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 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