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
A Ballad upon the Popish Plot Santa Barbara, which are part of the James Ludovic Lindsay Crawford collection at the National Library of Scotland, indicate in the subtitle that the author is "a lady of quality." However, the compilers of "The National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Imprints" have identified John Gadbury (1627–1704), an English astrologer, almanac writer, and otherwise prolific author, as the composer of several versions of the ballad held at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. Gadbury, a High Tory and Catholic convert, had been wrongfully imprisoned at the time of the Plot. However, Yale librarian and literary cataloger Donald Wing has attributed the ballad