insurrections, rebellions, and massacres were projected by that
religious order in all the three kingdoms. There were twenty thousand
Catholics in London, who would rise in four and twenty hours, or less;
and Jennison, a Jesuit, said, that they might easily cut the throats of
a hundred thousand Protestants. Eight thousand Catholics had agreed to
take arms in Scotland. Ormond was to be murdered by four Jesuits; a
general massacre of the Irish Protestants was concerted; and forty
thousand black bills were already provided for that purpose. Coleman had
remitted two hundred thousand pounds to promote the rebellion in
Ireland; and the French king was to land a great army in that island.
Poole, who wrote the Synopsis, was particularly marked out for
assassination; as was also Dr. Stillingfleet, a controversial writer
against the Papists. Burnet tells us, that Oates paid him the same
compliment. After all this havoc, the crown was to be offered to the
duke, but on the following conditions: that he receive it as a gift from
the pope; that he confirm all the papal commissions for offices and
employments; that he ratify all past transactions, by pardoning the
incendiaries, and the murderers of his brother and of the people; and
that he consent to the utter extirpation of the Protestant religion. If
he refuse these conditions, he himself was immediately to be poisoned or
assassinated. "To pot James must go," according to the expression
ascribed by Oates to the Jesuits.

Oates, the informer of this dreadful plot, was himself the most infamous
of mankind. He was the son of an Anabaptist preacher, chaplain to
Colonel Pride; but having taken orders in the church, he had been
settled in a small living by the duke of Norfolk. He had been indicted
for perjury, and by some means had escaped. He was afterwards a chaplain
on board the fleet; whence he had been dismissed on complaint of some
unnatural practices not fit to be named. He then became a convert to
the Catholics; but he afterwards boasted, that his conversion was a mere
pretence, in order to get into their secrets and to betray them.[*] He
was sent over to the Jesuits' college at St. Omers, and though above
thirty years of age, he there lived some time among the students. He
was despatched on an errand to Spain; and thence returned to St. Omers;
where the Jesuits, heartily tired of their convert, at last dismissed
him from their seminary. It is likely that, from resentment of
this