And if that had been the case, I might very well soon have been sharing his fate.
I DO BELIEVE that the trial of Sir George Wakeman was a turning point for Titus Oates and his confederates, though this was not immediately apparent.
Oates was, of course, incensed by the acquittal. It was an absolute rebuff by Lord Chief Justice Sproggs, who had hitherto been a zealous Protestant and far from lenient to Oates’s victims.
I did not like much what I heard of Sproggs. He was rather a crude man with a not very good reputation. He was brash, but his asset was a certain power with words. He could be outstandingly eloquent, both with speech and pen. This set him apart, and the fact that he had used his skills on the side of good against evil and had secured the release of Sir George Wakeman aroused the King’s interest in him.
As was expected, Oates was not going to accept the rebuttal meekly.
He immediately began stirring up trouble for Sproggs. He incited the people against him, and defamatory libels were set in motion; broadsheets were circulated and rhymes were set to tunes to be sung in the streets. These implied that Sproggs had been bribed with gold from Portugal. Sproggs knew that Wakeman was guilty and with him the Queen. In the ordinary course of justice that would have been the verdict…but Sproggs had diverted the course of justice for Portuguese gold.
Sproggs, however, was a man able to defend himself. At the King’s Bench, he answered his critics in a brilliant speech. He said that at the trial of Sir George Wakeman he had acted “without fear, favor or reward, without the gift of one shilling or promise of expectation.”
I believed that even Oates realized that there was little to be hoped for from attacks on such a man.
The King sent for Sproggs and he came to Windsor. I was present at the interview.
I was a little repulsed by the man. There was something unpleasant about him, but Charles received him warmly, for he said to me in private that the man had saved us from God alone knew what. I knew that he was thinking that, had Wakeman been judged guilty, there would have been demands to question me; and moreover, those who did so would have been determined to prove me guilty. So we owed a good deal to Sproggs.
Charles congratulated him on his actions in Sir George’s trial.
“I did my duty, Your Majesty,” said Sproggs.
“Knowing that it was not what the people wanted.”
“Knowing that, Sire. The accusation was aimed beyond Sir George Wakeman…that much was clear.”
The King laid his hand on my arm and nodded gravely.
I said: “Thank you, Lord Chief Justice.”
“The people are using you ill,” added Charles.
“Your Majesty, the mob is easily led…and very changeable.”
“And these have some strong leaders. They have used you ill. They have used me worse.” He smiled at me. “We stand or fall together.”
Sproggs bowed. He was obviously delighted, and I believed counted the King’s favor as worth more than the approval of the mob.
When he had gone, Charles said: “I don’t much like the fellow, but he has a way with words…and that is a very powerful thing to have. He will stand for us…and it may well be that Mr. Titus Oates will not maintain his glory much longer.”
IT WAS TRUE that Oates was deflated by the Wakeman trial and his inability to take adequate revenge on the Lord Chief Justice. There was another case in which Oates met a similar fate.
There was a certain notoriety about this one, because the accused was Roger Palmer, Earl of Castlemaine, husband of the infamous Barbara. He was a well-known Catholic, and therefore a target for Titus Oates.
On Oates’s accusation he was sent to the Tower, and while there he wrote a pamphlet on those who had been falsely arrested and charged with being concerned in a plot which had no reality outside the imagination of Titus Oates.
This was a further insult to Oates and he could not allow it to pass. Fresh evidence against Castlemaine was procured and in time the case was brought before Lord Chief Justice Sproggs.
The Earl of Castlemaine was a great friend of the Duke of York. I sometimes wondered when Oates would have the temerity to attempt to bring James himself to trial. After all, he had tried hard enough to involve me. But then, of course, because Charles spent so much time with other women they had not expected so much opposition from him. Yet when he had protected me, they had not stopped their prosecution. But I supposed that even they would hesitate to attack the King’s brother and heir to the throne.
Castlemaine faced the court with courage and determination. He shrugged aside the insults of the prosecution and defended himself with dignity, restraint and a sincerity which could not be ignored. And, like Sir George Wakeman, he was acquitted.
Oates’s power was considerably subdued, but I had another enemy in Shaftesbury. His was the cause of Protestantism, and I was a Catholic. He did not accuse me of attempting to poison the King. He merely wanted to remove me so that the King might marry a Protestant queen and have children who would ensure a Protestant heir to the throne.
He knew that he could rely on considerable support throughout the country, and he brought in a Bill for the exclusion of the Duke of York and a divorce for the King that he might marry a Protestant and leave the crown to legitimate issue.
If Charles had wished to divorce me then, it would have been easy for him to have done so. He could have shrugged his shoulders in his nonchalant way and declared that it was his duty to do so.
I shall never forget how he stood by me in that time of danger. I knew how he hated trouble, how his great desire was to live a life of comfort and pleasure. His sauntering, his interest in the stars, his herbs, his dogs, the navy, planning buildings with the architects…that was the life he wanted to live. He had been so long in exile that these pleasures were of particular importance to him. He had had enough of conflict.
Yet with great vigor, he became my champion, and because of this I was ready to fight beside him. Indeed, what else could I do? To be parted from him was something I could not contemplate. It would be the end of everything I wanted. Anything, even this persecution, was better than that.
Charles made a point of going to the Peers to stress his abhorrence of the Bill, and to tell them that it was against his wishes that it should proceed. He would not see an innocent woman wronged. He was married to me and so he would remain. As for the Duke of York, he was the legitimate heir to the throne and only if he, the King, had legitimate heirs could that be changed.
Charles won the day. His wishes were respected and the Bill did not proceed.
Then William Bedloe died. This was quite unexpected, and it was another blow for Oates, for on his deathbed, Bedloe decided that he could not meet his Maker with so much on his conscience. So he repented and confessed that he had told many lies, that he knew nothing against me, except that I had given money to some Catholic institutions and was a Catholic myself. He admitted that accounts he had given of my attempts to poison the King were all lies.
Titus Oates must have been infuriated. Already he had lost some of his credibility by the acquittals of Sir George Wakeman and the Earl of Castlemaine. He might strut round in his episcopal robes — silk gown, cassock and long scarf — calling himself the nation’s savior, and enjoying his pension from the privy purse, but he must be suffering some qualms of fear and asking himself how long his glory would last.
I heard he had three servants to wait on him and dress him, as though he were royal; they vied for the honor of holding the basin in which he washed his hands. Everywhere people fawned on him, fearing that if they did not he might name them as conspirators and they find themselves under arrest.