Christmas pies, and that if he would not become R. C. (Rex Catholicus) he should no longer be C. R. (Charles Rex;) that the Jesuits had been the authors of the great fire in London, and were now concocting a plan for the burning of Westminster, Wapping, and all the ships upon the river; and that, with the full expectation that all these things would be done, the pope had already, by a secret bull, filled up all the bishoprics, and had made appointments to most of the high offices of state. ----- Footnote 14: Dryden’s _Miscellaneous Works_, vol. i. notes, p. 54. 1760. ----- The Privy Council heard these statements of Titus Oates with astonishment. Meanwhile, Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, who had taken Oates’ depositions, suddenly disappeared from his house in Westminster, and was found brutally murdered in a ditch near Primrose Hill. The ghastly body was exhibited to many thousands, who shuddered and wept at the sight of one whom they deemed to be a Protestant martyr. The funeral was attended by an immense procession, having at its head seventy Protestant divines, in full canonicals. The panic spread, and Protestants, of all classes, conformists and non-conformists, royalists and republicans, considered their lives in danger. Titus Oates was summoned before parliament. Lord Stafford and four other Catholic lords were committed to the Tower. Common prisons were crammed with Papists. The House declared “that there hath been, and still is, a damnable and hellish plot, contrived and carried on by the popish recusants, for assassinating the king, for subverting the government, and for destroying the Protestant religion.” Titus Oates was proclaimed the saviour of the nation, and had a pension awarded of £1200 a-year. Charles yielded to the storm of agitation, and Catholics were expelled from their seats in both Houses of Parliament,—seats which were not regained, by their successors, for one hundred and fifty years afterwards, until 1829. Titus Oates went further still, and even accused the Queen of England, at the bar of the House of Commons, of high treason, declaring that he himself had heard her say, “I will no longer suffer such indignities to my bed; I am content to join in procuring his death, and in the propagation of the Catholic faith.” This accusation, however, was allowed to drop; but Stayley, the banker, Father Ireland, the Jesuit, and five other persons, were tried and convicted, and then executed at Tyburn for their complicity with the alleged popish plot.