But the utter impossibility of accounting, by any other hypothesis, for those strange measures embraced by the court, as well as for the numerous circumstances which accompanied them, obliges us to acknowledge, (though there remains no direct evidence of it,[*]) that a formal plan was laid for changing the religion, and subverting the constitution of England; and that the king and the ministry were in reality conspirators against the people.

What is most probable in human affairs, is not always true and a very minute circumstance overlooked in our speculations, serves often to explain events which may seem the most surprising and unaccountable.
* Since the publication of this History, the author has had occasion to see the most direct and positive evidence of this conspiracy.

From the urbanity and candor of the principal of the Scotch college at Paris, he was admitted to peruse James II.'s Memoirs, kept there.

They amount to several volumes of small folio, all writ with that prince's own hand, and comprehending the remarkable incidents of his life, from his early youth till near the time of his death.
His account of the French alliance is as follows: The intention of the king and duke was chiefly to change the religion of England, which they deemed an easy undertaking, because of the great propensity, as they imagined, of the cavaliers and church party to Popery: the treaty with Lewis was concluded at Versailles in the end of 1669, or beginning of 1670, by Lord Arundel of Wardour, whom no historian mentions as having had any hand in these transactions.

The purport of it was, that Lewis was to give Charles two hundred thousand pounds a year in quarterly payments, in order to enable him to settle the Catholic religion in England; and he was also to supply him with an army of six thousand men, in case of any insurrection.