e had even, according to Oates's deposition,
advanced a guinea to promote those bloody purposes. These wild stories
were confounded with the projects contained in his letters; and Coleman
received sentence of death. The sentence was soon after executed
upon him.[*] He suffered with calmness and constancy, and to the last
persisted in the strongest protestations of his innocence.

Coleman's execution was succeeded by the trial of Father Ireland, who,
it is pretended, had signed, together with fifty Jesuits, the great
resolution of murdering the king. Grove and Pickering, who had
undertaken to shoot him, were tried at the same time. The only witnesses
against the prisoners were still Gates and Bedloe. Ireland affirmed,
that he was in Staffordshire all the month of August last, a time when
Oates's evidence made him in London. He proved his assertion by good
evidence; and would have proved it by undoubted, had he not most
iniquitously been debarred, while in prison, from all use of pen, ink,
and paper, and denied the liberty of sending for witnesses. All these
men, before their arraignment, were condemned in the opinion of the
judges, jury, and spectators; and to be a Jesuit, or even a Catholic,
was of itself a sufficient proof of guilt. The chief justice,[**] in
particular, gave sanction to all the narrow prejudices and bigoted fury
of the populace. Instead of being counsel for the prisoners, as his
office required, he pleaded the cause against them, browbeat their
witnesses, and on every occasion represented their guilt as certain
and uncontroverted. He even went so far as publicly to affirm, that
the Papists had not the same principles which Protestants have,
and therefore were not entitled to that common credence, which the
principles and practices of the latter call for. And when the jury
brought in their verdict against the prisoners, he said, "You have done,
gentlemen, like very good subjects, and very good Christians, that is
to say, like very good Protestants, and now much good may their thirty
thousand masses do them;" alluding to the masses by which Pickering was
to be rewarded for murdering the king. All these unhappy men went to
execution, protesting their innocence; a circumstance which made no
impression on the spectators.

* December 3.

* Sir William Scroggs.

{1679.} The opinion, that the Jesuits allowed of lies and mental
reservations for promoting a good cause, was at this time so universal