d. Such fears were deepened
as the general purport of the Treaty of Dover became known.

Into this atmosphere charged with suspicion was interjected the Popish
Plot, said by Titus Oates and his fellow perjurers to be designed to
murder Charles II and place James on the throne. From September 1678,
when Oates began his series of revelations until the end of March 1681,
when the King dissolved at Oxford the third Parliament elected under the
Protestant furore excited by the Plot, Shaftesbury and his followers had
the upper hand. The King was obliged to propose concessions to the
popular will and to offer to agree to limitations on the authority of a
popish successor. But Shaftesbury was bent on passing the Exclusion
Bill, which excluded James from the throne and substituted the King's
illegitimate son, Monmouth. Here he made a fatal blunder because he
alienated churchmen who believed in the divine right of kings, all whose
sense of decency was outraged by the prospect of a bastard's elevation
to the throne, and the supporters of William of Orange, husband of
Mary, the elder daughter of James, and the great opponent of Louis XIV.
Also, when it became obvious that the King would not agree to a change
in the succession, many feared another civil war with all its attendant
dangers of a second military domination. Moreover, the lies of Oates and
his imitators were becoming discredited.

Though a reaction against the Whigs was beginning, propaganda was needed
to disabuse the public of two anxieties--that there was still a danger
that Roman Catholicism might be restored and that the three dissolutions
might foreshadow a return to unparliamentary government such as Charles
I had established from 1629 to 1640, also after three dissolutions. The
royal party was at first on the defensive. Their propaganda began with a
proclamation issued on April 8 and ordered to be read in all churches.
In the proclamation the King posed as the champion of law and order
against a disloyal faction trying to overthrow the constitution. It was
read in churches on April 17 and, according to Luttrell's _Brief
Historical Relation_ (I, 77), "in many places was not very pleasing, but
afforded matter of sport to some persons." Among several replies was one
entitled _A Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend_. Clearly
there was need to answer this pamphlet and to state more fully the case
against the Whigs. This task was undertaken by two of the greate