partly by him, partly by
Everard, was the most furious, indecent, and outrageous performance
imaginable, and such as was fitter to hurt than serve any party which
should be so imprudent as to adopt it. Waller carried the intelligence
to the king, and obtained a warrant for committing Fitzharris, who
happened at that very time to have a copy of the libel in his pocket.
Finding himself now delivered over to the law, he resolved to pay court
to the popular party, who were alone able to protect him, and by whom
he observed almost all trials to be governed and directed. He affirmed,
that he had been employed by the court to write the libel, in order to
throw the odium of it on the exclusionists: but this account, which was
within the bounds of credibility, he disgraced by circumstances which
are altogether absurd and improbable. The intention of the ministers,
he said, was to send about copies to all the heads of the country party;
and the moment they received them, they were to be arrested, and a
conspiracy to be imputed to them. That he might merit favor by still
more important intelligence, he commenced a discoverer of the
great Popish plot; and he failed not to confirm all the tremendous
circumstances, insisted on by his predecessors. He said, that the second
Dutch war was entered into with a view of extirpating the Protestant
religion, both abroad and at home; that Father Parry, a Jesuit, on the
disappointment by the peace, told him, that the Catholics resolved to
murder the king, and had even engaged the queen in that design; that the
envoy of Medena offered him two thousand pounds to kill the king, and
upon his refusal the envoy said, that the duchess of Mazarine, who was
as expert at poisoning as her sister, the Countess of Soissons, would,
with a little phial, execute that design; that upon the king's death,
the army in Flanders was to come over and massacre the Protestants; that
money was raised in Italy for recruits and supplies, and there should be
no more parliaments; and that the Duke was privy to this whole plan, and
had even entered into the design of Godfrey's murder, which was executed
in the manner related by France.

The popular leaders had all along been very desirous of having an
accusation against the Duke; and though Oates and Bedloe, in their first
evidence, had not dared to go so far, both Dugdale and Dangerfield
had afterwards been encouraged to supply so material a defect, by
comprehending him in