Oates’ credit was rudely shaken. Nevertheless the matter could not be dropped without further investigation. The informer managed to cover his mistakes by the suggestion that he had himself been deceived. He had misspelt the name of Louis XIV’s confessor, calling him Le Shee; but in an age of loose spelling, when Barillon wrote of Shaftesbury as Schasberi, and Cardinal Howard’s name was spelt Huart by a papal nuncio, this was not of great weight. Oates had evidently lied, but perhaps he had spoken some truth. His assurance and readiness had been such as to amaze the council. Charles himself was taken aback, and though he gave no credence to the informer’s story, felt that great care was necessary for the discovery of the truth. Falsehood has not been unknown in the seventeenth and other centuries as a prop to even a good cause. At all events persons, against whom serious charges, not disproved, had been made, could not be allowed to remain at large. So on the second night in succession Oates was sent his rounds with a guard, sleepless and defying the stormy weather. Before dawn most of the Jesuits of eminence in London lay in gaol. At one point the party encountered a check. Oates led his men to arrest Whitebread, the provincial, at the residence of the Spanish ambassador. The ambassador’s servants resisted the intrusion, and the next day Count Egmont and the Marquis Bourgemayne lodged a complaint with the secretary of state. Material compensation was not to be had, but an ample apology; and the soldiers with Oates were said to have been drunk and were punished.[132] Of greater importance than persons was a find of papers. A warrant had been signed at the council board for the arrest of Coleman. When the meeting rose the Earl of Danby noticed that direction for seizing his papers had been omitted. He hastily caused another warrant for this purpose to be drawn, and obtained the five requisite signatures just in time that a messenger might be dispatched the same evening. Coleman’s house was searched, and, besides others, a deal box containing the most important of his letters was found in a secret recess behind a chimney. Danby could boast with justice, when he was accused of having acted in the French and papist interest, that but for his action the chief evidence of the schemes of both in England might never have come to hand. The Duke of York, against whom they told heavily, would never forgive him, he said. Coleman surrendered himself on Monday morning, and was put under the charge of a messenger with only Oates’ accusation against him. He managed to send word to the French ambassador that nothing would be found in his papers to embarrass him. A cruel awakening from the dream was not long delayed. When his letters came to be read, the lords of the council looked grave and signed a warrant for his commitment. Coleman disappeared into Newgate.[133]