A Health Unto His Majesty

by Jean Plaidy

  That was the first plot. Others would follow; and when the people were fully aroused, and the King fully alarmed, they would bring forth evidence of the Queen’s complicity.

  Titus was excited. He saw here a chance to win honours such as had never before come his way.

  So when Dr Tonge returned to his lodgings and told Titus that the man who had uncovered the hellish Popish plot and had thrust the papers concerning it under the door of Dr Tonge was ordered to appear before the King, Titus was eager to tell his story.

  *

  Charles looked at Titus Oates and disliked him on sight.

  Oates knew this but was unperturbed; he was accustomed to looks of disgust. He cared for nothing; he had a tale to tell, and he felt himself to be master of his facts.

  He was glad now of the affair of William Parker as it had taught him such a lesson.

  Beside the King was the Duke of York, for Charles had said he must be present since this matter of plots and counter-plots concerned him as much as Charles himself.

  ‘A preposterous tale,’ said Charles when he had read the papers. ‘False from beginning to end.’

  His eyes were cold. He hated trouble, and these men were determined to make it.

  ‘So you have studied in Valladolid?’ he asked Titus.

  ‘It is true, Your Majesty.’

  ‘And you became a Jesuit, that you might mingle with them and discover their secrets?’

  ‘That is so, Your Majesty.’

  ‘What zeal!’ commented the King.

  ‘’Twas all in the service of Your Most Gracious Majesty.’

  ‘And when you were in Madrid you conferred with Don John of Austria, you say in these papers.’

  ‘’Tis true, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Pray, describe him to me.’

  ‘He is a tall, spare, and swarthy man, if it please Your Majesty.’

  ‘It does not please me,’ said Charles with a sardonic smile. ‘But doubtless it would please him, for he is a little, fat, fair man, and I believe would desire to appear taller than he is.’

  ‘Your Majesty, it may be that I have made a mistake in the description of this man. I have met so many.’

  ‘So many of the importance of Don John? Ah, Mr Oates, I see you are a man given to good company.’

  Titus stood his ground. He could see that if the King did not believe him, others were ready to do so. The difference was that they wanted to, whereas the King did not.

  ‘You say,’ went on the King, ‘that the Jesuits will kill not only me but my brother, if he should be unwilling to join them against me, and that they received from Père la Chaise, who is Confessor to Louis Quatorze, a donation of £10,000.’

  ‘That is so, Your Majesty.’

  Those about the King seemed impressed. It was true that Père la Chaise was Confessor to the French King.

  ‘And that there was a promise of a similar sum from another gentleman?’

  ‘From De Corduba of Castile, Your Majesty.’

  Again Titus was aware of his success. He made sure of facts. The visit to Spain had been well worth while. What if he had made a mistake in his description of a man; those about the King did not consider that to be of any great importance.

  ‘So la Chaise paid down £10,000, did he? Where did he do this, and were you there?’

  ‘Yes, Your Majesty. It was in the house of the Jesuits, close to the Louvre.’

  ‘Man!’ cried the King. ‘The Jesuits have no house within a mile of the Louvre!’

  ‘I doubt not,’ said Titus slyly, ‘that Your Majesty during your stay in Paris was too good a Protestant to know all the secret places of the Jesuits.’

  ‘The meeting is over,’ said Charles. ‘I will hear no more.’

  And, putting his arm through that of his brother, the King led James away, murmuring: ‘The man is a lying rogue. I am certain of it.’

  *

  But the news of the great Popish plot was spreading through the streets of London. The citizens stood about in groups discussing it. They talked of the Gunpowder Plot; they recalled the days of Bloody Mary, when the fires of Smithfield had blackened the sky and a page of English history.

  ‘No Popery!’ they shouted. Nor were they willing to wait for trials. They formed themselves into mobs and set about routing out the Catholics.

  Coleman, who had been secretary of the Catholic Duchess of York, and one of the suspects at whom Titus had pointed, was found to be in possession of documents sent him by that very Père la Chaise, for Coleman was in truth a spy for France.

  All the King’s scepticism could do nothing to quieten rumour. The people’s blood was up. They believed in the authenticity of the plot. The Jesuits were rogues who must be tracked down to their deaths; Titus Oates was a hero who had saved the King’s life and the country from the Papists.

  Oates was given lodgings in Whitehall. He was heard in royal palaces talking of Popery in his high nasal and affected voice interspersed with the coarsest of oaths; he was at the summit of delight; he had longed for fame such as this; he was no longer a poor despised outcast; he was admired by all. He was Titus Oates, exposer of Jesuits, the man of the moment.

  The King, still declaring the man to be a fake, went off to Newmarket, leaving his ministers to do what they would.

  And Titus, determined to hold what he had at last achieved, concocted fresh plots and looked for new victims.

  *

  Catherine was afraid.

  In her apartments at Somerset House she sensed approaching doom. She felt she had few friends and owed much to the Count of Castelmelhor, a Portuguese nobleman, who had been loyal to Alphonso and had found it necessary to leave the country when Pedro was in control. He had come to Catherine for shelter and had brought great comfort to her during those terrible weeks.

