knowledge of it, or made any disclosure respecting it, was Titus
Oates. He, when examined before the council in October, 1678, stated that
at a consult held by the Jesuits on the 24th of April preceding, at the
White Horse Tavern in London, resolutions had been adopted to kill the
king, overthrow the established church, and restore popery. Upon this many
arrests were made, and among others was Coleman, who had been secretary to
the late Duchess of York. His papers were seized, and there was found a
correspondence he had carried on several years before with the confessor
of Louis XIV., having reference mainly to the restoration of the Catholic
religion in England. These letters, although in no way confirmatory of the
alleged Plot, except so far as they indicated an anxious desire on the
part of the members of that church to regain their lost ascendency in
Great Britain, and their intention to use every effort for that purpose,
things already well known, yet produced great excitement, and were
regarded by many as conclusive proof of the truth of Oates' statements.
Another event, which happened about the same time, raised the excitement
to its highest pitch. Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, a London magistrate, before
whom Oates had made his depositions, was found murdered, and under such
circumstances as precluded the idea of suicide. Suspicion now deepened
into certainty. No one longer dared to doubt the reality of the plot. To
doubt, was to confess one's self an accomplice. Nothing was talked of but
the Plot. The wildest rumors were caught up and repeated, and soon grew
into well-authenticated facts. The name Papist, or Roman Catholic, became
synonymous with assassin. Many, not content with carrying arms, clothed
themselves in armor. At the funeral of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, says North,
in his Examen, 'the crowd was prodigious, both at the procession, and in
and about the church, and so heated, that any thing called Papist, were it
a cat or a dog, had probably gone to pieces in a moment. The Catholics all
kept close in their houses and lodgings, thinking it a good compensation
to be safe there, so far were they from acting violently at that time. But
there was all that which upheld among the common people an artificial
fright, so that every one almost fancied a popish knife just at his
throat; and at the sermon, beside the preacher, two thumping divines stood
upright in the pulpit, to guard him from being killed while he was
preac