Judge North fidgeted with his papers, turned pages, perhaps reminding himself of some detail of what had gone before, while he awaited the silence his gavel demanded. At least four of them were knights: Scroggs, Jones, Levinz and Jeffries, and each was a rough and hardened Protestant. Indeed, it was illegal for a Catholic to be employed by the state, and equally impossible for the Jesuits to be judged by their peers: the jury would be of the Church of England, as was the way of it.
Most of the judges’ faces were creased with fifty years or more living, the exception being young Sir Jeffries, who had already made a name for himself in the courts for his scathing attitude towards Catholics and fellow judges alike.
And then there was Sir Scroggs.
Word on the street was that Scroggs had sent the so-called murderers – Berry, Green and Hill – to the gallows without a sincere hearing, and against proof that they were elsewhere at the time of death of the magistrate Sir Edmundbury Godfrey. He had not looked for justice, but revenge. In the words of Tom, the royal blacksmith that I overheard outside the Rainbow Coffee House, ‘from what I ‘eard, he ‘anged ‘em to court favour with the king’. Maybe he knew and maybe he did not; there was far too much came from the imagination these days.
Before the interlude, Titus Oates, the main accuser and witness against the Catholics, had spewed his lies all over the courtroom, to stick in the craw of those of us who knew his twisted words were the vilest of stories. He had taken moments of God’s own truth and spun them into complicated blasphemy against the very Bible he had kissed upon his oath.
His finger pointed to first one Jesuit then each of the others brought here to be tried today. He brazenly claimed that they had made plans to kill the king and overthrow the country, and then further planned to force the entire three kingdoms to convert to Catholicism or die. His accusations reached inside people on the street and in the court, twisting their fears and making them hate. The packed, whispering court seemed willingly to believe him absolutely, occasionally jeering or shouting their assent with what he said.
I was certain, on another day to come, Oates would also enjoy pointing his unctuous, fat finger at James Corker, the sixth Jesuit, for whom the judges had earlier indulged the plea for extra time to prepare a defence and call witnesses.
Less welcome was their indulgence of Oates’ inconsistent and imprecise testimony. He could not be sure whether it was this month or that when he had seen such and such person, or whether it was the beginning or middle of the month, vital points for the prisoners to prove their own whereabouts at those times, and yet the judges did not question he could not be precise about any of it!
Not for me to speak out and say they were at fault for this, when no others perceived such, but it seemed to me, each time the prisoners asked for clarification, their queries were swept aside as though the answers could make no difference, despite the importance of those details.
And I was further shocked how the same rules did not count for all. For when the young students from St Omer stood up, and though they were more precise about the time that Oates stayed in their college, and their memories of him being there agreed with each other, even to remembering exactly where he had sat in the dining hall in the college at those times, and stories about him in the garden when he said he was in England, Scroggs had the court laughing at them for not being absolutely certain of some petty detail or another during the cross examination by several judges at once.
As I understood it, Oates’ evidence was based on two essential points. The one was about a consult of up to fifty Jesuits in London on the twenty-fourth day of April in the year of 1678 that Oates claimed was got together to plan the murder of the king, and the other was a letter written by one prisoner to another that referred to ‘a design’, a plan, that was interpreted to be for the killing of the king but, according to the Jesuits, was in fact to organise the aforementioned consult, an annual gathering. Their whole case rested on these two proofs.
And on the testimony of a man that was thrown out of that same Jesuit College for his unseemly and gross behaviour. He had been none too quiet speaking out against Catholics whensoever he had opportunity. His revenge was strong against those that were intolerant to his abhorrences, for which they had thrown this particular viper from their nest. For this, he had snatched so many good innocent people from their homes and condemned them with lies and without fair trial. He could not even keep his lies straight.
Thus far, the answers of the prisoners convinced me of their truth more heartedly than did Oates and the last witness against them, a man called Stephen Dugdale, steward to Lord Aston. It was the latter that had first pointed the finger at, and given evidence against, Lord Powys and the other four lords now in the Tower. Dugdale was so well spoken and had so much wit that he had the manner of one who spoke the truth, yet there were rumours his master had dismissed him for embezzlement…a snake with a silver tongue is still a snake.
The break had been to await the arrival of the next witness after the man Dugdale. I presumed the witness had now arrived. Before he spoke, a voice at my right shoulder said, ‘Madam Cellier, I am to fetch some victuals for the young folk of St Omer. Might I also find favour with you and bring something to wet your throat?’
It was Captain Willoughby. Even loving Pierre, I could not prevent the usual flutter behind my ribs at his smooth delivery of words and sincere face.
‘If you are in a tavern, a beer would surely wash the dust from my throat, I thank you Sir.’ He nodded and smiled at his flirtatious answer.
‘For you, madam, I would ride to John O’Groats or Land’s End to find such a tavern! Indeed, I would search the world over for one.’
‘I do not ask you to travel so far, Captain. Merely fifty paces.’
