One thought, one passion alone--terror and hatred of the Catholics--filled the breasts of the new members. Some months before the downfall of Lord Danby a terrible and unparalleled piece of news had overwhelmed the mind of the nation, clouded the strongest judgments, and impelled the most moderate to violence. King Charles, while taking a walk in St. James's Park, received from a certain Captain Kirby, an unknown and insignificant personage, the revelation of a plot stated to have been hatched against his life. The informer, Kirby, referred to Dr. Tonge, an ecclesiastic of the Church of England, and known to some persons of the court. Tonge affirmed the existence of a great Papist conspiracy. Letters were seized; the king and the Duke of York judged them to be forgeries. Tonge produced his principal witness, Titus Oates, son of an Anabaptist preacher, but in holy orders, a chaplain in the navy, thence soon dismissed, a convert to Catholicism, and twice ignominiously expelled from the College of the Jesuits. As audacious as he was corrupt, he maintained with effrontery that his relations with the Jesuits had given him occasion to discover the entire plot; that documents had passed into his hands; the Pope had assigned the government of England to the Jesuits, who were spread over all parts of the three kingdoms in order to labor in the work of the general conversion; the life of the king was threatened, as well as that of all obstinate Protestants; the Fire of London had been the work of the Jesuits; a second fire was preparing for the port of London; all the ships were to be delivered to the flames; the Pope had already named the ministers who were to govern England for him. The good sense of the king, favored by his secret confidence with regard to the Catholics, enabled him at once to reject this monstrous tissue of falsehoods and calumnies. {373} Some persons, however, were mentioned, and public opinion began to be excited. The papers of Coleman, who had been occasionally employed by the Duke of York, were seized at the moment when he was beginning to burn them. Enough remained to furnish evidence, not of a plot properly so called, but of the hopes which the Catholicism of the heir to the throne, as well as the personal inclinations of the king, had engendered in the Church of Rome. "We have a great work in hand," wrote Coleman to Father La Chaise, confessor to Louis XIV.; "it is a question of nothing less than the conversion of the three kingdoms, and perhaps by this means of the destruction of that odious heresy which has so long prevailed over the people of the North. Never have such hopes been able to flourish since the death of our Queen Mary. God has given us a prince who has, by a miracle, become ardently desirous of being the author and the instrument of this glorious enterprise; but we are certain to meet with so many obstacles and so much opposition, that it is important to afford us all the