The plot, as Oates invented and detailed it, was on the most magnificent scale imaginable. The pope himself was at the head of it. The pope, he said, had laid the subject before a society of learned theologians at Rome, and they had decided that in such a case as that of England, where the sovereign and a majority of the people had renounced the true religion, and given themselves up to avowed and open heresy, the monarch lost all title to his crown, and the realms thus fallen from the faith lapsed to the pope, and were to be reclaimed by him by any mode which it seemed to him expedient to adopt. Under these circumstances, the pope had assumed the sovereignty over England, and had commissioned the society of the Jesuits--a very powerful religious society, extending over most of the countries of Europe--to take possession of the realm; that, in the prosecution of this plan, the king was to be assassinated, and that a very large sum of money had been raised and set apart, to be paid to any person who would kill the king; that an offer of ten thousand pounds had been made to the queen's physician if he would poison him. The physician had insisted upon fifteen thousand for so great a service, and this demand had finally been acceded to; and five thousand had actually been paid him in advance. Besides the murder of the king, a general assassination of the Protestants was to take place. There were twenty thousand Catholics in London, for instance, who, according to Oates's account of the plan, were to rise on a preconcerted night, and each one was to kill five Protestants, which it was thought they could easily do, as the Protestants would be taken wholly by surprise, and would be unarmed. The revolution being thus effected, the crown was to be offered to Charles's brother, the Duke of York, as a gift from the pope, and, if he should refuse to accept it on such conditions as the pope might see fit to impose, he was himself to be immediately assassinated, and some other disposal to be made of the kingdom. Oates was examined before the council very closely, and he contradicted himself so much, and made so many misstatements about absent persons, and the places where he pretended that certain transactions had taken place, as to prove the falseness of his whole story. The public, however, knew little or thought little of these proofs. They hated the Catholics, and were eager to believe and to circulate any thing which tended to excite the public mind against them. The most extravagant stories were accordingly circulated, and most excessive and universal fears prevailed, increasing continually by the influence of mutual action and reaction, and of sympathy, until the whole country was in a state of terror. A circumstance now occurred which added tenfold to the excitement, and produced, in fact, a general consternation.