But it appears that his wife had some connections with Mrs.Wall, the favorite maid of the duchess of Portsmouth; and Fitzharris hoped, if he persisted in a story agreeable to the court, that some favor might, on that account, be shown to his family.
It is amusing to reflect on the several lights in which this story has been represented by the opposite factions.

The country party affirmed, that Fitzharris had been employed by the court, in order to throw the odium of the libel on the exclusionists, and thereby give rise to a Protestant plot: the court party maintained, that the exclusionists had found out Fitzharris, a spy of the ministers, and had set him upon this undertaking, from an intention of loading the court with the imputation of such a design upon the exclusionists.

Rather than acquit their antagonists, both sides were willing to adopt an account the most intricate and incredible.

It was a strange situation in which the people at this time were placed; to be every day tortured with these perplexed stories, and inflamed with such dark suspicions against their fellow-citizens.

This was no less than the fifteenth false plot, or sham plot, as they were then called, with which the court, it was imagined, had endeavored to load their adversaries.[*] * College's trial.
The country party had intended to make use of Fitzharris's evidence against the duke and the Catholics; and his execution was therefore a great mortification to them.