ors who had sent Strafford and Laud to the Tower.

Meanwhile the courts of justice, which ought to be, in the midst of
political commotions, sure places of refuge for the innocent of every
party, were disgraced by wilder passions and fouler corruptions than
were to be found even on the hustings. The tale of Oates, though it had
sufficed to convulse the whole realm, would not, unless confirmed by
other evidence, suffice to destroy the humblest of those whom he had
accused. For, by the old law of England, two witnesses are necessary
to establish a charge of treason. But the success of the first impostor
produced its natural consequences. In a few weeks he had been raised
from penury and obscurity to opulence, to power which made him the dread
of princes and nobles, and to notoriety such as has for low and bad
minds all the attractions of glory. He was not long without coadjutors
and rivals. A wretch named Carstairs, who had earned a livelihood in
Scotland by going disguised to conventicles and then informing against
the preachers, led the way. Bedloe, a noted swindler, followed; and soon
from all the brothels, gambling houses, and spunging houses of London,
false witnesses poured forth to swear away the lives of Roman Catholics.
One came with a story about an army of thirty thousand men who were to
muster in the disguise of pilgrims at Corunna, and to sail thence to
Wales. Another had been promised canonisation and five hundred pounds
to murder the King. A third had stepped into an eating house in Covent
Garden, and had there heard a great Roman Catholic banker vow, in the
hearing of all the guests and drawers, to kill the heretical tyrant.
Oates, that he might not be eclipsed by his imitators, soon added
a large supplement to his original narrative. He had the portentous
impudence to affirm, among other things, that he had once stood behind a
door which was ajar, and had there overheard the Queen declare that she
had resolved to give her consent to the assassination of her husband.
The vulgar believed, and the highest magistrates pretended to believe,
even such fictions as these. The chief judges of the realm were corrupt,
cruel, and timid. The leaders of the Country Party encouraged the
prevailing delusion. The most respectable among them, indeed, were
themselves so far deluded as to believe the greater part of the evidence
of the plot to be true. Such men as Shaftesbury and Buckingham doubtless
perceived that the whole