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 the 18th, James wrote to William of Orange that Godfrey's death was already 'laid against the Catholics', and even he, never the most realistic of men, feared that 'all these things happening together will cause a great flame in the Parliament.'" The Lords asked King Charles to banish all Catholics from a radius of 20 miles (32 km) around London, which Charles granted on October 30, 1678, but it was too late because London was already in a panic, which was long remembered as "Godfrey's autumn". Oates seized on Godfrey's murder as proof that the plot was true. The murder