A.D. 1680.] TRIAL OF LORD STAFFORD. 249 terodox sovereigns may be lawfully deposed and murdered by their subjects, and that actions, vicious of their own nature, become virtuous, when their object is the benefit of the church. They then reminded their hearers of the persecution under queen Mary, of the gunpowder plot, of the massacre of the French Huguenots, and of the rebellion in Ireland; they attributed to the catholics the burning of London, the destruction of the fleet at Chatham, and the subsequent fires in the metropolis; they painted in vivid colours all the horrors disclosed by Oates and his associates, the intended assassination of the king, the massacre of the protestants, the auxiliary armies of French papists, of wild Irishmen, and of Spanish pilgrims; and they urged the death of Godfrey, the correspondence of Coleman, and the convictions of that intriguer, of Langhorne, and of the jesuits. In the next place they threw out menaces of vengeance against all who should presume to defame the king's witnesses, or affirm the innocence of the peers in the Tower; called on the lords to display their love of truth, and zeal for the protestant cause; and predicted that, if justice were done in this case, popery would be for ever banished out of the English world. Having thus prepared the minds of the audience, they called five witnesses, Dugdale, Oates, Prance, Turberville, and Denis, men whose very characters were a sufficient condemnation of the cause which they appeared to support. They deposed to things, many of them utterly incredible, and many morally impossible; that the pope, the cardinals, and the jesuits had for several years made this, their design of assassi nating the king, the subject of common discourse and of public sermons in Italy; that the moment the king should fall, the papists, confessedly a small body of men, would rise and cut the throats of the protestants, and that such protestants as had the good fortune to escape the knives of the assassins would nevertheless fall by the swords of the popish army, though whence that army was to come, or by what means it was to be raised, no 1. man could describe or conceive. To the testimony of these men lord Stafford was content to reply, that no part of it was in any manner applicable to him *. that on a Tixall to that the On the second day the managers undertook to bring Dec. the charge home to the accused. Dugdale deposed to three facts: 1. that lord Stafford, at a consult at Tixall, had given his consent to the king's death; 2. subsequent Sunday, coming from Stafford to hear mass, he met the deponent, and told him catholic worship would soon be established in England; and 3. that on the 20th or 21st of September, sending for the witness to his chamber, he offered him 500l. if he would undertake to assassinate the king. Dugdale was repeatedly urged to name the time of the consult: but he kept himself on his guard; though a latitude of ten, and subsequently of fourteen days was offered, still no ingenuity could extort from him any other answer than that it was held about the end of August, or the beginning of September, 1678. Oates followed. Besides his pretended acquaintance with many letters, in which lord Stafford had expressed his adhesion to the plot, he swore positively that he saw Fenwick deliver into the hands of the prisoner a patent from the general of the jesuits, appointing him paymaster to the catholic army. To Oates succeeded Turberville, a younger son of a catholic family in Glamorganshire, who, finding himself reduced to poverty, had conformed to the established church, and put in his claim for the reward promised to informers t. This witness declared that in Paris he had been three weeks with lord Stafford, who earnestly solicited him to murder the king. His deposition closed the case for the prosecution; and the prisoner was called upon for his defence. He observed, that he had good reason to believe that the • Trial, 7-39. According to his sworn "information," he was at first gentleman usher to lady Mary Molineux, and afterwards sent to Douai to become a friar, but ran away from the convent, which so enraged his relations, that his brother disinherited him. Inform. 5. 7. A.D. 1680.] HIS DEFENCE. 25: doctrines so ostentatiously put forward by the managers, were not the doctrines of the church of Rome: at all events, they were not his doctrines; he had always looked on them with abhorrence, and therefore was not answerable for them; that his past life had borne witness to his loyalty, and had earned for him the approbation of his sovereign; and that his conduct on the first discovery of the plot was a satisfactory proof of his innocence. Had he been conscious that Oates the informer saw him accept the traitorous commission, and that others had been suborned by him to murder the king, would he not have sought to preserve his life by flight or concealment? Yet seven days afterwards he came publicly to London, and continued to attend his duty in parliament, till he was taken into custody. Again, two commissioners from the house of lords, and subsequently others from the council, had come to him in the Tower with a promise of a full pardon, if he would only confess what he knew of the conspiracy. Was it to be conceived that, with the knowledge of the fate which had befallen those who were found guilty, and of the fate which awaited himself in the event of conviction, he would have refused the proposal, if he had been conscious of guilt? These things he offered as strong presumptions in his favour; and then requested the respite of a day to prepare for his defence. That the request was refused is already known to the reader *. The following morning he boldly met the charges against him. Each of the three witnesses was, he maintained, a perjured villain; and whoever impartially considers his proofs must admit the truth of the assertion †. Of Dugdale he showed that the informer knew nothing of the pretended consult at Tixall, when he made his ⚫ Trial, 52-56. 