Charity to publish to the World before my death all that I know in this point concerning those Catholicks I have conversed with since the first noise of the Plot desiring from the very bottom of my heart that the whole Truth may appear that Innocence may be clear'd to the great Glory of God and the Peace and Welfare of the King and Country As for my self I call God to witness that I was never in my whole life at any Consult or Meeting of the Jesuits where any Oath of Secrecy was taken or the Sacrament as a Bond of Secrecy either by me or any one of them to conceal any Plot against His Sacred Majesty nor was I ever present at any Meeting or Consult of theirs where any Proposal was made or Resolve taken or signed either by me or any of them for taking away the Life of our Dread Soveraign an Impiety of such a nature that had I been present at any such Meeting I should have been bound by the Laws of God and by the Principles of my Religion and by God's Grace would have acted accordingly to have discovered such a devillish Treason to the Civil Magistrate to the end they might have been brought to condign punishment I was so far good People from being in September last at a Consult of the Jesuits at Tixall in Mr. Ewer's Chamber that I vow to God as I hope for Salvation I never was so much as once that year at Tixall my Lord Aston's House 'T is true I was at the Congregation of the Jesuits held on the 24th of April was twelve-month but in that Meeting as I hope to be saved we meddled not with State-Affairs but only treated about the Governours of the Province which is usually done by us without offence to temporal Princes every third Year all the World over I am good People as free from the Treason I am accused of as the Child that is unborn and being innocent I never accused my self in Confession of any thing that I am charged with Which certainly if I had been conscious to my self of any Guilt in this kind I should not so frankly and freely as I did of my own accord presented my self before the King 's Most Honourable Privy Council As for those Catholicks which I have conversed with since the noise of the Plot I protest before God in the words of a dying Man that I never heard any one of them neither Priest nor Layman express to me the least knowledge of any Plot that was then on foot amongst the Catholicks against the King's Most Excellent Majesty for the advancing the Catholick Religion I dye a Roman Catholick and humbly beg the Prayers of such for my happy passage into a better Life I have been of that Religion above Thirty Years and now give God Almighty infinite thanks for calling me by his holy Grace to the knowledge of this Truth notwithstanding the prejudice of my former Education God of his infinite Goodness bless the King and all the Royal Family and grant His Majesty a prosperous Reign here and a Crown of Glory hereafter God in his mercy forgive all those which have falsely accused me or have had any hand in my Death I forgive them from the bottom of my heart as I hope my self for forgiveness at the Hands of God O GOD who hast created me to a supernatural end to serve thee in this life by grace and injoy thee in the next by glory be pleased to grant by the merits of thy bitter death and passion that after this wretched life shall be ended I may not fail of a full injoyment of thee my last end and soveraign good I humbly beg pardon for all the sins which I have committed against thy Divine Majesty since the first Instance I came to the use of reason to this very time I am heartily sorry from the very bottom of my heart for having offending thee so good so powerfull so wise and so just a God and purpose by the help of thy grace never more to offend thee my good God whom I love above all things O sweet Jesus who hath suffer'd a most painfull and ignominious Death upon the Cross for our Salvation apply I beseech thee unto me the merits of thy sacred Passion and sanctifie unto me these sufferings of mine which I humbly accept of for thy sake in union of the sufferings of thy sacred Majesty and in punishment and satisfaction of my sins O my dear Saviour and Redeemer I return thee immortal thanks for all thou hast pleased to do for me in the whole course of my life and now in the hour of my death with a firm belief of all things thou hast revealed and a stedfast hope of obteining everlasting bliss I chearfully cast my self into the Arms of thy Mercy whose Arms were stretched on the Cross for my Redemption Sweet Jesus receive my Spirit The last Speech of John Fenwick GOod People I suppose you expect I should say something as to the Crime I am Condemned for and either acknowledge my Guilt or assert my Innocency I do therefore declare before God and the whole World and call God to witness that what I say is true that I am innocent of what is laid to my Charge of Plotting the King's Death and endeavoring to subvert the