least Beam of their so highly forfeited Mercy can never be recovered under a less Attonement Sacrifice There is one Pen more drawn against me call'd a Letter to E. Settle Printed by Nat. Thompson The Writer whereof has no Quarrel against my Narrative but the Author and seems to suspect not only the Truth of my Penitence but also of my Confession and that there still lyes some undiscovered Anguis in Herbâ in the Breast of so high an Offender He very much doubts whether those Motives exprest in my Preface were the true Incendiaries to so inveterate a Pen as mine and believing that an Author so eminently serviceable to those false Patriots that always make Religion and Liberty the specious pretences to mask the Blackest and Foulest Purposes he seems to be very confident I must be trusted in their Intrigues and Cabals and thereupon has put me a whole Roll of Quaraees to Answer To which Book I can only make this short Reply In that Confession made in my Preface I have given the World the whole Truth of my Soul And tho my unhappy Resentments for having a Play remanded to the Dukes Theatre may appear a very idle Provocation for so implacable a spight and revenge as mine yet as that Command was occasionally the Ruine of my well being in the World the Circumstances of which are too tedious to recite from that very Cause tho never so unjust and unchristian a one I drew in that Poyson and Virulence against the Son of a King and a Martyr the Greatest of Heroes and the best of Friends and Brothers But as my soul too much loaded already has no farther Sins to answer for I am so wholy uncapable of solving this Gentlemans Queries that Ignorance and Innocence is all the Plea I can make I being so far from a Confident Caballer or indeed Company-keeper with those Antimonarchical Matchevils that I can safely Swear I never so much as drank at the Kings-head Club excepting on a publick Queen Elizabeths Night Perhaps the Voluntary Tribute I brought them made me esteemd a Profitable Servant enough without exacting any farther Task from my Hands or otherwise they might be those skillful Physiognomists that they could read Souls and found me so uncapable even of a Thought against my King that in Prudence and Safety they made their Machinations against the Crown those Secrets that were to be laid out of my reach for I declare in the presence of God I know no more by them then that the Bill of Exclusion and the other Parliamentary Projections for Liberty and Religion were the utmost end they drove at And if I have belyed my Conscience in this Protestation and am any wise Guilty of those Crimes that the Letter-writer suspects there is now that Justice wakened that would soon o'retake me For thanks be to Heaven the Great Mystery of Iniquity begins to be unfolded and the detection of this last TRULY Damnable and Hellish Plot begins to set the Staggering World upright again a Plot not discovered by the Rakings of Jails and Scumm of Mankind but by Clouds of Witnesss of Substance and Quality A Plot not universally denyed with Vows Oaths and Imprecations even at Gibbets and Death but confest in Jails with Horror and Trembling A Plot that I hope will so fully restore those Senses that Delusion and Frenzy have so long set a wandring that Union and Loyalty shall so perfectly Flourish again till the Hearts of his People and Parliaments so intirely return to the best of Men Kings that they shall meet him with no less Caresses and Endearments then those at his Restoration ADVERTISEMENT Whereas Mr. Care in one of his Courants has said that Mr. Cademan durst not Print my Narrative till it had Mr. L'Estranges Blessing these are to signifye 't is wholy False for tho 't is true Mr. L'Estrange read some part of it yet on the other-side he advised and Councelled Mr. Cademan by no means to venture to Print it FINIS
Remarker makes short work and indeed as much as the Cause would bear and tells you He 'll say no more to 't but that if the King of Spain was a Block-head in it and the King of France a Lunatick as the Irish Plot makes them they ought to come to E. Settle to learn Politicks And for his part because Settles Romantick Objections depend upon Plunkets Trial upon which he was condemnd he shall not troubl◠himself to make any further defence for Courts of Judicature T is true the Reflecter is a little more Prolix upon this business but so abominably lew'd is the ignorance or impudence of this nameless Wretoh that he doubts not but the Spanish King had 30 thousand Pilgrims ready Mustered and to be Landed at Bradlington 〈◊〉 and Ten thousand Flandrians at Hull tho when he wanted Hands to save his own Kingdoms and another Army to joyn with the French King tho to make his most mortal Enemy King of Ireland nay tho not one of these Martial Pilgrims were ever seen in the World from that day to this yet all these Armies were rais'd and this stupendious Alliance of France and Spain was undeniable truth and why as he says because the Spanish King is Priest-ridden and the Jesuits rule his Ascendant There he has hit it Popery Plot and Jesuites can do every thing Incorporate even Fire and Water and make confederacies between the greatest and most implacable of Enemies nay it can unman Kings and make the Wise and Politick French King be for bringing a Royal Navy into that very Port of Ireland where a Fisherboat can scarce live and Maugre that foolish obstacle call'd impossibility neither the King of France can forbear attempting all this nor the Reflecter believing it Nay the most Hellish hideous Masterpiece of all Dr. Oats his Discovery his Information to the Parliament that the French had already landed a great Army of 25000. Messina