d any part of so complicated a conspiracy. Though the informers
pretended that, even after they had resolved to betray the secret, many
treasonable commissions and papers had passed through their hands, they
had not had the precaution to keep any one of them, in order to fortify
their evidence. But all these difficulties, and a thousand more,
were not found too hard of digestion by me nation and parliament. The
prosecution and further discovery of the plot were still the object of
general concern. The commons voted, that, if the king should come to
an untimely end, they would revenge his death upon the Papists; not
reflecting that this sect were not his only enemies. They promised
rewards to new discoverers; not considering the danger which they
incurred of granting bribes to perjury. They made Bedloe a present of
five hundred pounds; and particularly recommended the care of his safety
to the duke of Monmouth. Colonel Sackville, a member, having, in a
private company, spoken opprobriously of those who affirmed that there
was any plot, was expelled the house. The peers gave power to their
committees to send for and examine such as would maintain the innocence
of those who had been condemned for the plot. A pamphlet having been
published to discredit the informers, and to vindicate the Catholic
lords in the Tower, these lords were required to discover the author,
and thereby to expose their own advocate to prosecution. And both houses
concurred in renewing the former vote, that the Papists had undoubtedly
entered into a _horrid_ and _treasonable_ conspiracy against
the king, the state, and the Protestant religion.

It must be owned, that this extreme violence, in prosecution of so
absurd an imposture, disgraces the noble cause of liberty, in which the
parliament was engaged. We may even conclude from such impatience
of contradiction, that the prosecutors themselves retained a secret
suspicion, that the general belief was but ill grounded. The politicians
among them were afraid to let in light, lest it might put an end to so
useful a delusion: the weaker and less dishonest party took care, by
turning their eyes aside, not to see a truth, so opposite to those
furious passions by which they were actuated, and in which they were
determined obstinately to persevere.

Sir William Temple had lately been recalled from his foreign
employments; and the king, who, after the removal of Danby, had no one
with whom he could so much as