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All these mollifying expressions had no influence with the commons. Every step which they took betrayed the zeal with which they were animated. They voted, that it was the undoubted right of the subject to petition the king for the calling and sitting of parliament. Not content with this decision, which seems justifiable in a mixed monarchy, they fell with the utmost violence on all those abhorrers, who in their addresses to the crown, had expressed their disapprobation of those petitions. They did not reflect, that it was as lawful for one party of men as for another to express their sense of public affairs; and that the best established right may, in particular circumstances, be abused, and even the exercise of it become an object of abhorrence. For this offence they expelled Sir Thomas Withens. They appointed a committee for further inquiry into such members as had been guilty of a like crime, and complaints were lodged against Lord Paston, Sir Robert Malverer, Sir Bryan Stapleton, Taylor, and Turner. They addressed the king against Sir George Jefferies, recorder of London, for his activity in the same cause; and they frightened him into a resignation of his office, in which he was succeeded by Sir George Treby, a great leader of the popular party. They voted an impeachment against North, chief justice of the common pleas, for drawing the proclamation against tumultuous petitions; but upon examination found the proclamation so cautiously worded, that it afforded them no handle against him. A petition had been presented to the king from Taunton. “How dare you deliver me such a paper?” said the king to the person who presented it. “Sir,” replied he, “my name is DARE.” For this saucy reply, but under other pretences, he had been tried, fined, and committed to prison. The commons now addressed the king for his liberty, and for remitting his fine. Some printers also and authors of seditious libels they took under their protection.

Great numbers of the abhorrers, from all parts of England, were seized by order of the commons, and committed to custody. The liberty of the subject, which had been so carefully guarded by the Great Charter, and by the late law of habeas corpus, was every day violated by their arbitrary and capricious commitments. The chief jealousy, it is true, of the English constitution is naturally and justly directed against the crown; nor indeed have the commons any other means of securing their privileges than by commitments, which, as they cannot beforehand be exactly determined by law, must always appear in some degree arbitrary. Sensible of these reasons, the people had hitherto, without murmuring, seen this discretionary power exercised by the house: but as it was now carried to excess, and was abused to serve the purposes of faction, great complaints against it were heard from all quarters. At last, the vigor and courage of one Stowel of Exeter, an abhorrer, put an end to the practice. He refused to obey the serjeant at arms, stood upon his defence, and said that he knew of no law by which they pretended to commit him. The house, finding it equally dangerous to proceed or to recede, got off by an evasion: they inserted in their votes, that Stowel was indisposed, and that a month’s time was allowed him for the recovery of his health.

But the chief violence of the house of commons appeared in all their transactions with regard to the plot, which they prosecuted with the same zeal and the same credulity as their predecessors. They renewed the former vote, which affirmed the reality of the horrid Popish plot; and, in order the more to terrify the people, they even asserted that, notwithstanding the discovery, the plot still subsisted. They expelled Sir Robert Can and Sir Robert Yeomans, who had been complained of for saying, that there was no Popish, but there was a Presbyterian plot. And they greatly lamented the death of Bedloe, whom they called a material witness, and on whose testimony they much depended. He had been seized with a fever at Bristol; had sent for Chief Justice North; confirmed all his former evidence, except that with regard to the duke and the queen; and desired North to apply to the king for some money to relieve him in his necessities. A few days after, he expired; and the whole party triumphed extremely in these circumstances of his death: as if such a testimony could be deemed the affirmation of a dying man; as if his confession of perjury in some instances could assure his veracity in the rest; and as if the perseverance of one profligate could outweigh the last words of so many men, guilty of no crime but that of Popery.

The commons even endeavored, by their countenance and protection, to remove the extreme infamy with which Dangerfield was loaded, and to restore him to the capacity of being an evidence. The whole tribe of informers they applauded and rewarded: Jennison, Turberville, Dugdale, Smith, La Faria, appeared before them; and their testimony, however frivolous or absurd, met with a favorable reception: the king was applied to in their behalf for pensions and pardons: their narratives were printed with that sanction which arose from the approbation of the house: Dr. Tongue was recommended for the first considerable church preferment which should become vacant. Considering men’s determined resolution to believe, instead of admiring that a palpable falsehood should be maintained by witnesses, it may justly appear wonderful, that no better evidence was ever produced against the Catholics.

The principal reasons which still supported the clamor of the Popish plot, were the apprehensions entertained by the people of the duke of York, and the resolution embraced by their leaders of excluding him from the throne. Shaftesbury, and many considerable men of the party, had rendered themselves irreconcilable with him, and could find their safety no way but in his ruin. Monmouth’s friends hoped, that the exclusion of that prince would make way for their patron. The resentment against the duke’s apostasy, the love of liberty, the zeal for religion, the attachment to faction; all these motives incited the country party. And above all, what supported the resolution of adhering to the exclusion, and rejecting all other expedients offered, was the hope, artfully encouraged, that the king would at last be obliged to yield to their demand. His revenues were extremely burdened; and, even if free, could scarcely suffice for the necessary charges of government, much less for that pleasure and expense to which he was inclined. Though he had withdrawn his countenance from Monmouth, he was known secretly to retain a great affection for him. On no occasion had he ever been found to persist obstinately against difficulties and importunity. And as his beloved mistress, the duchess of Portsmouth, had been engaged, either from lucrative views, or the hopes of making the succession fall on her own children, to unite herself with the popular party, this incident was regarded as a favorable prognostic of their success. Sunderland, secretary of state, who had linked his interest with that of the duchess, had concurred in the same measure.

But besides friendship for his brother, and a regard to the right of succession, there were many strong reasons which had determined Charles to persevere in opposing the exclusion. All the royalists and the devotees to the church, that party by which alone monarchy was supported, regarded the right of succession as inviolable; and if abandoned by the king in so capital an article, it was to be feared that they would, in their turn, desert his cause, and deliver him over to the pretensions and usurpations of the country party. The country party, or the whigs, as they were called, if they did not still retain some propensity towards a republic, were at least affected with a violent jealousy of regal power; and it was equally to be dreaded, that being enraged with past opposition, and animated by present success, they would, if they prevailed in this pretension, be willing as well as able to reduce the prerogative within very narrow limits. All menaces therefore, all promises, were in vain employed against the king’s resolution: he never would be prevailed on to desert his friends, and put himself into the hands of his enemies. And having voluntarily made such important concessions, and tendered, over and over again, such strong limitations, he was well pleased to find them rejected by the obstinacy of the commons; and hoped that, after the spirit of opposition had spent itself in fruitless violence, the time would come, when he might safely appeal against his parliament to his people.