An exact and faithful narrative of the horrid conspiracy of Thomas Knox, William Osborne, and John Lane, to invalidate the testimonies of Dr. Titus Oates, and Mr. William Bedlow by charging them with a malicious contrivance against the E. of Danby, and the said Dr. Oates with an attempt of sodomy wherein are exemplified from the originals I. Four forged letters dictated by Thomas Knox, II. Five false informations, one paper of memorials, and one other information against Dr. Oates for sodomy, forged by Knox in the names of Lane and Osborne, III. The informations, depositions, examinations, and confessions of the said Knox, Osborne, and Lane, taken upon oath before Sir William Waller and Edmund Warcup, Esq., IV. An account of some depositions taken before the Lords Committees of Secresie, relating thereunto, V. The breviates of the councel for the King at the trials of the said Knox and Lane, Nov. 25, 1679, wherein full satisfaction is given to the world of the whole cause, by the particular evidences of the witnesses in behalf of the King / published by the appointment of me, Titus Oates.

TO HIS Sacred Majesty CHARLES, II: BY THE GRACE of GOD OF Great Britain, France and Ireland, KING, Defender of the Faith.

Great Sr.

THe highest Ambition this Address dares pretend to, is to Congratulate your Majesties happy Success in the late famous Cause obtained against the Enemies of your Person, Crown and Dignity; in which Tri••l you have won the Field, and carried the day not by the Justice of the Sword, but by the Sword of Justice: And if the old Roman Consuls rejoyced in these Triumphs decreed to their fortunate Valour by the Senate; wherein the Success was commonly better than the Cause, your Majesty must needs much more Rejoice to have come off Victor by the Law, where you have not the Ad∣vantage of the longer Sword, but fight your Enemies with equal Weapons: where 'tis the Glory of your Courts of Judicature, that they are Eagle-eyed to discern the merits of the Cause, but blind in the favour, and respect of Persons.

Nor will you wonder (dear Sir) that I have Entituled your Name to what may seem my personal and private Concern, since without Vanity I can avow it, they that struck at my Credit, designed the Blow at your Sacred Life; and to Murder the Repute of your Majesties Evidence against the Traytors, was indeed but a handsom expedient to atchieve a more horrid Assassination.

I have therefore fair Hopes your Majesty will graciously Accept this Dedica∣tion, and give it the Protection of your Royal Purple, which will convince the obstinate Unbelief of your Enemies, that Papal Principles bear such a Vatinian Hatred against your Person, Government, and Religion, that they abhor the meanest Creature that crosses them in the way of their Conspiracies.

But I give them free leave to Storme! and if the Interposition of so inconside∣rable a thing as what I am, between your Sacred Person and their Fery, might intercept the Effect of their raging Malice, I should glory to become your suc∣cedaneous Sacrifice, and despair ever to place out my cheape Life to better ac∣count,

then to pay it down upon the Nale, for the preservation of yours, that is, of three Kingdoms, for seeing I owe a Death to Nature, my loyal Heart must interpret it a huge Advantage to swist Martyrdome with Mortality, and make so great a Virtue of inevitable Necessity▪

You will easily believe Sir! I might have slept out my Dates in inglorious Ease, amongst the Crowds of men of no Name or Noyse, could I have satisfyed myself to have stood a Spectator in the common Box, of those Tragedies they had contrived, and laid great Brittan for the Seene of Action; but when once Duty and Allegiance had conquered the remainders of slavish Fears, worldly Hopes, or whatever of self Respects might fright or flatter me out of honou∣rable Danger, into a base Retreat, to discover their Deeds of Darkness before the Sun, I foresaw, I must draw the Combined Wrath of that whole Faction upon my self, and that all the lines of their Malice would enter at least in the desine of my Destruction, who otherwise fly at higher Games, and do not use to stoop at so Incon∣siderable Quarry.

I accknowledge it was no small Encouragement to me, to see with what Trans∣ports your Majesties loyal Subjects there present, exprest their inward Joys, when the righteous Verdict of the Jury according to full, and clear Evidence of the Fact, at once proclaimed my own Innocence, and the villanous Confederacy of my Popish Enemies, but how would that Joy be multiplied if the grand Engineers of all these Mischiefs, who sit behind the Curtain and direct these Actors, were once brought to a legal Ordeal, which in effect would be condigne and exemplary Pan∣ishments? the rather because all Essays towards settlement, all approaches towards satisfaction have proved fruitless, and will do so, whilst the great Abettors and Fomentors of Treason, hug themselves in the prospect of not despayred Success, and seem to defy and deride the Justice of the Nation.

