being both informed of their Proceedings against him and his Sufferings did take upon them the Examination of the business and being sufficiently made sensible of his innocency and the wrongs done him did obtain of his Majesty a discharge for him and he hath since his releasement been very instrumental in making farther Discoveries of this present Plot. One more instance I shall give you said Phileroy of another Witness whom God raised to confirm the truth of this Plot one Fitz-Ienny a Gentleman of good Extract and Quality but himself and Family all Petropolitans And though the Principles of that Religion in which he had been educated from his Childhood did ingage him to the Interest of that Party yet he had so much reason and judgment yet left untainted in him as to see into the horrid wickedness of rheir Practices and so designed to leave them and make a Discovery But this was not to be done without the difficulty of losing his Relations who as I said were all Petropolitans besides what advantages as to his Estate he might expect by them Bogland one of the two Priests that were lately executed for conspiring against the Life of the King was his near Kinsman and his Elder Brother a person deeply concerned in the present Plot for which he was after put into the Den of Thieves about the time that this Fitz-Ienny was about to make his Discovery Whereupon the Petropolitans grounded this malicious report of him that he had betrayed and would prosecute his Brother meerly to get the Inheritance of the Estate from him by incapacitating him to enjoy it But the Vanity of this Slander he easily made out by his generous declining all such selfish advantages in that he would not deliver in his Informations till such time as he got a promise from the Lords of the Royal Council to obtain the Kings Pardon for his said Brother His Kinsman Bogland did both at his Trial and at his Death like a true Petropolitan deny a necessary circumstance in the Evidence against him which was material to his Conviction as namely that he was at Londinopolis upon such a day acting in the Design when at the same time he affirmed with solemn Protestations that he was remote off in the Country This Circumstance for a time the Petropolitans did much glory in But this his Kinsman Fitz-Ienny knowing the truth of the matter being called upon to attest the same at the Trial of some other Priests afterwards did honestly declare that he was with the said Bogland at the same time mentioned in the Evidence at Londinopolis by which means the truth of that particular was cleared and the Petropolitans defeated of their design Thus see you Cheats what truth the dying words Of your pretended Martyrs now affords What credit 's to such dying sayings due That live and act so wickedly as you This was the first proof of the integrity of this worthy Confessor after which he proceeded to discover several other of their Practices both at home and abroad as namely that being at Petropolis he heard the Ignatians affirm as a Canon of their Religion that the Grand Viccar had Power to depose Kings and that Princes being by him once excommunicate which in their sense is not only to Vn-christian them but to vn-Vn-king them it is not only a thing lawful but meritorious for their Subjects to kill them And by the way said Phileroy this Doctrine of theirs known to be allowed and approved by them in their most authentique writings may serve to un-riddle that mysterious Salvo so formally used by them in their dying Speeches and by which the over-credulous Vulgar are so easily amused into a persuasion of their Innocency viz. That they are Innocent of any Design or Endeavour to kill the King For according to this Doctrine and in their Petropolitan sense Our King is no King being deprived both of Name and Office by the Iudgment of the Chair But to return to our matter this worthy Fitz-Ienny being more true to his Country and Conscience than regardful of his dearest Interests hath spared neither Friend nor Foe in these his Discoveries A Narrative of which he hath since published to the World and therein informed us how his Kinsman Bogland offered to forgive him a Debt of 20 l. if he would be assisting to them in taking off the King which he absolutely refusing the other then pressed him to acquaint him if he knew of any with some Boglanders Petropolitans that were fit for that devilish purpose Fitz-Ienny then named three to him besides one Fitz-Will an Albonian who were the four Ruffians first approved by Bogland that were after imployed to kill the King at his Pallace in the Country the names of whom particularly he mentioned in his Discovery upon which the Royal Proclamation was afterwards issued out for their seizing It was no small temptation to this worthy Confessor that during this while he was continually attacqued by the most passionate and importunate Letters of his nearest Relations urging him as a Rebel to his own Blood with the necessity of bringing a certain ruine upon his whole family if he went on in his proceedings but these powerful Suada's had so little Influence upon the Constancy of his mind and prevailed no more to reduce him to his former but