umours were now noised abroad,
which were not without foundation, that the monarch and his brother had
renewed the treaty with France, by which Louis engaged to send troops
into England to support Charles, when the latter saw fit to lay aside
duplicity, and proclaim himself a catholic. And, notwithstanding the
rigorous Test Acts, it was believed many high positions at court were
held by those who were papists at heart. Occasion was therefore ripe
for the invention of a monstrous fraud, the history of which has been
transmitted under the title of the Popish Plot.

The chief contrivers of this imposture were Titus Oates and Dr. Tonge.
The first of these was son of a ribbon-weaver, who, catching the
fanatical spirit of the Cromwellian period, had ranted as an Anabaptist
preacher. Dissent, however, losing favour under the restoration, Oates,
floating with the current of the times, resolved to become a clergyman
of the Church of England, He therefore took orders at Cambridge,
officiated as curate in various parishes, and served as chaplain on
board a man-of-war. The time he laboured as spiritual shepherd to
his respective flocks was necessarily brief; for his grossly immoral
practices becoming notable, he was in every case ousted from his charge.
The odium attached to his name was moreover increased by the fact,
that his evidence in two cases of malicious prosecution had been proved
false; for which he had been tried as a perjurer. Deprived of his
chaplaincy for a revolting act of profligacy, driven from congregations
he had scandalized, homeless and destitute, he in an evil hour betook
himself to Dr. Ezrael Tonge, to whom he had long been known, and
besought compassion and relief.

The Rev, Dr. Tonge, rector of St. Michael's, Wood Street, was a
confirmed fanatic and political alarmist. For some years previous to
this time, he had published quarterly treatises dealing with such wicked
designs of the Jesuits as his heated brain devised. These he had printed
and freely circulated, in order, as he acknowledged, "to arouse and
awaken his majesty and the parliament" to a sense of danger. He had
begun life as a gardener, but left that honest occupation that he might
cultivate flowers of rhetoric for the benefit of Cromwell's soldiers.
Like Titus Oates, he had become suddenly converted to orthodox
principles on return of the king, and had, through interest, obtained
the rectorship of St. Michael's. Bishop Burnet considered him "a