This statement, literally taken, does not stand examination, and Crétineau, who reports it, triumphantly exclaims, that this manner of writing history renders all discussion impossible.[287] No, certainly not; such infernal projects as to drive the king to extremities, and make the king’s head fall for the fulfilment of their designs, if formed, were neither publicly nor secretly discussed at the Court of Rome in the presence of eighteen Jesuits and a lord, and much less was the conclusion they came to, and their approval of the project, put in writing and _freely distributed_: we readily acquit them of such foolish contrivances. But, knowing as we do the arts of the Loyolan brotherhood, we repeat that we firmly believe that it is more than probable that the Jesuits did mix among the Roundheads and excite their fanaticism to frenzy. I have recorded (page 171) an almost similar fact which appeared under our own eyes in Rome. And I must further add, that all the more virulent men who, in the beginning of Pius IX.’s reign, were proposing the most daring and extravagant measures, were afterwards discovered to be either in the pay of the fathers, or to be the unconscious tools of their secret agency. Discouraged a little under Cromwell, the Jesuits took heart again after the restoration of Charles II., and resorted to their usual arts and machinations. If we are to believe what they boast of, it seems that they had plunged into a more dangerous and extensive conspiracy against the Protestant religion and the English liberties than we are aware of. “A secret treaty,” says Crétineau, “had been signed between Louis XIV. and Charles II., to re-establish the Catholic religion in Great Britain. Fathers Annat and Ferrier, successively confessors to the French king, and the English Jesuits, had not been strangers to this negotiation; Colman did not ignore those details, and he spoke of them in his letters to Father Lachaise.”[288] We do not know how far we may credit this assertion; we know that Charles debased himself by asking and receiving money from the French monarch, to whom he betrayed the interests of his allies and of his own kingdom; but, as to having stipulated for the re-establishment of the Romish religion, we would not be bold enough to assert that it was so. However it be, this statement is connected with the famous Popish plot which, in 1678, threw Great Britain into such a state of alarm and excitement, and which, although it was at first the cause of many innocent victims beings sacrificed, ultimately produced an immense and glorious result—the Habeas Corpus Act.