these Depositions that he had not only more than an ordinary Reputation in my Lord Aston's Family the management of my Lords chiefest Concernments being entrusted with him but that he was highly valued by the whole Countrey for Candor Integrity Justice and Truth beyond what other Papists under all the Recommendation of Birth Breeding and Inheritance could arrive unto And as to be accounted and stiled Honest Mr. Dugdale was the greatest honour that a virtuous ambition could make him aspire unto so his Temper and whole Conduct since called forth to appear on a more publick Theatre do proclaim him every way worthy of that Compellation And this Character which he obtained in Staffordshire doth so correspond with what we have seen and observed of him in London that all impartial men do readily acknowledge the justness of it And whereas my Lord Stafford protested in the presence of God that as he was never with him alone so he never spake to him but once and that only concerning a Foot-man Here are proofs neither to be distrusted nor contradicted that he had both frequent conversation with him and admitted him into those privacies which others were debarred and shut out from And indeed by the familiarity he entertained him with and the sequestring themselves from all other Company whensoever they discoursed together we may easily imagine what was the Subject they treated about For what else should recommend another Persons Servant to those Privacies which my Lord Stafford vouchsafed Mr. Dugdale or prefer one of so mean a Rank to be selected from among the company of the best Gentlemen to be discoursed with apart but that there was some important Design on foot of which they two were particularly conscious And could this in probability be any other than the mighty Affair of destroying the King and overthrowing the Protestant Religion which the whole Papal Party had so long designed and were at that time filled with the highest confidences of accomplishing § 12. The next thing that lies before us is the consideration of this late Lords renouncing all knowledge of Mr. Turbervill and with what solemnity he abjured the having so much as at any time seen him For having at his Trial not only declared that he never saw him before in his life he repeats it in his Speech upon the Scaffold and withall avers upon his Death and Salvation that he never spake one word to Mr. Turbervill or to his knowledge ever saw him until his Trial. Some possibly may be ready to believe that my Lord Viscount Stafford had the gift of forgetfulness and that the Papists by a peculiar Donation remember nothing that may either asperse themselves or the interest of the Catholick Cause But as they can not tell us where such a priviledge is bequeathed unto them so we shall make it appear by irrefragable Testimonies that he was well acquainted with Mr. Turbervill and that the spring of this misadventure in denying it was not the weakness of his Memory but the badness of his Conscience Nor shall I insist upon the Testimony of Mr. Mort who being produced at the Trial of my Lord Stafford deposed that being acquainted with Mr. Turbervill at Paris the said Turbervill did to the best of his remembrance tell him that his Brother who was a Monk had introduced him into the favour of my Lord Stafford and that once being in company with Mr. Turbervill the said Mr. Turbervill withdrew from him to speak with that Lord and that he the said Mort walk'd about Luxemburg-house till his return For though this Testimony doth mightily strengthen Mr. Turbervills Evidence being agreeable in several circumstances with what he declared yet forasmuch as the whole is to be found in the Printed Relation of my Lord Staffords Trial together with the great and convincing improvement which an excellent Person made of it I shall therefore decline enlarging upon it and shall proceed to advance two other Depositions demonstrative of this late Lords insincerity and falsehood in renouncing before God and men the having had any former knowledge of Mr. Turbervill The Information of John Showter Gent. one of the Clerks in the Crown-Office in Chancery taken upon Oath this 3th day of January 1680. before me Edmond Warcupp Esq one of his Majesties Justices of the Peace in the said County and City Middl. Westm. ss THis Informant saith that about six or seven years ago he did frequently resort to the Chappel at Tart-Hall to Mass the then House of William late Viscount Stafford and one of those times he met there one Mr. Glassie who asked this Informant a List of the Names of the Justices of the Peace in Shropshire which List some few days afterwards this Informant carried to Tart-Hall and delivered it to the said Glassie who in kindness invited this Informant to drink a Glass of Wine in the Cellar and two other Gentlemen went to drink with them and after some time this Informant asked the said Mr. Glassie who a Tall thin Gentleman was who was then one of the Company who answered his name was Turbervill and that he belonged to the Lady Molineux and this Informant cannot positively say that Mr. Edward Turbervill now produced was the same Person then in his Company but believes he may be the same by his stature and thinness only his Hair did then look like a Perriwig and was much longer than it is now And he further saith that he verily believes he saw the said Mr. Turbervill at least forty times in the said House up and