Government and bring in a foreign Power as the Child unborn and that I know nothing of it but what I have learn'd from Mr. Oates and his Companions and what comes originally from them And to what is said and commonly believed of Roman Catholicks that they are not to be believed or trusted because they can have Dispensations for Lying Perjury killing Kings and other the most enormous Crimes I do utterly renounce all such Pardons Dispensations and withall declare That it is a most wicked and malicious Calumny cast on them who do all with all their hearts and souls hate and detest all such wicked and damnable Practises and in the words of a dying Man and as I hope for Mercy at the hands of God before whom I must shortly appear and give an account of all my actions I do again declare That what I have said is most true and I hope Christian Charity will not let you think that by the last act of my Life I would cast away my Soul by sealing up my last Breath with a damnable Lye THe main Drift and Scope of these so notorious Malefactors Speeches was to wipe away the Contamination of that Guilt which brought them all to be the publick Spectacles of Condign Punishment wherein they observe all the same method of Appealing to Heaven denying the Doctrine and Maxims of their Order and then praying for the King and themselves All which Oaths and Protestations had they been true they might rather have been thought Apostates from their Order and desertors of the Religion they so zealously professed upon the Ladder than valiant Champions of the Romish Militant Church Had they
kill or murder any person whatsoever much more our lawful King now Reigning whose personal and temporal Dominions we are ready to defend against any Opponent whatsoever none excepted I forgive all that have contriv'd my Death and humbly beg pardon of Almighty God I also pardon all the World I pray God bless His Majesty and grant him a prosperous Reign The like I wish to his Royal Consort the best of Queens I humbly beg the Prayers of all those of the Roman Church if any such be present The last Speech of John Gavan aliàs Gawen DEarly beloved Country-men I am come now to the last Scene of Mortality to the hour of my Death an hour which is the Horizon between Time and Eternity an hour which must either make me a Star to shine for ever in the Empyreum above or a Firebrand to burn everlastingly amongst the damned Souls in Hell below an hour in which if I deal sincerely and with a hearty sorrow acknowledge my crimes I may hope for mercy but if I falsly deny them I must expect nothing but Eternal Damnation and therefore what I shall say in this great hour I hope you will believe And now in this hour I do solemnly swear protest and vow by all that is Sacred in Heaven and on Earth and as I hope to see the Face of God in Glory that I am as innocent as the Child unborn of those treasonable Crimes which Mr. Oates and Mr. Dugdale have Sworn against me in my Tryal and for which sentence of Death was pronounced against me the day after my Tryal and that you may be assured that what I say is true I do in the like manner protest vow and swear as I hope to see the Face of God in Glory that I do not in what I say unto you make use of any Equivocation mental Reservation and material Prolocution or any such ways to palliate Truth Neither do I make use of any dispensations from the Pope or any body else or of any Oath of secresie or any absolution in Confession or out of Confession to deny the truth but I speak in the plain sence which the words bear and if I do not speak in the plain sence which the words bear or if I do speak in any other terms to palliate hide or deny the truth I wish with all my Soul that God may exclude me from his Heavenly Glory and condemn me to the lowest place of Hell Fire and so much to that point And now dear Country-men in the second place I do confess and own to the whole World that I am a Roman Catholick and a Priest and one of that sort of Priests which you call Jesuits and now because they are so falsly charged for holding King-killing Doctrine I think it my duty to protest to you with my last dying words that neither I in particular nor the Jesuits in general hold any such opinion but utterly abhor and detest it and I assure you that among the multitude of Authors which among the Jesuits have printed Philosophy Divinity Cases or Sermons there is not one to the best of my knowledge that allows of King-killing Doctrine or holds this position That it is lawful for a private person to kill a King although an Heretick although a Pagan although a Tyrant there is I say not one Jesuit that holds this except Mariana the Spanish Jesuit and he defends it not absolutely but only problematically for which his Book was called in again and the opinions expugned and sentenced And is it not a sad thing that for the rashness of one single Man whilst the rest cry out