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 it in the press. The narrator ends with a “Prayer” against the plotters and for the providence and safety of the current King, and with the hope that the participants will be executed at Tyburn, a village in Middlesex County well known for capital punishment of London criminals and martyrs. The ballad is one of several that describe the “Popish Plot” in England and Scotland between 1678 and 1681, and the print publication of the ballad is tentatively dated from 1678 or 1679. All versions of this ballad held at the English Broadside Ballad Archive at the University of California,