The public mind was in the wildest state of alarm and fermentation. Every hour teemed with fresh rumours. Murders, assassinations, and invasions were the constant talk of the panic-struck public. The city put itself into a posture of defence; chains and posts were put up, and no man deemed himself safe.
In this state of the public mind parliament met on the 21st of October. Charles informed parliament that he had obtained more favourable terms for Spain by his army in Flanders, but that the expense had been enormous; the supplies were not only exhausted, the revenue of the next year was anticipated, and that it would require a liberal grant even to disband the army. He alluded but passingly to the plot, for it touched too nearly on the tender ground of his French secret, but said he left the examination of the plot entirely to the law. But both Danby and the opposition rushed into the question, contrary to the wish of Charles. Danby was anxious to divert the house from the threatened impeachment of himself, and the opposition to establish a popish plot, to damage the duke of York's prospects in the succession. Charles was extremely incensed with Danby's part in it. "He told him that he would live to repent meddling with it. That though he did not believe it, it had given parliament a handle to ruin him by, as well as to disturb the king's own affairs"—which was only too true.
Oates was called before both houses, as well as Dr. Tongue, and such was the effect of their statements, that they had guards placed in the cellars under the parliament house, to prevent another gunpowder plot; and they implored Charles to order every catholic, not a householder, to quit London, to dismiss all papists from his service, and have his food prepared only by orthodox cooks. Committees were appointed to search the conspiracy to the bottom, Shaftesbury took the lead in that of the lords, and there was busy work issuing warrants for searches and arrests, sending out informers and officers, examining and committing prisoners. In consequence of the charges made by Oates against lords Arundel, Fowis, Bellasis, Petre, and Stafford, as having received appointments from the pope of the chief offices of state, they were arrested and committed to the Tower.
The commons introduced a new test act, to exclude every catholic from parliament. This had indeed been effected in the commons in the preceding session by the oath of supremacy, and the declaration against transubstantiation; but the present test went to exclude the catholic peers from their house also. It prescribed the taking of the oaths of supremacy and allegiance, and a declaration that the church of Rome is an idolatrous church. Such a test had been been frequently introduced before and thrown out, but in this public furore it rapidly passed the commons, and reached a third reading in the lords, when James, with tears in his eyes, entreated them to exempt him from so severe an exclusion, protesting that his religion should always remain a thing betwixt God and his own soul. A proviso, exempting him from its operation, was added to the bill; but in the commons this passed by only two votes. Thus the catholic peers were excluded by Titus Oates from their seats, and their successors did not regain them till 1829.
Under the stimulating effect of the repeated summonses of Oates before parliament, and his continually augmenting disclosures, both houses voted that "There had been and still was a damnable and hellish plot contrived and carried on by the popish recusants for assassinating and murdering the king, and for subverting the government, and rooting out and destroying the protestant religion." The great Titus Oates was declared "the saviour of his country," and a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year was, at their instigation, settled on him. To increase the effect of his disclosures, the funeral of the murdered Godfrey was conducted with every circumstance of public parade. He had been carried from Primrose Hill to his own house, and thousands had crowded thither to see the martyr of protestantism. Seventy-two protestant divines, in full canonicals, walked in procession to St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, where he was buried, and they were followed by a thousand gentlemen in mourning, including many members of parliament. Dr. Lloyd, his friend, and rector of the parish, preached a sermon from the text, "As a man falleth before the wicked, so fellest thou." And he had two stout fellows in the pulpit with him, dressed as clergymen, to defend him from the papists.
The fury against the catholics now amounted to a frenzy. Two thousand suspected traitors were thrust into the prisons of the metropolis, and thirty thousand catholics, who refused to take the obnoxious oaths, were compelled to quit their homes in London, and remove to twenty miles distance from Whitehall. The trained-bands and volunteers, to the number of twenty thousand, were occasionally kept all night under arms; batteries were planted, and every military precaution taken to prevent a surprise. The terror spread over the whole country; orders were issued to disarm the catholics everywhere, and every one was compelled to take the oaths, or give security for keeping the peace.
And who was this Titus Oates, who had been able to conjure up such a storm?—One of the most infamous of mankind. His real name was Ambrose. He was the son of a ribbon weaver, who turned anabaptist preacher during the commonwealth, and managed to secure an orthodox pulpit at the restoration. Titus was sent to Cambridge, where he took orders, and became a curate in different parishes, and afterwards chaplain on board a man-of-war. But wherever he went, the worst of characters pursued him, as addicted to a mischievous and litigious temper, and to the most debased and disgraceful vices. Out of very situation he was expelled with infamy, and was convicted twice of perjury by a jury. Reduced by his crimes to beggary, he fell into the hands of Dr. Tongue, and by him was engaged to simulate the character of a convert to Catholicism, so as to be able to discover all that he could of the secret views and design? of the papists. He was reconciled, as the catholics term it, to the church by a priest of the name of Berry or Hutchinson, who was first of one religion and then of another, and nothing long, and sent to the Jesuits' College at Valladolid, in Spain. But he was successively ejected both from that college and from St. Omer, with accumulated infamy. Returning to England, he became the ready tool of Tongue, who no doubt was also the tool of deeper and more distinguished agitators
