the Jesuit's Doctrine concerning Kings as believing it conformable to what the best Doctors of the Church have taught But why do I relate the testimony of one particular Prince when the whole Catholic World is the Jesuits Advocate For to them chiefly Germany France Italy Spain and Flanders trust the Education of their Youth and to them in a great proportion they trust their own Souls to be governed in the Sacraments And can you imagin so many great Kings and Princes and so many wise States should do or permit this to be done in their Kingdoms if the Jesuits were men of such damnable principles as they are now taken for in England In the third place dear Country-men I do attest that as I never in my life did machine or contrive either the Deposition or Death of the King so now I do heartily desire of God to grant him a quiet and happy Reign upon Earth and an Everlasting Crown in Heaven For the Judges also and the Jury and all those that were any ways concern'd either in my Tryal Accusation or Condemnation I do humbly ask of God both Temporal and Eternal happiness And as for Mr. Oates and Mr. Dugdale whom I call God to witness by false Oaths have brought me to this untimely end I heartily forgive them because God commands me so to do and I beg of God for his infinite Mercy to grant them true Sorrow and Repentance in this World that they be capable of Eternal happiness in the next And so having discharged my Duty towards my self and my own Innocence towards my Order and its Doctrine to my Neighbour and the World I have nothing else to do now my great God but to cast my self into the Arms of your Mercy as firmly as I judge that I my self am as certainly as I believe you are One Divine Essence and Three Divine Persons and in the Second Person of your Trinity you became Man to redeem me I also believe you are an Eternal Rewarder of Good and Chastiser of Bad. In fine I believe all you have reveal'd for your own infinite Veracity I hope in you above all things for your infinite Fidelity and I love you above all things for your infinite Beauty and Goodness and I am heartily sorry that ever I offended so great a God with my whole heart I am contented to undergo an ignominious Death for the love of you my dear Jesu seeing you have been pleased to undergo an ignominious Death for the love of me Gawen BEing now good People very near my End and summon'd by a violent Death to appear before God's Tribunal there to render an account of all my thoughts words and actions before a just Judge I am bound in Conscience to declare upon Oath my Innocence from the horrid Crime of Treason with which I am falsely accused And I esteem it a Duty I owe to Christian Charity to publish to the World before my death all that I know in this point concerning those Catholics I have conversed with since the first noise of the Plot desiring from the very bottom of my heart that the whole Truth may appear that Innocence may be clear'd to the great Glory of God and the Peace and Welfare of the King and Country As for myself I call God to witness that I was never in my whole life at any Consult or Meeting of the Jesuits where any Oath of Secrecy was taken or the Sacrament as a Bond of Secrecy either by me or any one of them to conceal any Plot against His Sacred Majesty nor was I ever present at any Meeting or Consult of theirs where any Proposal was made or Resolve taken or signed either by me or any of them for taking away the Life of our Dread Soveraign an Impiety of such a nature that had I been present at any such Meeting I should have been bound by the Laws of God and by the Principles of my Religion and by God's Grace would have acted accordingly to have discovered such a devillish Treason to the Civil Magistrate to the end they might have been brought to condign punishment I was so far good People from being in September last at a Consult of the Jesuits at Tixall in Mr. Ewer's Chamber that I vow to God as I hope for Salvation I never was so much as once that year at Tixall my Lord Aston's House 'T is true I was at the Congregation of the Jesuits held on the 24th of April was twelve-month but in that Meeting as I hope to be saved we meddled not with State-Affairs but only treated about the Governours of the Province which is usually done by us without offence to temporal Princes every third Year all the World over I am good People as free from the Treason I am accused of as the Child that is unborn and being innocent I never accused my self in Confession of any thing that I am charged with Which certainly if I had been conscious to my self of any Guilt in this kind I should not so frankly and freely as I did of my own accord presented my self before the King 's Most Honorable Privy Council As for those Catholics which I have conversed with since the noise of the Plot I protest before God in the words of a dying Man that I never heard any one of them neither Priest nor Layman express to me the least knowledge of any Plot that was then on foot amongst the Catholics against the King's Most Excellent Majesty for the advancing the Catholic Religion I dye a Roman Catholic and humbly beg the Prayers of such for my happy passage into a better Life I have been of that Religion above Thirty Years and