now abandoned Principles the thing they principally aimed than that they produced the quite contrary effects both to confirm him in his Resolutions and the Consideration thereof together with the Conviction of the now clearly detected Villany of that Party whose profession he had owned did so far prevail with his aged Father that abjuring his own he became a Proselyte to the Christian Religion and farther to make the Triumphs of his Testimony and the truth more illustrious he gained another Convert out of his Fathers Family a Secular Priest and Retainer to it in that Office who by this means was taken from performing Idolatrous Worship in a private Family to the service of more than one Tribe in Israel his King and Country This Person by name Smithus since his Conversion hath gratified the World as an Evidence of his sincerity with some excellent Treatises of his own penning evincing the inconsistency of Petropolitan Principles with the Peace and Security of States and Kingdoms a thing said Phileroy which if Christian Princes were sufficiently sensible of they would no more suffer any of that viperous brood to harbour within their Dominions than they would known Traitors and Murtherers to dwell within their Pallaces Besides having in those Treatises exposed their Villanies in this present Design according to those Principles he hath justified the Honour and Justice of the Albonian Tribunals in their procedures against the Plotters and also vindicated the Testimony of Fitz-Ienny particularly by manifest Demonstration of passages relating to it whereof he himself had been an ocular Witness And now you Petropolitans dare you vie The Glories of a cursed Obstinacy In dying
THE PLOT in a DREAM OR THE DISCOVERER IN Masquerade IN A Succinct Discourse and Narrative of the late and present Designs of the Papists against the King and Government Illustrated with Copper Plates By PHILOPATRIS Fictae Religioni ficta decent LONDON Printed by T. Snowden for John Hancock and Enoch Prosser and are to be sold at their Shops at the Three Bibles next Popes-Head Alley over against the Royal Exchange in Cornhil and at the Rose and Crown in Swethings Alley at the East end of the Royal Exchange in Cornhil 1681. THE BOOKSELLER TO THE READER Courteous Reader THe ingenious Author wants neither Wit nor Eloquence to recommend this delightful Mirror of the Popish Plot to thy acceptance but his great humility restrains him from doing that Justice to himself and kindness to me Yet rather then so fair a Birth should perish in the bringing forth so curious a Work lie by for want of a few good words I resolved to say somewhat my self and not onely for the Authors praise but a little for my own profit I know what hath been said in some Prefaces of the bottomless deserts of some Writings to deceive the Credulous World And it is easie to say more in a Page than you shall find true in a volume But my design is not to swell this Book or thine expectation by a prolix and undeserved Encomium My purpose is only to bespeak thy Faith as the Author I doubt not hath pleased nor a damnable black and bloudy Plot against our King Laws Lives and Religion more fully discovered and fairly represented than you do in this Vision To conclude If thine eyes be shut this Vision will open them if open it will delight them What thou seest in it or by it intended but defeated designed but discovered let it excite thy praises to that God whose All-seeing eye beholds and whose infinite power and wisdom bounds the Rage and baffles the Counsels of these wicked Achitophels Neither do thou cease to pray that the same Jehovah would evermore mightily defend our Gracious Sovereign this great and populous City the whole Kingdom and all the Churches of God both at home and abroad from Hells Rage and Romes Religion till Christ shall come in glory to judge that Scarlet Whore and give us and all his Saints a clearer Vision of that Mystery of Iniquity than the World ever had or shall have till that day Farewel To the Ingenious Dreamer T Is well when others with their waking Wit Won't see a Plot that Dreams discover it When our grave Narratives grow out of date You lend brisk Faâ—sie to perpetuate Its Memory Pray take the other Nap And dream who would our Phileroy intrap What yet I saw is but the midnight Theam But hope ere long to see a Morning Dream That will reveal not onely what is past But what conclusion they 'l come to at last Servile Applauses to no man I owe Yet on your Dream my Verdict I le bestow More Truth nor better Sense no Dreamer spake But Sir you dream as if you were awake Your unknown Friend T. D Ad Authorem Epigramma Heu quam grande nefas haec dira insomnia narrant Ni fallor verè somniat hic vigilans T. D. THE PLOT in a DREAM OR The Discoverer in Masquerade CHAP. I. The Author in a Vision travelling over the Petropolitan Countries arrives at Strombolo the supposed place of Purgatory in company with some Petropolitan Travellers There they met with an Apparition talking to it self about the present Plot A pleasant passage of the fright the Petropolitans were put into by the Apparition and their flight upon it The Apparition proves to be Phileroy the