towards Rome. His brother and heir presumptive was known to be
a bigoted Roman Catholic. The first Duchess of York had died a Roman
Catholic. James had then, in defiance of the remonstrances of the House
of Commons, taken to wife the Princess Mary of Modena, another Roman
Catholic. If there should be sons by this marriage, there was reason to
fear that they might be bred Roman Catholics, and that a long succession
of princes, hostile to the established faith, might sit on the English
throne. The constitution had recently been violated for the purpose of
protecting the Roman Catholics from the penal laws. The ally by whom the
policy of England had, during many years, been chiefly governed, was not
only a Roman Catholic, but a persecutor of the reformed Churches. Under
such circumstances it is not strange that the common people should have
been inclined to apprehend a return of the times of her whom they called
Bloody Mary.

Thus the nation was in such a temper that the smallest spark might raise
a flame. At this conjuncture fire was set in two places at once to the
vast mass of combustible matter; and in a moment the whole was in a
blaze.

The French court, which knew Danby to be its mortal enemy, artfully
contrived to ruin him by making him pass for its friend. Lewis, by the
instrumentality of Ralph Montague, a faithless and shameless man who
had resided in France as minister from England, laid before the House of
Commons proofs that the Treasurer had been concerned in an application
made by the Court of Whitehall to the Court of Versailles for a sum of
money. This discovery produced its natural effect. The Treasurer was,
in truth, exposed to the vengeance of Parliament, not on account of his
delinquencies, but on account of his merits; not because he had been
an accomplice in a criminal transaction, but because he had been a most
unwilling and unserviceable accomplice. But of the circumstances, which
have, in the judgment of posterity, greatly extenuated his fault, his
contemporaries were ignorant. In their view he was the broker who had
sold England to France. It seemed clear that his greatness was at an
end, and doubtful whether his head could be saved.

Yet was the ferment excited by this discovery slight, when compared with
the commotion which arose when it was noised abroad that a great Popish
plot had been detected. One Titus Oates, a clergyman of the Church of
England, had, by his disorderly life and heterodo