ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the reportage of fires and arson accusations during the Popish Plot within the context of a ‘moral panic’ that played, at least initially, into the hands of the political opposition. Arson prosecutions doubled as attacks on royal guardsmen, Catholic military officers and troops stationed abroad, while rumours and speculation about the causes of fires served to redefine the Plot from a conspiracy to assassinate the king to an arson plot against parliament and the London metropolis. However, this study qualifies the traditional assumption that Plot testimony was scripted, even suborned, by Whig politicians and propagandists: arson accusations were often opportunistic and incoherent and fire reportage began to bifurcate into competing narratives even before the Tory reaction gained momentum after about 1681.