now give God Almighty infinite thanks for calling me by his holy Grace to the knowledge of this Truth notwithstanding the prejudice of my former Education God of his infinite Goodness bless the King and all the Royal Family and grant His Majesty a prosperous Reign here and a Crown of Glory hereafter God in his mercy forgive all those which have falsly accused me or have had any hand in my Death I forgive them from the bottom of my heart as I hope my self for forgiveness at the Hands of God O GOD who hath created me to a supernatural end to serve thee in this life by grace and injoy thee in the next by glory be pleased to grant by the merits of thy bitter death and passion that after this wretched life shall be ended I may not fail of a full injoyment of thee my last end and soveraign good I humbly beg pardon for all the sins which I have committed against thy Divine Majesty since the first Instance I came to the use of reason to this very time I am heartily sorry from the very bottom of my heart for having offended thee so good so powerful so wise and so just a God and purpose by the help of thy grace never more to offend thee my good God whom I love
ten miles from the City of London And the third was a Proclamation that no Officers or Souldiers of his Majesties Guards should be a Papist His Majesty also observing the affection of both His Houses towards His Royal Person and their zeal for the security of the Nation was pleased to make them a most Gratious Speech wherein he gave them thanks for the care which they took of his Government and Person promising to pass all Acts which they should make for preservation of the Protestant Religion During these Proceedings of Parliament and Council one Staley having out of the abundance of his Heart on the fourteenth of November 1678. spoken most desperate treasonable words against the King and being the next day apprehended for the same was brought publicly to his Tryal at the King's Bench Bar in Westminster Hall upon the twenty first of the same Month. This Staley was a Goldsmith in Covent-Garden and the reason of his inveteracy against the King is said to be for that being a Papist and a Goldsmith that dealt in money he found his Trade decay because the Catholicks with whom his chiefest dealings were call'd in their money faster than he desir'd upon the discovery of the Plot. The Treason urged against him was this that being at the Black Lyon in King-street in the new Buildings between High Holborn and Long-acre with one Fromante his Friend the said Fromante among other discourse was saying That the King of England was a great Tormentor of the people of God Upon which the said Staley flew out into a violent Passion and made answer with the addition of other irreverent words That the King was a great Heretick there 's the heart and here 's the hand I would kill him my self These words being spoken in French were distinctly understood by two English Gentlemen that over-heard and saw the said Staley when he spoke them the door of the Room being open And this also in the presence of another that did not understand French to whom the others immediately interpreted the words He was endited for Imagining and Contriving the Death of the King The Jury were Sr. Philip Matthews Sr. Reginald Foster Sr. John Kirk Sr. John Cutler Sr. Richard Blake John Bifield Esq Simon Middleton Esq Thomas Cross Esq Henry Johnson Esq Charles Umphrevil Esq Thomas Egglesfield Esq William Bohee Esq The Witnesses swore the words positively upon him and the Statute of this Kings Reign making desperate words to be Treason was read and urged against him But his defence was weak while he only endeavoured to evade the Crime by alledging a mistake of the Expression as if he had said I will kill my self instead of I will kill him my self But that shift would not serve for the Jury soon brought him in Guilty whereupon he was condemn'd to be hang'd drawn and quarter'd which Sentence was upon the 26th of the same month executed accordingly So that he had this honour to be the Popes first Martyr for the Plot. It was his Majesties pleasure that his Relations should have the disposal of his Quarters to give them a decent and private burial but they abusing his gracious favour with a publick and more than ordinary funeral Pomp his buried Quarters were ordered to be taken up and to be disposed by the Common Executioner upon the Gates of the City 1678. Next to him Coleman became the publick spectacle of his own conceit and Ambition He had been committed to Newgate by the Council upon the 30th of September which was the next day after Dr. Oates's first Examination He was brought to his Tryal upon the 27th of November before the Judges of the Kings Bench. The Jury were Sr. Reginald Foster Sr. Charles Lee Edward Wilford Esq John Bathurst Esq Joshua Galliard Esq John Bifield Esq Simon Middleton Esq Henry Johnson Charles Umphrevile Thomas Johnson Thomas Egglesfield William Bohee The general Charge of the Enditement was for an intention and endeavour to murder the King for an endeavour and attempt to change the Government of the Nation for an endeavour to alter the Protestant Religion and instead thereof to introduce the Romish Superstition and Popery The particular