said sketches its essence. Oates was not after all aiming shafts entirely at random. During his stay in the Jesuit seminaries in Spain and Flanders he must have obtained an inkling of what was in the air, and proceeded to act upon the information to his best advantage. That the whole truth had little resemblance to his tale of fire and massacre is certain, but the tale was not wholly devoid of truth. His vast superstructure of lies was not without a slight basis of solid fact. This conclusion can in some degree be supported from other sources. Any attempt to reconstruct the part played by the Catholic reformation in the years preceding the appearance of Oates must be chiefly conjectural. Scarcely any evidence on the subject is known, but what more comes to hand points in the same direction. In December 1680, as he lay in the Tower under sentence for high treason, Lord Stafford sent a message by Dr. Burnet and the Earl of Carlisle to the House of Lords that he would confess all he knew of the Catholic intrigues. He was admitted to speak from the bar of the House. Unfortunately his statement does not refer at all to the later years of the movement, for when he came to describe the project debated between Shaftesbury and the Duke of York for a coalition between the Catholic and country parties to obtain a dissolution of Parliament and general toleration, Stafford was stopped hastily at the mention of the great Whig leader’s name. To a few more questions put he simply answered no, and was presently sent back to the Tower. Cut short as it was, his account is of some value. He admitted that he had endeavoured to alter the established faith, and gave some details of the meeting held early in Charles II’s reign at the Earl of Bristol’s house to discuss the oath of allegiance. He had always disapproved the policy of the declarations of indulgence, and marked them as causes of the downfall of his religion. At one time he almost decided to leave England and live beyond sea. Others however were not of his opinion. The Papists and Jesuits had been far too open in their conduct, he said, and he had even seen a priest in the House of Lords standing below the bar. All his fellow peers, excepting the Earl of Bristol, were in favour of toleration for the Catholics. There was even talk of a restitution of the church lands, but Stafford warned the Duke of York that they were in so many hands as to render any attempt of the kind impracticable.[105] All this does not amount to much; nevertheless it shows a drift in one direction. Other straws are floated down the same stream. In the summer of 1678, when it was doubtful whether or no England would declare war on Louis XIV, Catholics in Ireland were discussing the chances in that event of a rebellion in their country aided by France. Calculations were made on the strength of the French navy, and there was talk of a rising in Scotland as well.[106] There