down so commonly that he believed the said Turbervill to be one of the Lord Staffords Family and did likewise see him several times at Mass at the said House John Showter Jurat ' die Anno supradicto coram me Edmond Warcupp Vera Copia Ex ' per me Edmond Warcupp The Information of Colonel John Scott taken upon Oath the 13th day of February 1680. before me Edmond Warcupp Esq one of his Majesties Justices of the Peace in the said County and City Middl. Westm. ss THis Informant saith that he was at Paris in France in the month of November 1675. and there met William late Viscount Stafford whom this Informant was well acquainted with in a Cedan in the Street called Rue de Neuf Fosse about the 18th or 20th of the said November who called to this Informant inviting him to his Lodgings which he then said was in a Street called La Rue de Pornoung at a Corner House at the lower end of that Street the upper end whereof is fronted by Luxemburgh-house to which Lodging this Informant went the next day and was introduc'd into his Lordships Chamber who complain'd of a lameness which the Informant judg'd to be the Gout and this Informant visited him several times afterwards in his Chamber which was a lower Room in the said Corner House about the latter end of the said month of November 1675. when a certain Person
confirmed and established upon the Authority of Expiring and dying persons who as they felt and saw themselves out of all hopes of enjoying the pleasures of Life any longer or compassing riches or advancement to their friends or posterity so they ought to be judged delivered from the Impression of all sublunary Allurements in what they said and no man can suppose that any thing else should influence them to speak falsly Accordingly Mr. Bedlo in the view and approach of Death affirmed both upon the Faith of a Christian and as he hoped for Salvation that he had wronged no man by his Testimony but that whatsoever he had testified concerning the Plot was true Shall the Advocates for the Conspirators account themselves mightily advantaged in weakning the Credit of the King's Witnesses from this that there is not that Faith to be given to men not only in the possession of Health but having all Legal security of their Lives as there is to persons who both know that they must immediately die and that they are to appear before the great and righteous God who hath threatned to punish all Falshood and Perjury with unconceivable torments And shall not we esteem our selves mightily confirmed as to the truth of the whole Evidence concerning the Plot by finding that so considerable a Witness both in detecting the parts and degrees of it as well as those that were engaged in its contrivarce and prosecution should so solemnly seal what he had before deposed with his last and dying Breath Here is one that hath declared their Guilt in the same Circumstances wherein the advocats for Rome glory so much that the condemned affirmed their Innocency So that all their Harangues concerning the Credit that is due to the Asseverations of dying persons are much more applicable to our Belief of the Plot on the dying Testimony of Mr. Bedlo than it is possible they should be to the weakening our Faith about it upon their affirming themselves Guiltless who were so Legally Convicted and Condemned for it For their Concernment to Preserve the Reputation of their Religion Secure the Libertïes of many of their Party and the Hopes which they might flatter themselves with to save their own together with a Desire of Recommending their memories to the favorable Opinion of future Generations may be conceived Sufficient Grounds and Inducements to influence them to a Denial Whereas Mr. Bedlo had no Concernment of his own no Expectations of advantage to accrue to his Friends or Relations no hopes of avoiding approaching Death which might be conceived to prevail upon him to breath out his last words in the Affirmation of their Guilt Besides the Principles of their Religion are such as do both countenance their Denial and Justifie them in it whereas the Principles of the Protestant Religion wherein this Gentleman Dyed do both prohibit and condemn the asserting every thing that is false let the Motives be never so great and important The disparity between the Asseverations of the one and of the other is so considerable upon this single and alone Account that should it be admitted that their Circumstances were the same in all other things as well as in that of Death immediately in their view yet there can be no just Competition between the weight and Authority of what they said in the Attestation of their Innocency and what he affirmed in the Confirmation of their Guilt And it is remarkable that he not only Dyed in the profession of the Protestant Religion which precludeth all hopes of pardon to any that shall persevere in malice hatred lying and slandering but that during his whole Sickness he was in the Exercise of all seeming contrition and remorse and so far as any one could judge in the practice of sincere and unseigned Repentance for all the sins whereby he had offended God or injured Men. So that upon all that can rationally sway or determine our belief entire credit ought to be given to Mr. Bedlo upon the Declaration he made of their Guilt in the Juncture and Circumstance of Dying whereas there is nothing that can be justly or rationally alledged which without abandoning our selves