place, he exeried for the great objects which we have adverted to. To destroy Danby, who was thoroughly anti-galliean in his policy; to exclude James from the throne and secure a protestant succession; to compel the king to rule by a protestant government, and to have recourse to parliament for support; there certainly appeared nothing more likely than to raise a terror of a papist conspiracy, and to link it sufficiently with suspicious connection with France. All this was done with wonderful effect, and amid a wonderful exhibition of strange events, except that of excluding James from the throne, and even that was all but accomplished. Few, we think, on a careful review of the whole drama of the plots, can avoid coming to the conclusion that the conception of the scheme was due to the fertile mind of Shaftesbury, and its execution to the same master of chicane, assisted by the unscrupulous Buckingham.
On the 12th of August, as the king was walking in the park, one Kirby, a chemist, who had been occasionally employed in the royal laboratory, and therefore was known to Charles, approached and said, "Sir, keep within the company. Your enemies have a design upon your life, and you may be shot in this very walk." Charles stepped aside with him, and asked him the meaning of his words. He replied that two men. Grove and Pickering, had engaged to shoot him, and that Sir George Wakemau, the queen's physician, had agreed to poison him. Charles showed very little change of manner or countenance, but told Kirby to meet him that evening at the house of Chiffinch, his well-known procurer, and pursued his walk. In the evening Kirby repeated what he had said, and added that he received the information from Dr. Tongue, rector of St. Michael's, in Wood Street, who was well known to several persons about the court. This Dr. Tongue was a singular mixture of cunning and credulity, who had long been an alarmist, and who had printed yearly and quarterly pamphlets against the Jesuits, "to alarm and awaken his majesty and the two houses." Tongue was sent for, and brought a mass of papers, divided into forty-three articles, giving a narrative of the conspiracy, which he pretended had been thrust under his door. That he did not know the author, but thought he had a clue to him. Charles referred him and his voluminous papers to Danby, and to him Tongue repeated the story of Grove, otherwise called Honest William, and Pickering, and said he would find out their abode, or point them out when walking, according to their daily custom, in the park. Orders were given to arrest these assassins, but they did not appear, and Tongue gave various frivolous reasons for their non-appearance. It was said that they were gone to "Windsor, but they could not be found there. Charles came at once to the conclusion that the whole was a hoax, and when Danby requested permission to lay the narrative before the privy council, he replied, "No, not even before my brother! It would only create alarm, and might put the design of murdering me into somebody's head."
The contempt which the king showed and expressed for the whole affair, might have caused it to drop, but there was unquestionably a party at work behind, which would not suffer it to cease. Tongue informed Danby that he had met with the person whom he suspected of having drawn up the papers; that he had given him a more particular account of the conspiracy, but he begged that his name might be concealed, lest the papists should murder him. He moreover assured Danby that on a certain day a packet of treasonable letters would pass through the post-office at Windsor, addressed to Beddingfield, the confessor of the duke of York. Danby hastened to Windsor to intercept the packet, but found it already in the hands of the king. Beddingfield had delivered them to the duke, saying that the papers appeared to contain treasonable matter, and that they certainly were not in the hands of the persons whose names they bore. The duke carried them at once to the king.
These papers now underwent & close examination, and the result was that all were convinced that they were gross forgeries. One was clearly in the same hand as the papers presented before by Tongue; the rest, though in a feigned hand, bore sufficient evidence of being the work of the same person. The king was more than ever convinced that the whole was a hoax, and desired that no further notice might be taken of it. Kirby frequently made his appearance at court, but Charles always passed him without notice. As there appeared no prospect of proceeding with the matter at court, the person who had conveyed the papers to Dr. Tongue, now went to Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey, an active justice of the peace of Westminster, and made affidavit not only of the truth of the former papers, but also of thirty-eight more articles, making altogether eighty-one articles. This mysterious person now appeared as one Titus Gates, a clergyman, and it was ascertained that he had been lodging at Kirby's, at Vauxhall, and that Dr. Tongue had also retired thither, on the plea of concealment from the papists. Godfrey, on perceiving that Coleman, secretary to the late duchess of York, and a friend of his own, was named in the affidavit as a chief conspirator, immediately communicated the fact to Coleman, and Coleman communicated it to the duke of York.
James was now more than ever convinced, that whatever were the plot, its object was to bring the catholics into odium, and lead to his exclusion from the throne, and demanded of Charles that it should be inquired into. Danby now seemed to favour the king's view of keeping it quiet, but this only led James to suspect that the minister wished to keep it back till the meeting of parliament, when its disclosure might assist an impeachment with which he was menaced. Charles, at the duke's renewed entreaty, reluctantly ordered Tongue and Gates to appear before the privy council. Accordingly Titas Oates, soon to become so notorious, appeared before the council on the 28th of September, 1678, in a clerical gown and a new suit of clothes, and with an astonishing assurance delivered in writing the following strange narrative:—That the pope claimed Great Britain and Ireland on the ground of the heresy of the prince and people, and had ordered the Jesuits to take possession of it for him; that De Oliva, general of the order, had arranged everything for this purpose, and had named, under the seal of the society, all the persons to fill the offices of the state. Lord Arundel was created lord chancellor; lord Ponds, treasurer; Sir William Godolphin, privy seal; Coleman, secretary of state; lord Bellasis.
