The Popish Plot: A study in the history of the reign of Charles II

1677. Ash Wednesday Titus Oates converted to the Church of Rome. April Enters the English Jesuit college at Valladolid. October 30 Expelled from the college at Valladolid. Decem...

Titus Oates has justly been considered one of the world’s great impostors. By birth he was an Anabaptist, by prudence a clergyman, by profession a perjurer. From an obscure and...

For contemporaries the Popish Plot provided a noble field of battle. Between its supporters and its assailants controversy raged hotly. Hosts of writers in England and abroad pr...

Thus the Popish Plot was introduced to the world, “a transaction which had its root in hell and its branches among the clouds.”[120] While Charles proceeded on his walk, Chiffin...

The death of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey has passed for one of the most remarkable mysteries in English history. The profound sensation which it caused, the momentous consequences...

On October 20 a proclamation was published offering a pardon and the reward of £500 to any one whose evidence should lead to the apprehension and conviction of the murderers. Fo...

The change in the situation had been caused by the appearance of a witness whose evidence about the murder was of the greatest weight, and whose position in the intrigues of the...

At this point the atmosphere begins somewhat to clear. Two trials have been discussed, and the result is seen that the two chief witnesses at them were guilty of wilful perjury....

Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was an intimate friend of Edward Coleman, secretary to the Duchess of York. At the time of the murder Coleman lay in Newgate under an accusation of trea...

“The English nation are a sober people,” wrote Charles I to his abler son, “however at present infatuated.” Charles II had greater right than ever his father to believe that his...

Of the five hundred Cavalier gentlemen who fell in the Civil War more than one-third were Catholics,[349] The remnant of the class that had once been the most dignified and the...

Of all men whose reputation was made or raised by the Popish Plot, none have since maintained their fame at so even a height as John Dryden. His person but not his name suffered...

The trials of the Popish Plot have remained the most celebrated in the annals of our judicial history. Their reports occupy three volumes of the State Trials and more than two t...

The Reformation, as in almost all other branches of modern history, constitutes the starting-point at which the study of public procedure must be begun. Rather it would be true...

Such was the state of society and the procedure of the English courts when Edward Coleman was brought to the bar of the Court of King’s Bench on November 27, 1678 to be tried on...

—— Copies and extracts of some letters written to and from the Earl of Danby (now Duke of Leeds) in the years 1676, 1677, and 1678, with some particular remarks upon them. Publi...

[340] Barillon, February 5/15, 1680. Luttrell, _Brief Relation_ i. 19, 33. Burnet ii. 246, 248, 249. Temple i. 419, 420, 441–444. Ailesbury, _Memoirs_ i. 35. Foxcroft, _Life of...