I know well your Majesties excellent Lawes are not like the Spiders Toyls, which entangle the lesser Flyes, whilst the great Transgressors by power, and interest brake through them. Nor dare we question but your Wisdom will find a sit juncture of time to let the proudest Delinquents know, if they dare offend, your Justice will dare to punish: That the Sword which the Divine Grace had entrusted you with, is sharpe enough to chop off a plotting Head, as well as to paire the Nayles of those that would scratch your Royal Honour; that your equal, and impertial Justice will reckon with these Wholesale Traytors who are in Arrear to the Laws for Talents, as well as you have called to account some of the Retayle Offendors, which com∣paratively owed but a few Farthings..

And in this Confidence your Majesties loyal Subjects have waited, and still do, and shall attend your Royal Leasure, resting satisfied that though your Majesty will try, you will not dissapoint their Expectations, and if you suffer their Hope to Gaspe, you will not suffer it to give up the Ghost.

I am confident there is no Prince in Europe that can Command more real and couragious Hearts then your Majesty may: and when you have made a Purchase of their Hearts, their Hands, and Purses, their Lives, and Estates are but Appurtinances which go along with, and of course are thrown into the bargain, on∣ly they are so devoted to your Service that as they would have no forreign Prince, Pope, or potentate govern them, so they desire you may be King of, and to all your Subjects:

Whilst you shall unite them amongst themselves, and against your, and their common Enemy, they are wholy your own, and whilst you secure to them their religious, and civil Interests, the Fruits of both are entirely in your Exchea∣quer.

Which Union of your Protestant Subjects your old inveterate popish Enemies, dread more than all your Naval and Land Forces, who indeed only live by our Divi∣sions, and gather Confidence from our Animosites: And this work as 'tis truly glorious, so 'tis exceeding easy, and I hope reserved as the great blessing which

England shall receive from your Royal Hand: for you see them all (except some few Bigots) impatiently waiting till your Majesty shall remove the rocks of offence, cun∣ningly by our adversaries laid in the way of our peaceable Coalescence, and command us all to write in the grand Truths of the Protestant Religion, leaving the lesser punctilio's a fit matter wherein to exercise charity and mutual forbearance, which o∣therwise like fire for want of Fewel to feed it would expire. And though those Zealots of all forms and perswasions amongst us, who value their little preten∣tions at a greater rate than that of the publick peace, may seem to discour age your pious endeavours this way, yet believe it (Sr.) the discord of a single string or two, will be drowned in the Harmony of an universal Jubilee.

All true Protestants are naturally enclined to peace upon consciencious Terms. out of Interest as well as Duty; for if we be so mad as to create troubles in England, we are not so fond as to expect Peace in Italy; If we fire our own hou∣ses, Rome will never quench them; we have no foreign, Dependencies, or trans∣marine expectancies, where ever our Circumference may be by Trade or Travel we Censor in your desired self; though 'tis far otherwise with our Catholicks who have a Head at Rome, and an Interest distinct form, and opposed to that of their Natural King and Native Country.

Whatever Cruelties, and Barbarisms the Papists have acted amonst us, may be paralleld by Instances from other Country's and former Ages, but still from their own Patterns: Their late Ingenious Artifice to divolve the quilt and Odium of their own Treasons, upon the innocent Protestants, may be sampled in the Pow∣der Treason, and the Massacre of Paris; In the former of which (had it suc∣ceeded) the Puritans must have born the blame and shame of their Villanies; in the latter Instance, the Hugonots did actually bear it, and Knights of the post were suborned to swear against the valiant Briquemault, and gallant Caviagnes that they with the great Admiral Caligni had conspired the Death of the King, and the Duke of Guise, and accordingly these innocent Persons were Executed; so trite a Method is it for our Catholicks to object their own Treasons to their Ene∣mies, and it's evident that they never contrived a Plot for the Protestants, but at the same time they designed upon the pretence and under the umbrage a general Massacre of them: but now what History can give us an example so contrived, we repeated a project, to Corrupt (if it were possible) the Evidence which divine Pro∣vidence had brought in against their Treasons or to suborn a company of Rake-hels to disparage the Testimony of those, who came in as Voluntiers to save a Prince and his People from imprudent destruction.

I am far from despairing to see your Majesties Kingdoms once more yet happy, that is, freed from these Pests of all Societies, the sworn Enemies to Peace and Truth, the Priests and Jesuits without which 'tis impossible England should be happy: which is no Conclusion hastily, and rashly drawn from a solitary, or sin∣gle observation, but the uniform experience of all times since this Island was rescu∣ed from Romish Slavery by a Miracle of mercy, no less glorious than that of the Redeeming Israel from Egypt or Balylon.

