A NARRATIVE.  
WRITTEN BY E. Settle.  
Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam  
Jungere si velit, & varias inducere plumas  
Undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atrum  
Desinat in piscem, Mulier formosa superne,  
Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici.  
LONDON, Printed, and are to be Sold by Thomas Graves for the Author. 1683.   

To his Honoured Friend Sir Thomas Taylor Baronett.  
SIR,  
YOUR promised Acceptance has lent me Confidence to make you this Present, yet whatever Pretensions your own Goodness has given me for this Presumption, or the Present itself might otherwise obtain, the unhallowed hand that offers it, is enough to make it undeserve the Glory it claims. However I lay hold of your generous Condescension, and fix your Name before this Peice, not only as a Patron; but a Precedent to all Loyal Gentlemen to forgive my past faults as you have done.  
'Tis with this Design I shelter myself under the Protection of a Person of such Eminent Worth, and so high in the List of Honour: For no man has a Soul more entirely devoted, and a Loyalty more firm to his Prince; and to heighten the Blessing, no man a Courage more daring to signalise that Loyalty, when ever his Prince shall call for't. But, Sir, as your Country may be proud of you in either Capacity, may it never want you in the last. May our Caesar Reign like a second Augustus; have his Janus Temple ever shut, and his Peace for ever Flourishing. And that he may not only have the constant Prayers, and hearty Endeavours of all good Subjects to give him it: I hope he has some Prognostics even from Heaven itself to assure it him. For certainly that Noonday Star that shined at his Nativity, and that Miracle that shined more bright, his Bloodless Restoration, both from the Immediate Finger of God, are undoubted Forerunners of some more than common Glories attending him; Those Divine Propheticks that he neither can be what the Malice of his Enemies would Character him, nor shall be what their Treachery would make him.  
But, Sir, before I aspire to the Favour of so Honourable a Friend as yourself, I ought first to shake off that Load that holds me down even below your meanest Thoughts. And truly Sir, as I want no little refining to purge my Dross away, so I am resolved to be so candid in my Confession, that in Testimony of a perfect Abjuration of my past Ills, I'll give both Yourself and the World as plain a Picture of my faults and follies as my severest Enemies can or would paint them for me.  
About ten years since I writ a Play called, The Empress of Morocco, and some time after I carried it to His Majesty's Theatre, where in the height of Mr. Heart's Health and Excellence, I flattered myself with assurance of wonderful success from the performance of then so able a Company: but upon former Treaties with His Highness' Servants, they made a complaint to their Royal Master, & got the Play commanded back again to their own Playhouse, where tho' His Royal Highness, upon condescending to hear his Servants in so humble a Cause, upon the Circumstances against me, did nothing but the highest Peice of Justice, yet Self-justification and my defeated Vanity begat that malignant resentment, that manet alta ment repostum, and engendered that unhappy Gall, that above Seven Years could not remove; and the Licence of the Press, and the Eruption of the late accursed Plot, furnished me with an Opportunity, under the umbrage of a popular Champion, to wreak my own private Spite and Revenge. This I declare was the true Cause that misled me into so much Spleen and Venom, of which I hearty repent and am ashamed, and humbly implore Pardon at the Feet of that Royal Prince for all those accumulated wrongs I have done both against his Honour and Virtue: and from the bottom of my Soul I wish, as I have been the greatest (I mean in my little capacity) so I may be the last of his Enemies.  
And truly my Faults, how criminal soever, are likewise so Universal, that I stand not alone under this convicting Accusation. For too many, alas, and those of the greatest Men in England have my sins too to answer for. For where the true Preservation of the Protestant Religion makes One Patriot (as they call themselves) Uneasiness, Disgust, or a Court-Grudg makes Twenty; whilst Reformation is the least buysiness of those that most pretend to it. How many Persons of the highest Quality in the Kingdom (if they would be but half so ingenuous as I am) could tell you that tho' Religion and Property are the pretended Quarrel against the great Pilots above, their real Grievance is that their own Hands are not at the Rudder, and the State Helme is only Steered awry, because some happier some envied Court Darling sits at it before them. Thus as poor Abel Died for being a greater Favourite to God then his Brother, the same Discontent that made Cain a Murderer, makes a great Man a Patriot.  
But now, tho' this plain Confession, how disadvantageous soever to myself, might have been curtiled into a something more Excusable Error, by laying the whole blame on that more pardonable Folly of being mistaken or seduced, yet I declare I had rather treble my blushes, than fly to so mean a refuge as a Lie for any part of an Apology. And therefore I must own, though with the greater shame, I was so far from any Advice or Encouragement for the writing my first Libel, The Character of a Popish Successor, that I had finished it before ever I let it see Light: But then indeed I Coveted the Approbation of my Honourable Aldersgate-street Patron, and entrusted a Friend to show it him, who truly made but little Correction, only he expressed his Dislike of one or two passages in it, and for Amendment, Bid the Author speak more favourably of Rebellion.  
But now since the Malevolent spirit of Revenge was the fatal Lust I gratified, and that foul Tempter the Plot risen up to lend both Means and Opportunity, I am resolved, like a true penitent Debauch, to renounce both the Whore and the Bawd; and as I abhor the Sorcery of the First, so loath the Lewdness of the Last: Lewdness indeed! for to all the lose Desires, and prostitute Imaginations that Faction ever whored after Our late Plot has been the unhappy Pander.  
What was it but the Plot that furnished the world with so much counterfeit Zeal, and Gilded Hypocrisy, making the greatest of Atheists, the greatest Stickler for Religion? What brought the most rigid fanatics to the Church of England's Communion and Sacrament to Capacitate them for an Office of Trust; and widend the Throats of the greatest true Protestant City Don's even to the Gorging of Perjury, but the Plot. What makes the Metropolis independent of the Crown, and the lopping the Prerogative, and borrowing the Militia to fight against Black Bills the Principal Expedient for the safety of the King and the Nation but the Plot?— What has set up so many City Posts and Chains, to keep out Spanish Pilgrims, and Popish Guards, but the Plot?— And riddle me riddle what made the whole Body of the Antipopish Dissenters in their Highest Enmity and Dudgeon against Plots, and Rome, desire to be united, and incorporated with the Popish Church of England, but the Plot?— What is it arraighns the Laws, Libels Courts, and Blackens Kings; supplies the poisoned Gall to all Republic Pens, prefers a Rareeshow before a Te Deum, and sets a Milton above an Evangelist, but the Plot? The Plot writ the Association: and 'twas Plots Popish Plots too that installed the Covenant, Plots that pulled down the Church to set up the Kirk, raised an Arbitrary Common Wealth to pull down an Arbitrary Legal Monarchy, and cut off the King's Head to make him Glorious?— What is it that Plots cannot or have not done though never so Romantic or Impossible? Have they not made a whole Protestant Church all Popish, and the Episcopal Clergy Tooth and Nail conspiring for their own Destruction? Yes, and the Mildest and Best of Kings, after so moderate an Administration of Government, a Reign of above Twenty quiet Halcyon years together, a Reign, where Law and Justice were never stretch unless into Mercy and Indulgence, a Reign, where too easy Forgiveness, and receiving his pardoned Enemies the warm ungrateful Snakes too near into the Bosom of Majesty, and too high into his Trust and Honours, has been the only fault in the Throne; This very Godlike Tempered King after so long a Harmony of Government in so calm a Sphere of Glory, by the all-aspersing Libel of a Plot, shall nevertheless all of a sudden throw his long golden Reins away, and to bring in that unwieldy Leviathan Arbitrary Power involve his Grey Hairs in inextricable Broil and Tumult, lose all the peaceful Rest of Age, and all to turn a Tyrant, a Jehu, a Phaeton even in the last Race of his Life. Nay and to make the Hideous Fantom a little more Gigantic, this very Prince (if Noise and Plots may be believed) shall be pensioning and confederating with France, though against himself, to the betraying of his Crown and Empire.  
But Popery and Arbitrary Power are to be brought in; and though by Head and Shoulders, though by the most Ridiculous Means, as wide from Sense and Truth as North from South, 'tis all alike. 'Tis but insinuating into the Brainless heads of the People that the King himself (as I told you) is leaguing with France to bring in the Pope: and though the French King has his Sword in the very Bowels of Flanders, against the Faithfullest Son of Rome the King of Spain; though he can scarce keep his profane hands even from Italy, the Seat of the Roman God himself; though he has pyrated the very best Flower in the Pope's Garden the Regalias of his Empire, and shaken the very Papal Supremacy, even to the pulling down of that dreadful Curse of Excommunication, had the Pope but Courage to pronounce it; nay though he has promoted the Protestant Rebellion in Hungary, and brought the very Turk into Christendom, possibly not many years' journey from the very Gates of Rome; yet all this while this very King of France shall be the Pope's right Hand, his Spear, his Shield, his every thing, and is setting up the Romish Interest with all the Industry and Vigour in the World: And to complete this Mountainous Monster of a Conspiracy, the King and Court of England (for Plots and Popery make all things go down) shall be as deep in it as Herald And though, God knows, there is not so much as the least Sign Appearance or shadow of any thing of this, and the Infusers of all this poison into the unreasoning Multitude are conscious 'tis all rank Forgery, no matter for that: They know whom they have to deal with, the Headlong Mobile of England, a People of that strange Constitution, that they fear nothing that they See, but all things that they Hear. And those very men that in Visible dangers shall face the Mouths of Cannons, yet at the Apprehension of Castles in the Air, Popery and Arbitrary Power, from the Imaginary Thunderbolts from that quarter shall start like Hinds. 'Tis but winding that Horn, and they fall as flat before the sound as the Walls of Jericho; and nothing but breathing the Spirit of Rebellion into them, can rouse them out of the fright on't. And who at last are the Great First Movers in all these National Enflaming?— Truly those very Men that bawld loudest for the Preservation of His Majesty's Person, against Plots and Popish Swords, are the Numerical Persons that Scandalise His Majesty with Popishly affected, to the withdrawing the hearts of his Subjects, which are his greatest and strongest Guard against all Plots or Swords whatsoever. And whilst this Zeal for the King and the Government Established, brings these mighty leading Nimrods' into the Chase, 'tis much to be feared the Cry of running down Popery, is more to call the Hunters together then the Game intended.  
Thus since the Plot is made the Tool for all this Mischief, and furnishes all the Fuel for Dissensions and Discords the great Incendiaries of the World; I am resolved to bid adieu to it: and to leave it as I found it, draw the true Picture of that Wonderworking Prodigy that has so long and so highly (to astonishment be it spoken) put three Kingdoms into a Distraction.  
And now, Sir Thomas, having shaken hands with that troublesome Companion Whiggism; my Conversion, as the Divines say of Christianity, makes me happy, if but in the very Ease of Mind it gives me, and the Slavery it rids me of; A Whig being that Owlight sort of Animal that, unless in a Coach and six, it never looks abroad without being hooted at. And I thank my Stars I shall now be no longer confined but to two perches in a Cage, like the Salamanca Doctor, just to hop to Amsterdam Coffeehouse and then home again; But once more venture to walk by Daylight, and from this time forward look Sense and Quality in the Face, and instead of Shades and Coverts return to Conversation and the World again; And that I may no ways forfeit those good Graces that, Sir, from yourself and all other Persons of Honour and Loyalty I shall ever ambitiously Covet, and study to preserve: I shall fully and entirely abjure all Turbulence and Malignity whatever; and to avoid the Crime and Fate of Saphira retain no one part of my unrepented sins about me, that might make my whole Atonement Sacrifice unacceptable; but persevere with that Integrity and Honesty that may render me so much the more worthy to subscribe myself,  
Sir, Your most Obedient and most Humble Servant. E. Settle.   

A Narrative, etc.  
IN the Year 78 it pleased those Powers that inspired them to raise up Mr. Oats, bedlow's, Dugdale, Prance, etc. to be the Preservers (or what properer name, you'll give 'em) of the King and three Kingdoms, from the Malice and Machinations of the Papists; who by an ample Discovery (whether given us by the right or left hand of Providence it matters not) came enlightened by Repentance, and animated by Zeal, or something as active, to betray their old Colleagues and Patrons the Papists, and Jesuits, and by detecting Crimes ineffable, and Plots inscrutable to give the World that unknown scene of Villainy, and the most unaccountable Mystery of Iniquity, that ever Mankind was astonished to hear, or puzzled to fathom. And that this Plot is more remarkable, than all that Rome and Pope, Conclaves or Devils ever managed before, it has so many cross Windings Turn and Mazes throughout, that whatever Wit, Prudence, or Conduct, those Great and Politic Enemies of our Religion have ever been Masters of in former intrigues; in this only Plot We have a Cabal of such extravagant Fools, and Madmen, as History affords no Parallel of.  
The Conversion and Subjection of Great Britain to the Romish Religion and Power, after so long, and almost total a Revolt from Rome, is, or aught to be (and the Jesuits must be Sensible as much) a Work of that politic undertaking, that requires the wisest and Subtlest steps, that the mightiest Machiavels of all Ages ever moved in; and yet through the whole carrying on of this Conspiracy, the Jesuits and their Adhoerents took such indirect measures and opposite Means to obtain their great Ends, that there is not so much as the Shadow of right reason, or scarce common sense in the whole management. The business therefore of this following discourse, is to manifest what an unthinking pack of Jehues the Papists have been through the whole Plot, and what Lunacy and Infatuations drove 'em; with the particular account of what Snares and Nets they had provided against us, and what Cobweb Lawn they and the Discoverers have made 'em of.  
First then for their kill of the King.  
This dire undertaking being the great Wheel that was to set the whole Machine a working, the Papists by virtue of a Summons from father Whitebread, beld a General Consult at the White-horse Tavern in the Strand, at which were present Father Warren Rector of Liege, Sr. Thomas Preston Baronet, Father Marsh rector of Ghent, Father Willams Rector of Watten, Sr. John Warner, 
Oats Nar. par. XXVIII.  and Sr. Robert Brett Baronet's, Father Poole, Edmond Nevil, etc. who together with Dr. Oats came over Sea upon the said summons, and met the English Fathers at the said Tavern, in all to the number of fifty Jesuits, on April the 24th, 78.  
