Note 9 — Chapter I

Lord Keeper North “was of opinion that the fiction of the Popish Plot did not arise from the accident of Tongue’s and Oates’ informations, but from a preconcerted design.” The reasons are given in a MS. of North’s, printed in Dalrymple’s Memoirs, ii. app. 320. That the plot was invented by Shaftesbury there seems no sufficient ground for believing. See Campbell’s Lives of Lord Chancellors, iv. 197.