Charges were one or two Letters written to Monsieur Le Chaise Confessor to the King of France to excite and stir him up to procure aid and assistance from a Forreign Prince Arms and Levies of Men. That this Letter was delivered and an Answer by him received with a promise that he should have Assistance That he wrote other Letters to Sr. William Throckmorton who traiterously conspired with him and had intelligence from time to time from him The main things insisted upon for the Evidence to prove were first That there had been a more than ordinary design to bring in the Popish and extirpate the Protestant Religion That the first On-set was to be made by a whole Troop of Jesuites and Priests who were sent into England from the Seminaries where they had been train'd up in all the Arts of deluding the people That there was a Summons of the principal Jesuits the most able for their head-pieces who were to meet in the April or May before to consult of things of no less weight than how to take away the Life of the King That there was an Oath of Secrecy taken and that upon the Sacrament That there were two Villains among them who undertook that execrable work for the rewards that were promised them Money in case they succeeded and Masses for their souls if they perished That if the first fail'd there were also four Irish men recommended to the Caball men of mean and desperate Fortunes to make the same attempt when the King was the last Summer at Windsor That Forces Aids and Assistances were prepared to be ready both at home and abroad to second the Design That Mr. Coleman knew of all this and encouraged a Messenger to carry money down as a reward of those Murderers that were at Windsor That there were Negotiations to be maintain'd with publick persons abroad money to be procured partly from friends at home and partly beyond Seas from those that wish'd them well in all which Negotiations Mr. Coleman had a busie hand That this Conspiracy went so far that General Officers were named and appointed and many engaged if not listed and this not only in England but in Ireland likewise That the great Civil Offices and Dignities of the Kingdom were also to be disposed of and that Coleman was to have been Secretary of State and had a Commission from the Superiours of the Jesuits to act in that Quality That he had treated by vertue thereof with Father Ferrier and La Chaise Confessors of the King of France for the Dissolution of the Parliament and Extirpation of the Protestant Religion to which purpose he had penned a Declaration with his own hand to justifie the Action when the Parliament was dissolved That he kept intelligence with Cardinal Norfolk with Father Sheldon and
as free from any guilt of these things laid to my charge in this matter as I came into the World from my Mother's Womb and that I do renounce from my heart all manner of Pardons Absolutions Dispensations for Swearing as occasions or Interest may seem to require which some have been pleased to lay to our charge as matter of our Practice and Doctrine but is a thing so unjustifiable and unlawful that I believe and ever did that no power on Earth can authorize me or any body so to do and for those who have so falsly accused me as time either in this World or in the next will make appear I do heartily forgive them and beg of God to grant them his holy Grace that they may repent their unjust proceedings against me otherwise they will in conclusion find they have done themselves more wrong than I have suffered from them though that has been a great deal I pray God bless His Majesty both Temporal and Eternal which has been my dayly Prayers for him and is all the harm that I ever intended or imagined against him And I do with this my last breath in the sight of God declare that I never did learn teach or believe that it is lawful upon any occasion or pretence whatsoever to design or contrive the Death of His Majesty or any hurt to his Person but on the contrary all are bound to obey defend and preserve his Sacred Person to the utmost of their power And I do moreover declare that this is the true and plain sence of my Soul in the sight of him who knows the Secrets of my Heart and as I hope to see his blessed Face without any Equivocation or mental Reservation This is all I have to say concerning the matter of my Condemnation that which remains for me now to do is to recommend my Soul into the hands of my blessed Redeemer by whose only Merits and Passion I hope for Salvation White THE words of dying persons have been always esteem'd as of greatest Authority because uttered then when shortly after they were to be cited before the high Tribunal of Almighty God this gives me hopes that mine may be look'd upon as such therefore I do here declare in the presence of Almighty God and the whole Court of Heaven and this numerous Assembly that as I ever hope by the Merits and Passion of my sweet Saviour Jesus Christ for Eternal Bliss I am as innocent as the Child unborn of any thing laid to my charge and for which I am here to dye and I do utterly abhor and detest that abominable false Doctrine laid to our charge that we can have Licenses to commit perjury or any Sin to advantage our cause being expresly against the Doctrine of