“He threatened me indeed with a parliament, but that is a course of speech he has got. If the prisoners but ask a new comer for his garnish, the master of the prison shall be told of a parliament. A bishop shall not suspend a minister for refusing to officiate according to the canon, but he is presently threatened with a parliament. If the university shall not think fit to allow Mr. Oates his degree, the lawn sleeves are to be ruffled next parliament. I was walking awhile since only over the outer court at Whitehall innocently about my business, and because I did not cap him over the square, as the boys do fellows at Cambridge, ‘Squire L’Estrange,’ says he, ‘we shall have a parliament,’ twirling his hat about between his finger and thumb, with a look and action not to be expressed.”[134] The credit of the plot and of its author declined together. In 1681, Oates appeared as a witness in defence of one Colledge, better known as the “Protestant joiner,” a busy man and a zealot against Popery, who was accused of treason upon no better grounds than had served his own party for the destruction of so many Papists. The court was eager for revenge, and by no means scrupulous concerning the means of obtaining it; the witnesses, who had supported the plot, were indifferent which way they perjured themselves, so long as perjury was profitable, and swore against Colledge as readily as against the Jesuits. Oates, therefore, who adhered to his old friends, be this one thing recorded to his credit, was brought into collision with his former associates, and a scene of abuse passed between him and them in open court which is too long for quotation, but will satisfy any person of the infamy of at least one, probably of both parties. (State Trials, vol. viii. p. 628.) Towards the end of Charles’s reign, when the discontinuance of parliaments threw all power into the hands of the court, and the infamous Jefferies was a ready minister of oppression; Oates was prosecuted by the Duke of York for libel, and damages assessed at 100,000_l._ This was but the beginning of his misfortunes. In 1688, soon after the accession of James, he was convicted of perjury upon two indictments: the one charging him with having sworn that he was at a consultation of Jesuits in London, when he was really at St. Omers; the other, with having deposed to Ireland’s presence in London at a time when he was gone into Staffordshire. The sentence passed upon him was most savage and illegal, and moreover executed with such severity as to produce the belief that he was not meant to survive it. It is in itself a curiosity, and as such, as well as for the instruction of any who do not duly appreciate the blessings of an incorrupt judicature: though long, it shall be given entire.