--
Forged letters.--Titus Oates before the council.--His blunders.--
A mysterious murder.--Terror of the citizens.--Lord Shaftesbury's
schemes.--Papists are banished from the capital.--Catholic peers
committed to the Tower.--Oates is encouraged.
The marriage of the Lady Mary, though agreeable to the public
mind, by no means served to distract it from the turmoil by which
it was beset. Hatred of catholicism, fear of the Duke of York,
and distrust of the king, disturbed the nation to its core.
Rumours were now noised abroad, which were not without
foundation, that the monarch and his brother had renewed the
treaty with France, by which Louis engaged to send troops into
England to support Charles, when the latter saw fit to lay aside
duplicity, and proclaim himself a catholic. And, notwithstanding
the rigorous Test Acts, it was believed many high positions at
court were held by those who were papists at heart. Occasion was
therefore ripe for the invention of a monstrous fraud, the
history of which has been transmitted under the title of the
Popish Plot.
The chief contrivers of this imposture were Titus Oates and Dr.
Tonge. The first of these was son of a ribbon-weaver, who,
catching the fanatical spirit of the Cromwellian period, had
ranted as an Anabaptist preacher. Dissent, however, losing
favour under the restoration, Oates, floating with the current of
the times, resolved to become a clergyman of the Church of
England, He therefore took orders at Cambridge, officiated as
curate in various parishes, and served as chaplain on board a
man-of-war.
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