Where after long and serious debate, the great Resolve of this general Consult, was, that Pickering and Groves should go on in their attempt to assassinate the King's Person, for which the first should have 30000 Masses said, for the health of his Soul, and the other 1500. l. which Resolve they all Consented, and Signed to, and Mr. Oats carried it from Consult to Consult, and Chamber to Chamber to get all their hands subscribed to it.  
Now this Pickering and Groves were two blind Gunners, that had followed the King for several years for the same Murdering Design, but ineffectually. Pickering as Bedlow affirms, having had several fair opportunities, but miscarried. One time the flint of his Pistol was lose, another time there was no Powder in the pan, and another time he had charged with all Bullets, and no Powder. for which Misdemeanours he received 20 Lashes of Discipline. 
Trial. p. 24.  But his Comrade Groves for aught we know never charged his Gun at all, for we neither read of his having any opportunities or hitting or Missing.  
Here is to be observed the great Depth and Wisdom of this grand Consult of no less than 50 Politicians, These Popish Conspirators, that (as it appears,) had been for several years together, at Pistolling the King, by the hands of these two heroic blood-thirsters are at the charge and trouble of coming from several parts beyond Sea: and the great Result of that famous Assembly is, that these two aforesaid Wretches, a brace of fumbling fools, that had been so many years so aukwardly about it before, should still be continued and Employed for the great work of murdering the King, without so much as the least proposition of one wiser head, or better Marksman to come in for a snack with them. 
Ireland's Trial p 22.  For the greater Sons of Thunder, such as the four Gentlemen Irish Ruffians, were not thought on till the August following, and in the same month Conyers and Anderson struck in with their Leaguer Cloaks, and broad Daggers for the Kings New-market walk: nor was Sr. George Wakeman treated with, till the July after this Consult; besides Sr. George Wakeman could be engaged in the Murder without the trouble of any such general. 
Ireland's Trial p. 21.  Assembly: a letter from Whitebread then at St. Omers being sufficient authority to propose 10000 l. and embark so great a Man in the design without any For reign Summons for general Consults, conveying Resolves to be Signed, or Subscribing of hands either for his Poisoning, 
Nart. par. XXXIII.  Conyers Stabbing, or the four Ruffians Assassinations.  
But though this April Subscribing to that very Decree, that belike had been their Act and deed of so many Years before, is somewhat Oddish, yet this great hinge of April Consult is almost all the whole Plot to move upon: and though the Jesuits, Pickering's Elder Brothers, for no wiser a Resolve at so vast a Meeting deserved as many Lashes as he. yet I assure you, and the Doctor shall swear it, it was absolutely necessary, that Whitebread and the rest should Subscribe in April 78. that they might be hanged for't in June 79.  
But before the Reader proceeds, he is requested not to be startled at Incoherence Absurdities Contradictions, or indeed Impossibilities. For a Plot's nothing without 'em. For example, he'll find in the unerring Drs Depositions, that the Dr. read a Packet at St. Omers directed from Whitebread to Ashby, where amongst other matters we meet these Numerical words.  
In the packet was contained an account of one Pickering, that waits upon the Jesuits at Sommerset-house, to shoot the King as he was walking in St. James' Park when he was at some distance from his Nobles and Attendants, but the flint of his Pistol being somewhat lose, 
Nar. Par. XIX  he did defer the action till another opportunity, and if he had done it, and had suffered, he should have had 30000 Masses for the health of his Soul ['tis well he tells 'em what reward he was to have had; for possibly the first design upon the King's Life might have been made without a general Consult, and therefore they might be ignorant at St. Omers, either of the Man or the Bargain; or else it might be so long since they set him at Work, that they might have forgotten it] But these Letters were Signed by Thomas White alias Whitebread; which Letters when read, the Fathers in the English Seminary were in great trouble for the negligence of the said Pickering; and the Deponent saw and read them in the latter part of January etc. And that we may be assured January was the Month, the next Paragraph in the Narrative is the Subject of the Dr, and his Confessors discourse about keeping the King's Martyrdom Day.  
But notwithstanding this invincible demonstration of Januaries Packet: The Dr. upon Oath before the House of Lords, assures us, 
Journal 29. Nou. 78.  that this Attempt and failing of Pickerings Gun was some few days before the Consult in April. And more particularly at Pickerings Trial he ascertains the express time to be in March, being asked. 
Trial p. 24.   
Sir Ch. L. Do you know any thing of Pickerings doing penance, and for what?  
Oats. Yes my Lord in the Month of March last (for these persons have followed the King several Years) but he at that time had not looked to the flint of his Pistol, but it was lose, and he durst not Venture to give Fire, he had a fair opportunity as Whitebread said, and because he missed it through his own negligence he underwent Penance, and had 20 strokes of Discipline.  
Now can any thing in Nature be more strange, than that Whitebread should send the St. Omers Fathers in January, a perfect Relation of a crime not committed till the March following; Well but that the Devil and the Pope are sworn Friends, and Conjuration may do much, otherwise some foolish unbelievers would not stick to call it a downright Elliotism. But alas to confute that Error, we are to consider that the confinement to Unity, Time, or Place or any of those circumstantial Popperies are a formality fit for a Country Assizes, or an Evidence against a poor Sheep Stealer or so. But against that terrible thing called a Kingkiller, and such a Goliath Traitor as Pickring, so mean a Tongue-tye had been much too humble and servile an imposition for the High and Mighty Dr. Oates the Saviour of no less than three Kingdoms.  
And to show you that this Figurative way of speaking is an Elegance, that the Dr. extremely Prides himself in, you shall have it from one end of the Plot to the other. For another instance at this very consult in his Narative, 
Trial p. 28.  and at Pickerings Trial the Assembly consisted of fifty Jesuits: but at Langhorns Trial, because 'twas proved there was never a Room at the White-horse Tavern that would hold above a dozen People, than the aforesaid fifty upon second thoughts were dwinled into eighteen or twenty, and those in several Rooms. 
Langhorns Trial p. 47.  And therefore as I said before since 'twas inconsistent with the Glory of so Sacred a Deliverer to be so poorly confined; January and March in his Calendar, and fifty or twenty in his Arithmetic shall be all alike. Whilst he scorns his Discovery should be understood by Vulgar Capacities, and therefore like a second Revelation has wrapped it in Riddle and Mystery.  
Besides the Reader is humbly desired not to be puzzled to imagine how Mr. Pickering should present a Gun (between a Pistol and a Carbine) twice at the King, which one time for want of Prime, and another by being Charged with all Bullets would not go off, and yet not be apprehended or so much as seen by any one of all the King's Attendance, and that too in so public and open a place as St. James' Park, a place where there is not so much as a Bramble or Briar or any one Covert throughout it enough to Shroud a Pigmy, much less two Manslayers; excepting the Osiers within the Canal (but those are moated round and therefore inaccesible) neither would I have the Reader surprised at Armies of Pilgrims and Legions of Black Bills, and other Miraculous Tools used in the Popish Service: for let me tell you, Time was, that is in the first year of the Doctor's Reign, rather than such a Bloody Assassin as Pickering should have wanted convenience for so Damnable a Design, the Doctor if occasion had been, could have concealed him in a Misty Cloak, or have Conjured up a Bush to hid him in, like a second Ionas Goad, that should have grown up one day, and withered down the next; besides rather then the Pilgrims should have wanted Strength for the Work in hand, he should have made 'em all Giants at least, nay and if that would not have done, before the Massacre should have went lame, or the Protestants have wanted Cutthroats he should have brought you half Ovid's Metamorphosis into the Plot, and have marched ye an Army of Satyrs and Centaurs through Cheapside.  
But now after the Kings being beset all round like the Man in the Almanac with so many Pistols Poniards Swords and poisons; after the Issue and Success of all this dead doing Artillery the next great movement of the Plot was, when the King had had the pre-eminence of having his Cutt first, the Protestants Throats were to have been Cutt next.  
For doing of which we have the Drs. List of Officers for the raising of an Army of which the Lord Belasis was to be Lord General, Lord Petres Lieutenant General Sir. Thomas Ratcliff Major General, etc. and their Patents or Commissions were Signed by the General of the Jesuits Johannes Paulus d' Oliva, And particularly Mr. Oats Swears before the Lord Ch. Justice Scroggs, Oct. 24. 
Nar. p. 58.  that he saw the Lord Bellasis Letter to Fenwick in the month of July 78. to accknowledge the receipt of his Commission, and in May 78. he saw the Commission for the Lord Petres in the hands of Mr. Langhorn, and another in July to make Sr. George Wakeman Physician to the Army; and for the inferior Commissions Stamped and Sealed by Whitebread he himself in these very months delivered several of them with his own hand.  
This Army being to be fixed for striking immediately upon the Kings falling, was consequently to be all Listed and Armed in the King's Life time, and all incognito in a Protestant Kingdom, and upon having none but such notoriously known Papists for the Commanders, it was Morally impossible to have drawn in any other Malcontents into the Confederacy: Besides the very proposal of listing any of the Protestants had been the way to have Discovered the Conspiracy and Ruined all: and therefore the whole Body of this Army must necessarily have consisted of all Papists; and if the Jesuits were so cocksure of the Strength, and Courage of the Popish party in England to think them able to give a tug for the Pope's Restauration Vi et armis with open Hostility against all the Protestants in England, they must certainly be inspired with no common Enthusiasms, and take their Leaders for no less than Saul's and David's, expecting to see them return flushed with so wondrous a Success that the very Daughters of Rome should meet them with Songs and Timbrels, and give them no less a Welcome than Petres has Slain his thousands and Bellasis his ten thousand.  
But no matter this is but one Drs. Opinion. Mr. Oats and his Jesuits were for doing the Work with Popish Generals and Popish Armies, but Mr. Dugdale is of another mind, and he and his Jesuits were for quite another sort of conduct. 'tis true he concurs with Mr. Oats that the King was to fall by as many private hands as the Dr. pleased, but then to subdue the rest of the Kingdom. (Lord have mercy upon us) a Massacre was to ensue. And because he and his Plotters were not altogether so Strong in Faith as Mr. Oats his, and believed the Popish party to be too Small and therefore too Weak of themselves alone to go through stitch with so great an Undertaking, they had found this expedient, Viz. They had designed (he tells you) to fling the Murder of the King upon the King kill Presbyterians and then to engage the Episcopal party to rise with the Papists in revenge of the King's blood, 
〈◊〉 p. 25.  and cut the Fanaticks throats; and when with their help they had destroyed the Fanatical party, and weakened the Kingdom by so universal a Blow, than they had decreed to turn their Swords all of a sudden against the hearts of their Colleagues the Episcopals; and so playing the subtle Polyphemus, and reserving them for the last morsel, when they had no other Enemies left, by this last dexterous Wheel about, and cutting the Episcopal Protestant Throats too, the great Work of Projection had been Completed, and the Papists left Masters of the Field, whilst Jó by Faean Jon Triumphum England was there own. Here we find Dr. Oats his Measures quite broken, for alas this Massacre of Dugdals is of a quite different piece with Oats his Battalions: but no matter more ways than one to the Wood, and neither false Scents nor hunting Counter spoils the sport either in Plotters or Discoverers.  
But methinks, this last stratagem of Mr. Dugdales, is the oddest fancied out-of-the-way project that ever Folly or Frenzy invented, for suppose the bloody minded Pickering had learned to charge his Gun the right way, with some Powder, and not all Bullets, and let us imagine that after his late discipline upon his shoulders he had mended his aim, and had Killed the King. How must the Episcopal Party be possessed it was done by a Presbyterian hand, for it was impossible the Jesuits should ever expect, that a single Assassinate in such a place as St. James' Park in the Face of the Court, and approaching so near as within Pistol shot, upon the Murder of the King should ever escape seizing, either by the hands of the Nobility, or His Majesty's Servants that always attended him. Upon this Consequence how must the Papists, I say steer to draw in the Episcopal Party to the Massacre, must they give it out it was done by a Presbyterian hand, and thereupon hand over head without any Examination, but right or wrong the Episcopals upon the mere motives of a Hearsay should Pellmel fall to butchering perhaps one third of the Nation. This Presumption in the Jesuits is such an impudent Piece of Madness as certainly was never matched, it being so far from the Principles of the Church of England, that nothing but Lunacy itself could suspect them guilty of so brutal nay so execrable a Thought. But suppose this Massacre was not to commence till Pickering had been taken, Examined and Tried for the Fact, and let us for once imagine further, that they had before hand instructed him to own himself a Fanatic, and resolutely and impudently even at the Gallows die a Sectary, and lay the crime upon the Dissenters; yet never did the Jesuits so famed for Politics go so senslesly to work, as here, first not only to choose so shallow a head-piece as Pickerings for such a Masterpiece of Cheat and Villainy, and so known a Popish Face as his too a Lay Brother, and Candlesnuffer of the Queen's Chapel to disguise for a Presbyterian. So that here upon the upshot of Pickerings being discovered (or indeed any other of the Ruffians) as none but Fools could think otherwise, if they had believed the Church of England of that Massacring Spirit (as belike they did) had they been in their right Wits, they ought rather to have feared to have had the Massacre on their own side, and their own Throats, not the fanatics have paid for it. These are the Tribe of the Jesuits, and this the Plot the Dr. assures us had been hatching ever since King James his days, yet we see after no less than almost a Hundred years' Labour, what the Mountain brings forth, and after so much Intrigue and such indefatigable Pains, how sillily and awkwardly at last these Matchiav ils put their Noddles together.  
But notwithstanding this movement of Dugdales, does not extremely well cotton with Mr. Oates', yet that Discoverers like good Wits may sometimes Jump, Mr. Dugdale is for an Army too; for after the laying the Death of the King on the Presbyterians, and engaging the Church of England in the Massacre, he says in these words. And then my Lord there was to be a Massacre, 
the Jes. ●r. pag. 25.  and if any did escape (viz the Massacre) that they could not be sure were Papists, they were to have an Army to cut them off.  
