WILLIAM AND MAE.Y.

287

enemy of the leading Baptists, and persecuted them with thesame treachery, the same mendacity, the same effrontery, the •same black malice which had many years before w'rought thedestruction of more celebrated -victims. Those who had latelybeen edified by his account of his blessed experiences stoodaghast to hear him crying out that he would be revenged, thatrevenge was God’s own sweet morsel, that the wretches whohad excommunicated him should be ruined, that they shouldbe forced to fly their country, that they should be stripped tothe last shilling. Iiis designs were at length frustrated by arighteous decree of the Court of Chancery, a decree whichwould have left a deep stain on the character of an ordinaryman, but which makes no perceptible addition to the infamy ofTitus Oates.* Through all changes, however, he was sur-rounded by a small knot of hotheaded and foulmouthed agita-tors, who, abhorred and despised by every respectable Whig,yet called themselves Whigs, and thought themselves injuredbecause they were not rewarded for scurrility and slander withthe best places under the Crown.

In 1691, Titus, in order to be near the focal point of politicalintrigue and faction, had taken a house within the precinct of"Whitehall. To this house Fuller, who lived hard by, found ad-mission. The evil work which had been begun in him, wlien hewas still a child, by the memoirs of Dangerfield, was now com-pleted by the conversation of Oates. The Salamanca Doctorwas, as a witness, no longer formidable; but he was impelled,partly by the savage malignity which he felt towards all whomhe considered as his enemies, and partly by mere monkeylikerestlessness and love of mischief, to do, through the instrumen-tality of others, what he could no longer do in person. In Fullerhe had found the corrupt heart, the ready tongue and the

* North’s Examen; Ward’s London Spy; Crosby’s English Baptists,vol. ill. chap. 2.

cnAp.

XVIII.

1632 .