A Ballad upon the Popish Plot and region (“From Pulpit to Pot / They talk’d of a Plot” [1.5-6]), as well as the fear invoked in the general population (“frighted with Fire-balls, their heads turned round” [1.4]), but then proposes a rational and just correction of these effects. The majority of the rest of the ballad then lists the occupational types, personal characteristics, and machinations of the participants in the plot. The first is a politician “of Body unsound,” who intends to slander the Pope and the current King, Charles II, until both are forced out of power (2.1, 8). The narrator then describes the personal
Popish Plot result – in the expectation of a second Gunpowder Plot. Anyone even suspected of being Catholic was driven out of London and forbidden to be within ten miles (16 km) of the city. William Staley, a young Catholic banker, made a drunken threat against the King and within 10 days was tried, convicted and executed for plotting to kill him. Oates, for his part, received a state apartment in Whitehall and an annual allowance. He soon presented new allegations, claiming assassins intended to shoot the King with silver bullets so the wound would not heal. The public invented their own