hated the Presbyterians, who returned the compliment. He gave
Dangerfield twenty guineas, and sent him to the King his brother.
But Dangerfield, breaking down altogether in his charge, and being
sent back to Newgate, almost astonished the Duke out of his five
senses by suddenly swearing that the Catholic nurse had put that
false design into his head, and that what he really knew about,
was, a Catholic plot against the King; the evidence of which would
be found in some papers, concealed in a meal-tub in Mrs. Cellier’s
house. There they were, of course – for he had put them there
himself – and so the tub gave the name to the plot. But, the nurse
was acquitted on her trial, and it came to nothing.
Lord Ashley, of the Cabal, was now Lord Shaftesbury, and was strong
against the succession of the Duke of York. The House of Commons,
aggravated to the utmost extent, as we may well suppose, by
suspicions of the King’s conspiracy with the King of France, made a
desperate point of the exclusion, still, and were bitter against
the Catholics generally. So unjustly bitter were they, I grieve to
say, that they impeached the venerable Lord Stafford, a Catholic
nobleman seventy years old, of a design to kill the King. The
witnesses were that atrocious Oates and two other birds of the same
feather. He was found guilty, on evidence quite as foolish as it
was false, and was beheaded on Tower Hill. The people were opposed
to him when he first appeared upon the scaffold; but, when he had
addressed them and shown them how innocent he was and how wickedly
he was sent there, their better nature was aroused, and they said,
‘We believe you, my Lord. God bless you, my Lord!’
The House of Commons refused to let the King have any money until
he should consent to the Exclusion Bill; but, as he could get it
and did get it from his master the King of France, he could afford
to hold them very cheap. He called a Parliament at Oxford, to
which he went down with a great show of being armed and protected
as if he were in danger of his life, and to which the opposition
members also went armed and protected, alleging that they were in
fear of the Papists, who were numerous among the King’s guards.
However, they went on with the Exclusion Bill, and were so earnest
upon it that they would have carried it again, if the King had not
popped his crown and state robes into a sedan-chair, bundled
himself into it along with them, hurried down to the chamber where
the House of Lords met, and dissolved the Parliament. After which
he scampered home, and the members of Parliament scampered home
too, as fast as their legs could carry them.
The Duke of York, then residing in Scotland, had, under the law
which excluded Catholics from public trust, no right whatever to
public employment. Nevertheless, he was openly employed as the
King’s representative in Scotland, and there gratified his sullen
and cruel nature to his heart’s content by directing the dreadful
cruelties against the Covenanters. There were two ministers named
CARGILL and CAMERON who had escaped from the battle of Bothwell
Bridge, and who returned to Scotland, and raised the miserable but
still brave and unsubdued Covenanters afresh, under the name of
Cameronians. As Cameron publicly posted a declaration that the
King was a forsworn tyrant, no mercy was shown to his unhappy
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followers after he was slain in battle. The Duke of York, who was
particularly fond of the Boot and derived great pleasure from
having it applied, offered their lives to some of these people, if
they would cry on the scaffold ‘God save the King!’ But their
relations, friends, and countrymen, had been so barbarously
tortured and murdered in this merry reign, that they preferred to
die, and did die. The Duke then obtained his merry brother’s
permission to hold a Parliament in Scotland, which first, with most
shameless deceit, confirmed the laws for securing the Protestant
religion against Popery, and then declared that nothing must or