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
A Ballad upon the Popish Plot as records or descriptions of significant past political events but also because they give readers access to the subjective quality of the lives of that era's common people. As Joseph Woodfall Ebsworth, the editor and annotator of the second division of the published Bagford Ballad collection, evocatively phrases it: "Here, if we choose to pay attention, are clearly written the contemporary records of how men [and women] felt and spoke during the mad excitement, the servile terror, and the ferocious hatred of the days when clamours echoed against the so-called 'Popish Plot'" ("viii"). By giving readers access to the inner