Soldiers in Ireland goes as inoffensively down with the Reflecter as the least puny exploit in the whole Plot. Nay to outdo the Doctor a Bow-shoot the Doctor only brings them on but let the Devil bring them off again but the Reflecter both lands and unlands them INVISIBLE For page 14 he says why might not their designs be disappointed upon the discovery of the Plots and they RETIRE again or forbear acting till better strengthen'd and prepared for bringing their Designs about That is why may not a Body of no less than 25000. men Land in a foreign Kingdom and come go or stay from that day to this without so much as one Mothers Son of 25000 being seen by Human Eye Heaven what a GORGE has the Reflecter to swallow such unprecedented PLOT-ROMANCE or what Impudence to vindicate such Execrable FORGERY Quanta est ficti Constantia Vultus The next thing we come to is Sir Edmundbury Godfreys Murder and there the Reflecter to vindicate Mr. Bedlows wonderful Refusal of 4000 l. to be one of the six to Murder Sir Edmund and afterwards 2000 l. to be one with them to carry off the Body Makes answer that such is the generosity of some mens tempers how meanly soever born that they cannot be bribed nor wrought into an ill thing So generous a man was Bedlow and so averse to any thing that 's ill that only the greatest part of his Life was spent in Horsestealing Cheating and Pocketpicking or rather the providence of God who had otherwise ordain'd might make him make use of the Proposal of that very act to create a reluctance in him and to work him to a Discovery of that and the rest This last point indeed is unanswerable but possibly upon a review His Discovery to give Providence no trouble in it might come a shorter Journy than from Heaven only from the Prince of the Air by the way But Elkanah is a little Satyrical on the strange and different account of the whole continued contradiction in Bedlows and Prance's Testimony Sir Edmund by Bedlows Evidence being stifled with a Pillow in a lower Room of the great Court in Somerset-house between four and five in the Afternoon and the Murderers Walsh Lephaire my Lord Bellasis 2 Gentlemen c. but by Prance Evidence he was strangled with a twisted Handkerchief at 9 at Night by the stablus in the outward Court of Somerset-house by Green Girald Hill Kelly Berry and Prance c. To reconcile with contradiction the Reflecter tells you page 16th that Miles Prance owns to have been present and to have had a hand in that Murder Mr. Bedlow knows it only by a Relation and by a Relation of a thing which he had already refused to have a hand in and at a time he was so much suspected by that Party as that they made him take the Sacrament twice a day for fear he should reveal Now he being a suspected Person and knowing the Murder to have been committed by Papists they varyed in their Account of his Death from the Truth to baulk his Evidence in case he should fail them Now observe how Bedlow only swears to a Relation In his Testimony before the House of Lords he swears that Walsh and Lephairé two Jesuits proffer'd him 4000 l. to be one of the 4 or 6 that were to Kill Sir Edmond-bury Godfrey and that upon his taking the Sacrament to do it he should have the Money before hand paid where or to whom to himself or what Friend he thought fit Thus far Mr. Bedlows I hope was not suspected by them neither was this only a Relation for he had the proffer of present payment and of a swinging summ too Besides supposing that the concern of Walsh Lephaire and his Cut-throats was only a Sham and that no such Persons were concern'd in the Murder put the Supposition that Bedlow had accepted the Money and Sacrament as t' is stupendious he did not how must Walsh and Lephaire have excused this Sham must they have cryed peccavi and said Sir we beg your pardon we are concern'd in no such Murder and tho we have given you the Sacrament and 4000 to no purpose in the World we have no service to desire of you for it 't is an inconsiderable trisling sùmm and it burnt in our Pockets and therefore much good may do you with it Also that very Night that Sir Edmund was carryed out from Sommerset-house Bedlow swears that at the hour of 9 he was showed the Body at which were present Walsh Lephaire my Lord Bellasis Gentleman Mr. Atkins Mr. Pepys Clerk and one Irish Man more here was he offer'd half the 4000 l. to be one with these very numerical Men to help to carry off the Body and this but two hours before it was carryed forth And yet these very Men it seems were none of the Persons engaged and upon Bedlows acceptance of the two Thousand pound they must have still excused themselves by saying Sir we have told you a notorious Lye the Body is to be conveyed out by a
pack of Mr. Prances Friends to whom we are wholly strangers and altogether unconcern'd with Nay and to make out the Oddness of this wondrous matter of Fact sworn by Bedlows we have Mr. Prances crew of Cut-throats Sir Edmonds REAL Murderers and those Cut-throats are expresly sworn by him to have had the keeping of the Dead Body all along and to have carryed it up and down from Room to Room upon every Shadow of danger Nay their fears and terror was so great that on Wednesday night being removing the Body back to the first Room it lay in Mr. Prance happening to come upon them at that instant they all ran away and left the Body in the Entry till he call'd to them and made them come back again c. And yet but two hours before they carryed out the Body 't was left in a Room exposed to the view of Bedlows Lephaire and the rest of his Brethren to the number of half a dozen Men all strangers to Prance with neither Prance nor one of his Comerades upon the Spot tho all