The purpose of the _Observator_ and its main targets are clearly formulated in _Observator_ No. 1, as well as in the prefatory "To the Reader," which was written in 1683 for the publication of Volume 1 of the collected papers. The "faction" which L'Estrange proposes to reprove consists at first (1681-1682) of Shaftesbury's republican-minded followers and of the perpetrators of the Popish Plot. In his evaluation of the Plot, L'Estrange agrees with some modern historians,[12] for he never doubted that it was a Whig fabrication, an invented cause around which the party members could rally and which neatly veiled the parliamentary power-struggle behind the scenes. Titus Oates is consequently the _Observator's_ _bête noire_, and Andrew Marvell's pamphlet, _The Growth of Popery_, is for L'Estrange the odious origin of the Plot: _Obs._: I do not know Any man throughout the whole Tract of the Controversy that has held a Candle to the Devil with a Better Grace then the Author of that Pamphlet ... that Furnishes so Clear a Light toward the Opening of the Roots, Springs, and Causes of our Late Miserable Disorders, and Confusions.... Prethee let Otes'es Popish Plot, Stand, or Fall, to it's Own Master; provided that Marvels may be Allow'd to be the Elder Brother.... (II, No. 16) Toward the end of 1682, when the Whigs had ceased being an imminent threat to the government and all but one of the Whig newspapers had been silenced, L'Estrange turned his attack against the more moderate Trimmers, as illustrated in _Observator_ III, No. 88. But whether the offensive is against Whigs or Trimmers, Dissenters and advocates of toleration are always in the line of L'Estrange's fire as chief subverters of absolute monarchy and of the Church of England, as is evident in the satire of _Observator_ Nos. 13 and 110. On the eve of the Glorious Revolution, this rigid stand lost him the support of both the Anglican clergy and the universities, support of which he was so proud in his "To the Reader." Finally, _Observator_ No. 1 singles out the Whig press as one of its chief targets. The "Smith" referred to in that first number is Anabaptist Francis "Elephant" Smith, publisher of the outrageous _Mirabilis Annus_ books, the inflammatory pamphlet _Vox Populi_, and the offensive paper _Smith's Protestant Intelligence_; "Harris" is Benjamin Harris, publisher of the Whig paper, _Domestic Intelligence_. These, together with Harry Care (_Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome_ and _Popish Courant_), Richard Janeway (_Impartial Protestant Mercury_), Langley Curtis (_The Protestant Mercury_), and hordes of anti-Royalist authors or publications are habitually quoted or referred to in L'Estrange's counterpropaganda. His untiring countering of Whig publications earned him Nahum Tate's hyperbolic praise in _The Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel_: