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Oates, the informer of this dreadful plot, was himself the most infamous of mankind. He was the son of an Anabaptist preacher, chaplain to Colonel Pride; but having taken orders in the church, he had been settled in a small living by the duke of Norfolk. He had been indicted for perjury, and by some means had escaped. He was afterwards a chaplain on board the fleet; whence he had been dismissed on complaint of some unnatural practices not fit to be named. He then became a convert to the Catholics; but he afterwards boasted, that his conversion was a mere pretence, in order to get into their secrets and to betray them.[*] He was sent over to the Jesuits’ college at St. Omers, and though above thirty years of age, he there lived some time among the students. He was despatched on an errand to Spain; and thence returned to St. Omers; where the Jesuits, heartily tired of their convert, at last dismissed him from their seminary. It is likely that, from resentment of this usage, as well as from want and indigence, he was induced, in combination with Tongue, to contrive that plot of which he accused the Catholics.

This abandoned man, when examined before the council, betrayed his impostures in such a manner, as would have utterly discredited the most consistent story, and the most reputable evidence. While in Spain, he had been carried, he said, to Don John, who promised great assistance to the execution of the Catholic designs. The king asked him what sort of a man Don John was: he answered, a tall, lean man; directly contrary to truth, as the king well knew.[**] He totally mistook the situation of the Jesuits’ college at Paris.[***] Though he pretended great intimacies with Coleman, he knew him not, when placed very near him; and had no other excuse than that his sight was bad in candle light.[****] He fell into like mistakes with regard to Wakeman.

* Burnet Echard, North, L’Estrange, etc.

** Burnet North.

*** North.

**** Burnet, North, Trials.

Notwithstanding these objections, great attention was paid to Oates’s evidence, and the plot became very soon the subject of conversation, and even the object of terror to the people. The violent animosity which had been excited against the Catholics in general, made the public swallow the grossest absurdities, when they accompanied an accusation of those religionists: and the more diabolical any contrivance appeared, the better it suited the tremendous idea entertained of a Jesuit. Danby, likewise, who stood in opposition to the French and Catholic interest at court, was willing to encourage every story which might serve to discredit that party. By his suggestion, when a warrant was signed for arresting Coleman, there was inserted a clause for seizing his papers; a circumstance attended with the most important consequences.

Coleman, partly on his own account, partly by orders from the duke, had been engaged in a correspondence with Father La Chaise, with the pope’s nuncio at Brussels, and with other Catholics abroad; and being himself a fiery zealot, busy and sanguine, the expressions in his letters often betrayed great violence and indiscretion. His correspondence, during the years 1674, 1675, and part of 1676, was seized, and contained many extraordinary passages. In particular, he said to La Chaise, “We have here a mighty work upon our hands, no less than the conversion of three kingdoms, and by that perhaps the utter subduing of a pestilent heresy, which has a long time domineered over a great part of this northern world. There were never such hopes of success since the days of Queen Mary, as now in our days. God has given us a prince,” meaning the duke, “who is become (may I say a miracle) zealous of being the author and instrument of so glorious a work; but the opposition we are sure to meet with is also like to be great: so that it imports us to get all the aid and assistance we can.” In another letter he said, “I can scarce believe myself awake, or the thing real, when I think of a prince in such an age as we live in, converted to such a degree of zeal and piety, as not to regard any thing in the world in comparison of God Almighty’s glory, the salvation of his own soul, and the conversion of our poor kingdom.” In other passages, the interests of the crown of England, those of the French king, and those of the Catholic religion, are spoken of as inseparable. The duke is also said to have connected his interests unalterably with those of Lewis. The king himself, he affirms, is always inclined to favor the Catholics, when he may do it without hazard. “Money,” Coleman adds, “cannot fail of persuading the king to any thing. There is nothing it cannot make him do, were it ever so much to his prejudice. It has such an absolute power over him that he cannot resist it. Logic, built upon money, has in our court more powerful charms than any other sort of argument.” For these reasons, he proposed to Father La Chaise, that the French king should remit the sum of three hundred thousand pounds, on condition that the parliament be dissolved; a measure to which, he affirmed, the king was of himself sufficiently inclined, were it not for his hopes of obtaining money from that assembly. The parliament, he said, had already constrained the king to make peace with Holland, contrary to the interests of the Catholic religion, and of his most Christian majesty: and if they should meet again, they would surely engage him further, even to the making of war against France. It appears also from the same letters, that the assembling of the parliament so late as April in the year 1675, had been procured by the intrigues of the Catholic and French party, who thereby intended to show the Dutch and their confederates that they could expect no assistance from England.

When the contents of these letters were publicly known, they diffused the panic with which the nation began already to be seized on account of the Popish plot. Men reasoned more from their fears and their passions, than from the evidence before them. It is certain, that the restless and enterprising spirit of the Catholic church, particularly of the Jesuits, merits attention, and is in some degree dangerous to every other communion. Such zeal of proselytism actuates that sect, that its missionaries have penetrated into every nation of the globe; and, in one sense, there is a Popish plot perpetually carrying on against all states, Protestant, Pagan, and Mahometan. It is likewise very probable, that the conversion of the duke, and the favor of the king, had inspired the Catholic priests with new hopes of recovering in these islands their lost dominion, and gave fresh vigor to that intemperate zeal by which they are commonly actuated. Their first aim was to obtain a toleration; and such was the evidence, they believed, of their theological tenets, that, could they but procure entire liberty, they must infallibly in time open the eyes of the people. After they had converted considerable numbers, they might be enabled, they hoped, to reinstate themselves in full authority, and entirely to suppress that heresy with which the kingdom had so long been infected. Though these dangers to the Protestant religion were distant, it was justly the object of great concern to find, that the heir of the crown was so blinded with bigotry, and so deeply engaged in foreign interests; and that the king himself had been prevailed on, from low Interests, b hearken to his dangerous insinuations. Very bad consequences might ensue from such perverse habits and attachments; nor could the nation and parliament guard against them with too anxious a precaution. But that the Roman pontiff could hope to assume the sovereignty of these kingdoms; a project which, even during the darkness of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, would have appeared chimerical: that he should delegate this authority to the Jesuits, that order in the Romish church which was the most hated: that a massacre could be attempted of the Protestants, who surpassed the Catholics a hundred fold, and were invested with the whole authority of the state: that the king himself was to be assassinated, and even the duke, the only support of their party: these were such absurdities as no human testimony was sufficient to prove; much less the evidence of one man, who was noted for infamy, and who could not keep himself, every moment, from falling into the grossest inconsistencies. Did such intelligence deserve even so much attention as to be refuted, it would appear, that Coleman’s letters were sufficient alone to destroy all its credit. For how could so long a train of correspondence be carried on by a man so much trusted by the party, and yet no traces of insurrections, if really intended, of fires, massacres, assassinations, invasions, be ever discovered in any single passage of these letters? But all such reflections, and many more equally obvious, were vainly employed against that general prepossession with which the nation was seized. Oates’s plot and Coleman’s were universally confounded together: and the evidence of the latter being unquestionable, the belief of the former, aided by the passions of hatred and of terror, took possession of the whole people.