to weakness and easie Credulity can obtain from us the giving the least Faith to them notwithstanding their affirming their Innocency in expiring Circumstances And therefore though the Publick hath sustained great loss by the removal of a Witness that could have not only testified against so many of the Conspirators but so particularly and with so many corroborating Circumstances yet the Deposition which he made in his last Sickness whereby in the prospect of approaching Death and in the belief and sense of his speedy appearing at the Tribunal of God he confirmed and ratified upon Oath all that he had declared before hath done more to establish the Credit of the Plot and ruine the Reputation of the Papal Party in the minds of all unbiassed men than ever he could have effected by never so many reiterated Testimonies against them at Bars and in Courts of Judicature § 4. Nor in the next place ought any man to be surprized that such of the Traitors as nave been convicted and condemned for this Hellish and Damnable Plot should Die professing their Innocency as to what they were condemned for seeing they bound and obliged themselves by such Oaths which they account most solemn and vowed by whatsoever according to the Principles of their Religion is esteemed more sacred than other that they would never discover the Conspiracy which they were engaged in For all those to whom this Bloody Design was communicated and especially such who were to be assisting in it had taken an Oath of Secrecy and the Sacrament upon it as all the Witnesses do inform us never to reveal or disclose what they were either engaged in or acquainted with And the tenor of this holy and Catholick Oath by which they most sacredly and indispensibly bound themselves was this as it was found very happily amongst Mr. Rusten's Papers a Priest in Sir Thomas Gascoyne's House I A. B. being in the presence of Almighty God the Blessed Mary Ever Virgin the Blessed Michael the Archangel the Blessed St. John Baptist the holy Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul and all the Saints in Heaven and to you my Ghostly Father do declare and in my heart believe the Pope Christ's Vicar General to be the true and only Head of Christ's Church here on Earth and that by virtue of the Keys of binding and loosing given his Holiness by our Saviour Christ he hath power to Depose all Heretical Kings and Princes and cause them to be killed Therefore to the utmost of my power I will defend this Doctrine and his Holinesses Rights against all Usurpers whatsoever especially against the now pretended King of England in regard that he hath broke his Vows with his Holinesses Agents beyond Seas and not performed his promises in bringing into England the holy Roman Catholick Religion I do
the last February to trace him to the Portugal Ambassadors where they saw him not only present at Mass but kneel at the Elevation of the Host. Which from the Regard which they bear to His Majesties Honour did so inflame their Zeal that they immediately seized him after he was come out of the Chapel and having carried him whither they thought fit they first stript him to the middle and then poured a Pale of Water leisurely down his body as a testimony of their Resentment and as a kind of Military correction To this I might subjoyn the known Story of one John Cummin who having swallowed the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy in order to his being Listed also in His Majesties Guards was lately seized upon Duty in the Tower and Committed to New Prison not only as a Papist but as a Priest and though there was not Legal Evidence to Evince the last yet the first is indubitable However we see that the Papists can forswear as well as dissemble their Religion when it is so much for the Interest of the Catholick Cause as the winding themselves into the Guards must needs be esteemed And as we have reason to believe this not the only person who hath had a Dispensation to take the aforesaid Oaths in order to the furthering the holy Designs of the Infallible Chair so no man can be so ignorant as not to understand that through their being Listed under His Majesties Ensigns they are ready for the Subversion of our Religion and the Destruction of our Lives whensoever they hear of the King's Death shall come which they have so long waited for and used so many waies to hasten And besides this Justifies the Jealousies of those Noble and Renowned Peers who in their Address to His Majesty January the twenty fifth last told him that they had reason to fear and apprehend that neither Lords nor Commons will be in Safety at Oxford but will be daily exposed to the Swords of the Papists and their Adherents of whom too many is to be feared are crept into his Guards § 6. And whereas some may possibly imagine that though men may be influenced to perjure themselves while in a probability to live and enjoy not only the beneficial fruits of their perjuries but may be ready to delude themselves with hopes of repenting of their Villanies afterwards if they shall at any time arrive at such a persuasion of mind as to think it necessary we shall therefore in the next place give an account of some condemned for crimes less dangerous to the Papal Cause should they be acknowledged than Treasons against the King and Government are likely to prove who yet trusting to the blessed provisions of their Religion and in an Implicit Obedience