PROSECUTION OF THE PLOT.

407

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or give security for their behaviour; every priest whom CHAP. the officers could discover was committed to take his A.D. 1679. trial on the charge of high treason; and the king was harassed with addresses for rewards to informers,1 for the ejection of papists from the inus of court, and for the removal from employment of all Protestants who suffered any of their children to be educated in the Catholic faith. Both houses again declared that there had existed, and did exist, a horrid and treasonable conspiracy, contrived by those of the popish religion, for the murdering of the king, the subverting of Protestantism, and the ruin of the ancient government of the kingdom; and, the more to inflame the passions of the people, it was ordered that this vote should be prefixed to the public form of prayer appointed to be read on the day of the national fast. So general, indeed, was the infatuation, so violent were the antipa thies of those who partook of it, that even the few who doubted or disbelieved the existence of the plot, concluded "that it must of necessity be pursued as if it "were true, whether it were so or not;" and that, without the king's uniting with his people on this point,

1 In consequence of repeated addresses, Oates and Bedloe were not only lodged and boarded at the public charge, they also received large sums of money; Bedloe, in particular, the reward of five hundred pounds promised for the discovery of the murderers of Godfrey. In the Appendix I shall give the bills of expenses delivered in by these men; by Oates on the 11th, by Bedloe on the 15th of February. That by Oates amounted to six hundred and seventy-eight pounds, twelve shillings, and sixpence; that by Bedloe to two hundred and thirteen pounds. When the reader has perused them, he will be at a loss which to admire the most, the impudence of these impostors, or the credulity of the men who condescended to be their dupes. Oates charged the nation fifty pounds for a pretended manuscript of the Alexandrine copy of the Septuagint, which he alleged that he had given to the Jesuits in order to win their confidence!-See note (E)

CHAP. he would never grow into ease at home, or consideraA.D. 1679. tion abroad.1

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The articles of impeachment against the Catholic peers in the Tower were at length forwarded by the April 7. hands of Lord Russell to the House of Lords. This instrument charged them, that, in union with Cardinal Howard, the provincial of the Jesuits, and a number of persons, whose names were mentioned, they had conspired to imprison, depose, and murder the king, and to reduce the kingdom under the tyranny of the pope ; and that for this purpose they had employed persons to take his majesty's life, had provided men and arms, had corresponded with other conspirators beyond the sea, had accepted commissions from the pope, had caused their priests to administer oaths of secrecy, and had incited their adherents to assassinate Sir April 15. Edmondbury Godfrey. The Lord Petre pleaded at once that he was not guilty; the others that they could not be expected to answer a charge so general and uncertain, which specified neither the times when, nor the places where, the offences were supposed to be committed, and which consequently, by keeping them in ignorance, disabled them from providing witnesses, or preparing their defence. That there was much reason in this objection, can hardly be denied; but the Commons pronounced it an evasion, and resolved to demand judgment against the four lords unless they put in a different answer. They deemed it prudent to yield, and, saving to themselves the benefit of exception to the generality, uncertainty, and insufficiency of the articles, severally pleaded not guilty."

April 25.

April 24.

On the preceding day had been tried, under a special

Temple, ii. 491.

C. Journ. April 3, 23. L. Journ. 500, 517, 521, 535, 542.

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commission, and at the request of the House of Com- CHAP. mons, Nathaniel Reading, a Protestant barrister, once A.D. 1679. secretary to Massaniello in the celebrated insurrection at Naples, but now practising the law in London. He was acquainted with Bedloe, had often given him the benefit of his advice, and occasionally supplied him with money. In Trinity term he had been employed in procuring the discharge on bail of several among the prisoners on account of the plot, and after the dissolution had been consulted on the same subject by some of the lords in the Tower. In a private conversation between Reading and Bedloe it was suggested (but from which of the two the suggestion originated is uncertain) that, in consideration of an adequate reward, the informer might pare down the evidence which he had already given, so as to render it insufficient to convict the accused of treason. For this purpose, Reading, with the concurrence of Bedloe, wrote out an amended form of testimony to be produced on the trial, took it in company with him to the Tower, and on his return delivered it to his associate. But that associate had previously betrayed him to the committee of inquiry: witnesses had been already concealed to overhear their discourse, and the paper in his writing was instantly, but secretly, transferred by him to the custody of a third person.1 The fact could not

