“Oates would never say all that he knew, for that was not consistent with the uncertainty of events. For he could not foresee what sort of evidence there might be occasion for, nor whom (it might be thought fit) to accuse. All which matters were kept in reserve to be launched or not, as occasion, like fair weather, invited, or flaws discouraged. And having once said, there was all he knew (if he had been so overseen), it had ended the plot, and then there could have been no further suspense or expectation, as was afterwards continually kept on foot, in hopes that at length the bottom of the plot would come up. In the mean time the faction could calumniate any person, as the Duke, the Queen, and even the good King himself, as being in the plot, much more any one that was loyal in the ministry and magistracy, and so keep all in one. And all the while it went about in whispers, that strange things would appear, if they could but once come to the bottom of the plot, and each one’s evil imagination was to inform what that was, as will fully appear afterwards. When Oates was examined in the House of Commons, and was asked if he knew of any further designs against his Majesty, &c., instead of answering that question, he told a tale of a fox and a goose, that the fox, to see if the ice would bear him and his goose, first carried over a stone as heavy as the goose. And neither then nor ever after, during his whole life, would he be brought to say he had told all that he knew.”[132] “Oates was now (the author is speaking of a time soon after his first examination before parliament) in his trine exaltation; his plot in full force, efficacy, and virtue: he walked about with his guards (assigned) for fear of the Papists murdering him. He had lodgings in Whitehall, and 1200_l._ per annum pension. And no wonder, after he had the impudence to cry to the House of Lords in plain terms, that if they would not help him he must help himself. He put on an episcopal garb (except his lawn sleeves), silk gown and cassock, great hat, satin hatband and rose, and was called, or most blasphemously called himself, ‘the Saviour of the nation.’ Whoever he pointed at was taken up and committed, so that many people got out of his way, as from a blast, and glad that they could prove their last two years’ conversation. The very breath of him was pestilential, and if it brought not imprisonment or death over such on whom it fell, it surely poisoned reputation, and left good Protestants arrant Papists; and, something worse than that, in danger of being put in the plot as traitors.”[133]