himself." The Duke of York
states, in the Stuart Papers, that "the seeming necessity of his affairs
made his majesty think he could not be safe but by consenting every day
to the execution of those he knew in his heart to be most innocent."
Now, however, when foul charges were made against the queen, calculated
not merely to ruin her honour but destroy her life, he resolved to
interfere. He therefore requested she would return to Whitehall, where
she should be safe under his protection; and feeling assured Oates had
received instructions from others more villainous than their tool,
he ordered a strict guard to be kept upon him. This he was, however,
obliged to remove next day at request of the Commons.

On the examination before the House of Lords of Oates and Bedlow, their
evidence proved so vague and contradictory that it was rejected even by
the most credulous. When Bedlow was asked "why he had not disclosed such
a perilous matter in conjunction with his previous information touching
the murder of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey," he coolly replied, "it had
escaped his memory." On Oates being sent to point out the apartment in
which he had seen her majesty and the Jesuits, he first selected the
guard-room, and afterwards the privy chamber, places in which it would
have been impossible to have held secret consultation. Aware that the
king was resolved to protect her majesty, and conscious the evidence of
her accusers was more wildly improbable than usual, the Lords refused to
second the address of the Commons, when the charge against this hapless
woman was abandoned, to the great vexation of my Lord Shaftesbury.

Though the queen happily escaped the toils of her enemies, the reign of
terror was by no means at an end. At request of the king, the Duke
of York left England and took refuge in Brussels; the catholic peers
imprisoned in the Tower were impeached with high treason; Hill, Green,
and Berry, servants of her majesty, charged with the murder of Sir
Edmondbury Godfrey, were, without a shadow of evidence, hurried to the
scaffold, as were soon after Whitebread, Fenwick, Harcourt, Gavan and
Turner, Jesuits all, and Langhorn, a catholic lawyer, for conspiring
to murder the king. On the morning when these unfortunate men stood
ignominiously bound to the gallows at Tyburn, the instruments of death
before their eyes, the angry murmurs of the surging mob ringing in their
ears, suddenly the sound of a voice crying aloud, "A pardon!