‘I am honoured to do you such service, madam.’ With which he raised his hat from his long false curls and, rather than swirl it in a flourish and bow low as he had when the room was empty, he merely raised it and lowered it once more upon his head. I did not see him for some time after that. I later heard he had stayed longer in the tavern than necessary and had washed his own throat very thoroughly whilst he collected the drinks. This did not surprise me. He was known for frequenting the White Horse Tavern in the Strand for more of the day than he worked. I did not miss him for I had other matters to contemplate.
The judge cleared his throat a couple of times over the constant chatter of the spectators. I returned my attention to the court proceedings. I had many times sat in a courtroom since that time more than a year ago when I was attacked in the street, but that had been in the Sessions. Even then, the nature of the court stirred me. Its dream-like flavour gave me a taste of another world, where every event of the past mattered and shaped the present and future, gave me a yearning to learn more of how the justice process worked.
Any tried for treason would be at the Old Bailey, where serious crimes were dealt with. Something told me I must remember everything, learn how it worked, for that knowledge might, one day, become advantageous.
Already, on the first morning, I had learned one could dismiss people assigned to the jury for various reasons. Sir Creswell Levinz had made me burn with rage at his opening speech. He had made clear that this country had ‘put up with’ the presence of Catholic priests though they be illegal, then he had gone on to proclaim them akin to the bloody murderers that carried out the massacres in Merindol and Paris and Ireland, warning the defendants they would not have the satisfaction of suffering for their religion, that this was not what they were being tried for. It was cleverly done, and turned the court against the prisoners before any testimony was heard, if it were possible to skew opinion more.
And then that pretender, Oates, had told his lies, and called his man, Dugdale, to bear witness to them.
Oates had declared himself part of a design by the Jesuit priests to kill the king, to massacre Protestants and force Catholicism onto the c
ountry.
If his story be true, how was it that the Jesuits should be on trial when he was not, though he had apparently partaken of the same crime? He admitted to having converted to Catholicism. Indeed, his crime was far worse, for he had turned against those that had taken him under their wing! How could his word be believed, when the lies of his turncoat witness, Dugdale, were shown in their true colours in court this day. Most unbelievable was when the judges found inconsistencies within his testimony, they corrected for him rather than found it false.
Oates said one thing that could be tested straight away, if they had had a mind to. Dugdale said he recognised the treasonable letters by the hand of Harcourt, yet Harcourt himself stood there and told them the man had not long since been unable to recognise either him nor his hand, when compared to writing by attendant committee members of the House of Commons!
Harcourt revealed that in private, out of Dugdale’s sight, some of the gentlemen of the Commons had written Harcourt’s name on a piece of paper, and had put them along with that of Harcourt’s own hand in front of Dugdale, when he came back into the room. Dugdale could not pick Harcourt’s hand out. Yet, when he spoke of this, Harcourt was told his words meant nothing, though their case rested on it.
Why did they not call these gentlemen to test his statement? It was so easily verified, yet they did not do it. In what world this might be considered fair, I could not fathom. Especially, if what he said was the truth. Dugdale had already shown himself a scoundrel and admitted to having given monies towards killing the king and taking over the country.
‘I gave them four hundred pounds to pray for my soul, and for the carrying out of this design, and when they told me they doubted they should want for money, I promised them one hundred pounds more for the carrying out of the work,’ he told the court, and ‘Upon which, Mr Gavan promised me that I should be canonized for a saint,’ said Dugdale.
Did they not think this man might not make a good witness?
When Dugdale professed knowledge of the murder of the knight, Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, the noise in court became almost too much to hear him speak. Every Judge vied to question him on that, and seemed to believe all his answers. It was also their wont to ensure the jury particularly heard the parts they wanted them to by repeating certain testimony, and ignoring other.
Even Chetwyn, Dugdale’s own witness, spoke against him. He said the testimony where Dugdale said the words, ‘This night, Sir Edmundbury Godfrey is dispatched’, was not actually in the said letter from Father Harcourt to Father Ewers when it was shown to him, and that he said of the matter, ‘it was added later’.
Bedlow also spoke, and knowing how he had admitted in a letter to the man, Stroud, who had confided in Willoughby how he knew none of this before being told it by Oates, his testimony stuck in my craw. I could not help but shout out at one point, ‘Lies! ‘Tis all lies! He knows nothing about any of it!’
Judge Scroggs looked directly at me, lifted one eyebrow and raised his voice above mine, ‘If the lady knows something of this, why does she not take the stand?’ before returning to his leading questions, telling Bedlow what to say by how he asked them.
The Judges treated the boys from St Omer disgracefully. When it was their turn to give testimony, they were not let to swear on the Bible, though they wished to, for they were Catholics. One judge had the disrespect to openly tell them that, because of their religion they could not be trusted. His complaint was that a Catholic’s first duty was to the Pope before the king, and that would give cause to lie; and that they would not have any compunction about doing so, because they could then be absolved of that sin by confession and a pardon.
Father Harcourt and the others tried to use Dugdale’s and Bedlow’s criminal past to show they were not trustworthy witnesses, and each time they were told the same thing, that the men were absolved of their previous crimes by having a pardon from the king. I was struck by the irony and hypocrisy of this: they feared the priests and their witnesses had a dispensation to lie and would speak false for only want of a pardon yet they openly allowed and gave credit to the crown’s own witnesses standing against them that were criminals just so pardoned by the king in order to give testimony!
