The Loves of Charles II (98 page)

He was about to take his quick morning walk through St. James’ Park, with which he always liked to begin the day. With him were a few of his friends, and his dogs followed at his heels, barking their delight at the prospect of the walk.

But before he had taken more than a dozen steps a young man, whom he recognized as one who worked in his laboratories, came running towards him.

“Your Majesty,” he cried, falling to his knees, “I beg of you, allow me to speak a few words to you.”

“Do so,” said the King in some astonishment.

“It would be well if, when walking in the Park, Your Majesty did not stray from your companions.”

“Why so?” said Charles. He was faintly amused by the man’s earnest looks. It was rarely that the King walked abroad and was not asked for something. That he should be asked to keep with his companions was a strange request.

“Your Majesty’s life is in danger,” whispered the young man.

Charles was not easily alarmed. He stood surveying the young man, who he now remembered was Christopher Kirby, a merchant who had failed in business and had begged the Lord Treasurer, the Earl of Danby, to employ him as a tax collector; as he had some skill as a chemist, he had been given work to do in Charles’ laboratory; and it was in that capacity that the King on one or two occasions had come into contact with him.

“What is this talk?” asked Charles.

“Your Majesty may at any moment be shot at.”

“You had better tell me all you know,” said the King.

“Your Majesty, I can give you a full account…. I can give you many details, but to do so I must ask for a private interview.”

“Go back to the Palace,” said Charles, “and wait there in my private closet for my return. If any ask why you do so, tell them it is at my command.”

The man came closer to the King. “Your Majesty, on no account leave your companions. Remember … men may at this moment be lurking among the trees.”

With that, Kirby bowed and retired.

The King turned to his companions.

“Will Your Majesty continue the walk?” asked one.

The King laughed. “Ever since the gunpowder plot, in my grandfather’s reign, there have always been plots which are purported to threaten the life of the King. Come! Let us enjoy the morning air and forget our chemist. I’ll warrant this is nothing more than a dream he has had. He had an air of madness, to my mind.”

The King called to his dogs who came running round him joyfully. He threw a stone and watched them race for it, each striving for the honor of bringing it back to him.

Then he continued his walk, and it was an hour later before he again saw Kirby.

When the King returned to his closet, the chemist was waiting for him there.

The King listened to his story as patiently as he could, without believing a word of it.

Two men, according to Kirby, were lurking in the Park waiting for an opportunity of shooting the King.

“Why should they do this?” asked Charles.

“It is for the Jesuits, Your Majesty,” replied Kirby. “Their plan is to murder you and set your brother on the throne.”

Poor James! thought Charles. He has many enemies. Now these people would seek to add me to their number.

“How did you learn of these matters?” he asked, scarcely able to suppress a yawn.

“It was through a Dr. Tonge, Your Majesty. He is the rector of St. Michael’s in Wood Street, and he has discovered much in the interests of Your Majesty. If Your Majesty would but grant him an interview he could tell you more than I can.”

“Then I daresay we should see your Dr. Tonge.”

“Have I Your Majesty’s permission to bring him to the Palace?”

“You may bring him here between nine and ten this evening,” said the King.

When Kirby had left, the King summoned the Earl of Danby and told him of all that had passed.

They laughed together. “The fellow is clearly deranged,” said the King. “Let us hope this fellow Tonge is not equally so. Yet he was so earnest I had not the heart to deny him the interview. In the meantime keep the matter secret. I would not have the idea of murdering me put into the heads of people who previously have not given the matter a thought.”

At the appointed time Kirby arrived with Dr. Tonge, a clergyman and schoolmaster of Yorkshire; he was, he told the King, rector of the parishes of St. Mary Stayning and St. Michael’s Wood, and because he had long known the wickedness to which the Jesuits would stoop—even to the murder of their King—he had made it his business to study their ways.

He then began to enumerate the many crimes he had uncovered, until the King, growing weary, bade him proceed with the business which had brought him there.

There were, said Dr. Tonge, Jesuits living close to the King, who had plotted his murder.

“Who are these men?” demanded the King.

Dr. Tonge thereupon produced a wad of papers and told the King that if he would read these he would find therein that which would shock and enrage him.

“How came you by these papers?” asked the King. “Sire, they were pushed under my door.”

“By whom?”

“By one who doubtless wished Your Majesty well and trusted that I would be the man to save Your Majesty’s life and see justice done.”

