A fortnight after Coleman’s execution, Whitebread, Fenwick, Ireland, Pickering, and Grove were brought to the bar of the Old Bailey. Thomas White or Whitebread, alias Harcourt, was a man sixty years of age. He had been educated at St. Omers, became a professed father in the Society of Jesus in 1652, and was chosen provincial of the English province at the beginning of the year 1678.[615] It was by his means that Oates had entered the Jesuit College at St. Omers after expulsion from Valladolid, and it was he who Oates swore had boxed his ears on learning that the plot was betrayed.[616] Fenwick, less well known by his real name Caldwell, was ten years his junior. He had joined the English mission from Flanders in 1675, and was now the London agent for the college at St. Omers. Both were noted in the society for their success in the missionary field.[617] Ireland, alias Ironmonger, had come into England in 1677 as procurator of the province.[618] All five were accused by Oates of being principals in the plot and privy to the king’s death. Pickering, a Benedictine, and Grove, a Jesuit lay-brother, were named as the actual agents in one of the schemes for his assassination. Oates’ evidence was long and highly coloured. He had been sent over by the Jesuits to murder Doctor Tonge. He had seen instructions for the murder of the Bishop of Hereford and Dr. Stillingfleet. He had been in the thick of a scheme of Fenwick’s contrivance to raise rebellion in Scotland and Ireland. Whitebread had sealed commissions for the popish army under the seal of Johannes Paulus de Oliva, general of his order. Fenwick had been present when Coleman paid the famous guinea to quicken the message which was to be fatal to the king. All the prisoners had been present at the consult on April 24, 1678, when a resolution to kill the king was signed by at least forty persons, Pickering was to have thirty thousand masses and Grove £1500 for the deed. They had dogged the king in St. James’ Park, and had twisted the silver bullets of their carbines that the wound made might be incurable. Charles would infallibly have been shot had not the flint of Pickering’s pistol been loose, and Pickering had undergone penance of thirty lashes for his carelessness. To use their own words, “they did intend to dispose of the duke too, in case he did not appear vigorous in promoting the Catholic religion.”[619] To all this there was little to be said. The prisoners put some questions to Oates, and were in turn slightly questioned by the court. All that appeared was that Grove had known Oates more intimately than he wished to represent, and that the witness had borrowed from both Grove and Fenwick money which had naturally never been repaid.[620] Fenwick however offered to bring a document from St. Omers, under the seal of the college and attested by unimpeachable witnesses, that Oates had been at the seminary at the time when he swore that he was present