Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	believe_v	know_v	reveal_v	2,144	5	8.3094	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63112	Truth vindicated, or, A detection of the aspersions and scandals cast upon Sir Robert Clayton and Sir George Treby, Justices, and Slingsby Bethell and Henry Cornish, Esquires, sheriffs of the city of London, in a paper published in the name of Dr. Francis Hawkins, minister of the Tower, intituled, The confession of Edward Fitz-Harris, Esq., &c. the coppy of which paper is herewith printed for the readers clearer judgment in the case.	Treby, George, Sir, 1644?-1700.; Fitzharris, Edward, 1648?-1681. Confession.	1681 (1681)	Wing T2107; ESTC R11729	17,499	36

TRUTH VINDICATED OR A detection of the Aspersions and Scandals cast upon Sir ROBERT CLAYTON and Sir GEORGE TREBY Justices and SLINGSBY BETHELL and HENRT CORNISH Esquires Sheriffs of the City of LONDON in a Paper published in the Name of Dr. Francis Hawkins Minister of the Tower INTITULED THE CONFESSION OF EDWARD FITZ-HARRIS Esq c. The Coppy of which Paper is herewith Printed for the Readers clearer judgment in the Case LONDON Printed for Rich. Baldwin 1681. TRUTH Vindicated c. OUT of a just care that the Protestant Religion and Interest may not suffer nor our own Reputations be blasted by the most odious Scandals causelesly cast upon us in the execution of our several Offices we are constrained to make known unto the World the abominable falsehoods and fictions of that pretended Confession of Fitz-Harris published by Dr. Francis Hawkins Minister of the Tower We could not indeed suddenly resolve whether it were needful to open the Villany of that Paper in regard it carries in its own forehead so many evident marks of malice and falsehood to every observing man that knows what happened about Fitz-Harris But having heard that some have been deceived by that Paper and induced to believe that it was Written by Fitz-Harris bona fide from some compunction of Conscience or sense of obligation to reveal the truth at his death We hold it our duty to discover the Popish practice and contrivance in the forming and publishing that pretended Confession The poor deluded timerous Wretch consenting perhaps to the wickedness whilst he was perswaded it should save him from the Gallows though he was conscious to himself that the matters pretended to be confessed were a parcel of falsehoods invented to serve base designs the whole Paper having no face or appearance of a dying Criminal's open-hearted confession of his sins nor any expressions of remorse of Conscience for them No more notice is taken of any of those too well known debaucheries and wickedness of his Life than if he had lived like a Saint or Angel no acknowledgment or mention is made of those odious repeated perjuries to the Secretaries of State to Sir Robert Clayton c. and to the Judges of the Kings-Bench of which he must have known himself to be guilty if he had thought this pretended Confession to be true There 's nothing in it that looks plain clear and natural as seriously intended to discharge his Conscience and satisfie the world about the matters formerly sworn by him and published by Authority If any such purpose had been really in his heart like a true penitent sinner he must natually have descended to the particulers of what he had sworn and have declared to the world whether his Ghostly Father Gough did really tell him in the year 1672 as he had deposed of the Papists designs to bring the D. of York to be King to restore Popery and of killing the King to make way for it He could not but have confirmed or denied the truth of his Oath That his other Ghostly Father Parry the Portugues Embassador's Confessor told him in 1678 That a Council of Roman Catholicks had resolved that seeing the King failed in the expectations they had from him he should be destroyed and that the business was near and he should soon see it done If his Conscience had been to be unburdened in this Consession he could not have forborn to say clearly that he deposed truly or falsly That the Marquess Montecuculi in 1679 swore him first to secrecy and then offered him Ten thousand pounds to kill the King either in his own person or by any other And if this pretended Confession were conscientiously taken by Dr. Hawkins as from a penitent sinner whom he absolved from his sins as he says he could not be so negligent or ignorant in his Priestly Office or so false to the King and the Religion he professes as not to exhort the sinner when he seemed to retract what he had sworn before to confess the truth in matters of such concern to the life of the King and the being of the Protestant Religion and the publick justice of the Kingdom knowing that