Note 585 — Chapter III

An extraordinary instance of the nature of the ideas of the time on the subject of evidence appears in an examination before the Lords’ committee of inquiry. Oates complained that the Bishop of Chichester and Justice Bickley had reviled his evidence. A witness named Nicholas Covert was examined: “says he was at the public meeting at Chichester, but he remembers not that anything was said reflecting on Dr. Oates. The discourse was concerning the Narratives, and somebody there said that he had contradicted himself twenty-two times.” House of Lords MSS. 146. If a score of self-contradictions were not generally taken as an objection to a witness, it is hard to imagine what would have been.