The English Soyl carries the same Antipothy against the Ignatian Fraternity, that Ireland bears no venomous Creatures and 'tis the happier constitution of the two that we maintain a radicated enmity against the Romish Wolves, then that they can boast of the aversion of their Ayr or Soyl to Spiders, to Adders and Serpents; a temper and natural Complexion, which we owe not to any fabulous miroculous pow∣er of St. Patrick, but to that more powerful Influence of the grace of God: which cannot be interpreted a sudden flash or hasty ferment of spirit, which will be dash'd in a moment, but to the Genius, and Interest of the People, whose Piety has been their best Policy, it being a staple Maxime bequeathed to your Majesty from that Glorious Jacen of eternal and happy Memory, that our only way to secure peace at Home, was to love none with Rome, nor reconciliation with them to be attempted till they shall cease to be what they are, and divest them of their imbred Disloyalty.

History tells us of a Great Prince that habituated his body to the use of poyson, till no poyson would work upon him; but that which is the Serpents Nature is our Disease; If Spain can live with such a Dose of Superstitions and Heresies in its Bowels, we cannot; but must eternally languish; till Nature, or the Poyson get∣teth victory: All those convulsive motions, all those pangs, those gripes, and dread∣ful symptoms that have been found upon us of late, are entirely due to some frag∣ments of this Popish Poyson, which the Nation has unawares lickt up, or has been given it in some plausible Vehicle; and all our distortions, struglings and commotions in many parts of the body politick are nothing else but the strainings and Pumpings of a strong Constitution to eject the venom that we have unadvi∣sedly contracted.

I can discern nothing by the pulse of the Nation, but that the heart is yet sound for God, and the King, the vitals are good, and perhaps the true old English Spirit may by the strength of its natural Crasis overcome, and throw off those ill humours which at present oppress it; but yet Nature may want a little help, and when she discovers a willingness to discharge that which burthens it, those indicati∣ons are to be observed, and her attempts to be encouraged.

Which your Majesty will have the glory of, when you shall consult your Great Colledge of Physitians, who proceed upon the solid Principles of Art, and listen not to those Empiricks who try conclusions with us, and shew tricks upon us, to their own shame, and the retarding our hopes of a perfect Cure, and through-recovery.

God has honoured your Sacred Majesty with a peculiar Grace, to heal that Disease which we commonly call the King's-evil (not that he causes it, but that he cures it) with one Touch of your Royal Hand. Sr. we come to you for one So∣veraign Touch, May it please you but to put your Hand to one Bill humbly ten∣dred to you by your loyal Subjects at their next Session, to deliver us from our pre∣sent Dangers, and secure us against future fears, and you have healed us all.

I confess that we are not touch't, and healed, is not your Majesties fault but our own, who lye pining, and languishing under our Maladies, and perhaps as un∣civilly as unjustly complaining of others, when we should complain of our own slug∣gishness, that we make not our frequent Addresses to your Majesties Grace and Favour for this divine Medicine: 'tis past your Majesties Obligations, and I be∣lieve your Skill too, to cure a People whether they will or no: 'tis but decent we complain to, though not of the Physitian, that we may learn to prize restored health at greater rates, and testifie the gratitude of those that have been at the Shrine of AEsculapius by some Noble Fee, which I dare promise you; for a through-cure would be the most noble that ever a saved Nation tendered to their Preservers.

I know not how I am fallen into this odd way of expressing my self, I am sure I ought to beg your Majesties pardon that I have imitated those affected modes of ex∣pressions, which your great Soul does justly scorn; But I shall pursue the Humour no further then to represent to your sacred Majesty that as some learned Observa∣tors have proved, that English Simples are most congenial to English Bodies, and work more benignly upon us than all the far-fetcht and dear-bought Drugs of Pon∣tus, so the Wholsom Laws, and Customs of your own Kingdom, duly and properly applyed will work more glorious and admirable effects to the composing all our dif∣ferences, preventing all recidivations, and relapses, then all your boasted Catholi∣cons of our exotick chymical Empiricks, and at once disappoint Hell, and Rome, and preserve your Majesties Person, and our Religion, if your Majesty pleases.

Which is the daily prayers and humble petition to the King of Kings.

Whitehal, Decemb. 4th. 1679.

Your Majesties Most humble Most loyal Subject, and Serant, Titus Oates.