It was the distressing fate of so prized a member of the society to be a cause of dissension and scandal. Even his death at Tyburn did not make an end. The no less famous Dr. John Sergeant, who had passed a long career in controversy against Jesuit and Protestant divines, came forward to blacken Gavan’s memory. Sergeant had already given trouble to the Roman officials by his teaching on the oath of allegiance.[359] With the prosecution of the Popish Plot the movement in favour of the oath naturally grew in strength among moderate Catholics; the formula had been many times condemned at Rome; and it was heard with dismay at the curia that the Duke of Norfolk had flouted authority and taken the oath, presumably to obtain more easily a pass to go beyond seas.[360] With others of his order Gavan had written against the oath and, though he pronounced in his speech from the gallows against the notion that kings might be killed at the pope’s command, would not surrender the theory of the deposing power.[361] Soon after his execution Sergeant came to Henry Sidney, ambassador at the Hague. He knew nothing of the Plot, but offered to prove that according to the teaching of a certain Jesuit the queen might lawfully kill the king for his unfaithfulness. Sidney brought the priest to London, where on October 31, 1679 he was examined by the king in council. A few months later the council again received his information and that of another priest, David Morris, who had been educated at St. Omers and the English Jesuit College in Rome. The Jesuit of whom they spoke was Gavan. It seemed that he had expressed the opinion complained of to a lady living in Brussels. By order of the House of Commons the depositions were printed and obtained a wide circulation. The spectacle of two priests informing against a brother in orders was calculated to afford grave scandal to Catholics and equal satisfaction to Protestants. Considerable pains were taken by the Jesuits to upset the credit of the story, and the rector of the college at Liège wrote an account containing a denial of the fact by the lady in question; but the compiler of the _Annual Letters_ for the year 1680 was unfortunate in choosing to cast doubt upon her credibility, thus leaving the matter as much open to question as before.[362] The division in the Catholic body of which this was a symptom was a source of undoubted weakness: all the efforts to crush those in favour of the oath were unavailing, and lively agitation was caused by the certain news that the Duke of York himself had pledged his allegiance by it, seduced thereto by the example of so many born Catholics who upheld its lawfulness.[363] However much it might be denied in public controversy, the refusal to allow the oath to Catholics was indissolubly bound up with the claim to the papal power of deposition. About the same time a priest whose name is given as Forstal maintained that the king might be deposed at the command