to their Ghostly Fathers have ventured the going boldly off the Stage affirming and swearing their Innocence when they knew their own guilt The Relations were sent to the Right Honourable the Earl of Essex in a Letter from Dublin bearing Date the fifth of March 1679. and Printed at London for Langley Curtis 1679. The first contains an account of one John Curphy a Papist who at Lent Assizes seven years before was tryed before Baron Hene then His Majesties Serjant for Burglary committed in the County of Monaghan and being found guilty was condemned to dye And that the said Curphy denyed the fact with great confidence and asseverations of his Innocency at the Gallows and 〈◊〉 turned off the Ladder persisting in his denials but that the Rope breaking by chance after he had hung some little space and he coming again to himself thanked God who had given him time to declare the Truth and not go out of the world with a lye in his mouth and then confessed himself guilty of the fact for which he was condemned Adding that a Priest had given him Absolution upon condition not to discover any thing nor to declare his accomplices and that he needed not doubt of his salvation the fact not having been committed against God's people meaning as he supposed the Papists So that no doubt had but the Rope been strong enough he had in the esteem of our Papal Notaries and Agents died as Innocent of the Burglary for which he was condemned as the late Conspirators did of the Plot against His. Majesties person the Protestant Religion and the Government Established by Law But there fall out sometimes unhappy accidents that no humane wisdom could foresee which contribute to the unfolding and detecting the tricks and villanies of these vile men the Priests who have prostituted all that is Religious and Sacred to a subserviency to worldly ends and designs Yet it were unreasonable that we should in the face and defiance of all Evidence demonstrative of the guilt of persons suffer our selves to be imposed upon to a belief of their Innocency unless convinced of their criminalness by the interposure of a thing so wonted and fortuitous For though it was the lot of this Curphry to be made participant of a providence so merciful to himself and so instructive to us of the base and wicked Artifices of the Papal Clergy and with what obduracy and implicitness the Laity resign themselves to their hellish and imperious dictates yet we must not expect that every malefactor amongst them who upon the Authority of their Ghostly Fathers and security of Absolution ventures dying with his mouth full of falshoods and blasphemous Execrations should be reprieved by so unusual a method or thereupon awakened to an acknowledgment of their guilt And for this one person that hath been trusted with such an opportunity of confessing how many may we conceive to have ended their Lives in a guilty silence And of this we have two Instances afforded us in the aforesaid Letter to the same Honourable Peer whereof one is that there being a special Commission directed to Mr. Justice Johnson to try several Malefactors for Murders and Robberies committed in the County of Canan there were thereupon two of the Duffies and one of the Plunkets all Irish Papists indicted The Duffies confest that they were guilty of the crimes laid to their Charge and gave the same Evidence against Plunket upon which and other most undeniable circumstances he was condemned having also at his first apprehension owned to Sir John Edgworth that he was guilty But yet when he came to suffer for the fact he died absolutely denying it and that with curses upon himself and renunciation of Salvation if he were not innocent We may be sure by whose Influence and upon what Inducements and in the Confidence of what security he did it in that one Brady a Priest had accosted the Duffies in Prison who were also condemned for the same fact using arguments to induce them to recant their Evidence and renounce their Testimony against Plunket And though his Importunities and Ghostly Authority was unsuccessful upon them the one of them that suffered the other being reprieved persevering in his accusation
of Plunket and in the confessing that himself was guilty of the crime for which he was condemned yet we may be justly confident that his applications prevailed with Plunket and that through Bradys persuasions he dyed obstinate in the denial of what was not only proved against him but what himself had before acknowledged The other instance mentioned in the same Letter is a Narrative how that one Neile O Neile an Irish Papist being tryed before Sir Richard Reynell one of the Judges of the Kings-Bench in that Kingdom upon a Commission of Oyer and Terminer for a murther committed at Rathrum in the County of Wicklow and the fact clearly proved upon him for which he was accordingly condemned did nevertheless notwithstanding the fullness of the Evidence against him and that he himself had both in Prison and at his Tryal owned the fact to several persons at the Gallows utterly deny it § 7. But that it may more evidently appear that there is nothing in the Exit and manner of the late Traitors taking their farewell of the world that should surprise any true English man or thinking Protestant we shall endeavour to give an original Copy of it in the Practices of others who suffered for the like crimes in a former Reign And we will at present take it upon the