So that here was an Army in Embryo, though not so early raised as to do the Drs. Execution; for alas here it is plain, that the Massacre was to come first and the Army last, to cut off the Remains of what had escaped the Massacre, the Massacre being supposed to be performed by down right Bear-garden play, with a helter skelter of Assassinates with Quarter staffs, black Bills, Spits, Pole-axes, or any other Weapon that came next to hand, and the succeeding Army was only to be engaged in the Rear of the Catholic Cause, the greatest part of the Brunt being over before the Army came into play. Here 'tis true that the Lord Bellasis, and the rest of the Right Honourable Commanders had entered the lists; but alas, only to attaque those scattered remnants that had escaped. This Dispensation of Affairs at Rome would appear an Indignity to Persons of the L. Bellasis, Petres and Powis Quality and Estates: but we are to Consider 'twas the Pope's pleasure, and no Post too mean even for Princes and Potentates in the Catholic Battles.  
But here the Astonished Reader must make a little pause and stand amazed at the unprecedented Cruelty of all Popish Miscreants: It was not enough belike for 'em to make a Massacre of the Protestants throughout the Kingdom, and mow down the Heretics with so universal a blow, but after all this an Army too must be raised to destroy even the very Glean of the Field. Never certainly had been so in humane a Scene of Butchery, when after no less than a Massacre, all that were not known Papists that had Escaped were to perish likewise; insomuch that by this Depopulation of Root and branch, not so much as a heretic Hewer of wood or Drawer of Water had been left unslaughtered.  
Now after this damnable Popish Decree, and all this Lamentable Tragedy, I admire what need the Pope had in his long Bull read by Dr. Oats in Blundels hands after the disposal of Bishoprics, 
Nar. p. 72.  Abbotships etc. for want of English born Priests enough for all the dignities of the Church of England to decree such and such Spaniards, and other foreigners should supply that want, and order such and such for reading Philosophy, and Divinity in all great Towns and Colleges, and such and such to be employed in Preaching, catechising, and assisting at the Altar.  
Alas and welladay, after so Numberless an Assassination as All the Protestants in England, there would have been so little Occasion for Supplies of Spanish priests, that there would scarce have been Flock enough left to overstock the very St. Omers Brotherhood. Many a great Town in England would have stood in so little need of a Philosophy or Divinity School, that there would not have been so much as three souls left alive in't: and three Surviving Families had been more than many a nine Parishes in England could have produced, That the Pope (one would think) might have Spared his untimely provision for his Underchurches, for unless his Jagoe Pilgrims and other kind Visitants had repeopled the Kingdom, the Underchurches might have even stood Idle, and the very Cathedral alone in many a fair Town have held the Congregation of the whole County.  
Besides in my Mind 'twas mighty ridiculous in the Plotters to trouble their heads about the Succession, and (as the Dr. tells you) to threaten the Duke if he followed his Brother's steps to send him after him. For truly when Mr. Dugdales' Massacres and Armies had left him no Subjects living but Papists, 'twas not three Farthings matter what the Successors Religion was, nor was it likely he could ever follow his Brother's steps and favour the Protestants, when he had not one Protestant left to favour.  
But now after all this dismal, and deplorable business, methinks, I cannot make a livelier Representation of the woeful state of England, than by fancying I see the distressed and desolate Britannia, mourning o'er her slaughtered Sons, like the Brentford Kings howling over Lardella's Coffin. But now what if by a new turn of State Lardella should be alive at last, and maugre this fatal and universal Doom, several Thousands of those Sentenced Heretics should live many a fair Summer's day after it. And that all this is undeniable truth, we have no less than Mr. Bedlow's Reprieve to save them: for after his landing an Army of 10000 Men from Flanders at Bradlington Bay to surprise Hull Garrison, and the Lord Petre and Powis having another Army to march to Pembrookshire, to meet a Third Army of 20 or 30000 Men, who were to land at Milford haven, being an Army composed of all Religious Men and Pilgrims from St. Jago in Spain, 
Lords Journ. 12th day of Nou. 78.  and whatever should happen that their Strength, as they said, might be sufficient, they had 40000 Men (a Fourth Army) ready in London, besides those that would on the Alarm be posted at Every Alehouse door, to have Killed the Soldiers, as they came out of their quarters, which I suppose at least must make a fifth Army more, besides a sixth Army of Mr. Oats' from France, expressly to have been let in upon the King's death, but at present forgotten by Mr. Bedlow. 
Ireland's Trial p. 29.  Now amongst all these formidable Armies to be commanded by Bellasis, Petres, Powis etc. The edge of Mr. Dugdales' Massacre is a little rebated: for here, as Bedlow tells the House of Lords, after Conyers had killed the King, Keins the Duke of Monmouth, Pritchard the Duke of Buckingham, Mr. Right my Lord Shaftesbury, Mr. O neal my Lord Ossory, and one whose name he had forgotten the Duke of Ormond; after all these Persons were killed, the Papists did not question the Power of the rest, or their Counsels, but that they should out do them; for they would give such great Pay, that all sorts of Malcontents, and People that depended on their fortune, 
Lords Journ. ibid. 12th of N.  would be ready to serve them. All this performed, (as he tells you afterward, they designed to establish their Government secure enough, for they intended utterly to extinguish all sorts of People, that would not really be converted to the Church of Rome, and to prove it, persecute their nearest Relations that were Obstinate.  
Here we have the abovenamed Lords Generals a little more honourably employed under Mr. bedlow's Banners, than Mr. Dugdales, the whole Glory of the Day being now like to be theirs, and not only Mr. Dugdales Presbyterians, that were to be Massacred by a medley of Papists, and Episcopals, manifestly rescued from destruction, but they and all other Malcontents to be bribed into the Popish Army, and vice versâ make a part of the Catholic Forces to cut the Episcopal Throats. Here though all the Protestants at long run were to be extinguished, yet the stream is not half so rapid as Mr. Dugdales; for here the Heretics had time to cry Quarter, and have the fair Proffer of Conversion for their Deliverance, whilst the destruction of the Obstinate was only to approach by the slower hand of Persecution.  
Thus far I have showed you the many and wonderful Wind and Turn of French Armies, English Armies, Flandrian Armies, and Pilgrim Armies and all the rest of the Plot Forces, that were to destroy the King, Subvert the Government and Religion, and Subject the whole Nation to slavery and Popery. But after all these manifold and various Motions of so many Armies for the Protestant Destruction, (as Bays his whispering Conspirators wisely observed of the two Brentford Kings: viz. When they heard us whisper, 2dly. What they heard us whisper, and lastly whither they heard us at all or no.) So likewise in our Conspiracy after we have given you an account by What Armies and When this great Design was to have been accomplished, what if we come to Bays his last point, and prove the Work was to have been done by no Armies at all. I, that would be a Rarity indeed, and an Achievement enough to immortalize the Policy and Glory of Rome.  
Well! As wondrous as this Achievement may look, it is no more strange than 'tis true. And that too as shall be manifestly made out by the clearest Demonstration through the whole discovery. For Example Mr. Oates swears (as you have been told before) that Pickering and Grove by the Jesuits order, had been at Killing the King the March before the April Consult, and not only then but several Years before had been dogging the King, for the same Murdering purpose: nay upon further Examination we may tract the Plot upon occasions, even to the Firing of London. Here it visibly appears, that many Years before the April Consult the Design was Ripe for Execution, and the King for Falling, and consequently the Subversion of the Government, and destruction of the Protestants that were always to attend it, must necessarily and inseparably have Succeeded his Murder. This granted, and that upon further Inquiry we find the Commissions for the Army to be raised in England, not so much as delivered out till the Months of May, June, July, August 78. and the Foreign Armies from Jago, Flanders etc. Expressly to come over to join the English Forces, under the Command of Bellasis, Petres, Powis etc. Which Joining of Armies Mr. Bedlow assures us was just ready to put in Execution, 
Lords Journ. 12th. Nou. 78.  when the Design against the King's Person was discovered. Besides when Pickerings Gun Miscarried in January, or at any time Winter or Summer, for all those Years that Pickering followed the King, it was morally impossible, for either the French or Spanish King to have always Armies ready to March, and Navies to Land them: so that upon the whole 'tis unanswerably Evident that the stroke was to have been given without the least Limb of any Army whatsoever, either Foreign or Domestic.  
Upon these undeniable Demonstrations mark the prodigious Prowess, Strength and Courage of the Sons of Rome. Here to follow their first Blow, viz. the King's Murder, must the Popish hands in England without any assistance whatever have made a Massacre, and to have kept their ground, either Killed, or Subjected the whole Body of the Protestants throughout the Kingdom. Alas! What were the Foolish insignificant Irish, Piedmont, and Parisian Massacres compared to This? There the Religion of the Countries, was Popish, the Strength and Government Popish, and the Majority of lhe Peoqle all Papists, and what with the help of Surprise their Strength and advantages triple to those of their unarmed Enemies. But the State of England has quite another Face; here the Strength, and Government of the Nation, is in Protestants hands, and upon several Scrutinies made of the number of the Papists throughout all England, upon Computation they are not found to be the hundred and fiftieth part of the Nation. So that as the Old poor Grovelling Cutthroats in their ignobler Erterprises went on with those cowardly encouragements of Hope, Reason and Possibility on their side, The bolder English Highflyers lay all these duller inglorious trifles aside, resolved to assume the Souls and Strength of Hercules, each Man an Almanzor, or Cousin German to him at least, whilst the vast Bulk of a Hundred and Fifty to one odds had been to have fallen, no doubt like a second Goliath, with the strength of a Pibble from a Roman hand.  
So that, put but the King's Murder and the Protestants Massacre together, and examine the strange Methods of the Jesuits for effecting them, and we shall plainly see, that as God hath restored His Majesty by Miracle, so the Pope and the Devil were resolved to destroy him by Miracle too.  
But suppose after all, that this Immense and Supernatural Courage had not been in them, and that really they knew they had not been able to achieve all this; why, truly that had been no hindrance to the business, nor any part of their Consideration; for a Jesuit in a Plot, when his hand is in, like Sr. Martin on the Lute, plays on, and never stops at all; and in Season or out of Season troubles not his head. For Example.  
The Jesuits Fired London, with an Intention to Kill the King in the hurry, and Massacre the Protestants upon't; and yet, see the oddness of the Design, 
Nar. par. XXXIV.  they laid London in Ashes, and yet were not at all provided to go through with the Work. And why! as the Dr. expressly tells us, they were not secured of the Duke; [a wonderful Impediment, when from the beginning of the Plot to the end, they never were, nor hoped to be secure of him; the Duke being wholly a stranger to their Design, and no part of their Trust, but the whole Family of the Stuarts being positively to be cut off Root and Branch. 
Nar. pag 64. ]  
And the next Obstacle to their Design was, the King was industrious about the Fire, that they could not find in their hearts to do it, [a very odd Qualm of pity in a Plotter, and an extraordinary stop to a Conspiracy of almost a Hundred Years growth.]- Besides in this Fire they used 700 Fireballs, and those made of Sheep's Fat, 
Nar. par. XXXIV.  no more an Ingredient (to my knowledge) for the Composition of a Firebal than for a Sack-posset, and might as honourably have been sworn into one as the other. But the Reader may remember that about the great Fire-time, and some Years after, there were a sort of Thiefs had got a trick of Killing Sheep by Night and stealing the Fat, as being a more portable, more profitable, and less dangerous Luggage than the Mutton itself, and this Thievery commencing about the Fire of London, came pat in the nick for the Fright and Ignorance of the Rabble, to fancy it stolen for Fireballs; and the Jesuits that can improve Fables into Records, found out an Art of putting the Whim into Execution  
Besides, in this Fire they pilfered Holland, Cambrics, fine Cloth, some considerable Quantity of Plate, and a Box of Jewels, in which were One Thousand Carracts of Diamonds, 
Nar. ibid.  l●pt up in several Papers for several Goldsmiths. A wondrous stock for one Man's keeping, and a vast Treasure, especially of that Lightness to be carelessly left behind, to the Rapine of Thiefs or Flames. And what's still more remarkable; so Infinite was the Wealth of London, that amongst so many several Goldsmiths concerned, not one of them from that day to this, has missed them or made inquiry after them.  

The PLOT in IRELAND.  
BUt here let us take our leave a while of the Rebellions, Assassinations, Massacres, and Fireworks in little old En land, and see how the Posture of Affairs stands in Ireland, for the doing of which we can have no greater Light, than from the Trial of Oliver Plunket late Titular Arch Bishop of Ireland, where indeed we find the whole Irish Plot so to admiration made out, that even Infidelity itself must tremble at such undeniable Proofs, and unanswerable Demonstrations: and to the Confusion of Rome, all this undoubted Truth delivered by Oracles, sworn home by no less than the very Oaths of Members even of the Popish Clergy itself.  
The whole sum of which Conspiracy is as follows,  
Oliver Plunket was made I rimate of Ireland, by the Election of the King of France, and upon his Election he made those Conditions with the King of France, 
Trial p. 84.  to raise Men to join with the French to destroy the Protestant Religion, the said Plunket having Engaged to get Dublin, London-Derry, and all the Sea Ports into their own hands, to Levy War and Destroy the Protestant Religion, (a Vast undertaking for a Titular Bishop to go thorough with) and that they should have the King of France to protect them during Life; 
Trial p. 84  as Mac Leigh swears. Upon this Contract we have Plunket keeping touch with his promise, and undertaking to raise 60 or 70000 Irish to be ready to Join with the French, as Duffy and Murfey the two main Witnesses attest, the said Plunket having taxed the Irish Clergy several Sums of Money, for the carrying on of this War, and maintenance of this vast Body of Men, viz some of them 10 some 20 nay some 40. s. p annum, (a wonderful Sum for so Vast a Design) and himself pitched upon Carlingford Haven for the French's Landing. This Design it seems after some Years collecting for, and preparation towards it, grew so ripe, that as Mr. O Neale swears, he heard Bishop Terril in August 78. in the head of 40 Horse alighting at Vicar General Brady's Door, give those 40 odd Horsemen an Oath which they took willingly from hand to hand, to forward the Plot against the Protestant R ligion, and to make an end of them all in one hour from End to End of Ireland, and said he, I will come within two days with an Order from the Lord Oliver Plunket, and you ne●d not be afraid, for the Lord Oliver Plunket and I, have sent some Gold and M●n●y into France to get Men, and bring them from France over Sea, and do not fear this will go on in one hour through all Ireland, from End to End. (Tho by his good leave I should have much doubted, whether the French Men could have kept pace with these nimble Irish Men; for Landing all at Carlingford Haven, 'tis much to be feared, they would have made it above Two Hours work, in running through all Ireland.  