The King handed the papers to Danby.

“So you do not know the man who thrust these papers beneath your door?”

“I have a suspicion, Your Majesty, that he is one who has spoken to me of such matters.”

“We may need to see him. Can he be found?”

“I have seen him lately, Your Majesty, walking in the streets.”

The King turned to Danby. He was wishing to be done with the tiresome business, and had no intention of postponing the trip to Windsor because of another Papist scare.

“You will look into these matters, my lord,” he said.

And with that he left.

The Earl of Danby was a most unhappy man. He had many enemies, and he knew that a fate similar to that which had befallen Clarendon was being prepared for him. He was in danger of being impeached for high treason when Parliament met, and he was terrified that if there were an investigation of his conduct of affairs he might even lose his life.

He was fully aware that powerful men such as Buckingham and Shaftesbury would welcome a Popish plot. Since the Duke of York had openly avowed his conversion to the Catholic Faith there had been an almost fanatical resentment towards Catholics throughout the country. The Duke of York was heir to the throne, and there was a great body of Englishmen who had vowed never to allow a Catholic monarch to sit again on the throne of England.

Already the slogan “No Popery” had come into being; and it seemed to Danby that, by creating a great scare at this time, he could turn attention from himself to the instigators of the plot. The people were ready to be roused to fury at the thought of Catholic schemes to overthrow the King; some of the most important of the King’s ministers would be ready to devote their great energy exclusively to discrediting the Duke of York and arranging a divorce for the King; and mayhap arranging for the legitimization of the Duke of Monmouth, thus providing a Protestant King to follow Charles.

The papers which he studied seemed to contain highly improbable accusations; but Danby was a desperate man.

He sent for Tonge.

“It is very necessary,” he told him, “for you to produce the man who thrust these papers under your door. Can you do that?”

“I believe I can, my lord.”

“Then do so; and bring him here that he may state his case before the King.”

“I will do my utmost, sir.”

“What is his name?”

“My lord, it is Titus Oates.”

Titus Oates was a man of purpose. When he heard that he was to appear before the King he was delighted. He saw immense possibilities before him, and he began to bless the day when Fate threw him in the way of Dr. Tonge.

Titus was the son of Samuel Oates, rector of Markham in Norfolk.
Titus had been an extremely unprepossessing child, and it had seemed to him from his earliest days that he had been born to misfortune. As a child he had been subject to convulsive fits, and his father had hated the shuffling, delicate child with a face so ugly that it was almost grotesque. His neck was so short that his head seemed to rest on his shoulders; he was ungainly in body, one leg being shorter than the other; but his face, which was purple in color, was quite repulsive, for his chin was so large that his mouth was in the center of his face; he suffered from a continuous cold so that he snuffled perpetually; he had an unsightly wart over one eyebrow; and his eyes were small and cunning from the days when he had found it necessary to dodge his father’s blows. His mother, though, had lavished great affection on him. He had none for her. Rather he admired his father whose career he soon discovered to have been quite extraordinary. Samuel, feigning to be a very pious man, had, before he settled in Norfolk, wandered the country preaching his own particular brand of the gospels which entailed baptism by immersion of the naked body in lakes and rivers of the districts he visited. Samuel went from village to village; he liked best to dip young women, the more comely the better; and for this purpose he advised them to leave their homes at midnight, without the knowledge of their parents, that they might be baptized and saved. The ceremony of baptism was so complicated that many of the girls found that they gave birth to children as a result of it. But, in view of these results, dipping had eventually become too dangerous a procedure, and Samuel, after some vicissitudes, had settled down as rector of Hastings.

Meanwhile Titus pursued his own not unexciting career.

He went to the Merchant Taylor’s School, where he was found to be such a liar and cheat that he was expelled during his first year there; afterwards he was sent as a poor scholar to a school near Hastings where he managed to hide his greater villainies; and eventually, having taken Holy Orders, he became a curate to his father.

The curate of All Saints, Hastings, quickly became the most unpopular man in the district. The rector was heartily disliked, and the people of Hastings would not have believed it was possible to find a man more detestable until they met his son. Titus seemed to delight in circulating scandal concerning those who lived about him. If he could discover some little peccadillo which might be magnified, he was greatly delighted; if he could discover nothing, he used his amazing imagination and an invention which amounted almost to genius.