The king having demanded a further supply for the navy and other purposes, they revived those duties on wines and vinegar which had once been enjoyed by the late king; and they added some impositions on tobacco and sugar.

This grant amounted on the whole to about six hundred thousand pounds a year.
The house of lords were in a humor no less compliant.

They even went some lengths towards breaking in pieces all the remains of the Popish plot, that once formidable engine[*] of bigotry and faction.
A little before the meeting of parliament, Oates had been tried for perjury on two indictments; one for deposing, that he was present at a consult of Jesuits in London the twenty-fourth of April, 1679; another for deposing, that Father Ireland was in London between the eighth and twelfth of August, and in the beginning of September, in the same year.
Never criminal was convicted on fuller and more undoubted evidence.

Two and twenty persons, who had been students at St.Omers, most of them men of credit and family, gave evidence, that Oates had entered into that seminary about Christmas in the year 1678, and had never been absent but one night till the month of July following.

Forty-seven witnesses, persons also of untainted character, deposed that Father Ireland, on the third of August, 1679, had gone to Staffordshire, where he resided till the middle of September; and, what some years before would have been regarded as a very material circumstance, nine of these witnesses were Protestants of the church of England.