This Plot was carried on so far, that (as Mr. Wyer attests) it was to have taken Effect, 
Trial p. 72.  and the Invasion to have been made in 79. a Year after the Discovery of the Plot in England, he himself affirming, that since Plunket was taken he saw in the time of Plunkets Imprisonment his Commands to his under dignitaries, not to be forgetful of the Moneys, that were assessed towards the supplying the French Army, and that there was no better time to bring in the French, than when he was in Prison.  
And for sure Work Mr. Duffey attests, that this Invasion was not only to be made by a French Army, but by a Spanish Army too, that was to land with them. 
Trial p. 77.  For Duffey heard Plunket at a Consult, and giving Special Order for some of them to get a List of all the Officers that lost their Estates, and that they should be more forwards than they to proceed in that Wicked Design, to destroy all the Protestants together, which was expressly to be done by an Army, of Irish, Spanish, and French together, Plunket at the same time encouraging every one that could dispose of Money to provide some for those Gentlemen, that would soon come over into Ireland, viz. the French Army and Spanish Army together. Duffy having likewise, besides the sight of several Orders for to raise Money, seen a Letter from Plunket when he lay in Jail signifying, that that was the only time for bringing the matter to an end, and that the French and Spanish Kings should take the Advantage, that now was Offered whilst he was in Prison.  
In all this Irish Plot we have a Model of State Affairs extremely different from those in the English Plot. As first for example, we find the French King not half so Generous in Carrying on the Catholic Cause in Ireland, as in England. In England he was to Lend the Conspirators an Army gratis, and help them to make a Conquest for themselves, whilst the Vanquished Crown and Government was to have been disposed of as Bellasis, Petres and Arundel, and the rest of the Victorious English Generals thought fit. But in Ireland he plainly sets up for himself, and poorly and mercinarily sides with the 60 or 700000 Irish Champions, to conquer and possess their Kingdom, nay, he is so wretchedly ignoble, that he robs the very Spittle, and suffers the poor beggarly Vermin the Irish Clergy, that were not able altogether to buy Horse and Arms for 20 Men, not only to be taxed for the maintenance of their own 70000 Irish, but likewise to send over Money and Gold, even to the Mighty King of France, towards the bringing his Army over Sea.  
Secondly, we find the Irish not half so valiant, and resolved in carrying on their Heretic Massacre, as the more Heroic English Catholics in theirs. For the English (as we have read before) upon the going off of Pickerings Gun in March 77. were prepared for a Massacre, and that too when one Man was to Kill near a brace of Hundreds for his share; But the poor Spirited Irish in the other Extreme, where the Popish Party are 50 times more numerous than in England, with an Army of no less than 70000 Conspirators all ready for the stroke, are cowardly distrusting so vast a Strength, and Calling in French and Spanish Armies to their Assistance, though to the inevitable Enslaving themselves and their Posterity, to so known a Tyrant as the King of France. The Foresight of which Slavery was the reason that Duffy Discovered the Plot, telling us he had been in 77. almost a year in France, and seeing there how the poor People are brought in such Slavery by the French, 
Trial p. 79.  he thought of it, and had rather the Devil should reign over them than the Frenchman.  
Thirdly, we have here the most unpolitick, and most senseless conduct in the Spaniard, that the Chronicles in all Ages can never parallel: viz. We have the King of Spain (if there can be such an Animal of a Monarch in Nature) at the very moment, that he's courting the Alliance of almost all Christendom to assist him against the French, having lost so great a part of Flanders to him, and being so much in danger of losing the rest of it, is notwithstanding Lending this very French King an Army to help him subdue Ireland, and enlarge the Conquests of his most Potent and most Formidable Enemy.  
Well: But that Miracles are not ceased in the Romish Church, this would appear most Monstrously strange. However for this, and the rest of the Extravagancies in the Plot, we have all along Substantial Oaths, and therefore are bound in Conscience to believe. Tho let me tell you, for a belief in this case with his Spanish Majesty's pardon, we must lead our Imagination so far as to lodge the very Soul of a Changeling in the Breast of a King. For a Soul of God's Common handy Work, could never be so void of Common Sense.  
But, alas! this Blockhead of a Spaniard (con licenza Signior: For I vow I cannot forbear calling him so) is not only Blundering this once, and Committing this one enormous piece of Stupidity: But the English Plot, and his Affairs there, are of the same Leven with the Irish Conspiracy. For this very King, had not only this Army ready to Land at Carlingford Haven, but another of 30000 Jago Pilgrims to Land at Milford Haven, and 10000 Flandrians likewise to be Landed at Bradlington Bay, and all this at a time when he had so many Irons in the Fire, and his hands so full to secure his own Dominions, and so hard a tug at home to preserve himself; and yet he has no less than Three spare Armies, of at least half a Hundred Thousand strong to send out abroad. What in the name of Dulness should make this Prince court the English Arms to relieve Man's for him, when he had no less than Three such Powerful Armies, and all lying idle by him, that (one would have thought) might have saved him that trouble. Well but that there is a Plot, and has been a Plot. Otherwise Mankind had been left in the Dark, and not one quarter of all these Apocrypha's had ever been Canonical.  
But as ridiculous as the Plot-craft has hitherto been, we have not only the Jesuits, and the Spanish King playing the Fools or Madmen, but even the High and Mighty King of France, under the same praemunire: for Example, was ever a Soldier of his Martial Cunning, so Egregiously out of his Royal Senses, and all the Rules of Conduct, as First to Attempt the bringing a Navy into that very Port of all Ireland, so notoriously known to Carry scarce water enough for a Fisherboat, much less a Man of War to ride in.  
And secondly, to conduct his Navy so far about, to the very North part of Ireland, not only through all the dangerous Irish Seas; but also in the Face of all the Irish Ports, and Consequently through the Mouths of all the King's Men of War, that lie in the way, and by so long and hazardous a Voyage (especially after the Discovery of the Popish Plot) to give the Three Kingdoms sufficient Alarm to prepare for their Opposition.  
Besides all these Gross unpardonable Faults, we have one yet more heinous piece of Lunacy, than Story ever matched. This Foolish French King, is at the Charge and Trouble of manning out a Fleet to land an Army in Ireland, when to the Eternal Shame of all ill Memories, both He and all his Statesmen had quite and clean forgotten they had Landed one there already, for does not the Infallible Dr. Oates give us to know, in his Examination before the Parliament, in these very words: That the French King had already Landed a great Army in Ireland, being those Forces that left Messina, and it is to make them up 25000 which are to Join with the Irish Papists, in a second Massacre to Fire the City of Dublin, and destroy the Duke of Ormond, and his adherents, and this part of the Conspiracy was Managed by Coleman, &c  
N●w what the Devil could make so subtle a Monarch, so strangely Overseen as. so abominably to expose a Navy, and a new Army to all the  hazards, when he had one so much better for his turn there already, an Army too of so vast a Number as 25000, and all Disciplined Soldiers, being the very Forces that left Messina: nay, and to outdo all yet, an Army even Miraculously Disposed for the Eruption of a Massacre, an Army that had out gone, even Bays his Knightsbridge Expedition, having Landed, Marched and Encamped Invisible being a kind of such Heterogoneus Animals, that from that day to this, they had never been Seen, Felt, Herd or Understood. But to excuse the French King and the rest of his Privy-Counsellors, his Armies are so numerous, that possibly a poor handful of 25000 might not be missed amongst them, otherwise if he had remembered any thing of these 25000 being Landed before, a Force of that Strength, as our Salamanca Oracle tells us were to Fire Dublin, and Destroy the Duke of Ormond and the Protestants his adherents, this last Navy and Army, I fancy were to come like Aesop in the rear of his Fellow Servants, to do just Nothing, because the former had done all things before. Thus were see what humane policies are: Hamanum est errare, and not only the lesser Plotters the Jesuits, but the Imperial Plotters too, even Monarches themselves may once in their Lives be overtaken.  
Now 'twill not be amiss for our Farther Light into this Conspiracy, to search the Mine from whence the Treasure comes to defray the charges expended, and to be expended, to support so vast a Body of Cutthroats. And here upon due Examination of matter of Fact, for the Carrying on of this fly Plot, we shall meet not only great Heads all along, but great Purses too Employed to Encourage the Laborers and Undertakers in this Sacred Cause, insomuch that wherever the Assurance of St. Ship and Canonisations, and the brightest Crowns of Paradise for their Reward, was not of itself alone a sufficient Spur to their Vigorous Endeavours; when the slow Pav of Heaven hereafter was thought a Bribe too little, the Jesuits never wanted ready Money to make up the Summ. Neither do we ever find them unfurnished, where or whenever those Golden Tempter's were necessary. But here as in the rest of their Affairs we meet with little else then the Highest Extravagance. For in Distribution of their favours to the great Pillars of their Cause, we find such Inequality and Partiality throughout, as to their Eternal disgrace will never be forgotten. For Example; what more unconscionable disproportion could there be between the 15000. l. contracted for, and no less than 10000 l. bid at first word to Sir George Wak●man to pouson the King, and but that inconsiderable trifle of 80 pounds given to the Four Irish Ruffians, when most of them were Gentlemen of as great or greater Quality and Fortune than Sir George, and the whole sum of 80. l. no more than either of them would not have valued spending in a Week, nay and when more and above, Sir George Wakemans undertaking had not the tenth part of their Dangers attending it, his business being only the Legerdemain of slipping a Pill extraordinary into the King's Broth or so, and Theirs to Assassinate him in the Face of open Day.  
Or could their be a greater Affront to Persons of their Quality, to know that honest William, alias John Grove a poor retainer to the Jesuits, should have Fifteen Hundred pounds reward for his King Killing Work, and all those Four Gentlemen together, have but one Twentieth part of the Sum for the same Service. This Indignity no doubt the Jesuits were sensible of, but possibly knowing them to be civil and well bred Gentlemen, they trusted to their Generosity to forgive it.  
But how close fisted so ever the Jesuits were in the pitiful Reward of Twenty Pound a Man, to Persons of their Rank and Character for Killing the King. Yet not long after, their bounteous Liberality was something more openhanded, when they offered William Bedloe, alias, B●dhoe, originally the Son of a Cobbler, 
Lords Journ. Mar. the 1278  and at present a Runner of Errands, no less than the sum of 4000 l. to hire him to Kill Sir Edmond Bury Godfrey, and that too, when himself was but to be one of the Four or Six that were to do it, witness his Oath before the House of Lords. William Bedloe saith on his Oath, that this Examinant being treated with by Mr. Lephaire, and Mr. Walsh Jesuits about the beginning of October last, they offered him a Reward of 4000 l. if he would be one of the Four or Six that should Kill a Man, that was a great Obstacle to their Designs, [viz. Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, as it proved afterwards] (a very round sum together, if the other Five were to be as well paid) But here the Reader is desired to take notice, of the most matchless Example of self Denial in Mr. Bedloe, that perhaps they have met with, and the vast and wonderful Difference of some men's Consciences. Those very Gentlemen to whom 500 l. was less in their Pockets, than five pound in Mr. Bedloes could notwithstanding by't at 20 l. a Man, to Murder no less than a King; when on the contrary Mr. Bedloe refused 4000 l. to Murder but a poor Justice of the Peace. For as we have it in his aforesaid Oath before the House of Lords. Thus following, he this Deponent promised [viz. to Lephaire and Walsh] to be one to do it upon their giving him notice; afterwards viz. (the Friday before Sir Edmond Bury was missing) Mr. Lephaire met him this Deponent, about Four a Clock in Grays-Inn-Walks, and appointed to meet him again the next day, at the same place about the same Hour to do that Business: that upon his taking the Sacrament to do it, he this Deponent should have the Money paid down; but he not liking the Design failed of meeting him etc. Is not this (as I said before) a wonderful piece of self denial, but as wonderful as 'tis here's the fellow on't to come.  
After Sir Edmondbury was murdered, this Deponent meets Lephaire again, and is showed Godfrey's dead Body, and upon the spot is offered half the aforesaid 4000 l. to be but only one of the Five or Six, 
ibid. Jur. 12 N  that should carry the body to a place where they had Chose to lay him. To which he seemingly agreed, but begging their pardon for half an hour, telling them he'd wait on them again, he went away and came no more; and being charged next day for not coming according to promise, Mr. Bedloe gave this Powerful Reason for his Absence: viz. he was unwilling to come because he knew the Person that was Killed. A very cogent Reason indeed. But to heighten the Miracle of Mr. Bedloes refusing 4000 l. for a M●rder; and 2000 l. for a Porteridge, the least of them (one would think) a very attractive sum; the Reader is to Consider, that Mr. Bedloe at that very time was none of the squeamishest or nicest conscienced Men, being all along not only privy to all the Popish Designs, the Landing of 20 or 30000 Jago Pilgrims at Milford Haven, 10000 Flandrians at Hull, besides the other Armies to be raised in England, the Commissions given out, and himself to be a Commission Officer, and consequently to be engaged in all the Protestant bloodshed intended (the Kings only excepted) and that this Man should all of a sudden stagger, at one poor Heretics dispatch, though for 4000 l. reward, or if that would not down to refuse 2000 l. and all but for the 6th part of the Luggage of one poor Carcase, but to Primrose-hill, is not (take it all together) a little stupendious.  
But having entered into so sad and deplorable a Story, as the Murder of that unfortunate Gentleman, nothing methinks can strike a greater Impression on all tender Hearts, than the Barbarous Circumstances and Methods, used by his Inhuman Butchers for his Destruction. Mr. Bedloe (for Example) in his former Examination before the House of Lords Nou. 12th. has him trappaned into Sommerset-house in this manner. Lephaire, Walsh, and my Lord Bellasis Gentleman, meeting Sir Edmondbury about Five of the Clock by the Kings-head-Inn in the Strand, and pretending to bring him to a place near St. Clement's Church, where they would show him a great Company of the Principal Plotters against the King, and Surprise both them and the Principal of their Papers, they walked on till they came at Sommerset-house great Gate, and there made a Halt, desiring him to walk in, and take a turn or two with two of them, till the Third went and got a Constable: here after they had took a turn or two, two more Persons came out, and shoved him into a Room; and when they had him secure; They held a Pistol to his Breast, threatening to shoot him if he made any noise, but if he answered their Expectations, they would not hurt him, then ask him to send for the Examinatious, he had taken about those that were Committed, he told them 'twas not in his Power, for he had sent them to Whitehall; upon that, and his refusing to answer other Questions they seized him, and stifled him with a Pillow, and so they thought he had been dead, but coming into the Room some time after, they found him struggling; and then they strangled him with a long Cravat. Thus in ample form from the Records of Mr. Bedloe, have we the true History of this poor Gentleman's untimely Fate.  
