ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author had chosen to speak this afternoon on the subject of Catholic Allegiance and the Popish Plot of 1678, a subject which involves the study of some Catholic writers of the Restoration period. The writers with whom he propose to deal are Roger Palmer, Earl of Castlemaine, Dom James Maurus Corker, monk of the English Congregation of the Order of St Benedict, and Fr John Warner, Provincial of the English Province of the Society of Jesus. The Popish Plot persecution could never have occurred had not the Restoration period been one of moral disintegration and decay. The Catholic community, priests and laity alike, who had hitherto lived quietly and peaceably among their fellow countrymen since the Restoration, now found that, owing to the slanders of Oates and his masters, they were regarded as a body capable of treason and murder, to say nothing of perjury.