his Confession about those things had been published to the whole world But this Paper shews it self when duly examined to be a studied artisicial contrivance to cover the Popish Treasons without an impudent direct forswearing the particulars that have been evidently proved and a design by equivocations and sly insinuations mixt with downright falshoods and fictions to perswade the world that there are amongst the Protestants abominable practises of subernation of Perjuries against the Papists wicked Conspiracies against the King Queen and Duke of York and vile designs against the Lords of the Council We doubt not but time will discover how and by whom this pretended Consession was modelled and put together and how long it was upon the Anvil to fashion it and how the miserable man was prevailed upon to give a seeming consent to it against the dictates of his Conscience with hopes to save his life by serving such designs though he was seemingly to renounce those hopes to make himself the better to be believed For the present let it suffice that we anatomize this mock Confession and shew its shameful falshood out of its own matter and form It is to be observed how he begins his Confession not like a man that had before confessed upon his Oath many Popish Treasons and Designs against the Protestants their Religion and Lives and from whom being now attainted of Treason was to be expected a clear account of all the Popish Intrigues he knew But without Apology or Preamble he tells the world believe it who can That the Treason of the Libel whereof he was convicted came from a Protestant viz. the Lord Howard and that he was no further concerned in it than as he was imployed to give the King notice of such Libels which he was wont to do by Mrs. Wall the Lady Portsmouths Woman But the Conscience of this poor wretch could not but witness within him that he had often protested before God that the Lord Howard knew nothing of the Libel and that he had bitterly complained sometime to Sheriff Cornish and sometime to Sheriff Bethel in Newgate that he was pressed with the powerful Argument of saving his Life to accuse my Lord Howard and Lord of Shaftesbury of the Libel and that he was so importuned thereunto that he was sorced to down of his knees and beg that he might not be further pressed therein the Lord Howard being innocent of it and the Lord Shaftesbury being such a stranger to him as he had scarce ever spoke to him adding with great asseverations that if it were to save his Life he could not be guilty of so base a villany but would rather dye than accuse the innocent What large offers were also made to some of his friends to perswade him to accuse the Lord Howard may hereafter be

Depositions were taken before that Court about Godfrey's Murder and that then and not before he discovered the Councels held at St. James's and Windsor about Godfrey's Murder and the persons concerned and present therein and the words he heard from the Earl of Danby coming out from the Consult and the account he then had from De Puy of the Resolutions taken for that Murder And this was in the Term after that the Parliament at Oxford was Dissolved and above six Weeks after his most close Imprisonment in the Tower where the City-Sheriffs or Magistrates or any from them were never admitted to see him Indeed the counterfeit Confession to avoid a plain conviction of its falshood durst not say by whom Fitz-Harris was put upon saying what he did of the Queen and Earl of Danby about Godfrey's Murder But as the matters are connected 't is strongly implied to have been by the City-Magistrates none other being named or referred unto And to perswade the World that the vilest Wickedness may justly be believed of them viz. the City Officers the Impudence of Hell is assumed to bring in Sir George Treby desiring or willing him to accuse the Earl of Danby and the Popish Lords in the Tower thus speaking as if the worst of Devils had spoke in him Do but you SAY it we have those that will SWEAR it If such as know not Sir George Treby can believe him to be so vile a Wretch as he is render'd and could also think Sir Robert Clayton could have been guilty of the same Wickedness in consenting to it or silently conniving at it to which a thousand worlds could not have hired him Yet when they shall hear of Sir George Treby's profession of the Law his Reputation and Place surely 't is impossible for them to believe him to have been so exceeding silly as to discover to an Irish Papist whom he had never seen before such a strange Mystery and Secret of Darkness amongst the Protestants and City-Magistrates viz. That they had a pack of Knights of the Post godless perjurious Wretches in readiness to swear whatsoever they