But now after this Barbarous manner of Trappanning him, and then Killing him stone dead, one would imagine we were come to the last Act of the Tragedy. But truly no; there's as bad or worse behind still, For the kind Mr. Práce upon his further discovery, has more Bloody Scenes of it to come yet. Upon his Oath before the King and Council, and afterwards confirmed before the House of Lords he says, that Hill, 
Lords Journ. jur. Dec. 24 78  Green, and Gerald, after a Week or Fortnight's dogging Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, they watched him at last passing from St. Clement's, till he came to the Water-gate at Sommerset-house, about Nine at Night, where Hill making some haste before stepped within the Wicket, which was open, and turning soon again called to Sir Edmond as he was passing, and said there was two Men quarrelling within, who might soon be quieted if once they saw him, whereupon he entered through the Wicket, and after him Green and Gerald, and down all went till they came to a Bench, that is at the bottom of the deep descent, and joining to a rail next to the upper end of the Stables on the right hand, and that upon the said Bench, there was Sitting and Attending their coming the said Examinant Miles Prance and Berry the Porter of the other Gate, with an Irishman whose name he knows not, and by that time they were come half way down. Berry and Prance risen up from the Bench, and one went up to the Wicket, and the other to the Stone steps going up to the great Court, to give notice if any came to disturb them, and so when Sir Edmond was got to the Bench, Green who followed him whipped about his Neck a large twisted Handkerchief, and thereupon they all assisted, and dragged him into a Corner, and twisted his Neck till they broke it, one of them Thumping him on the Breast to make sure work on't; and all this without one Syllable of a Pistol or Pillow, or any Questions asked him, or the least dispute about sending for Depositions, Papers or any thing like it.  
Here we may observe how strangely the Devil helps his Servants: Hill Green and Gerald, had dogged Sir Edmondbury Godfrey to the Watergate at Sommerset-house, where neither of them stirring from him, to give notice of their coming, only Hill just leaving them to step into the Watergate, and out again, with the Story of that shame quarrel: yet Berry Prance and the Irishman, are sitting on the Bench by the Stables, and attending their coming, having the Knowledge no doubt from some Infernal Intelligence, not only that Hill Green and Gerald, were at that time following Sir Edmond from St. Clement's, and that Sir Edmond would take the Watergate in his Walk, but also that upon the Story of a Quarrel within the Queen's Palace, Sir Edmond would Officiously thrust himself where he had nothing to do, and all to part a Fray, only with the Face of a Justice of Peace, at Nine a Clock in a Winter's Night, and that upon that very spot of ground within sight of a Sentry, who had Ten times more Authority and Power to do it then he.  
But to proceed with the Villainy of these Popish Assassinates, that very Night he was conveyed out from Sommerset-house, Mr. Lephaire courts Mr. Bedloe with 2000 l. to be one with himself, Mr. Walsh my Lord Bellasis Gentleman and Mr. Atkins, Mr. Peppys Clerk, to help convey him out, 
Lords Journ. jurat 12 N. 78  and the next minute Mr. Bedloe is showed the Body of Sir Edmond, and the aforesaid Persons all there, and all ready and agreed to do it, but Mr. Bedloe disliking the Employment, leaves them by an excuse, and the next day is chid for not keeping his last Night's promise of returning and assisting them.  
But Mr. Prance does not finish here but finds new matter, and new Night's work still; for he does not only all along leave the Body in the Custody of his own Crew of Murderers Green, Berry, Hill etc. but after many a Removal of it upstairs and down-stairs, from Room to Room, tossed as I may say from Pillar to Post, the aforesaid Green, Berry, Hill, with Kelly, Gerald, himself, and one Irishmen more, were the very numerical Persons that carried him to Primrose-Hill.  
In all this admirable Variety mark how pat it falls out: as Sir Edmondbury was found with those Two fold marks of Assassination about him, viz. both Strangled and Run Through; so likewise 'tis observable, that Twofold was the way of Trappanning him, Twofold the Fatal place, and Twofold his Murder (oh how insatiate is the Popish Revenge, that One Death could not suffice) and even to the very last, no less than a Double set of Nightwalkers are employed, for the Expedition to Primrose-Hill.  
I shall insist no farther, either upon the Cruelty or Strangeness of this Assassination, and the Appurtenances thereunto belonging, only to reconcile all doubts, that these seeming Extremes, or what else you please to call them, may not grate the Gentle Reader, let him but inquire farther, and he'll soon learn, that by that time those three Murderers, Green Berry and Hill were apprehended, and Tried for the Fact, all Difficulties were removed; and all Differences adjusted; whilst like East and West as (they say) differ but in a point, or like Virtue placed between two Vices, the Golden Mean was at last found out, and the aforesaid three Blood thirsters, received the condign reward of so outrageous a Crime. And I hearty wish, that all the yet undiscovered Aiders, Abettors, or Actors in that Murder had their as just, or more just Reward.  
Fiat Lux.  
But to return to our Plot History, and the Conduct of those Eternal Blunderers the Jesuits, one most remarkable Observation is, that in all those Numerous Letters and Pacquets seen and read by Dr. Oats, delivered at Valladolid, St. Omers etc. or elsewhere beyond Sea or received from thence, though they contained no less than the whole sum of all their Consults in England or elsewhere, and all the several Proposals and Methods for Regicides, Massacres, Assassinations, and all the rest of their Villainies whatsoever; The Jesuits in all their politics, were such stupid inconsiderate Fools, as to Venture the bringing and carrying of all those dangerous Papers from, and to all parts whatever, with the contents (excepting one or two in Latin or Spanish) in plain downright English words at length, only now and then intermixing such an inconsiderable cipher, as 48 for the King, 66 for London, or Barleybroth for the Parliament: insomuch that the most dangerous Letter Mr. Oats ever broke open, without the least trouble of a Key, or the opposition of Figures or Characters he read Ex tempore. Nay Mr. Dugdale in the 5 Jesuits Trial p. 25, & 26. intercepted no less than a 100 Letters, expressly upon Oath directed to other Men, all containing Treason in them for Killing the King, and Introducing of Popery, and all too in plain English without any cipher at all; and those Letters more and above too sent by the Common post. 
Jurat. before the H●use of Lords De. 3 78  Besides honest Bedloes the greatest Plot Messenger of them all, swears he never carried one Letter or Packet, that he did not break open and read.  
And now methinks in so subtle and hazardous an Enterprise, never were such egregious Oversights committed by Men of the Jesuits Brains, as to venture such notorious Treasons so nakedly dressed, to all Accidents that might occur; when Coleman, who had not one Syllable either of Killing the King, Firing of London, Massacres in England, Scotland, and Ireland; Jago Pilgrims, French Armies; Popish Ruffians, Black Bills, Pistols, Poniards or Poisons, not only writ but received all his Papers in Ciphers, nay a great many of them too from those very Jesuits beyond Sea, whose hand-writing with a 100 times more dangerous contents in it, Oats, Bedloe, and Dugdale daily saw and read, without the least veil of cipher Character or Disguise whatever: when the intercepting of but one of all those innumerable Pacquets, by any Protestant hand, had certainly destroyed the whole Fabric of the Plot, and laid both the Papists and their Cause in unavoidable Ruin. Good Heavens, that a Cabal of such prodigious Undertakers, should most of them be Men of such Infinite Learning, and yet to so little purpose.  
But alas, the Jesuits were those hardy Desperadoes, that they writ Treason, and posted it about at random, without either Fear or Wit: insomuch that Dugdale after intercepting, and breaking open so many of their Plot Letters, swears he kept those he could not handsomely Seal again, 
Corkers Trial p. 9th.  and yet not one Man of the Conspirators ever complained of the Miscarriage, or made the least Uproar, though for the loss of Recorded Treason in grain. Besides, as ill luck would have it, Mr. Dugdale could never find the place where he laid them, nor produce but one of them so kept, though for the saving the credit of his Colly Flowered Face, and preventing his Evidential Carbuncles, from being brought in for the ratification of his whole Discovery.  
Nay the Jesuits were that confident pack of Treason mongers, that they durst Preach it even to Schoolboys; whilst they had every day in the Week several Places, where Blundel taught the Youth of London, Treasonable and Mutinous Doctrines against the Interest and Person of His Sacred Majesty, and gave certain Sums of Money to their Parents (if poor) to encourage them to send their Children to be thus Instructed. And all these Children (it seems) so grown up as to understand Morals as well as Letters, 
Nar. par. XIV  and yet not one of them from that day to this, so unlucky as to tell Tales out of the School.  
I have one piece of Conduct more in these Everlasting Noddies the Jesuits, and that too likewise in the case of Coleman, which certainly is one of the Idlest Whims of Policy, that ever Stupidity in the Name of Nonsense could have contrived. We find this Machiavelli Coleman, in the greatest part of all his Papers corresponding and treating with the Foreign Jesuits, and all the greatest Plotters abroad all about Proroguing and Dissolving of Parliaments, sometimes pushing on the project of a Toleration, and otherwhiles labouring for their Proroguations upon their every least motion in disfavor of the Roman Catholics. And that this was the Design in the very Year 78, we have the Testimony of that Gentleman Evidence Mr. Robert Jennison for it, who in the first page of his Narrative saith, that about the beginning of the Year 1678. he hath heard Mr. Ireland and Mr. Jennison both Jesuits, discourse of a Design by the Roman Catholics to obtain a Liberty, or a Toleration for the open Profession of their Religion here in England. And the way he then heard them speak of, was by collecting a round sum of Money among their party, and by bribing the greatest part of the then Parliament. Now considering at the writing of Colemans' Letters, and all the time of his Foreign Correspondency, nay and as long before, as since the very Firing of London, not only the Sword (as the Plot Discoverers tell you) was every day almost at the King's Heart, and all the Protestants Throats, and Coleman himself a Person so deep in the mire, that as the Dr. Swears not only the Firing of Dublin, the Duke of Ormonds. Murder and the Irish Massacre was managed by him, but himself too was the Paymaster of the Four Irish Ruffians, and in fine engaged through the whole Plot. Now considering I say all this, and that 'tis plain, what with the Murder of the King, and Massacring the Protestants, whether by French Armies, Pilgrim Armies or Black Bills, Popery was manifestly to come in by nothing, but open Hostility and downright Conquest: What the Devil was in the Fool's heads of so many of the greatest Roman Conspirators, to be thus sencelesly day after day at the ridiculous trouble of so inconsiderable an Under-Plot, as poorly picqueering at the silly Sessions or motions of a Parliament, when upon murdering the King, and Subjecting the whole Nation by the Sword, not only the Parliament had been Dissolved, nay and a Members Brains possibly as easily knocked out as a Plow-jobbers; but more than all this, upon the Papal Empires entering by Conquest, they might have put an end to the very Constitution and Being of Parliaments.  
Why all that Cost and Labour then, and so much waste Paper in Figures and Characters, and ready Money too for Parliament bribing, and all to do just nothing, if at the same moment they had so much a vaster Machine at work to accomplish even their utmost Wishes without it. Well but as whimsical as all these Affairs appear, as I told you all along, the Jesuits were Infatuated, and through the whole Labyrinth of this Conspiracy, no Man can better solve the Phaenomena's he meets, then by saying in short they all hang together by Geometry.  
Now after all these Fantastic, and almost incredible Proceed of the Jesuits through their whole Plot, some People perhaps may object and say, that such underlings as Bedlow, Dugdale, Oats etc. whose chief business was but running of Errands, and themselves but a sort of Goers between to the other greater Plotters, might possibly be not fully entrusted with the whole Plot, and therefore by picking up of but scraps and hearsays of it, that might probably be the Occasion of many Stumbles Contradictions and Mistakes in their Discovery.  
But to refute that feeble objection, we have the very worst of them at every turn Hail Fellow at all Consults with their Lords and Masters; nay besides the Letters broken open by Mr. Oats scarce one of them all, that ever he carried that was not showed him, Mr. Dugdal likewise opened all that came down to his Masters in the Country; and Mr. Bedloe broke open all his. Nay for a farther Confirmation of their great trust, they had Access to Persons even of the highest Degree. Mr. Oats for instance, had that privilege in the Palaces of Princes, that he peeped through at least three Keyholes, in as many several Doors to see the Duke at Mass in a corner of his Closet. But little Mr. Bedloe had the greatest Honour imaginable viz. to be by when the Queen was snubbed for not consenting to the King's Murder. I marry was he, and all this Honour too was done to Bedloe a fellow proved at the Five Jesuits Trial, to have been a Prisoner in the Marshalsea in May 78. and so poor, as to Live on the Basket; though by the buy, the Jesuits were a little foolish here too as well as in the rest of their Affairs, 
p. 76.  to let a Person so long privy to their Designs, that Consequently had their Lives at his Mercy, lie in a Goal, and in so much Necessity as to be next door to starving; considering too they had been such kind Masters to him, that at Pickerings Trial, Bedloes Junior swears he had received 50 or 3 score pounds a time from them; and not many Months after, he had no less than the proffer of 4000 l. from them at one clap but for one job of Work: However (as we have before proved) if no greatness of Quality was too high Company for these Discoverers, and no secret concealed from them, there cannot be the least shadow for any such objection, and all their respective Testimony must be given in their full and perfect knowledge of the whole Intrigue.  
Nay that was unlikely the Dr. should err through any of his Affidavits, through that vulgar frailty Forgetfulness, we have him a Person of that prodigious Memory, that through his whole Examination before Sir Edmondbury Godfrey in LXXXI Paragraphs, the whole Subject of above Fifty of 'em is the contents of Pacquets, and innumerable Letters too and fro from the Jesuits from all parts, and almost all of them (excepting two or three of them broken open by himself) read only in other men's hands; yet I say we have him so complete a Remembrancer, as besides the wonderful variety contained in them, to give us their express date of the day of the Month, even to the nice distinction of Stylo novo & Stylo Vetere: A taste of which unexampled Memory I'll instance in paragr. LXXII where he says as follows.  