St. Paul saying Non sunt facienda mala ut eveniant bona Evil is not to be done that good may come thereof And therefore we hold it in all cases unlawful to kill or murder any person whatsoever much more our lawful King now Reigning whose personal and temporal Dominions we are ready to defend against any Opponent whatsoever none excepted I forgive all that have contriv'd my Death and humbly beg pardon of Almighty God I also pardon all the World I pray God bless His Majesty and grant him a prosperous Reign The like I wish to his Royal Consort the best of Queens I humbly beg the Prayers of all those of the Roman Church if any such be present Harcourt DEarly beloved Country-men I am come now to the last Scene of Mortality to the hour of my Death an hour which is the Horizon between Time and Eternity an hour which must either make me a Star to shine for ever in the Empyreum above or a Firebrand to burn everlastingly amongst the damned Souls in Hell below an hour in which if I deal sincerely and with a hearty sorrow acknowledge my crimes I may hope for mercy but if I falsly deny them I must expect nothing but Eternal Damnation and therefore what I shall say in this great hour I hope you will believe And now in this hour I do solemnly swear protest and vow by all that is Sacred in Heaven and on Earth and as I hope to see the Face of God in Glory that I am as innocent as the Child unborn of those treasonable Crimes which Mr. Oates and Mr. Dugdale have Sworn against me in my Tryal and for which sentence of Death was pronounced against me the day after my Tryal and that you may be assured that what I say is true I do in the like manner protest vow and swear as I hope to see the face of God in Glory that I do not in what I say unto you make use of any Equivocation mental Reservation and material Prolocution or any such ways to palliate Truth Neither do I make use of any dispensations from the Pope or any body else or of any Oath of secrecy or any absolution in Confession or out of Confession to deny the truth but I speak in the plain sence which the words bear and if I do not speak in the plain sence which the words bear or if I do speak in any other terms to palliate hide or deny the Truth I wish with all my Soul that God may exclude me from his Heavenly Glory and condemn me to the lowest place of Hell Fire and so much to that point And now dear Country-men in the second place I do confess and own to the whole World that I am a Roman Catholic and a Priest and one of that sort of Priests which you call Jesuits and now because they are so falsly charged for holding King-killing Doctrine I think it my duty to protest to you with my last dying words that neither I in particular nor the Jesuits in general hold any such opinion but utterly abhor and detest it and I assure you that among the multitude of Authors which among the Jesuits have printed Philosophy Divinity Cases or Sermons there is not one to the best of my knowledge that allows of King-killing Doctrine or holds this position That it is lawful for a private person to kill a King although an Heretic although a Pagan although a Tyrant there is I say not one Jesuit that holds this except Mariana the Spanish Jesuit and he defends it not absolutely but only problematically for which his Book was called in again and the Opinions expugned and sentenced And is it not a sad thing that for the rashness of one single Man whilst the rest cry out against him and hold the contrary that a whole Religious Order should be sentenc'd But I have not time to discuss this point at large and therefore I refer you all to a Royal Author I mean the wise and victorious King Henry the Fourth of France the Royal Grandfather of our present gracious King in a public Oration which he pronounced himself in defence of the Jesuits said that he was very well satisfied with
above all things O sweet Jesus who hath suffer'd a most painful and ignominious Death upon the Cross for our Salvation apply I beseech thee unto me the merits of thy sacred Passion and sanctifie unto me these sufferings of mine which I humbly accept of for thy sake in union of the sufferings of thy sacred Majesty and in punishment and satisfaction of my sins O my dear Saviour and Redeemer I return thee immortal thanks for all thou hast pleased to do for me in the whole course of my life and now in the hour of my death with a firm belief of all things thou hast revealed and a steadfast hope of obtaining everlasting bliss I chearfully cast my self into the Arms of thy Mercy whose Arms were stretched on the Cross for my Redemption Sweet Jesus receive my Spirit Turner GOod People I suppose you expect I should say something as to the Crime I am Condemned for and either acknowledge my Guilt or assert my Innocency I do therefore declare before God and the whole World and call God to witness that what I say is true that I am innocent of what is laid to my Charge of Plotting the King's Death and endeavouring to subvert the Government and bring in a foreign Power as the Child unborn and that I know nothing of it but what I have learn'd from Mr. Oates and his Companions and what comes originally from them And to what is said and commonly believed of Roman Catholics that they are not to be