65. Of course I must confine myself to the more important points of the case. Unfortunately lord Stafford urged in addition a great variety of proofs, many of them more liable to objection from an ingenious opponent. This enabled the managers, by disputing the accuracy of his statements, and the credit of some of his witnesses, to withdraw the attention of the court from that which constituted the most important part of his defence. Dec 2. original deposition upon oath in December, 1678. It was seven months later, at the trial of sir George Wakeman, that he first announced its existence to the public; but then he fixed it in the month of August, now he sought to transfer it to the beginning of September. But this artifice would not avail him. Lord Stafford, as was clearly proved, spent the month of August in Bath, and did not arrive at Tixall till the 12th of September, much too late to attend a consult there about the end of one month or the beginning of the other. Again, of the pretended offer of 5007. on the 20th or 21st of September for the murder of the king, Dugdale was equally ignorant at the time of his original information. He then, indeed, mentioned an interview with lord Stafford on the 20th; and charged him with saying, “that "there was a design in hand, and that, if Dugdale would "undertake it, he should have a good reward, and would "make himself famous;" but to learn the nature of this design, he hastened from lord Stafford to Evers the jesuit, and by him, having previously taken an oath of secrecy, was informed that it had for its object the assassination of the king*. How could that deposition be reconciled with his testimony on the present trial? How could he be ignorant of the design if he had already assisted at the consult in which it was determined, and had even received an offer of 500l. to carry it into execution? Against Oates lord Stafford objected, 1. that this witness, according to his own testimony, not only pretended to be a catholic while he was in reality a protestant, but during his voluntary transactions with the jesuits had lived in the practice of a religious worship which in his conscience he believed to be idolatrous. Was a man of this degraded character, a miscreant of such deep dissimulation and hypocrisy, one who would even commit idolatry for the accomplishment of his purpose, admissible as a witness in a court of justice? Trial, 69-95. 103. This information may be seen in the Lords' Journals, xiii. 442. A.D. 1689.] HIS DEFENCE. 253 2. Oates had stated that, if he had descended to such discreditable arts, it was to discover the secrets of the jesuits; that he had succeeded in obtaining their confidence, had been employed by them to arrange all their papers, and to distribute their treasonable commissions, and yet, out of the multitude of documents which passed through his hands, he had not preserved a single line, to prove the truth of any one of his pretended discoveries. 3. This was not the first time that Oates had charged lord Stafford upon oath. In one deposition he had made him secretary of state, in another he had named him without any office; and now he comes forward and swears that, three months before his first affidavit, he saw lord Stafford receive from the hands of Fenwick, the jesuit, a commission appointing him pay, master of the army. How was it possible to reconcile these different oaths, or to attach credit to the testimony of a man who had voluntarily taken them all *? To the evidence of Turberville the prisoner opposed, 1. a solemn assertion that he was a perfect stranger to the person and name of the informer; 2. the testimony of the two servants, who attended him in Paris, that they never saw Turberville in their master's house; 3. the acknowledgment of Turberville himself at the bar, that he knew not the servant, nor could describe the house, or the rooms, or their furniture; and, lastly, the depositions of different persons, that Turberville, after he had conformed to the established church, repeatedly asserted, and sometimes with oaths, that he knew nothing respecting the plot. In addition to these, Dr. Lloyd, the bishop of St. Asaph, at whose table Turberville, after his conversion, dined for the space of three months, might have testified the same, and with still greater effect: but a menace, artfully thrown out by Winnington in his opening speech, had terrified the prelate, and he thought it better to allow innocent blood • Trial, 95–102. See the depositions in State Trials, vi. 612; and L. Journ. xiii. 327. |