acknowledgements of our adversaries that there was such a Conspiracy as the Gunpowder-Plot Though by the way it may be observed as an argument of what sincerity the Romish Party is of and how that all they say or print is only accommodated to the posture of times and seasons and calculated in subserviency to depending Designs in that many of the Papal Communion have had the Confidence to obtrude upon the World oftner than once that the Gunpowder Conspiracy was only a State Trick and Contrivance to make them seem guilty and criminal who were truly innocent But besides that none of all those who were then convicted and executed for it did so much as ever pretend that they were wheedled into it by the cunning and dexterity of a publick and Protestant State-Minister so it must be acknowledged that they were well disposed and prepared by vertue of Romish Principles and throughly inclined of themselves to the committing of Treason otherwise they had never entertained nor complyed with so horrid an overture as the destroying at once the King Parliament and Kingdom But that which I shall insist upon is the denial of their Guilt upon their Examinations and the falshood of their asseverations at their very death though there was unquestionable Evidence both of the Treason and how far the whole Papal Party was interested in it not only by the seisure of some of them when ready to accomplish the execrable villany and by the insurrection of others in Arms to have protected themselves from the Law and commenced a Rebellion but by the discoveries which had been made from their own scanty and partial Confessions upon Examination and by the freer discourses which they were overheard to use one to another in Prison when they little apprehended that there were any near to observe what they said And I shall the rather insist upon this because they who have been condemned for the late Plot and such who have undertaken the justification of their Innocency are pleased to tell us That those executed for the Powder-Treason did confess their fact at the time of their execution whereas they that have been executed for the present Conspiracy have at their deaths denied the fact and resisted all temptations of Pardon and Reward Nay the late Lord Stafford was pleased to alledge at his Trial that as it was so horrid a thing that it cannot be expressed or excused So he had been told that all who were engaged in that wicked fact were heartily sorry for it and repented of it before they dyed and that he never heard any of the Church of Rome speak a good word of it and that the men concerned in it did all acknowledge and confess it and begged pardon of the King and God and all good men for it and that therefore he thought it was not the interest of Religion but a private Interest put them upon it In which words there are no fewer than four egregious Falshoods which whether they be excused upon the account of the smallness of his Converse with men and Books or upon the score of the weakness of his aged memory or whether they be not chargeable upon the badness of his Conscience intoxicated by ill Principles I leave the Reader to judge and determine The first is That he never heard any of the Church of Rome speak a good word of it Whereas Widdrington assures us that Garnet had his Picture soon after his Execution set up in the Jesuits Colledge at Rome with this Inscription over it Verus Christi Martyr And if this be not enough to convince after ages what Opinion the Jesuites have and still maintain of that Plot we will farther add that both Ribadewira hath reckoned Garnet Southwell and Oldcorn all Gun Powder Traitors among the Martyrs of the Society of Jesus And Alegambe hath likewise inserted Garnet's and Oldcorn's names amongst the Martyrs of the Catholick Church and that Order Yea not only Father Parsons Rector of the English Colledge at Rome speaking of Father Garnet saies He was an innocent man and suffered unjustly and that he lived a Saint's life and accomplished the same with a happy death But the Pope himself preferred Greenwell and Gerrard two of the Conspirators that escaped the one to be a Confessor in St. Peters in Rome and the other to be his Penitentiary Now whether these were Testimonies of a detestation of the Plot or Evidences of the approbation which nothing but its miscarriage Prevented their declaring more publickly I leave all mankind to judge The second is That he hath been told that all who were engaged in that wicked act were heartily sorry for it and repented of it before they died Whereas Thuanus tells us that some of the Traitors having escaped to Calice and being pittied and assured by the Governour of the French King's favour and that though they had lost their own Country they might be received there how that one of them thereupon replyed that the loss of their Countrey was the least part of their grief but that which sensibly afflicted them was that they could not accomplish so brave and generous a design Nay Sir Everard Digby even when a Prisoner in the Tower for the Plot stiles it in one of his Papers since come to light a good Cause and that if it had succeeded there would not have been three worth the saving that should have been lost and that he had some friends who would have been in danger but that he had prevented it The third is That he thought it was not the Interest of Religion but a private interest put them upon it Whereas not