Popish Plot Popish Plot The Popish Plot was a fictitious conspiracy concocted by Titus Oates that between 1678 and 1681 gripped the Kingdoms of England and Scotland in anti-Catholic hysteria. Oates alleged that there was an extensive Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Charles II, accusations that led to the executions of at least 22 men and precipitated the Exclusion Bill Crisis. Eventually Oates's intricate web of accusations fell apart, leading to his arrest and conviction for perjury. The fictitious Popish Plot must be understood against the background of the English Reformation and the subsequent development of a strong anti-Catholic sentiment among the mostly
A True Narrative of the Horrid Hellish Popish-Plot into Londoners' homes disguised as drivers of goods vehicles, porters, chimney-sweeps, or coal sellers and then sabotaging the homes. The narrator then tells how there was a meeting between the conspirators in April at a place called the White Horse. The English Broadside Ballad Archive at the University of California, Santa Barbara holds three seventeenth-century broadside ballad versions of this tale: two copies in the Huntington Library's "miscellaneous" collection (both numbered 183923) and another in the Crawford collection at the National Library of Scotland. All three of these documents contain cartoon illustrations. A True Narrative of the Horrid Hellish Popish-Plot