nation. He aimed at driving Danby out of office
and at forcing on Charles a ministry which should break his dependence
on France and give a constitutional turn to his policy. He saw that no
security would really avail to meet the danger of a Catholic sovereign,
and he aimed at excluding James from the throne. But in pursuing these
aims he threw himself from that moment wholly on the plot. He fanned the
popular panic by accepting without question some fresh depositions in
which Oates charged five Catholic peers with part in the Jesuit
conspiracy. Two of these five, Lords Arundell and Bellasys, had in fact
taken part in the preliminary conference which led to the Treaty of
Dover. Of this nothing was known, but the five were sent to the Tower
and two thousand suspected persons were hurried to prison. A
proclamation ordered every Catholic to leave London. The train-bands
were called to arms, and patrols paraded through the streets to guard
against the Catholic rising which Oates declared to be at hand.
Meanwhile Shaftesbury turned the panic to political account. He
fiercely demanded in the House of Lords the exclusion of the Duke of
York from the king's Council, and his demand was repeated in an address
of the Commons. Charles met the attack with consummate skill.
Anticipating the future Exclusion Bill, he declared himself ready to
sanction any measures which secured the Protestant religion so long as
they left untouched the right of hereditary succession and the just
power of the Crown. Shaftesbury retorted by forcing through Parliament
at the end of 1678 a bill which excluded Catholics from a seat in either
House. The exclusion remained in force for a century and a half; but it
had really been aimed against the Duke of York, and Shaftesbury was
defeated by a proviso which exempted James from the operation of the
bill.

[Sidenote: Lewis and the Plot.]

The plot, which had been supported for four months by the sole evidence
of Oates, began to hang fire at the opening of 1679; but a promise of
reward brought forward a villain named Bedloe with tales beside which
those of Oates seemed tame. The two informers were pressed forward by an
infamous rivalry to stranger and stranger revelations. Bedloe swore to
the existence of a plot for the landing of a Catholic army and a general
massacre of the Protestants. Oates capped the revelations of Bedloe by
charging the queen herself at the bar of the Lords with knowledge of the
plot t