  Her servants brought her news of what was happening, and from her stronghold she would often hear the sound of shouting in the streets. She would hear screams and protests as some poor man or woman was set upon; she would hear wild rumours of how this person, whom she had known, and that person, for whom she had a great respect, was being taken up for questioning. ‘No Popery! No slavery!’ was the continual cry. And Titus Oates and Dr Tonge with their supporters were banded together to corroborate each other’s stories and fabricate wilder and still wilder plots in order to implicate those they wished to destroy.

  The King, disgusted with the whole affair and certain that Titus was a liar, was quick to sense the state of the country. He had to be careful. His brother was a confessed Catholic. It might be that that clause in the secret treaty of Dover was known to too many, and that he himself might be suspect; he was afraid to show too much leniency to Catholics. He was shrewd, and the tragic events of his life had made him cautious. He remembered – although he had been but a boy at the time – the feeling of the country in those days before the Civil War, which had ended in the defeat of his father, had broken out. He sensed a similar atmosphere. He knew that Shaftesbury and Buckingham with other powerful men were seeking to remove the Duke of York; he knew too that they plotted against Catherine and were determined either to see him divorced and married to a Queen who could provide a Protestant heir, or to see Monmouth legitimized.

  He must walk very carefully. He must temporize by giving the people their head; he must not make the mistakes his father had made. He must allow those accused by the odious Titus Oates to be arrested, questioned and, if found guilty, to suffer the horrible death accorded to traitors.

  He was grieved, and the whole affair made him very melancholy. He would have liked to have put Titus Oates and his friends in an open boat and sent them out to sea, that they might go anywhere so long as they did not stay in England.

  But he dared not go against the people’s wishes. They wanted Catholic scapegoats, and they were calling Oates the Saviour of England for providing them. They must be humoured, for their King was determined to go no more a-wandering in exile. So he went to Windsor and spent a great de
al of time fishing, while he indulged in melancholy thought; and Titus Oates lived in style at Whitehall Palace, ate from the King’s plate and was protected by guards when he walked abroad. All tried not to meet his eye, and if they were forced to do so, responded with obsequious and admiring smiles, for Titus had but to point the finger and pretend to remember an occasion when a man or woman had plotted against the King’s life, and that man or woman would be thrown into jail.

  Titus was content; for all those powerful men who had for ten years been seeking to bring about a divorce between the King and Queen saw Titus as a means of perfecting their plans, and to Titus they gave their support.

  Catherine knew this.

  She longed for the King to come and see her, but she heard that he was at Windsor. There was no one to whom she could turn for advice except those immediately about her, and they were mostly Catholics who feared for their own lives.

  She began to realize that the trap into which many of her servants were in danger of falling was in reality being prepared for herself.

  There came news that a certain magistrate of the City, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, had been murdered. He it was who had taken Titus’s affidavit concerning the Popish Plot. He was known as a Protestant although he had Catholic friends, and the manner of his meeting his death was very mysterious. Titus accused the Papists of murdering him, and the magistrate’s funeral was conducted with great ceremony while Titus and his friends did everything they could to incite the citizens to fury against his murderers, declared by Titus to be Catholics.

  Charles had offered £500 reward for anyone bringing the murderer of Godfrey to justice, although he half suspected that the man had been murdered by Titus’s agents for the purpose of rousing the mob to fresh fury, for it seemed that whenever this showed signs of lagging, some such incident would take place, some new plot would be discovered.

  It was then that William Bedloe made himself known and came before the Council with a terrible tale to tell.

  Bedloe was a convict, and he had met Titus when they were both in Spain. At that time Bedloe had been living on his wits and posing as an English nobleman, with his brother James acting as his manservant. He was handsome and plausible, and had managed during his free life to live at the expense of others, but he had served many sentences in Newgate and had just been released from that prison.

  He was attracted by the King’s promised reward of £500 and by the fact that his old friend Titus, whom he had last known as a very poor scholar of dubious reputation in Valladolid, was now feted and honoured with three servants at his beck and call and several gentlemen to help him dress and hold his basin whilst he washed.

  Bedloe did not see why he should not share in his friend’s good fortune, so he came forward to offer his services.

  *

  It seemed to Catherine that she was always waiting for something to happen; she was afraid when she heard a movement outside her door. She believed that these men were preparing to strike at her, and she was not sure when and how the blow would fall.

  It was dusk, and she had come from her chapel to that small chamber in which her solitary meal would be served. And as she was about to sit at her table, the door was thrown open and two of her priests came in to throw themselves at her feet.

  ‘Madam, Madam!’ they cried. ‘Protect us. For the love of God and all the Saints, protect us.’

  They were kneeling, clutching at her skirts, when she lifted her eyes and saw that guards had entered the chamber.

  ‘What do you want of these men?’ she asked.

  ‘We come to take them for questioning, Madam,’ was the answer.

  ‘Questioning? On what matter?’