Item this Deponent saith, that the Pope hath issued out a Bull, a Copy of which Mr. Blundel showed this Deponent on the 30th of August, in which the Pope was pleased to Order and Dispose of the Bishoprics in England, and other Dignities of the same as follows  
CANTERBURY.  
Cardinal Howard, with an Addition of 40000 Crowns per annum, for maintaining a Legantine Power and Authority.  
YORK.  
Perrot, Superior to the Secular Priests, who hath power of probate of Wills Licences for Marriages, and all Episcopal Jurisdiction except Ordination and Confirmation, etc.  
In this manner, the Dr. goes on with Bishops and Abbots to the number of about 30, without forgetting one single Name or the Latitude of their Jurisdictions; with a further account, by whom the lesser Dignities of the Church were to be managed etc. And all this ad unguem from only the sight of the Copy of a Bull showed him by Blundel.  
But lastly, to draw towards a Conclusion, for his last Entertainment, I shall give my Reader the most profound piece of the whole Diabolical Plot.  
The Dr. you must understand, and his Epistle to the Reader in his Narrative tells you as much, made the Discovery of the Plot to His Majesty on the 13th of August 78. by the Means and Introduction of that Worthy and Honest Gentleman Mr. Christopher Kirby. And mark ye, after that very 13th. of August 24 of his 81 Paragraphs of his Narrative are the business of the Plot, still carrying on to September the 7 following, from p. 37 to p. 57 In which last part of his Narrative (and all after his Discovery to the King) we have the greatest Transactions and Consults of the whole Conspiracy. Particularly that very 13th of August, 
Nar. par. LV. II.  at 6 at Night was the Dr. not designedly, but by accident at a Sermon Preached by John Keins, to 12 Men poor in habit yet Men of Quality, as the Deponents supposes, by their white hands, in which Sermon was delivered, that Protestants and other Heretic Princes were ipso facto deposed, because such, and that it was as Lawful to destroy them as an Oliver Cromwell, or any other Usurper. August 18. the Dr. was at a Consult, where Mr. Vincent, 
Nar. par. IXI  Joseph David Keymash, Mr. Dominick, Mr. Collins, Mr. Fedding, Mr. Mansell, and Mr. Laumsdale all Dominicans, met and consulted with John Keins, Father Hartcourt, Father Fenwick, Father Wright, Father Blundel Jesuits, about Killing the King and Carrying on the Design; at which Consult Oats was present too and fro, and afterwards employed by them to carry the Proposals of the Consult to the Carmelites, viz. Dr. Hanson, Mr. Kimbal and Mr. Trevers, 
par. LXIII.  etc. On Wednesday the 21 of August. was another Consult held by the Jesuits and Benedictines about the Irish Affairs, and a 3d Consult at Mrs. Saunders-house, of which the Dr. had notice before the meeting of it by John Grove. Nay the Irish Ruffians were all Hired and sent down to Windsor, not till after the 13 of August, 
Par. LXVII.  and the Dr. by at the telling out and sending the 80 l. after them, expressly the 22d of August. Besides Conyers and Anderson too were not engaged in the King's Murder till now; for Conyers on the very same 22d of August showed the Dr. his Dagger of a Foot long in the Blade, spick and span new bought of the old Cutler in Russel-street, and the same 22d day does the Dr. meet Mr. Blundel, with a Bag of Fire-balls under his arm: and the 30th following is showed by the said Blundel at Fenwicks' Chamber (being invited thither to see it) a Paper Signed by Whitebread in the name of the whole Society, containing a Scheme of the manner of Firing of Westminster, Tooly-street, St. Thomas Apostle and the King's Ships at Wapping.  
Besides we have the Dr. at every turn, at his old sport of reading of Letters, Packets Memorials &c. one time a Catalogue of the Pope's disposal of all the Dignities of the Church seen August 30. 
Par. 72.  on the 2d of September a Packet directed to John Grove from the Fathers at Edinburgh to tell the Fathers here, that they had 8000 Catholics ready to rise, when the business grew hot to join with the disaffected Scots. These Plot Papers cum multis aliis too tedious here to recite did the Dr. peruse, and went hand in hand still with the rest of his Brother Plotters.  
In all these many Consults and Matters transacted since the 13th. of August, we find first this wonderful ill fortune, that the Jesuits should meet, consult, etc. with as much or more vigour than ever, without the least Breath or hint of a Discovery made to His Majesty from the very 13th of August to the 3d of September following.  
Secondly, we have the Doctor all along as deep in the Plot, and as much trusted by the Jesuits as ever, and though he had been with the King to discover it, and not extremely Credited by him, endeavoured to give him all the satisfaction and Confirmation of the Plot, that he could possible; yet he neither keeps seizeth or causes to be seized, any one of these Letters Pacquets Memorials Proposals or Commissions, seen or carried too and fro by him; nor so much as endeavours to apprehend either the Jesuits Dominicans Benedictines etc. at any of their  Consults, though in the height of all their Plotting, with all their treasonable Schemes, Pacquets, Papers, and Resolves before them.  
Now some unreasonable dissatisfyed Critics, have been apt (God forgive them sored) to make this unlucky Dilemma viz. that either there were no such Treasonable Packets, Papers etc. seen, read, or carried by the Dr, nor to be seized or produced, nor any such Consulters to be apprehended; or else, that Titus Oats instead of his pretended Zeal for the King and Protestants Preservation, is the unhappy or rather execrable Betrayer of both, whilst neither the safety of his Prince, Country, or Religion could prompt him to make use of such  and many opportunities, though for the full Confutation of all Objections whatever, and the Plain and Visible Detection of the King and Kingdoms Enemies, by such convincing Testimonies, as might have confronted even Malice, Impudence, nay Hell itself.  
'Tis true, it is to be Supposed thàt a Traitor engaged in a Conspiracy, during the time of his Faith and Truth to that Conspiracy, might never preserve any such thing as a Commission, Patent, or any other Treasonable Paper; and consequently the Dr. in times past, might not take care to furnish himself with any such visible Proofs against them. But from that very day that he repent of his Crimes, abjured their Treasons, and sided with them only to trepan and betray them, making it his whole business and study to furnish the World with Invincible Proofs of their Villainies, and yet thus egregiously to let slip such numerous Advantages, and daily offered Manifestations of their Rogueries, yes and for this very Discoverer to be introduced to the King with no other Credentials about him, than the bare Tale of a Plot, and that too in the very height of his giving out daily Commissions for raising of Armies etc. Nay after the Dr. was plainly sensible (if he believes as he swears) that he had seen Pacquets to the Fathers at St. Omers, bearing date January 1. new Style, in which the Fathers were assured, that His Majesty of great Britain was brought to that pass, 
Nar. par. XVIII.  that if any Malcontent amongst them should not prove true to their Design, His Majesty would never give ear to their Information etc. and yet after such fair Warning, for this very Patriot, that knew he had so much Difficulty and Infidelity to cope with, to come thus unprovided, with not one scrap or scraul out of all those Infinite Manuscripts and Undeniable Records against them, daily trusted in his hands; for this Plot-swearer I say, to be thus zealous for the Protection of the King and three Kingdoms, and yet to come so empty handed to his Discovery, is such a Riddle, Prodigy, or what else you please to style it, as certainly never had, nor will have the Fellow on't.  
So that through the whole Series of the Plot, we find not only the Motions of the Jesuits, but likewise the very Discoverers too, so notoriously eccentric, that the Liveliest Representation of the Whole, is, If one Pack of Phaeton's were setting the World on Fire, another Pack stepped out to quench it.  
But that the Jesuits have such roving Headpieces, that no Man can fix them to one Point, we might be extremely astonished, at all the Infinite Diversities we meet in the Popist Plot; and yet as numerous and as Mysterious, as their Methods have been for the Introduction of Popery; viz. sometimes by Massacres, another while by no Massacres, first by Killing all, and then by saving half, one while by one Army, and then another Army, and afterwards no Armies etc. with all the rest of the forementioned Yariety: what if at last we find out a new Projection for't still, a Projection not so much as resembling any of its Fellows, and possibly the very best in the whole Bundle. This Projection we find in the 23 paragraph of the Drs. Narrative verbatim as follows.  
That the Fathers of St. Omers, viz. Richard. Ashby Rector, Edward Hall, Edward Nevil, and others of the English Seminary, did write to Thomas Whitebread and other Fathers, in which was expressed that it was now apparent, that the Catholic Religion was to be brought in the same way, that they had used for the Destruction of the Father of this King, and as that could not be effected till much Blood was spilt on both sides, so this must be effected by Effusion of Blood, etc.  
Here 'twill be worth our while to inquire what that way was, the Roman Catholics used for the Destruction of the old King: and for that we'll go no further than the Authority of the Dr. himself, in the Epistle to his Narrative dedicated to His Majesty; where after many other Allegations against the Popish Party, he says.  
Who besides These were the first Authors and Contrivers of the late unnatural War, by their known Diabolical Arts of Inflaming Parties and Passions against each other, and of your Royal Father's Sufferings and Barbarous Osage It was those that brought him to his End, and flourished Swords, and triumphed over his dead Body, whom they durst not approach when Living, etc.  
This Assertion granted, the Means they used for his Destruction, and the Effects that followed can be no other than these, viz. the Papists who under the Reign of the old King, by the Indulgence of so Merciful a Prince had a private Toleration of their Religion, with a full and perfect Enjoyment of all the Liberties, Privileges, and Immunities. Peace and I ranquillity, of any of the rest of His Majesty's Protestant Subjects, we●e notwithstanding privately enflaming a Crew of Fanatic Traitors to Murder their Prince, destroy the Monarchy, and set up a Commonwealth to their own inevitable Ruin; and the more artfully to pull down that Ruin, they were most of them in actual service for that very Prince they were plotting to destroy; thereby not only hazarding their Lives in his cause, but likewise forfeiting both their Freedoms and Estates, to the Rapine and Revenge of the Victorious Rebels for their defending him. And all this for the Advancement of Popery; An Odd sort of Advancement; but let that pass.  
Now to sum up all, if the Fathers at St. Omers were unanimously agreed, that the apparent means of bringing in their Religion, was the way used for the old King's Destruction, and 'tis likewise as apparent this only was the said means; How can we make the Conspiracy and Bias of Affairs in that Age run with this, but by concluding the Papists, or their Brethren in Iniquity for them, are a blowing the old Coal again, f●●●● to raise a false Outcry against Popery and Arbitrary Power, to exasperate the Kingdom into a Civil War; then mount the Fanatic into the Saddle, and the King to the Block; whiln my old Patrons late Association was but a Bird of their own hatching, the second part of the old Covenant to have played the old Game over again. And faith, all things considered (Papists or no Papists in the Cabal) this may be the most probable of all the Intrigues we have met yet; and how unwilling soever some People may be to grant this point, if our Dr. ever swore truth, the Inference falls so pat, and several late Passages look so much that way, that 'tis the very Top of all his Discovery.  
This unlucky piece of Intelligence so mismatched to all the rest of his Evidence, however it got into the crowd, and slipped into Print, I know not; but I am certain his good Patrons the Brethren were mightily overseen at the perusal of his Papers, in not castrating this Luxuriant Branch; and the Dr. Himself deserved no less than a True Protestant Penance for't, and to be turned over to Satan to be buffeted.  
But the Plot itself is not more Extraordinary, than Mr. Oats his good Fortune and Escape to prove it; for on the 3d. of September, long after his being with the King, he tells us, 
Nar. par. 75.  That he saw a Letter from the Provincial, specifying that the Provincial had been Informed of some Discovery made, at which he was somewhat surprised. Pa. 76. the same day at Night Mr. Oats went to Visit the Provincial at his Lodging, and was ordered to come again the Morning following. Par. 77. the next Morning, being the 4th of September, according to the aforesaid Orders, he went to the Provincial, who upon sight of him, asked him with what Face he durst look on him, since he had played them such a Treacherous Trick; and struck him 3 blows with his stick, and a Box on the Ear, and charged him with being with the King and a Minister with him, whom he suspected to have Informed the King of these things etc. the Provincial having had Intelligence by a Letter from Father Benningfield, that had suggested some such thing to him; and therefore judged it must be he that had Discovered, and was drawn in by some Parson to the same etc. But at last the Provincial told him, he was willing to be reconciled to him, if he would discover who the Parson was, and his Name and Place of Abode, to the end he might be secured of him, and were resolved to Kill him: and in the mean time, the Dr. was ordered to go beyond Sea within 14 days, as the Provincial said, and that the Deponent might not Cheat them, they were to pay for his Coach-hire, and ordered him entertainment at Sittingbourn, and other places on the Road to Dover, and there Mr. Conyers at the King's head was to pay for his passage to Calais, and the Master of the Feathers in Calais to St. Omers, where he was to remain till farther Order from the Provincial.  
Aft●r all this, (Paragr. the 78) on the 6 of September, we have the Dr. and Pick●ring conferring Treasonable Notes together, and the same Night we have him coming again to visit the Provincial.  
That about night the Deponent attending the Provincials d or and about to go in, he heard White and some others whom the Deponent supposes by their Voices to be Father Mich●●, and one Mr. Poole consulting about the disposing of a Person he supposes to be himself; their words w●re these. This Man has betrayed us, and therefore we will give a Coachman twenty pound to take him up, and carry him directly to Rochester to E●quire Lees house, who lived near the Town, and from thence to D●ver by some buy way, because he was acquainted at S●●tin bourn and said, if they could get him on t' other side the Water, they would torment him till he had confessed to them, who it wa● had been with the King, and Informed him of the business; When the Deponent heard those Wor●s, he made haste away and durst not lie that Night in his own Lodgings.  
