Note 32 — Chapter XXXIX · DANBY'S ADMINISTRATION AND THE THREE SHORT PARLIAMENTS. 1675-1681

10. Growing Excitement. 1678.—Oates's depositions were taken before a Middlesex magistrate, Sir Edmond Berry Godfrey. Not long afterwards Godfrey was found murdered in the fields near Primrose Hill. All London was wild with excitement. It was widely believed that 'the Papists' had murdered him to punish him for listening to Oates. It was also held to be an undoubted truth that 'the Papists' were about to set fire to London, and to murder all good Protestants. A joiner named College made his fortune by inventing a pocket flail, tipped with lead, which was called the Protestant flail, and was to be used by sober citizens to brain 'Popish' assassins. When Parliament met on October 21 Shaftesbury, who had been liberated early in the year, unscrupulously encouraged belief in the supposed plot. Up to that time Catholic peers had kept their seats in the House of Lords, and a few Catholics had surreptitiously sat in the Commons. A new Test Act was now passed by which they were excluded[32] from both Houses, though the Duke of York was exempted by name from its operation. Five Catholic peers were thrown into the Tower, and Coleman, the secretary of the Duchess of York, who had in his custody papers implying that James had a design for forwarding the interests of his religion, was tried and executed.