Rye House Plot of the degree to which details of the conspiracy were finalised. Whatever the state of the assassination plot, plans to mount a rebellion against the Stuart monarchy were being entertained by some opposition leaders in England, and the government cracked down hard on those in a series of state trials, accompanied with repressive measures and widespread searches for arms. The Plot presaged, and may have hastened, the rebellions of 1685, the Monmouth Rebellion and Argyll's Rising. After the Restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in 1660 there was concern among some members of Parliament, former republicans and sections of
Popish Plot there might be a plot of some sort (otherwise, Kenyon argues, he would not have given these two very obscure men a private audience). Charles told Kirkby to present Tonge to Thomas Osborne, Lord Danby, Lord High Treasurer, then the most influential of the King's ministers. Tonge then lied to Danby, saying that he had found the manuscript but did not know the author. As Kenyon points out, the government took seriously even the remotest threat to the King's life or well-being – in the previous spring a Newcastle housewife had been investigated by the Secretary of State simply for