against him and hold the contrary that a whole Religious Order should be sentenc'd But I have not time to discuss this point at large and therefore I refer you all to a Royal Author I mean the wife and victorious King Henry the Fourth of France the Royal Grandfather of our present gracious King in a publick Oration which he pronounced himself in defence of the Jesuits said that he was very well satisfied with the Jesuits Doctrine concerning Kings as believing conformable to what the best Doctors of the Church have taught But why do I relate the testimony of one particular Prince when the whole Catholick World is the Jesuit's Advocate for to them chiefly Germany France Italy Spain and Flanders trust the Education of their Youth and to them in a great proportion they trust their own Souls to be governed in the Sacraments And can you imagin so many great Kings and Princes and so many wise States should do or permit this to be done in their Kingdoms if the Jesuits were men of such damnable principles as they are now taken for in England In the third place dear Country-men I do attest that as I never in my life did machine or contrive either the deposition or death of the King so now I do heartily desire of God to grant him a quiet and happy Reign upon Earth and an Everlasting Crown in Heaven For the Judges also and the Jury and all those that were any ways concern'd either in my Tryal Accusation or Condemnation I do humbly ask of God both Temporal and Eternal happiness And as for Mr. Oates and Mr. Dugdale whom I call God to witness by false Oaths have brought me to this untimely end I heartily forgive them because God commands me so to do and I beg of God for his infinite Mercy to grant them true Sorrow and Repentance in this World that they be capable of Eternal happiness in the next And so having discharged my Duty towards my self and my own Innocence towards my Order and its Doctrine to my Neighbour and the World I have nothing else to do now my great God but to cast my self into the Arms of your Mercy as firmly as I judge that I my self am as certainly as I believe you are One Divine Essence and Three Divine Persons and in the Second Person of your Trinity you became Man to redeem me I also believe you are an Eternal Rewarder of Good and Chastiser of Bad. In fine I believe all you have reveal'd for your own infinite Veracity I hope in you above all things for your infinite Fidelity and I love you above all things for your infinite Beauty and Goodness and I am heartily sorry that ever I offended so great a God with my whole heart I am contented to undergo an ignominious Death for the love of you my dear Jesu seeing you have been pleased to undergo an ignominious Death for the love of me The last Speech of Anthony Turner BEing now good People very near my End and summon'd by a violent Death to appear before God's Tribunal there to render an account of all my thoughts words and actions before a just Judge I am bound in Conscience to declare upon Oath my Innocence from the horrid Crime of Treason with which I am falsely accused And I esteem it a Duty I owe to Christian
THE LAST SPEECHES OF THE FIVE NOTORIOUS Traitors and Jesuits VIZ. Thomas White aliàs Whitebread Provincial of the Jesuits in England William Harcourt aliàs Harrison pretended Rector of London John Gavan aliàs Gawen Anthony Turner And John Fenwick Procurator for the Jesuits in England Who were justly Executed at Tyburn June 20. 1679. for Conspiring the Death of His Sacred Majesty and the Subversion of the Government and Protestant Religion IF the most ignorant of Criminals when Condemned to dye and just ready to undergo the deserved punishment of their Offences are always ambitious to extenuate the Enormitie of their Crimes wonder not then that they who have assum'd to themselves the dignify'd Orders of Religion and Sanctitie together with the perfections of noble Learning and under that Notion and Coverture to establish themselves in the absolute Dominion of the Souls and consequently the Bodies of Men break all the Fences and impalements of Divinity and Morality and being brought to suffer for their so doing make it their business to impose upon the Spectators of their last Behaviour Those people know that the last words of dying Men bear a great sway amongst the Living and that the swanlike sentences of those that sing at their departure being cunningly insinuated and politickly made use of penetrate more deeply than can be imagin'd into the hearts of the credulous and unstable Upon these grounds and with these aims those Persons so lately condemn'd by National Justice and warranted to execution like Men infected with the Pestilence who through the particular malice of that distemper labour to infect all Persons that they come near thought to have impos'd their delusions upon the people and by their ultimate Farwels to the World to have diffus'd the