believed or trusted because they can have Dispensations for Lying Perjury killing Kings and other the most enormous Crimes I do utterly renounce all such Pardons Dispensations and withal declare That it is a most wicked and malicious Calumny cast on them who do all with all their Hearts and Souls hate and detest all such wicked and damnable Practises and in the words of a dying Man and as I hope for Mercy at the Hands of God before whom I must shortly appear and give an account of all my actions I do again declare That what I have said is most true and I hope Christian Charity will not let you think that by the last act of my Life I would cast away my Soul by sealing up my last Breath with a damnable Lye Fenwick THE OBSERVATIONS THe main Drift and Scope of these notorious Malefactors Speeches was to wipe away the Contamination of that Guilt which brought them all to be the publick Spectacles of Condign Punishment wherein they observe all the same Method of Appealing to Heaven of denying the Doctrine and Maxims of their Order and then praying for the King and themselves All which Oaths and Protestations had they been true they might have been thought Apostates from their Order and Desertors of the Religion they so zealously professed upon the Ladder Had they been such Weak and Pusillanimous Combatants with Death as not strenuously to have deny'd what they were so fairly convicted of they would have been deprived of those glorious Crowns of Martyrdom which were assured them by Him whom they call the only Lord of all the World the only Vice-God the only Emperour the only King the Most Holy Pope They thought it was much better to make but one Skip from the Cart to Jacob's Ladder and so to mount directly up to Heaven than to be condemned with an ignominious Load of Truth and Penitent Confessions of the Facts they Committed to the Whips and Scourges of a tedious Purgatory else it would seem strange to the World that in the midd'st of those solemn Protestations which they made to that God to whom their Souls were taking such a speedy flight as they pretended they should so boldly deny what so many Grand-Signiours of Jesuitism have so stifly maintained to all the World Nor did these their succeeding Disciples shew themselves such mild Receders from their Principles who durst so confidently adventure to Beard the Laws and Statutes of a Soveraign Prince within his own Dominions ipso facto Malefactors and Rebels to His Majesty when they first set Foot within His Territories As for their renouncing all Equivocations and Mental Reservations which is the Ground upon which they all tread that will signifie nothing when we consider the Nature and Quality of a true Jesuit which is tenaciously to hold and adhere to the Dictates and Positions of their Superiours as believing what they Teach to be all Inspiration Now their Heavenly Doctrine is no more than this That it is lawful for them not only to deny and conceal the truth but also piously and religiously to affirm to swear by and invoke God and their Salvation to attest those things which they know to be assuredly untrue Thus Toletus both a Jesuit and a Cardinal Lib. 4. of his Instructions to the Priests Cap. 21. If it be a secret Crime concerning which any one is examined he may make use of Equivocation As for Example If I be asked whether I did such a thing or No I may answer No with this reservation to my self I did not now do it Gregory de Valentia asserts the same If the Question saith he be not fit to be answered though you be upon your Oath yet shall no Perjury be committed though the Party swear contrary to the Intent of the Judge such a one does neither lye nor take the Name of God in vain when it is for his own Preservation Andreas Eudemon Johannes is another of the same Stamp Martin Azpilcueta of Navarr proves Equivocation to be lawful from the Example of St. Francis who being asked by certain Officers Whether such a Murderer did not run such away Put his Hands into his Sleeves and cried he did not pass this way meaning that he did not flie through his Sleeves The fore-mentioned Cardinal Toletus also affirms That if a Priest be asked by the Magistrate whether he saw such a one at any time He may answer No For he did not see him that he should tell the Magistrate or he did not see him in a Beatifical Vision or he did not see him at Venice c. Many more Examples might be brought out of the same and several other Printed Authors neither are the Equivocations of Tresham Garnet and others unknown to our selves as those of Richeome are in France who affirmed That he never heard the last deceased Henry called Tyrant by any of his Subjects though he had heard Henry Valois the last Murdered King often so reviled So that it may be well said to be the Jesuits Motto Jura perjura secretum prodere noli Thus while they pretend to renounce and detest Equivocations Mental Reservations and Dispensations Reason it self must needs perswade us that Men principl'd and Educated by such Instructors are guarded with a good Salvo for those very Equivocations which they seemed to abjure No less if not more apparent is the fallacy of their disowning and disavowing that Dismal Doctrine of killing Kings and Princes To which purpose Gawen fell