The Popish Plot was a fictitious conspiracy concocted by Titus Oates that gripped Great Britain (then governed by the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland) in Anti-Catholic hysteria between 1678 and 1681. Oates alleged that there existed an extensive Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Charles II, accusations that led to the execution of at least 15 men and precipitated the Exclusion Bill Crisis. Eventually Oates' intricate web of accusations fell apart, leading to his arrest and conviction for perjury.
Read more about Popish Plot: Background, Plot, Godfrey Murder, Trial of The Five Catholic Lords, Other Accusations, Long-term Effects of The Plot, Gallery of Playing Cards
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)