1 This account is taken from the evidence at the trial; but Reading, after he had stood in the pillory, presented a petition to the king, stating that he had been employed by Bedloe to draw up his pardons, that by free conversation with him he discovered not only his practices against innocent men, but his design of accusing the queen, and that he had intended to disclose it to the king, when, to prevent him, Bedloe and his accomplices charged him falsely of the crime for which he had been condemned and punished; which punishment he might have escaped if he would have turned informer against the innocent; wherefore he prayed that he might be admitted to prove the said practice of Bedloe and his confederates.-June 4,

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CHAP. be denied. Reading sought to extenuate the offence A.D. 1679. by protesting that the first proposal came from his accuser, and that he joined in it for no other purpose than to prevent the shedding of innocent blood. He was sentenced to stand in the pillory, to pay a fine of one thousand pounds, and to suffer a year's imprisonment. Much appeared on the trial to expose the profligate character of Bedloe, but the punishment of the pillory disabled Reading from being afterwards produced as a witness to depose to his frauds and perjuries. Fortunately for the three lords, Powis, Stafford, and Petre, they had refused to send money, or to give any written promise to the informer; yet in the public mind the conviction of Reading created a strong presumption against them, accompanied with a persuasion that the attempt must have proceeded from their consciousness of guilt. It must be confessed that in ordinary times, when justice is fairly administered, such an inference is obvious; but it is not warranted in cases where innocence can afford no protection against the perjuries of witnesses and the prejudices of the court and jury. The accused foresaw that, if Bedloe were permitted to give his evidence, their lives would be sacrificed; it is no wonder, then, if they were willing to purchase his silence with money, the only object which he sought by becoming an informer.1

1679. To this petition no answer was returned.-From a copy of the petition in the handwriting of Lord Viscount Stafford, now in the possession of Lord Stafford.

1 State Trials, vii. 259-310. In answer to the questions put by Reading, Bedloe was compelled to acknowledge that he had intended, and even made preparations, to burn the city of Westminster; but that offence, he maintained, was covered by the king's pardon. He confessed also that he had been guilty of perjury on the trial of Whitbread, in swearing that he knew nothing of consequence against that

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Ever since the short prorogation, the king had been CHAP. occupied in devising and arranging a most important A.D. 1679. change in the administration of the government. The exile of his brother and the disgrace of Danby had left him without an adviser to whom he dared unbosom himself with freedom and confidence. He had sent for Temple from the Hague to succeed Coventry as secretary of state. But Temple feared the responsibility of such an office in the excited state of the public mind, and suggested to the king to govern for the future without a prime minister, or cabinet council, or committee for foreign affairs; to dissolve the present council of state, consisting of fifty members, as being too numerous for secrecy or despatch; to establish in its place a new council of thirty individuals, to whom all public affairs should be referred, and by whose opinion the proceedings of government should be regulated; to give a place in this council to fifteen officers of state in virtue of their respective employments; to select the other fifteen from the popular leaders in the two houses; and to take care that the annual income of the thirty counsellors should amount to three hundred thousand pounds, that it might bear some proportion to that of the House of Commons, which was estimated at four hundred thousand pounds. It was expected that the following benefits would be derived from this institution 1. The determined hostility of the popular party would in all probability be neutralized by the infusion of their leaders into the new council.

2. In Jesuit; but this he attributed to the persuasion of Reading. The fact was, he meant now to appear as a witness at the second trial of Whitbread, and invented this answer as an excuse for the contradiction which would then appear in his testimony.—Ibid. 271, 291, 294, 296.