From this disposition of men's minds we are to account for the progress of the Popish plot, and the credit given to it; an event which would otherwise appear prodigious and altogether inexplicable.
On the twelfth of August, one Kirby, a chemist, accosted the king as he was walking in the park.

"Sir," said he, "keep within the company: your enemies have a design upon your life; and you may be shot in this very walk." Being asked the reason of these strange speeches, he said, that two men, called Grove and Pickering, had engaged to shoot the king, and Sir George Wakeman, the queen's physician, to poison him.

This intelligence, he added, had been communicated to him by Dr.Tongue, whom, if permitted, he would introduce to his majesty.

Tongue was a divine of the church of England; a man active, restless, full of projects, void of understanding.

He brought papers to the king, which contained information of a plot, and were digested into forty-three articles.