The panic that followed the murder of Sir Edmund
Berry Godfrey spread throughout London at an alarming rate. A rumour spread
that a second Gunpowder Plot was underway, with both Houses of Parliament about
to be blown up. The Duke of Monmouth lent soldiers to guard the cellars beneath
both Houses, which were examined by Sir Jonas Moore and Sir Christopher Wren,
sentinels patrolled the cellars during both day and night and adjoining houses
and vaults were cleared.
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| Parliament Cellars |
The new prison at Clerkenwell was burned down, and the
priests inside burned with it. Sir Ossory claimed to have found one hundred
thousand incendiary bombs and hand grenades hidden in Somerset House. From
Flanders came the rumour that if English Catholics were destroyed, the burghers
of Bruges had a similar fate planned for English Protestants in their town.
There were Spaniards in Wales, Frenchmen in Scotland and Ireland, there was a
joint fleet in the Channel, waiting to invade, Tynemouth Castle had been blown
up with gunpowder, at night armed bands of militia men were seen exercising –
all rumours, all believed, deliberated over, attention given to, decisions made
about.
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| Execution of Jesuits |
Of the thirty or so thousand Catholics in London, those that weren’t
imprisoned fled elsewhere, many to the continent. Catholic businessmen were
made bankrupt, Catholic workmen were driven from their livelihoods and into
penury. Catholic houses across the country were repeatedly searched and
ransacked; Catholic relics, books and vestments were publicly burned. Catholics
were arrested, harassed and persecuted. Priests were hunted down and hid in
priest-holes, chimneys and hollow walls as their pursuers tore houses down
around them in their fervour to discover them. In the northern counties, things
were especially harsh with the notoriously grim dungeons of York Castle (in an
age of particularly grim dungeons) filled to capacity.
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| Titus Oates before the Privy Council |
Titus Oates was feted as
the saviour of the nation and took to wearing episcopal garb, with a silk gown
and cassock, a great hat with satin band and rose, and a long scarf. Now with a
troop of soldiers under his orders, he set about arresting the suspected
plotters he had named, including the so-called ‘Five Popish Lords’. Oates
claimed that the Pope had commissioned these five Catholic nobles – Lord
Arundel of Wardour was to become Lord Chancellor, Lord Powis would be
Treasurer, Lord Belasis to be General of the Forces, Lord Petre to be
Lieutenant General and Lord Stafford to be Paymaster General. On October 25th
1678, the five were arrested, sent to the Tower and impeached for treason.
Their trials were delayed over a period of seven years, for a variety of legal
and parliamentary reasons.
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| Titus Oates |
Emboldened by success Oates, with support from
Bedloe, went so far to accuse the Queen of plotting, with help from her doctor,
Sir George Wakeman, to poison the King. This was a step too far for Charles II,
who refused “…to see an innocent woman abused,” and he ordered Oates
arrested, his papers seized and his servants dismissed. The Queen was visibly
apolitical and it seems that the reason for an attack on her was to force a
Royal divorce, with Charles then remarrying a Protestant and, it was hoped,
producing a Protestant heir (Catherine was unable to bear children, which
resulted in James, Charles’s Catholic brother, being Heir Presumptive.)
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| Catherine of Braganza |
With
the threat of a constitutional crisis looming, Parliament intervened, ordered
Oates’s release and moves began, led mainly by Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of
Shaftesbury, to introduce an Exclusion Act through Parliament, which would prevent
James, Duke of York, from succeeding to the throne after the death of his
brother, Charles II, (in the end, the Bill failed to be passed by the Lords).
In addition, Test Acts were passed, requiring Members of Parliament to make a
declaration against transubstantiation, invocation of the saints and the
sacrament of the Mass, thereby effectively excluding Catholics from both
Houses. The King attempted to oppose many of the measures by dissolving
Parliament on a number of occasions, but the problem refused to go away and
there were even fears of a second civil war.
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| Exhumation |
On November 21st 1678,
the Catholic William Stayley, a goldsmith’s son from Covent Garden, was tried
for treason, on the grounds that he had been overheard in a tavern to call the
King a rogue and a heretic, and said he would kill him with his own hand. He
was found guilty and hanged at Tyburn on November 26th, but when his
body was buried, three days later, over 300 Catholics attended, and masses were
said. This infuriated Judge Scroggins, who ordered that the body be
disinterred, cut into quarters and displayed on the city gates, and the head
set to rot on a pike on London Bridge. Other Catholics were tried and executed
for treason, on the verbal testimony of Oates and Bedloe.
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| The Popish Damnable Plot |
On November 30th
1680, the first of the Five Popish Lords, Lord Viscount
Stafford, came to trial. It was Stafford’s sixty-ninth birthday, and over the
next seven days sixty-one witnesses gave evidence on the charges that Stafford
had offered £500 for the murder of the King. Stafford produced witnesses of his
own who contradicted their statements, so further prosecution witnesses were
produced to bolster the reputation of the original witnesses. When summing up,
Stafford feebly rambled and hesitated, boring the court with minor points of
procedure and legal argument, and did his case no good at all.
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| Execution |
On December 6th,
thirty-three peers found for him but fifty-five peers found him guilty of High
Treason and although attempts were made to obtain a pardon on December 29th
1680, Stafford, bowed with age and infirmity, went to the block at the Tower.
The only concession made was that he would beheaded only and be spared the
drawing and quartering that were the proscribed penalty for High Treason. He
made a long speech declaring his innocence and vindicating his religion, which
fell on deaf ears, and in front of a large, hostile crowd, the sentence was
carried out.
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