would have them If they had been so provided with false Witnesses against the Duke and the Popish Lords as this counterfeit Confession suggests and if there had been a wicked Design against them there was no need of Fitz-Harris his SAYING any thing about them no body can think that he was better able than Sir George Treby to instruct a false Witness against them especially when the Sham-confession represents him first instructing Fitz-Harris what he should say against the Duke and Lords that then the Sons of Belial might come from their lurking-places and SWEAR to his words Surely it had been the wiser the safer and the shorter way for Sir George Treby to have given his Swearers if there had been such their Lessons immediately without desiring Fitz-Harris as is vainly suggested first to say it over after him that then the Witnesses might Swear it Neither the false Suggestions nor the Perjuries could have gained any weight or credit from the Authority of Fitz-Harris by his saying what they were to swear In fine They must desire to be couzen'd that will but seem to believe so black so vain so unlikely and so foolish a Slander of Sir Robert Clayton and Sir George Treby only upon Dr. Hawkins's saying if he hath said true that he had the words of Fitz-Harris for it who hath convicted himself of forty Perjuries if the pretended Confession to Dr. Hawkins had been bona fide made by him But this pretended Confession having loaded with Infamy the Sheriffs and Justices of Peace imployed in Fitz-Harris's Examination takes wonderful care with all the Art and Skill the Contrivers had that the Earl of Danby might be wiped clean from Godsrey's Murder for which he was Indicted by the occasion of Fitz-Harris's Oath For that purpose the words of this Confession are so framed that the world may think that the Sheriffs or Justices of the City were the practisers with him in that Deposition the Paper saying They were the more desirous to accuse the Lord Danby of Godfreys Murder because the Crime of Murder is not inserted in his Pardon The word THEY will be understood to relate to Sir Robert Clayton and Sir George Treby who only were mentioned before or the Sheriffs tho' Fitz-Harris was never Examined about the Lord Danby by any of them nor had any of them ever heard the least of the matters Sworn by him against the Lord Danby about that Murder until they were publique at the Kings-Bench-Bar which was six Weeks after Fitz-Harris's removal from the Sheriffs custody to be close Prisoner in the Tower And if he knew before his Oath against the Lord Danby that Murder was not in his Pardon which we do not believe he was better informed than Sir Rob. Clayton or the Sheriffs and the most men of England But it seems strange that this mock-Confession did not for the help of this Popish Plot absolutely retract the whole Evidence given by Fitz-Harris at the Kings-Bench Court whereas those parts of it are now left as true that Deposed the Councels held at St. James's and Windsor and that the Lord Danby coming out of one of them breathed out the threatning words as Fitz-Harris remembers and that De Puy that was then in hearing o the Counsel presently told him that Godfrey's Murder was then resolv'd upon c. but a fine thin excuse is invented since his Oath that he believes De Puy spoke out of ill-will to the Lord Danby Yet nothing is said to shew how he now comes so to believe more than when he was sworn in the Court to speak the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth We hope we have said enough to convince every Impartial Reader of the Impiety Fraud and Mockery of the pretended Confession Yet we should not have taken this trouble if we could have suffer'd with patience that all the Popish Treasons and Wickednesses lately Discovered against our Religion the King and Kingdom should be represented to the world as the Devices and Practices of the Protestants their Officers and Magistrates against the Papists and that a seeming consciencious Confession of a Dying man should be cry'd up by the Papists at home and in forreign Countrys as a ground to have it so believed We have reason to fear that the Sufferings of the Protestants beyond the Seas are upon this occasion already encreased our English Papists there daily decrying the Popish Plot and catching at occasions to scandalize all Protestants in Authority that oppose them and to stir up Enmity and Rage thereby against the oppressed Protestants We must acknowledge that we were surprized with astonishment when we first saw this Mock-Confession of Fitz-Harris published and the more that it should be done by a Dr. of the English Church either Fr. Hawkins or Hawkesworth which Name he will owne we cannot yet learn but that a Dr. of our Church