house of commons, and then Oates appeared at the bar, and brazenly, and with a loud voice, exclaimed, "I, Titus Oates, accuse Catherine, queen of England, of high treason." The astounded commons immediately sent an address to Charles, requesting that the queen might be removed from Whitehall, and desired a conference with the lords. The lords, however, were not so precipitate; they desired first to see the depositions made before the council, next summoned Gates and Bedloe, and strictly examined them. They particularly pressed them to explain why this monstrous charge had not been produced before, and as they could give no sufficient reason, they declined any conference on the subject. Shaftesbury exerted himself to overrule this conclusion, but in vain; and the charge was dropped, the king observing, "They think I have a mind for a new wife; but for all that I won't see an innocent woman abused." Impeachments, however, were received by the lords against the peers whom these miscreants had accused.
And now began the bloody work which these villains had remorselessly elaborated for a number of innocent persons, to serve the great end of their employers. The first victim, However, was one whom a third base wretch, thirsting for blood-money, a broken-down Scotchman, of the name of Carstairs, had accused. This was Stayley, a catholic banker, whom the man said he had heard telling a Frenchman of the name of Firmin, of Marseilles, in a tavern in Covent Garden, that the king was the greatest rogue in the world, and that he would kill him with his own hand. Carstairs had gone to Stayley and told him what he professed to have heard, but offered to suppress the fact for two hundred pounds. Stayley treated him with deserved contempt, but he was arrested within five days and tried for his life. Burnet, on hearing the name of the accuser, hastened to Sir William Jones, the attorney-general, and told him that this Carstairs was a man of the vilest character, and not to be believed on his oath; but Jones asked him who had authorised him to defame the king's witness, and Burnet timidly withdrew. Firmin could have decided what Stayley had really said, but he was kept in custody and not allowed to appear on the trial, and Stayley was condemned and hanged.
Coleman perished next, on the evidence of Gates and Bedloe, that he had been plotting with the French court; but he contended it was only to obtain money for restoring Catholicism, and not to injure any person. It was clear that he had received money from the French king, and therefore was guilty of a serious crime, but it is equally clear that both Oates and Bedloe fabricated much falsehood against him. His own letters, however, were insurmountable evidence of his guilt. Next came Ireland, Fenwick, Grove, Whitbread, and Pickering. Ireland, a Jesuit priest, was accused of having signed, with fifty other Jesuits, a resolution to kill the king, and the others of having engaged to assist in the design. Oates swore to the guilt of the whole, Bedloe only to that of Ireland, Grove, and Pickering, who were condemned, and died protesting that they, before their apprehension, had never heard of such a thing as a plot, much less had any concern in one. Bedloe claimed to be the chief witness respecting the death of Godfrey; but though he had unscrupulously seconded the evidence of Oates, Oates would not support him in this case. He was obliged, therefore, to look out for a second witness, and it was two months before he could find one. At length, on the 21st of December, one Prance, a silversmith, who had worked for the queen's chapel, was apprehended on suspicion, he having absented himself from his house for several days about the time of Godfrey's murder. The moment Bedloe saw him, he exclaimed, "That man is one of the murderers." It was in vain that he denied it, equally vain that he brought witnesses to prove that he did not leave home at the time of Godfrey's death, but a week before. He was thrown into Newgate and loaded with irons; some say lit was tortured, others that he was worked upon by threats and promises. He confessed, and accused three others—Hill, Green, and Berry, three servants in Somerset House. But scarcely had he done so, when he entreated to be brought before the king and council again, and there on his knees, and with every sign of agony and remorse, protested that all that he had said was false, that he knew nothing whatever of either the murder or the murderers. Afterwards, in prison, where he was chained to the floor, the horror of his feelings was such, that Dr. Lloyd, who preached Godfrey's funeral sermon, and now was become dean of Bangor, said that he was occasionally bereft of his reason. When urged to confess, he again, however, repeated his former statement, but with various and strange additions; then Dr. Lloyd declined to have anything more to do with it, but left him to Boyce, the gaoler, who, Prance afterwards said, wrote many things that he copied after him, and that he could find that Boyce had been with Bedloe and lord Shaftesbury, and that he was told that he must make his evidence agree with Bedloe's, or he would be sure to be hanged. The first story of Prance was, that they had killed Godfrey because he was an enemy to the queen's servants; that Green strangled him with a handerchief, and punched him on the breast with his knee; but finding him not dead, wrung his neck. That on the following Wednesday night, about twelve o'clock, the body was put into a sedan chair and taken to the Soho, and there convoyed on horseback before Hill to the place in the fields where he was found, and where they thrust his sword through him.
Hill, Green, and Berry stoutly denied the whole affair, and pointed out the gross contradictions betwixt the evidence of Bedloe and Prance; but chief justice Scroggs, who presided at all these trials, and showed himself a most brutal and unprincipled judge, overruled all that. Mrs. Hill, who brought witnesses into court in favour of her husband, complained vehemently that they were brow-beaten and laughed at. "My witnesses," she exclaimed, "are not rightfully examined; they are modest, and are laughed at.", The unhappy victims were all condemned, and died still protesting their innocence. Berry, who was a protestant, was respited a week, with a promise of pardon if he would confess; but he would not—a sufficient proof of the man's innocence, who would not purchase life by a lie. Ralph, the historian, says, "A strong faith in the plot was the test of all political merit; not to believe was to be a political reprobate, and according to the zeal was the cruelty of the times. The terror excited by the plot had caused such a thirst for