venom of their Heresie through the Veins of the whole Nation For could they but have purg'd away their Crimes with the sweet Hysop of a fine speech or blotted out the stains of their Offences with an inveagling Metaphor then they thought they had done a great work well knowing that an Opinion of Martyrdom begets Belief and that Belief is the Mother of Conversion Thereby they had improv'd their Happiness in conceit and had short'ned their journey to Heaven by leaving Purgatory on the left hand as being such who had given a more deadly stroke like Sampson to their Enemies at their fall than all the years of their former lives e're gave them opportunity to do But to prevent their intended mischief and to advance an Antidote against the spreading venom of clandestine Transcripts conveyed from Person to Person and consequently subject to those alterations additions and diminutions as may be most advantageous to the interpreter it may be presum'd an Act of prudence to divulge in season the most exact Copies of these speeches which were intended for no good An act the rather to be justified in regard the best Physicians always first describe the distemper at large and then set down the prescription of the Cure Nor can it be unacceptable to good Government by lawful means to prevent the people from being deceiv'd where their deception may entice them to Change and Disobedience The last Speech of Thomas White aliàs Whitebread I Suppose it is expected I should speak something to the matter I am condemned for and brought hither to suffer it is no less than the contriving and plotting His Majesty's Death and the alteration of the Government of the Church and State you all either know or ought to know I am to make my appearance before the Face of Almighty God and with all imaginable certainty and evidence to receive a final Judgment for all the thoughts words and actions of my whole life So that I am not now upon terms to speak other than truth and therefore in his most Holy Presence and as I hope for Mercy from his Divine Majesty I do declare to you here present and to the whole World that I go out of the World as innocent and as free from any guilt of these things laid to my charge in this matter as I came into the World from my Mother's Womb and that I do renounce from my heart all manner of Pardons Absolutions Dispensations for Swearing as occasions or Interest may seem to require which some have been pleased to lay to our charge as matter of our Practice and Doctrine but is a thing so unjustifiable and unlawful that I believe and ever did that no power on Earth can authorize me or any body so to do and for those who have so falsly accused me as time either in this World or in the next will make appear I do heartily forgive them and beg of God to grant them his holy Grace that they may repent their unjust proceedings against me otherwise they will in conclusion find they have done themselves more wrong than I have suffered from them though that has been a great deal I pray God bless His Majesty both Temporal and Eternal which has been my daily Prayers for him and is all the harm that I ever intended or imagined against him And I do with this my last breath in the sight of God declare that I never did learn teach or believe that it is lawful upon any occasion or pretence whatsoever to design or contrive the Death of His Majesty or any hurt to his Person but on the contrary all are bound to obey defend and preserve his Sacred Person to the utmost of their power And I do moreover declare that this is the true and plain sence of my Soul in the sight of him who knows the Secrets of my Heart and as I hope to see his blessed Face without any Equivocation or mental Reservation This is all I have to say concerning the matter of my Condemnation that which remains for me now to do is to recommend my Soul into the hands of my blessed Redeemer by whose only Merits and Passion I hope for Salvation The last Speech of William Harcourt aliàs Harrison THE words of dying persons have been always esteem'd as of greatest Authority because uttered then when shortly after they were to be cited before the high Tribunal of Almighty God this gives me hopes that mine may be look'd upon as such therefore I do here declare in the presence of Almighty God and the whole Court of Heaven and this numerous Assembly that as I ever hope by the Merits and Passion of my sweet Saviour Jesus Christ for Eternal Bliss I am as innocent as the Child unborn of any thing laid to my charge and for which I am here to dye and I do utterly abhor and detest that abominable false Doctrine laid to our charge that we can have Licenses to commit perjury or any Sin to advantage our cause being expresly against the Doctrine of St. Paul saying Non sunt facienda mala ut eveniant bona Evil is not to be done that good may come thereof And therefore we hold it in all cases unlawful to