  ‘On the matter of murder, Madam.’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘They are accused of being concerned in the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey.’

  ‘But this is not true. It is quite ridiculous.’

  ‘Madam, information has been laid with the Council which may prove them guilty.’

  ‘You shall not take them,’ cried Catherine. ‘They are my servants.’

  ‘Madam,’ said the guard who was spokesman, ‘we come in the name of the King.’

  Her hands fell helplessly to her side.

  *

  When they had taken the two priests away, she went into her chapel and prayed for them.

  Oh, these terrible times! she mused. What will happen next? What will happen to those two servants of mine? What have they done – those two good men – what have they done to deserve punishment, except to think differently, to belong to a Faith other than that of Titus Oates?

  She was on her knees for a long time, and when she went back to her apartment she was conscious of the tension throughout her household.

  She was aware of strained and anxious faces.

  Walsh and le Fevre today. Who next? That was what all were asking themselves. And every man and woman in her service knew that if they were taken it would be because, through them, it might be possible to strike at the Queen.

  They trembled. They were fond of their mistress; it would be the greatest tragedy in their lives if they should betray her in some way. But who could say what might be divulged if the questioners should become too cruelly determined to prise falsehood from unwilling lips!

  ‘There is nothing to fear,’ said Catherine, trying to smile. ‘We are all innocent here. I know it. These cruel men, who seek to torture and destroy those of our Faith, cannot do so for long. The King will not allow it. The King will see justice done. They cannot deceive him.’

  No! It was true that they could not deceive him; but he was a man who loved peace; he was a man who had wandered across Europe for many years, an exiled Prince; he was a man whose own father had been murdered by his own countrymen.

  The King might be shrewd; he might be kind; but he longed for peace, and how could they be sure whether he would bestir himself to see justice done?

  And at the back of Catherine’s mind was a terrible fear.

  She was no longer young; she had never been beautiful. What if the temptation to put her from him was too great; what if the wife they offered him was as beautiful as Frances Stuart had been in the days before her disfigurement?

  Who could tell what would happen?

  The Queen of England was a frightened woman during those days of conspiracy.

  *

  The Duchess of Buckingham brought her the news. She and Mary Fairfax had always been great friends, for there was much sympathy between them. They were both plain women and, if one had been married to the most charming man in England, the other had been married to one of the most handsome.

  Mary Fairfax knew that her husband was one of the Queen’s greatest enemies; she loved her husband but she was too intelligent not to understand his motives, and she could not resist coming to warn the Queen.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ she cried, ‘this man Bedloe has sworn that Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was murdered by your servants.’

  ‘It cannot be true. How could they do such a thing? They were nowhere near the place where his body was found.’

  ‘They have trumped up a story,’ said Mary. ‘They declare that Godfrey was invited to Somerset House at five o’clock in the afternoon, and that he was brought into one of the rooms here and held by a man of my Lord Bellasis’ whilst Walsh and le Fevre stifled him with the aid of two pillows.’

  ‘No one can believe such a tale.’

  ‘The people believe what they want to believe at a time like this,’ said Mary sadly. ‘They say that the body lay on your back staircase for two days. Many have been arrested. The prisons are full. The crowds are congregating outside and shouting for them to be brought out, hung, drawn, and quartered.’

  The Queen shuddered. ‘And my poor innocent priests . . .?’

  ‘They will prove their innocence.’

  ‘These lies are monstrous. Will no one listen to the truth?’

  ‘Your Majesty, the people are treating
this man Oates as though he is a god. They are arresting all sorts of people. Do you remember Mr Pepys of the Navy Office, who did such good service at the time of the great fire? He was taken up, and God alone knows what would have become of him had not one of his accusers – his own butler – come suddenly to his deathbed and, fearing to die with the lies on his lips, confessed that he had borne false witness. He is a good Protestant. Then why was he taken? Your Majesty might ask. Merely because he had been in the service of the Duke of York who thought highly of him.’

  ‘No one is safe,’ murmured the Queen. ‘No one is safe.’

  She looked at Mary and was ashamed of herself for suspecting her. But the thought had crossed her mind then; how could she be sure who was her friend?

  Who was this man Bedloe who had sworn he had seen the body of a murdered man on her backstairs? Had he been here, disguised as one of her servants?

  How could she know who were her enemies; how could she know whom she could trust?

  *

  In the streets they were saying that the Queen’s servants were the murderers of the City magistrate; and since these men were the Queen’s servants, that meant that it was at the instigation of the Queen that the man had been murdered.

  She was alone . . . alone in a hostile country. She did not believe now that they merely wished to be rid of her; they wished for her death.

  They were going to accuse her of murder, and there was no one to stand between her and her accusers.

  The country was feverish with excitement; plot after plot was discovered every day; armed bands walked the streets wearing the sign ‘No Popery’ in their hats; and they all talked of the Papist Queen who had murdered the Protestant Magistrate.

  Titus Oates went about the town in his episcopal gown of silk, in his cassock and great hat with its satin band; he wore a long scarf about his shoulders and shouted to the people that he was the saviour of the nation.