Popish Plot and led to conflict with parliament during the 1670s. In December 1677 an anonymous pamphlet (possibly by Andrew Marvell) spread alarm in London by suggesting that the Pope planned to change the lawful government of England. The fictitious Popish Plot unfolded in a very peculiar fashion. Oates and Israel Tonge, a fanatically anti-Catholic clergyman (who was widely believed to be insane), had written a large manuscript that accused the Catholic Church authorities of approving the assassination of Charles II. The Jesuits in England were to carry out the task. The manuscript also named nearly 100 Jesuits and their supporters who
Popish Plot Yorkshire, (the "Barnbow Plot"), where prominent local Catholics like Sir Thomas Gascoigne, 2nd Baronet, were accused of signing "the Bloody Oath of Secrecy" ended in failure as their Protestant neighbours who sat on the juries refused to convict them. The judges gradually began to take a more impartial line, ruling that it was not treason for a Catholic to advocate the conversion of England to the old faith, nor to give financial support to religious houses (although the latter was a criminal offence). The Plot gained some credence in Ireland, where the two Catholic Archbishops, Plunkett and Talbot were the