so apprehensive of a discovery But next says the Reflecter Let us see Mr. Settles most remarkable Observation viz. That few or none of those numerous Letters and Packets seen read carried and intercepted by the several Discoverers should be couch'd in Ciphers seeing they contain'd no less than all the proposals for Regicides Massacres Assassinations and all the rest of their Villanies whatsoever Now might not all those Letters says the Reflecter that had no Cipher be conveyed by such hands and means as they might rely on for the safety of the Delivery and be couch'd in such Terms tho not in Cipher as to seem to an unprepossess'd Reader to contain nothing but indifferent matters tho they were stuft up with rank Treason Now nothing but Impudence unparallel'd would pretend to answer a Book at this rate Does not the Narrative in that very place prove all Dugdales Letters received by him tho directed all to other men to be all conveyed by the Common Post and that there was so far from any Caution used in the conveyance that he swears he broke them all open to above a hundred in number and those that he could not hansomely sâ—al again he threw by and never delivered and all without the least Outery or Uproar from the Discoverers at the miscarriage though for the loss of Treason in Grain Nay were not the contents of those Letters of such a Treasonable nature that Dugdale at Corkers Trial swears he received a Letter with KILLING THE KING in express words in it Just such another Reply the Reflecter makes to the Narratives other as remarkable Observation viz. why Coleman should spend so much labour and waste paper in Ciphers and Characters and Foreign Correspondence sometimes pushing on a TOLERATION and otherwhile labouring for Prorogations and Dissolutions of Parliament upon their every least motion in disfavour of the Roman Catholicks if at the same time they had that vaster Machine a working that would have Crown'd their utmost wishes without it when upon killing the King and murdering the Protestants they had not only dissolved the Parliament but likewise involved the Members in the Common Ruin and by the Entry of Popery by the Sword they had put an end to the very Being and Constitution of Parliaments To which answers the Reflecter Well might not these Proroguings and Toleration Projects be managed in the interim in case an Obstacle should happen to the putting their main Plot in Execution Does it not appear throughout the whole course of the Conspiracy that the Jesuits would leave no stone unturn'd for the bringing about their ends and play at small games rather than stand out A small game indeed and the dullest Gamesters in Christendom for had the Papists intended such an Universal Massacre in my Judgment nothing so convenient for their purpose as to have done it in the very Sitting of a Parliament How much more easie had it been out of Mr. Bedlows three English Armies to have planted some few Popish Champions at the Parliament house Door or the Parliament mens Lodgings to have killed Them too as well as the Soldiers as they came out then to begin a Massacre in a Prorogation time when so many great Men as those of the two Houses diâ—perst most of them in their Country Seats â—â—ad had the opportunity to Arm both themselves and Tenants and encourage all those numerous Hands that would immediately have laid down their Lives and Fortunes in such a Cause and under such Leaders especially to make head against so hated a Party as the Papists and that too after no less than the Murder of the KING and the approach of their own threatned Destruction Well! but Pickering and Coleman did not confer notes and his Gun with Bullets or no Bullets Powder or no Powder might have kill'd the King and not one sâ—llable of this convenience thought on And thâ—n for Mr. Oats not seizing any of those Letters Pacquets Memorials Proposal and Commâ—ssions that might have corroborated his Discovery the Reflecter answers As some he had only the sight of so it would be madness to think he would take 'em away by force as to those others he carried he does not say but that he was accompanied by some of the Conspiracy or if he was not so manifest a proof of his Trechery if one may call it so to his party would cut off all means of his diving farther into their Resolutions and yet might be of little use since perhaps he could not have PROVED THE HANDS And as for that courage of Mr. Oats which our Narrative Hero is pleas'd so to Droll upon it shows that Mr. Oats whole care was even AFTER the Discovery not to give the Jesuits the least cause to suspect his being fallen off that so by a fair appearance he might insinuate and grow so well acquainted with the Results of all their debates even concerning the Discovery as to reveal and prevent any HASTY and FATAL Resolutions they might have taken thereupon c. Was ever such a Blind Excuse sound out for so damnable a piece of VILLANY in the Doctor viz. That the Doctor should discover the Plot to the King on the 13th of August and upon the Kings disbehef of it return to the Jesuits to trapan and betray 'em and yet not so much as surprize one Treasonable consult after it nor seize one Paper of theirs amongst so many trusted in his hands and why in the name of Dulness possibly he could not have proved their hands And that too not only for so eminent a service to the King and three Protestant Kingdoms but likewise for his own Interest and Glory when so plain a proof of the Popish Plot had for ever gain'd him the universal love of a whole Protestant Kingdom and consequently all the encouragement that he could wish or ask Whereas on the contrary the lameness of his Narrative and the