In all this is remarkable, that Dr. Oats who not many days after durst not trust himself abroad, without half a score stout Beef-eaters, to defend him from Popish Assassinates, yet here, after his Discovery to the King, and reading a Letter from the Provincial expressing his intimation of the Discovery, like a bold Knight-errant ventures himself alone at the Provincials own Lodgings Sept. 3d, yes, and upon further Orders waits on him again the next day, nay, and what's yet the greatest piece of Herculean Courage, that e'er I met with, after not only being taxed with it, and handsomely cudgeled into The Bargain, but the very Minister that drew him in was fairly threatened to be murdered; The undaunted Dr. ventured again the 6 day to the Provincials door (though for n●●usiness in the World with him) and had went in had not his fortunate overhearing the Consult about him, made him troop off in a whole Skin; secondly we are to observe, that the Provincial that suspected him before, and sent for him to tax him with it, at the same time he had him safely alone with him, and with no less thoughts about him, then Killing the Minister that drew him in (which is supposed was Dr. Tongue) to prevent a farther Discovery; yet on the otherside, just at the critical minute of unravelling all those Jesuitish Intrigues, that had been an Hundred Years in hatching, foolishly even to hazarding their whole Cause, let's go the very Man, who had it in his Power to undo them all; a Person more dangerous ten times than Dr. Tonge; and for his falsehood ●o the Jesuits in such a Discovery, ten times more deserving to be secured, and to hav● his Mouth stopped with a Dagger than he; nay what's more lewdly foolish than all the rest, at the very Minute he designs to pack him beyond Sea, to prevent farther danger, he gives him 14 days time in Town before he sets out for Dover. Good Heavens; that the Principal of the Jesuits in England, that one would think should have a little more Wit, one not only so highly concerned in the Plot, and so industrious for the Pope's Restoration; but so bloodily principled that Murders, Regicides and Massacres were his daily Study, should so ridiculously lose so fair an opportunity of dispatching, or at least securing one poor Renegado, though for the Preservation of the Lives and Fortunes of himself and his whole Party.  
Well! nothing but Folly and Madness reigns, and therefore 'twas impossible such a Thought should enter into his Head: Besides as the Drs. Discovery, take it altogether, was wholly Miraculous, so 'twas ordained that Miraculous should be his Preservation to make it.   

POSTSCRIPT.  
THis and this only is the Popish Plot, as the Discoverers give it us, and these the particular true Methods taken by the Jesuits and their Engines, for both the Murder of the King, the Massacring the Protestants, and Subverting the Religion and Government. In this Narrative of the Plot (how light soever some may interpret the Style I have used) I defy the severest Plot-hunter, and the most angry Liberty and Property Morger in England, to tax me of one false Quotation out of the Records of Titus Dugdale, bedlow's, or any other of the Discoverers. However if my Inferences displease them, and any of them have read the Plot with other Optics than mine: and in fine can kick it into any better shape than I have done, I hearty beg he would set Pen to Paper, and mend the faults I have made, For I declare I should willingly hear Reason, and stand Convicted by it.  
But in them an while to return to the Plot. The greatest part of this Discovery is comprised in those fatal Examinations, taken before that unhappy Gentleman Sir Edmondbury Godfrey. But having named th●t unfortunate Martyr, I cannot but make one reflection more on the Jesuits Infatuation, in that piece of ill timed Cruelty. If I had been one of their Consult, I should have been so far from giving my Vote for his Murder, or one 10th part of 4000 l. a piece to his Assassinates, and all to suppress the Formidable Drs Depositions; that on the contrary, I should have civilly entreated him first to have Printed them, 2dly. have petitioned the 3 Kingdoms, to read them with Deliberation, and lastly have honourably rewarded the kind Dr. for his Discovery, with at least a Pension for his Life. This way I am sure might have probably saved a great deal of Bloodshed and more Distraction; and I am Confident a Pension to the Dr. for this service had been better laid out, and better deserved f●om the Popish Party, than many a round sum expended by them elsewhere for less Consideration.  
This is the Plot, the insufficient Prosecution of which (as some Shame Patriots please to think, or at least call it) has Exasperated them into that Gall and Rancour, as has made them brand even the Throne itself, and make the very Government in the Conspiracy for its own Dissolution: and because the●e Malcontents either cannot or dare not be plain in reciting all the particular Omissions and Transgressions committed in that kind, for once I'll do it for them; And since the Court and the Court conduct is the great grievance to some of His Majesty's true Protestant Subjects, I shall endeavour to Muster all the most visible Enormities and neglects, either in the detection of the Plot, or the Preservation of the Protestant Religion. For Example.  
After no less than 30000 Spanish Pilgrims were just in their March towards England, were not the King and Counsel extremely to blame in such a dangerous Exigence, not to dispatch Ambassadors to all Foreign Princes, to deny passage through their Kingdoms, to such a terrible Legion of Bloodthirsty Vagabonds, and more especially to break Alliance with the Spaniard for so Treacherous a Conspiracy, was it not high time for the safety of the Nation to alarm all the Ports of England, and draw down the Militia that way to keep them out. But this the true Protestants know was not done.  
Was it not Likewise as great a Neglect in the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in not Issuing out a Lat that or one and Cry, or some such thing against the 25000 Messina Soldiers Landed and Concealed in that Kingdom, and making a strict search for 40000 Black Bills, with a Proclamation likewise of so much reward to bring in either the Smiths, Ironmongers or Waggoners concerned either in to ging Lodging, or carrying of them.  
Is it not a manifest exposing of his Royal Person, to the very great fright of his true Protestant Subjects, for the King to venture himself to Windsor, or any other of his Country Seats, and Possibly but in the head of not above 200 Guards, when no less than Four Irish Ruffians have so notoriously attempted h●s Life there.  
Can there be a more heinous scandal to the Government, and the great Men at the helm, after the not only Firing of London and Southwark with 700 Sheep's fat Fire-balls alias Teuxberry Mustard Balls, but Likewise such numerous hands hired and posted for the Firing of the rest of the Suburbs, first not to make a stricter inquisition after these Jesuitical City burners, and 2dly not to have a severe eye upon all Mutton dealers from the Drover to the Butcher, nay from the Cook to the Kitchen stuff Maid, to prevent the dangerous use of all Sheep's Fat, and that for no less than the safety of England's Metropolis.  
But above all this; what more unpardonable Fault could His Majesty commit; or what greater neglect could he show both of his own, and his Kingdom's safety, as not to disband his Guards, especially when his Loyal Subjects, and the Nations Patriots, for the Protection both of the Protestant Faith, and the Faith's Defender, so humbly and so Seasonably desired it of him. And what's yet more Capital than all the rest; neither to resign his Militia, nor take his Forts and Cinque Ports from his Friends, and commit them to their Trust, whom They his Wiser Guardians kind Protectorships thought fit to choose for him. Have not the true Protestant Party just cause (think you) to Exclaim; and in the height of their fervent Zeal for their King and Country, Launch out now and then into a Libel or so, upon so unconscionable a Denial of these so reasonable Petitions?  
Nay have not the Brethren a yet more severe Complaint against His Majesty, for his Weakness of Faith, in not sufficiently crediting Dangerfields' receipt of 20 Guinneys from his Royal Highness? and that too against a Brother, and a Prince, upon the Single Attestation of one poor Jail Bird, a Testimony not sufficient to convict a Corn-cutter; nay, and all in down right contradiction of all the other Evidence beside, who still to the last swore the Duke both Ignorant and Innocent of the Plot. But alas! what's Innocence in the Face of a Bill of Exclusion; or what signity such foolish scruples as Nonsense, Improbability, and Contradiction in the Case of the Descent of Crowns? and why should not that Evidence strike at the Birthright, nay lives of Princes, and be believed for High-Treason at the C—s Bar, that at a Quarter Sessions would not have been credited for the Proof of a petty Larceny? Ay, and very good reason for it too, for the true Protestant Cause is a Theme so sublime and so Divine, that ipso mom●nto it consecrates all its Supporters, and puts Oracles even into all Mouths; and the Devil himself could scarce lie upon that Subject.  
Besides all Errors at Whitehall, have not those unnatural Mothers, the two Protestant Universities, a just Cause to blush, to see themselves so much out done by the more generous Academy at Salamanca? Is it not a crying Shame they have not celebrated a Commencement on purpose, to admit the Reverend Dignified Titus into his Drs. Robes? Nay, are not the whole Body of the Clergy down right Papists in their Souls, that they have not with one Heart, and one Voice, made it their humble Petition to His Majesty, that the so well deserving Pillar of their Religion, may be desired to lay by his Amsterdam Jump, and do them the Honour to Accept of a Bishopric.  
Or what more Barbarous Ingratitude could have been shown to the Preserver of 3 Kingdoms, and the Atlas of our Christianity, then that this very Person should be so heinously neglected, that from not being worth 12, d. and raised afterwards to 12 pounds a Week, he should be 700 worse for the Discovery of the Plot. But alas, that may very well be; for we are all sensible he brought over his Discovery as Whittington did his Cat, with no less Expectation then to be made an Alderman by it; and, as 'tis likewise plain, it came upon us very like Whittingtons' Cat too, no less than a Rarity and a perfect Original, being the First and the Last either of the Kind or the Price; what greater National piece of Injustice can be offered, then that he wants both the Reward and Exaltation he deserves.  
'Tis true, some ill natured Snarlers are apt to lessen the Drs Merit, upon several Lapses and Mistakes in some of his Affidavits; but alas! how insignificant are those Trifles (like the Spots in the Sun) to the shading of his Glory? What if his Infallibility forswore itself a little at Drs. Commons; dares any Man be so Impudent as to say any thing that he, or any other of the Narrative Men swore before the Council, or Sir Edmondbury Godfrey etc. how improbable or contradictory soever was not Oracle? What if eliot's Mahumetanism and Circumcision were a little Fabulous, must not every tittle therefore of Popery and the Plot-History be Sacred Truth? or is it not Downright turning a Favourer of Popery, and Enemy to the Protestant Religion to suspect it otherwise? What if he had a little forgot himself in his description of Don John? and what if before the King and Council he disowned any Personal Knowledge of Coleman; and yet at his Trial was intimately acquainted with him, and the Top Evidence that hanged him? And what if another time at the Council, he knew neither Sir George Wakemans Person nor Handwriting, or any ill thing by him; and yet at his Trial positively swore both his Writing a Treasonable Letter to Ashby, and the whole Circumstances of his Undertaking to Poison the King for 15000 pounds? Alas; shall these and Twenty other venial slips in the Drs Testimony be any blemish to the Prowess and Reputation of so Doughty a Discoverer?  
Ignorance indeed may prate, and Cynics may Snarl, and several of the Drs Oaths, especially that against eliot may be the Subject of their Mirth, that do not understand it: But alas the world little imagines the depth of that Oath, when that Oath, I assure you, is one of the greatest Achievements, that ever the Doctor performed for the Preservation of the Protestant Peace, and Religion. For mark ye, the Whigs (see what Superstition can do) were so strangely rapt up with the Contemplation of so Divine a Preserver, and looked upon him as so great a Guardian Angel to the Protestant Cause, that they Styled him no less than the Saviour of the Nation, a Title so arrogant as out did the greatest Roman Canonising; till the Careful Dr. troubled at their mistaken Adorations, to restore them to their right Protestant senses again, and prevent this more than Popish piece of Idolatry, very generously resigned his borrowed Divinity, and kindly forswore himself, only to show he was but Humane Flesh and Blood. Yes kindly indeed; and may the World acknowledge it: And so may the Eyes of the Nation be opened by it, till for the future Men shall weigh before they believe, and think as well as hear. Till neither Figments nor Phantoms, Incoherencies nor Absurdities be imposed upon them for Gospel; nor the Artifice of false Alarms, and false Fears fright them into a true Disobedience. So may our Jealousies daily lessen till our Concord increases, and the Best of Kings be universally Loved and Obeyed by the Best of Subjects.  
Why, alas! should the Apprehension of Imaginary Dangers put us into real Distractions; how much is it below the very Courage of an English Man, to fancy the Papists able to cut our Throats? for my Part I am so far from granting the Supposition of a Massacre, to be made by the Roman Catholic hands in England (I mean of late Years,) that I defy the Eloquence of Angels, to convince any rational Man of the Possibility of any thing like it. And truly amongst all the false Doctrines of the Plot, though I have been as bold a Pamphleteer as most Men, and possibly could have rigged out a feeble Argument, in as gay Trappings as my Fellow scribblers; yet I vow I had never Rhetoric enough, or indeed had never so much Impudence, amongst all the Gorgon's through both my Characters, as to defend that , called a Massacre. And I am certain if Popery had no other Door for its Entrance, the Jesuits might even as well have contrived to have brought it in by a Trojan Horse, and perhaps the better way of the two. Insomuch that I have read that Fate denouncing Line under Sir Edmond bury Godfrey's Picture  
Had He not Dyed, We had not Lived. Without up lifted hands for our Deliverance. For truly, I was so little of the Author's Faith that writ it, that I fancy if that poor Gentleman had escaped that Execrable Murder, both he, and many a score of Thousands of his Protestant Countrymen, had been in a fair way of living, till the Papists Hearts ached, and of seeing 7 and 7 merry Christmas' after it.  
But one thing I have observed. Of all the Liberty and Property Men, and the rest of the great Patriots for the Protestant Cause, that have hung the Popish Swords but in a Thread over our Heads, and so often alarmed us with Massacres, in all this long Licence of the Press, and the Loads of Pamphlets written on that Theme, through all their Painstaking to convince the World our Throats were all to have been cut by the Papists, there's not one of them has told us How and which Way. And truly there's good reason for it: That part of our Danger is so extraordinary Gigantic, that as not being in rerum Naturâ 'tis only to be Supposed; and the Papists in that Design were much in the Case of that Philosopher, that briskly vapored  〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. 
Give me but place on which my Feet may Stand,  
From their fixed Base I'll throw both Sea and Land.  
And no doubt he would have kept his Word; only the Misery on't was, The Philosophers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was never found out, and so the Feat was never performed.  
But now Suppose we laid the Massacre asleep a while, and let the Jago Pilgrims take a turn home again; and what if for once we ventured to call in all the Doctor's Commissions, and disbanded the innumerable Thousands and so forth; and then, (instead of the Charge and Trouble of Pickering, Grove, Conyers, the four Irish Ruffians, and the rest of the Bilbo Sparks, and all those more dangerous barefaced Assassinates) take the most Probable way of advancing the Catholic Cause: for Example, Let us Suppose the Jesuits had kept only Sr. George Wakeman in pay, and by his dexterity of hand had Slyly taken of the King, unsuspected by the World, and mounted a Popish Successor more Calmly into the Throne, without the open Murder of the King, to Set the whole Kingdom in a Flame, and possibly raise that unquenchable Fury against the whole Popish Party, that might not have Stopped till it had acted a second part in England of Cromwel's Revenge in Ireland. Imagine, I say, that the Jesuits had taken this Course, and gotten the advantage of a Popish Sovereign in Quiet Possession of the Imperial Crown; nay & a Prince too moulded to their own hearts Liking, and would make their Most of him; what wonderful Exploits could He and they together achieve for the Subversion of the Government, and Establishing the Popish Tyranny.  
