being so desperate a man as he was, endeavouring the killing of the king) to omit your information of it to the council and to the king at both times?”[569] Oates’ answers were the reverse of satisfactory. He became loud in protestation, swore that he had been so tired that he could scarcely stand, and appealed to the king to attest what had passed at his examination; but the Chief Justice kept close to the point and drove him from one position to another, until he seemed ready to take refuge in silence. The saviour of the nation was within an ace of a catastrophe which would have wrecked his whole future career when the prisoner restored the balance by a false move. Turning from the witness, Scroggs asked Coleman if he had any further question to put. With maladroitness singular in a man of his experience, Coleman reverted to the incident of the candles and Oates’ inability to recognise him at the council. The question was threshed out minutely, for Coleman thought that he had found in Sir Thomas Dolman, clerk to the privy council, a witness who could prove that Oates had not only failed to recognise him, but had denied acquaintance altogether with the person of Mr. Coleman. This however Sir Thomas could not do, and the matter was left exactly where it was before: the evidence only shewed that Oates had not been able to identify as Coleman the man with whom he was confronted.[570] This Oates had already admitted and explained. But the examination of Dolman naturally led the court to call upon Sir Robert Southwell, another of the council clerks, to state his version of what had happened. From his evidence it appeared that at the examination before the council Oates had charged Coleman by name with having in person paid £5000 out of £15,000 to Sir George Wakeman as a fee for poisoning the king.[571] This was a fact which Oates had not mentioned in his evidence at the trial, when he only swore that Coleman considered £10,000 too small a sum for such a great work, and had advised that Sir George Wakeman should be paid half as much again.[572] He had moreover forgotten altogether that he had given any evidence of the sort before the council. On this no remark was made either by the court or by the prisoner. The omission however to point out his lapse of memory as of weight against the witness is patent of a genuine explanation. Clearly no possible amount of fatigue would have justified Oates in the eyes of the judges for having failed at his examination by the council to charge Coleman with treason of which he afterwards accused him; but it was a very different thing, and perfectly reasonable, to consider that the great exertions which he had undergone might fairly explain his forgetfulness of the charge which he had then actually made.[573] The question had been reduced to the issue whether or no Oates had then charged Coleman with the high crimes of which he was now giving evidence. This was now indisputably determined