which the king related all these par

ticulars, repeated the deposition which he had formerly June subscribed, and to silence the cavillers against it, called God to witness that he had never been married to Lucy Barlow, or to any other woman besides the queen *.

8.

5. To parry this blow, the earl of Shaftesbury, on the 26th of June, proceeded to Westminster-hall in company 16, with the earl of Huntingdon, the lord Grey of Werke, the lord Gerard of Brandon, the lords Russell and Cavendish, nine commoners, and the arch-informer, Titus Oates. Being admitted before the grand jury, he described to them the dangers to be apprehended from the possession of the post-office in fee by the duke of York, and the benefit to be derived from the forfeiture of two-thirds of his estate according to the popery laws; offered six reasons why they should look upon him as a papist, and present him for a recusant; and in addition advised them to indict the duchess of Portsmouth as a national nuisance. The last part was intended only to excite alarm in the king's mistress; and the object of the first part was defeated by the address of the judges, who discharged the jury, while a portion of their number was closeted in private consultation with Shaftesbury. Nov. In the next term the attempt was renewed; and the 29. duke, on the oath of Oates that he had seen that prince receive the sacrament at mass, was presented as a recusant at the Old Bailey; but advantage was taken of some irregularity in the proceedings, and the cause was

⚫ James, i. 589. Macpherson, i. 101. London Gazette, 1507. 1520. To these solemn appeals of the king it was auswered by his adversaries that, if the eye and fear of God could not restrain him from living in adultery, it could not be expected that they should restrain him from swearing falsely, Somers' Tracts, viii 187-208, with sir Walter Scott's notes.

A.D. 1680.]

WHIG AND TORY.

227

removed by writ of certiorari into the court of King's Bench*.

It was during this period that the appellations of Whig and Tory became permanently affixed to the two great political parties which for a century and a half have divided the nation. The first had long before been given to the covenanters in the west of Scotland, and was supposed to convey a charge of seditious and anti-monarchical principles. The second originally designated those natives of Ireland who, having been deprived of the estates of their ancestors, supported themselves by depredations on the English settlers; and was now employed in conversation to intimate a secret leaning towards popery and despotism. Hence the abhorrers branded the petitioners with the name of Whigs; and the petitioners in revenge bestowed on their opponents the name of Tories. But in a short time Whig and Tory ceased to be terms of reproach; they were cheerfully adopted by the parties themselves, and became hallowed in their estimation as indicative of the political principles which they respectively professed to cherish and uphold.

II. To pursue the "Popish plot" through its successive ramifications, would be to impose an irksome task on the feelings and patience of the reader. But out of the new informers, who daily grafted their own discoveries on the original narrative of Oates, two will claim his attention, not so much on account of their superior infamy, as of the purpose to which their evidence was subsequently applied. 1. The first was named Dangerfield, a young man of handsome person and of creditable acquirements, but who, in the course of a few years, had run through a long career of guilt. In different places and for different crimes, he had been condemned to fine and imprisonment, had suffered the punishments of whipping and being burnt in the hand, had stood in the pillory, and had been repeatedly outlawed. Mrs. Cellier,

State Trials, viii. 179. C. Journ. Dec. 23, 1680. James (Memoirs), i. 666. Ralph, i. 504, note. See Vol. x. 369, note. Vol. xi, 309.

a catholic midwife of eminence, who collected alms for the relief of the prisoners, found him among the debtors in Newgate, and received from him a petition for pecuniary assistance, with a promise that he would in return purloin the papers of Stroud, a fellow captive, supposed to have been suborned by Shaftesbury as a witness 1679. against the lords in the Tower. She satisfied his crediJune tors, and on his discharge employed him to collect certain 6. monies due to her husband. In this occupation he pretended that, by visiting the different coffee-houses, he had discovered the existence of a most dangerous conspiracy. Cellier, through the agency of lady Powis, introduced him to the earl of Peterborough, and Peterborough to the duke of York, to whom he declared that, during the king's indisposition, the principal presbyterians had conspired to raise an army, and seize on the government; that the design, though frustrated for the moment by the king's recovery, was not yet abandoned; and that the paper which he then delivered to his royal highness, would show that commissions had already been distributed, and the plan of a revolution in the government had actually been arranged. James heard him with jealousy and reserve. He gave him indeed twenty guineas as a reward for his good will; but transferred him with his document to the king, who, having ordered him an additional present of forty guineas, commissioned secretary Coventry to watch his conduct, and investigate the truth or falsehood of his story. Coventry thought it unworthy of credit. He gave him back his paper, and demanded something more satisfactory: but Dangerfield could produce nothing besides two letters written by Bulstrode, the envoy at Brussels, to the earl of Shaftesbury. The letters were on indifferent matters; but that they should be in the possession of Dangerfield was very extraordinary. The king grew uneasy: there was, he declared, some dark and mysterious plot in agitation *.

* Dangerfield in his " Particular Narrative" (p. 39) says that he waited on Lord Shaftesbury to kill him at the instigation of the papists, and being left alone for some time took the opportunity of stealing these letters.