'Tis true, 'tis an Easy thing to muster up all the Cruelties of Queen Mary's Reign, and All the Breach of her Oaths to her Protestant Subjects; and from that threadbare Theme cramp out Matter enough to patch up a Scarecrow to fright the Ignorant Rabble both out of their Wits, and their Allegiance for fear of Popery; though God knows with no more Resemblance between the present State of England, and that in Queen mary's Days, then between bedlow's and Prances way of Murdering Sir Edmond, or the two most Opposite Things in Nature. Alas! she lived in an Age when the Majority of her Parliament were Papists, & the very Restoration of the Pope came in by Law; and when her Smithfield Bonfires blazed she had a Decretum est Lege for Hereticis Comburendis, and waved her Bloody Ensigns under the Standard of an Act of Parliament: but had her Fire and Faggot Statute been as down the Wind, and as little in force as now, I question if she, and all her bloody Councillors, her Bonner, Gardiner, and the rest of them, durst have Ventured to Set their Smithfield a Smoking, unless they had a mind to have had her Palace have Smoked after it. Neither do we ever read, in all her Popish Bigotry, that she and her Zealous Philip with all their Spanish and English Power together, and in all their kindness for Rome, durst venture so much as to restore the Pope but his Abbey Lands again, or set up any thing, that but looked like Arbitrary Government. And why, if we had a Popish Successor in our Age, he should dare do ten times more than She, and yet without the 20th part of her Power to effect it, I profess I am to learn. 'Tis true the Popish Character gives you a great many dreadful Features of that devouring Monster Popery, and as I remember, it goes so far as to bring a Popish Successor to a downright Nabuchadnezzar at last, with his fiery furnaces no less than 7 times hotter than Ordinary; but there as ill Luck would have it, it breaks off abruptly, and never gives the Reader Account, how and where a Popish Successor shall find those hardy Britain's, that like Nebuchadnezars Captains will burn themselves to throw Us into fire; and without that Latter part the Story's imperfect. For the Introduction of Arbitrary Power, Popery, and Smithfield Piles in this Age, is an Attempt will be so hot in the Fingers, that it will ne'er be handled without Mortal Danger to the Undertakers. When the Phaeton Spirit sets a driving, Phaeton's Fate must follow; and an English Monarch that takes that way of steering would quickly to his own sad Cost find himself a King not of Men but of Devils. For if the Shadow and Chimaera of Arbitrary Power, and Popery, can raise so troublesome a Ferment in the Stiffneckt People of England, the Substance of it will do worse: and Rome that now has been Ages a falling (let the Jesuits flatter themselves, as they please, or the Dr. for them) will never be rebuilt in a Trice.  
But suppose a Popish Successor either could, or would be the very greatest Monster that Dreams or Fears would paint him, yet The very Inspired Oedipus of the whole Whiggish Party, the Dr. himself has over and again cleared his Royal Highness from the Possibility of being that Creature. For in his Nar. par. XXIV. after the receipt of a Letter from the Dnos of St. Omers, which gave the English Fathers Instructions to feel how the Duke stood affected to their design a foot, we have no less than Thomas Whitebread, John Keins, Bazil Longworrh, Richard Petres, John Fenwick, Father Ire land, Father Harcourt, Father Blondel, Father Matthew Wright, Father Jennison, and Father Simmons all Subscribing this answer: Viz that though they had found the Duke a good Catholic, yet he had a Tender Affection for the King, and would scarcely be engaged in that concern: and if they should intimate their Design or Purpose to him, they might not only be frustrated of their Design, but also might lose his Favour, Nay we have the Duke so far from being thought a Prop of their Cause, that his Life is several times in the Plot, no less threatened than his Brothers, Whitebread tells Ashby at St. Omers June 10th. 78, that if the Duke should set his Face in the least measure to follow his Brother's Footsteps, his passport was made to lay him asleep too. Nar. par. XXIX. and in par. LX. we have Keinsv telling Oats that the Duke was not the Strength of their Trust, for if James did not comply with them, he must go to pot too. Nay we have the Dr. before the House of Lords, (Octob. 30.78.) upon his being informed that Coleman had highly Impeached the Duke of York by Letters; coming voluntarily to clear his Royal Highness, and giving six several Reasons to prove he thought the Duke was wholly Innocent. The First of these Reasons was, that the Plotters had got a trick to counterfeit his and her Royal Highness' Hand and Seal, etc. Now if the Doctor's Testimony be their infallible Confirmation for all the Villainy of the whole Popish Plot, why not likewise of the Duke's Innocence and Ignorance of it; and if so, why shall that Prince of Morals so opposite to the Jesuits designs, that his very knowledge of them had by their own confession been enough to have ruined both their Plot and them: A Prince though by their own Assertion so good a Catholic, yet in his Nature so averse to any Irregular Act, though for the crowning even that great Work that Rome and all her Engines had been labouring to perfect ever since Queen Elizabeth's days; how is it likely, I say, that a Prince thus Principled should upon Mounting the Throne, turn a Domitian, Caligula, Nero, and what not, and be all those Devils, that either the Fright of Fools, or the Malice of Knaves has represented him.  
But that neither Prejudice nor Ignorance should fly in my Face, and think this Treatise designed for the stifling of Truth, and lessening the Popish Gild, I will give them yet a farther Confession of my Faith. I believe that such a half-witted Zealot, or so over-believing a Wreteh as Pickering might have that confidence in the Pope's Key, that for the Assurance of Paradise, and 30000. Masses he might be hired to Pistol the King. And yet I declare, I neither think Pickering the best Gunner for that adventure, nor that his Pericranium was able to throw the Murder of the King upon the Presbyterians, as Dugdale has it: Nor that Mr. Oats in January 77. read a Letter at St. Omers containing a matter of Fact not committed till the March following: I cannot believe neither that Mr. eliot was Circumcised, or had Killed his Patron, and that the Doctor in Foro Conscientiae was not as much perjured at Doctor's Commons, as he he could have been at the Old Bayly. And though I most hearty abhor the Irish and Parisian Massacres, and the Hellish Gun-Powder-Plot, or any other of the Popish Villainies whatever; yet I declare if any Man should swear that Guido Faux, or Father Garnet had had an Invisible Army of 25000. Soldiers landed at Barn-Elms, and a French Navy Riding in Chelsey-Reach: I vow from the bottom of my Soul, I should not believe him. And I am so far from thinking that any reasonable Creature ought to pin his Faith only upon Oaths for his Credentials, or that all Accusations must be true, because they are alleged against Rogues and Villains, that on the contrary I'll lay little Tuus a Wager, that 'tis possible to draw up a Narrative (if he'll be but so kind to swear to it) against a Judas, nay the Devil himself, that shall not have one syllable of Truth in it. Alas! 'tis my opinion, the greatest Monsters of Men may be belied, and he is equally guilty of Perjury that swears falsely against a Barrabas as against a Jesus.  
But now ever since the first Discovery of all these Hellish Conspiracies, and all the hideous and bloody Matters in Agitation by the Papists, one thing is strangely Remarkable, none are so vehement against Popery and Plots, and so loud against Arbitrary Government as the Dissenters. In my Opinion the Episcopal Party were no doubt in as great danger from the Papists as the Non-consormists. Their principles are as opposite to the Romanists, and I am sure their Preachers, as Bishop of Lincoln, Pierce, Stilling fleet, Tillotson, etc. have done the Popish Religion more mischief than a thousand Baxters or owen's; for which they and their Disciples ought in all Reason to expect as fatal, and as universal a stroke from the Popish Swords as the Dissenters; and yet methinks there must be something more than ordinary in the Wind, that the Dissenters of all the Nation, are the greatest and almost only Dreaders of that unexpressible Inundation of Popery that was just pouring down upon us, with all those Torrents of Treasons, Fires, Massacres, and Rebellions, etc. so extraordinary apprehensive of it, till they make each Part and Tittle sworn on that Theme so absolute an Article of their Creed, that their Faith is stronger than an Estriges stomach, and can digest even Inconsistence, Romance, and Contradiction. Nay they'll push it farther still, and arraign even Majesty itself, and with all the most virulent Exclamations, make the Prorogations and Dissolutions of Parliaments a palpable encouragement of the Conspiracy, whilst the restless Malice of the Jesuits is (they'll tell you) at this very day as active, and the Plot no doubt as vigorously carrying on as ever.  
Now whether all these terrible Apprehensions against Popery be unfeigned, and from the bottom of their Hearts is the thing to be Examined: for Experiment of which, since no humane Power can faddom Thoughts, we can have no plainer Proofs or Signs of their Faith then by their Works; an Instance of which I shall give you in some few Particulars.  
Mr. Oats Swears, that London and Southwark were Fired by the Papists, Nar. par. XXXIV. and Ireland's Trial p. 32. and Nar. par. 71. he gives us a full Relation how himself, and the Lord knows who besides, were hired to Fire the rest of the Suburbs in August 78, and that his words are no common Authority, there's scarce a Dissenter amongst them that will not confidently aver to this very day, that he believes the Fire at the Temple, and Wapping, and indeed every considerable Fire of late Years has been done by the Treachery of the Papists.  
Yet notwithstanding all this, I would gladly know how many Rich Presbyterians since the Plot, in whatever part of London dispersed, have sold their Estates in Houses to the unbelieving Tories, or refused to lay out their Money for a Common Market price, even in those very Estates, that are every day incident to so much Ruin, and continually exposed to the Malice of such fatal and restless Enemies. Nay what is yet more strange, since the late Insurance Office has been up, how comes it about in a City, that has above 10000 Houses in the Dissenters possession, there is not yet 3000 Houses insured of all Parties; considering too that but the laying out of one five Shillings per annum, secures no less than a 100 pounds. Lord that the Brethren should have such Expansive Faith in Fires and Sheep's Fat Fireballs, and see such frequent and terrible Examples of them; yet should nevertheless be so strangely negligent, in so critical a Juncture, as not to expend so little a Trifle though for so important and so vast a Security. Besides if Popery were so near upon us, and the Pope had so many hands at Work, and all resolved to make Reprizals of his lost Ground in England, I wonder how it comes about, that the price of Abbey Lands is fallen no lower.  
In another parr of the Doctor's Narrative, we have no less than 20000 Fight Papists in or about London all ready to rise in 24 hours. (par. IX,) and those 20000 like Falstaffs Blades in Buck●●on run up afterwards by William bedlow's to 40000 (Lords Journal 12 Nou. 78) and all to cut the Protestants Throats. And if the Plot be still carrying on, no doubt they are still in the same readiness to do the former Execution, and if so, I desire to know how many of the Dissenting Brethren throughout London, in this Plotting Season barricado their Doors with one Bolt, Chain or Bar Extraordinary when they go to Bed, to keep their Throats the better from being cut before Morning. Besides notwithstanding all their Outcries against Popery, and the pretended Court Encouragement for the Bloodthirsty Papists to proceed with their Insurrections Armies Massacres, and all the rest of their Roman Thunderbolts, I would willingly see a List of all those rich Dissenters that have sold their Patrimonies at home to remove to Carolina, Pensylvania New-England, or any other Foreign Sanctuary to escape the Popish Blood hounds, though for the Preservation of both the Estates and Lives of themselves and their Families. 'Tis true the Suppression of their Conventicles has done much that way, and sent several of them outwards bound. But if the 25th of Tory Elizabeth had been repealed, or but the King's Indulgence continued, though the 40000 Black Bills had run up to Seed, and increased to Tenfold the number; though the Jago Pilgrims, Messina Soldiers, and the rest of the Papists Militant had been improved into half a Million; and the Plot itself made ten times a greater Garagantua than 'tis, I had defied them all from frighting one of them hence. Now certainly if the Dissenters believed as they say, and that all those daily imminent dangers from Popish Swords, and so universal a Destruction still threatening us were a true Article of their Belief, 'tis to be admired we find so few or none of their Actions to demonstrate their Fear's in Earnest. Their Fears in earnest? no, the wiser Heads amongst them know better things, and Fears, Plots, and Jealousies their old State Tools, are used always as Boys do Vizors, to fright every body, but themselves that wear them.  
And what is and ever has been for these 40 Years last passed, the Confusion and Ruin of three Kingdoms, but setting up of Shadows and Chimeras like so many Ignes fatui to misled deluded Ignorance into Distraction and Rebellion, whilst the great Knaves trail the Carrion, and the little Fools hunt after it.  
For let the whigs take it as they please, they cannot be divided but into two Classes. They amongst them that are so shallow as to believe a hotch potch of Incongruity and Contradiction for Truth are Fools; and the greater and Wiser Men amongst them that I am sure have better Intell●cts, and yet notwithstanding by all the Arts, and Study endeavour to impose that upon weaker understandings, what they do not believe themselves, are Villains; and whilst they make it their business to uphold Lies and sham's, are so far from what they pretend themselves Patriots, that they are nothing but Incendiaries, whilst the National Service is but the pretence and their own Revenge or sinister Interests the great end they drive at.  
The effects of which all good Subjects ought to their utmost endeavours and capacities to prevent, and the whole business of this Treatise is for no other design, that Noise and Nonsense may usurp no more, but Sense and Reason ever reign in Peace, till the great Disturber of the World, False Fear, be banished from our Borders, and Unanimity and Obedience ever Flourish amongst us in Secular Seculorum.  
But now to take my leave of all Republic Projects and state Cheats; and also to find a Comparison black enough for the late Damnable Plot, I cannot liken its Appearing in the world better than to some deformed Hag, with Paint Patches and Perfumes coming into a Masque; what with the help of good Trappings, good Fucus, good Plastering and other Embellishments, at first sight by Candlelight she appears pretty enough, till having danced too long to a Popular Jig, at last her Paint gins to melt, and the poor Thing is forced to withdraw; where after laying by her false Curls, her false Teeth, and her Glass Eye, Monster and Deformity even goes to Bed, and is just now falling asleep.   
FINIS.