own successor in view, and both doubted Charles too much to trust him with the money before the exclusion act was passed. Barillon, the French ambassador, whose object was to maintain James, also came in as a third party, with French money, to embarrass and divide them. To cut the main difficulty, Shaftesbury determined to damage James irrevocably before the country; he, therefore, on the 26th of October, brought forward the wretch Dangerfield to accuse the duke, before the commons, of having been at the bottom of the late plot against the presbyterians; of having given him the instructions to forge and distribute the lists and commissions; of having presented him with twenty guineas; given him a promise of much greater reward; and ridiculed his hesitation to shed the king's blood, &c.
The audacity of an opposition that could bring forward so horrible a charge against the heir-apparent, on the evidence of a scoundrel branded by sixteen convictions for base crimes, is something incredible now-a-days. But no sooner had Dangerfield made the statement, than the house was thrown into a wonderful agitation, and lord Russell rose and moved that effectual measures be taken to suppress popery and prevent a perish succession. From that day to the 2nd of November a succession of other witnesses and depositions were brought before the house to strengthen the charge. The deposition of Bedloe, on his deathbed, affirming all his statements, was read; one Francisco de Faria, a converted Jew, asserted that an offer had been made to him by the late Portuguese ambassador, to whom he was interpreter, to assassinate Oates, Bedloe, and Shaftesbury; Dugdale related all his proofs against the lords in the Tower; Prance repeated the story of the murder of Godfrey, with fresh embellishments; and Mr. Treby read the report of the committee of inquiry into the plot. The house, almost beside itself, voted that a bill should be brought in to disable the duke of York, as a papist, from succeeding, and that any violence offered to the king should be revenged on the whole body of the papists. In the debate on the bill, all the horrors of the fire of London, the destruction of the fleet in the river, and the perjuries of Titus Oates were charged on James and the papists, and the bill passed amid loud shouts. But on the 10th of November it received a different fate in the lords, being rejected by sixty-three against thirty. Shaftesbury then proposed, as the last means of safety, the king should divorce the queen, marry again, and have a chance of legitimate issue; but on this the king himself put an effectual damper. Disappointed in both those objects, the opposition resorted to the cowardly measure of shedding more innocent blood, in order to have a fresh opportunity of exciting the alarm and rage of the people against popery. They selected, from the five popish lords in the Tower, the lord Stafford for their victim. He was nearly seventy years of age, and in infirm health, and they flattered themselves he would not be able to make much defence. He was arraigned in Westminster Hall before a court of managers, as in the case of lord Strafford. The trial lasted seven days, and Oates, Dugdale, Prance, Tuberville, and Denis, all men of the most infamous and perjured character, charged him with having held consultations with emissaries of the pope, and having endeavoured to engage Dugdale by an offer of five hundred pounds to assassinate the king, &c. &c. The old earl made an admirable defence, in which he dissected most effectually the villainous characters of his traducers; but, notwithstanding, be was condemned by a majority of fifty-five to thirty-one, and was beheaded on the 29th of December on Tower Hill. The sheriffs of London objected to the order for his beheading, contending that he ought to suffer all the horrors of the law against traitors; but the king commanded them to obey his order. On the scaffold the earl, whose mild and pious demeanour made a deep impression on the popery frightened people, declared his entire innocence, and the people, standing with bare heads, replied, "We believe you, my lord. God bless you, my lord!"
This last transaction, instead of strengthening the opposition, greatly damaged them. The impression of the spectators was that the poor old earl was entirely innocent; and they called to mind that the whole of the victims had died, firmly protesting the same; and several of them even refusing to purchase their lives by confessing any knowledge of a plot. The witnesses throughout, too, were such men as would have damned any cause by their infamy, in any but such times. Shaftesbury and has party were, indeed, called the champions of protestantism; but in our time protestantism cannot accept as champions men who can employ any vile instrument in its support, who suborn the most polluted and perjured of the community in its defence, and sacrifice lives and shed torrents of innocent blood to effect their object. Protestantism repudiates such supporters, and the sense of to-day must be that the whole of these persecutions by Shaftesbury and his faction, stand as amongst the blackest facts in history.
CHAPTER XII.
REIGN OF CHARLES II. (Concluded).
Amid the contending factions of his court, and the most absolute destitution of money—for the commons would grant nothing without the exclusion bill—Charles is described as being outwardly merry. Reresby, at the end of December, 1080, says that Charles "seemed quite free from care and trouble, though one would have thought at this time he should have been overwhelmed therewith; for every one now imagined he must either dismiss the parliament in a few days, or deliver himself up to their pressing desires; but the straits he was in seemed no way to embarrass him."
Yet his situation would have embarrassed a much wiser man. The opposition, trusting to his need of money, calculated on his giving way to the exclusion bill; and they kept up their warfare by speeches, pamphlets, and addresses to