Sixteen boys had spoken up that Oates could not have been at the meeting in England when he sat every day at the table by the door in their dining room. And the testimony of each one was denigrated and trodden on as if it had no worth. Why the king saw fit to bring them over for this treatment was a mystery, if they were not to be listened to. And then it took only two lying witnesses from the other side to decide the case against the Jesuits. Their proof might have made a man laugh if it did not have such dire consequences. But instead they laughed loud at those poor boys that had done all they could to defend innocent men the best they could.
When the jury left to decide the Jesuits’ fates, there was not a person in the court who had any doubt of the way it would fall. With heavy heart and faint hope justice would be as clear to the jury as it was to me, I took time to look at the eager faces round the room. They came for blood and would not be happy unless they had it. The judges too were talking and laughing as if the priests’ lives were not at stake. Did the life of a Catholic mean so little to any of them that they failed to hold a fair trial? They failed to be what they should be – men of the law on the side of right.
But still, some hope in me glimmered. Twelve men sat in judgement of the Jesuits. Surely not all of them were so prejudiced they could not see the truth of the matter!
As it happened, of the twelve men that sat in judgement none of the twelve had sight to see the truth.
When they returned, the judge asked them for their verdict.
‘If they are guilty, then you must say so,’ he said, ‘and their property will be taken for the crown. If they are not guilty, but ran, then their property will be taken for the crown. If they are not guilty and did not run, then say so now. Do you find these men guilty or not guilty?’ He then ran through the names of the priests: John Gavan, William Harcourt, Anthony Turner, Thomas Whitbread, John Fenwick and for each a verdict of ‘guilty’ was given. None of them would escape the ghastly death of those convicted of treason.
The faces of the priests were neither surprised nor defeated. Neither did they flinch at such unfair judgment. That they had resigned themselves to their fate long before they had reached the court was testament to the kind of trial they had both expected and received. Their calm unnerved me. It made me want to scream out in their defence, but if I did I would not be heard, for the court had gone wild, and the collective joy was at odds to the despair I felt not only for the poor men that were now to be hanged, but for the poor boys, their defenders, who had failed in their task. I searched for them now.
At the back of the court on the other side, the St Omer boys, humiliated and demoralised, stood quietly together. In a room full of movement, their stillness struck me sharply and, if I were not here where seeds of sympathy did not grow, I would have watered them with my tears. I mourned for their own lost innocence, for many of them had truly believed that truth could not fail to reveal itself to all others, and that their testimony to it would be enough to turn the wind of lies from its present course, but the wind merely battered them then blew them away.
The lives of their friends had been entrusted to them, and they had not been able to save them. As one, with heads bent in prayer or dejection, the group turned and left the court, pushed and shoved by the jubilant crowd as they went.
I saw Willoughby some way from them, and wondered at that he had not sat with them; it would have given them moral support to not be so alone. I was glad to be near to the door so that I did not have to push my way through many, but I would have sat with them had I been able.
The last memory I took of the priests was the blessed look of forgiveness they bestowed upon their murderers.
I was sickened for the loss of the re
verence of justice and fairness I had once believed to be found in the courtroom, and quickly made my escape.
13
24th day of June, 1679
‘I shall not do it, Madam Cellier! You know I would do any thing you ask, but I would rather go one hundred miles than deliver this message to my Lord!’
Like a petulant child, Willoughby thrust the letter back towards me in his tattooed hand, the other hand balled at his side and his face pinched in obstinacy. He did not look so very attractive at that moment, and I more had the notion of placing him over my knee and giving him a spanking than I had of him tilting at windmills in the way of Don Quixote, or as a rakish highwayman the likes of Du Vall that I had once shed a tear for.
If I had tried to save the life of Du Vall, I had tried everything. I had petitioned the king for his mercy, but to no avail. He had stood against too many gentlemen on the road and at the gaming tables, and with their wives in his bed. Tales of his wild escapades filled every coffee shop and, alongside every other lady of the time, I was quite undone by the romantic tale of when he held up a knight and his lady.
She, when she saw they were to be robbed, played heartily on her flageolet. He, the highwayman, Du Vall, was so taken by the music, he drew out his own instrument and played along with her. At the end of their duet, Du Vall asked the knight for his wife’s hand in a dance, to which his lordship could barely refuse, saying, ‘I cannot deny a gentleman of such quality and good behaviour anything.’ So, they danced a courante with all assuredness, elegance and light-footedness as if the heath were a ballroom.
We ladies had whispered of how, after they finished moving together in a most graceful and dignified fashion, he handed her back up to her husband in the coach, then surprised the knight by saying, ‘Have you remembered to pay the musicians?’ to which the older man replied, ‘I never forget such things’. He then reached under his seat and drew forth a bag holding one hundred pounds. Du Vall took it gracefully and told the knight, for giving the money freely and without force, he would spare him the other three hundred he knew to be hidden whence that hundred came, and that he would be safe from any of his men on the road from that day forth. For that was the sort of decent man he was.
The Popish Midwife: A tale of high treason, prejudice and betrayal Page 13