in the whole reign. Louis revenged himself by intriguing
with the Opposition and by turning his streams of gold in that
direction, and a further treaty with France for the annual payment to
Charles of L300,000 and the dismissal of his parliament, concluded on
the 17th of May 1678, was not executed. Louis made peace with Holland
at Nijmwegen on the 10th of August, and punished Danby by disclosing
his secret negotiations, thus causing the minister's fall and
impeachment. To save Danby Charles now prorogued the parliament on the
30th of December, dissolving it on the 24th of January 1679.

Meanwhile the "Popish Plot," the creation of a band of impostors
encouraged by Shaftesbury and the most violent and unscrupulous of the
extreme Protestant party in order to exclude James from the throne, had
thrown the whole country into a panic. Charles's conduct in this
conjuncture was highly characteristic and was marked by his usual
cynical selfishness. He carefully refrained from incurring suspicion and
unpopularity by opposing the general outcry, and though he saw through
the imposture from the beginning he made no attempt to moderate the
popular frenzy or to save the life of any of the victims, his
co-religionists, not even intervening in the case of Lord Stafford, and
allowing Titus Oates to be lodged at Whitehall with a pension. His
policy was to take advantage of the violence of the faction, to "give
them line enough," to use his own words, to encourage it rather than
repress it, with the expectation of procuring finally a strong royalist
reaction. In his resistance to the great movement for the exclusion of
James from the succession, Charles was aided by moderate men such as
Halifax, who desired only a restriction of James's powers, and still
more by the violence of the extreme exclusionists themselves, who headed
by Shaftesbury brought about their own downfall and that of their cause
by their support of the legitimacy and claims of Charles's natural son,
the duke of Monmouth. In 1679 Charles denied, in council, his supposed
marriage with Lucy Walter, Monmouth's mother, his declarations being
published in 1680 to refute the legend of the black box which was
supposed to contain the contract of marriage, and told Burnet he would
rather see him hanged than legitimize him. He deprived him of his
general's commission in consequence of his quasi-royal progresses about
the country, and in December on Monmouth's return to England he wa