Discoverer of the Plot and an acquaintance of the Author's upon renewing their acquaintance Phileroy discourses with him concerning the Plot and of his end in coming thither which was to attend a Consult there holden by the Great Bishop and his Emissaries about carrying on their Designs against Albonia Their arrival at the place of the Consult A description of the place The Author placed on Phileroy's Apartment where incognito he takes his Observations BEing naturally delighted in reading of Forein Peregrinations and Observations of the different Manners and Customs of strange Countries I was one night musing upon such Subjects till sleep the Ape of Reason had dispossest me of my considering faculty and turn'd it wholly into Imagination and Fancy by the force of which on the sudden I was carried into the Hysperian Countries where having staid a small time to remarque some most noted Observables of that Catholick Region me-thoughts I approacht towards the Sea-coast and finding a Vessel ready did having agreed for hire therein imbarque my self for Italy the principal of the Petropolitan Countries and thence to return again to Christendom having past the Fretum Gaditanum and entred into the Levant we were by force of Winds carried to the utmost parts of Italy amongst the burning Islands the chiefest of which is Strombolo commonly affirmed by the Petropolitans of those Countries to be the Jaws of Hell and that therein the damned souls are tormented here notwithstanding the frightfulness of such Reports we were forced to put in for a Refuge against the Storm and having landed our selves at the foot of that burning Mountain I and some of our Company had a mind to ascend it to see the curiosities of that feigned Incendium We had by leisurely and winding Ascents arrived to near three parts of the way when in a solitary by-way amongst a queach of bushes we discovered something in the shape of a black man softly moving before us I and my company were I must confess somewhat startled and surprized to see any thing like humane in that desolate and uninhabited Region and therefore concluded it must be some Devil or other that was sent out as a Scout to surprize such unwary passengers as our selves or else some poor Purgatory Soul that by the power of Masses had got leave to cool himself in the open Air My Company were at the point of turning back again in a fright but I persuaded them against it telling them if it were the Devil it were more safe to resist him than to fly whereupon they all besides my self being Petropolitans began to cross themselves a main to rattle their Beads and to mutter over their Ave Maries at such a rate that for my part though I could not forbear smiling at their folly yet I was more afraid of such their ridiculous incantations than of the supposed Devil The best on 't was all this while his back was towards us and his posture rather standing than progressive taking his steps so leisurely as if some weighty notions in his head had retarded the motion of his heels By this means we hop'd to avoid his sight of us and proceeded forward when on the sudden we heard him who had hitherto kept silence break out into these expressions which he utter'd with
Murther and swore it against him whereupon he was by Order committed to the Den of Thieves but the next day made a Discovery of the Design and the Persons concerned in it who were thereupon taken into Custody Yet although the Petropolitans had prevailed so far with him as to deny what he had said the Impulses of his own Conscience besides the promise of a Pardon and Reward to any that should make a Discovery of it by the Kings Proclamation obliged him to assert the truth of his first Information which he hath since published to the World and therein gave an account how that after they had strangled Sir Edmond as I before told you they conveyed him into the Pallace where they kept him shifting the Body out of one Room into another for the more privacy for two or three dayes till they had an opportunity to remove him to the place where they designed to leave him The Evening that they designed to remove him having got the Souldiers that attended at the Court Gates out of the way at a drinking match that they had provided for them they had hired a Sedan into which they put the murthered Body and two of them carrying it out of Town late at night when few people were stirring at the Towns end they set the Body upon an horse with which one of them was there ready and with two or three more of their Confederates that walked a foot by them they carried him in that manner that you saw him in your Vision to the place where he was afterwards discovered as I have told you This Witness hath discovered the Ruffians ingaged in this Murther the principal of whom being Vernatti is since fled as also two other Priests concerned in it but three of them that were actual instruments in the Murther one of them being the Porter at the Court Gates and two others that were there Servants to the Royal Consort have since been taken into Custody and at the Petition of the Great Senate a Court of Iustice summoned by the King before whom they have been tried and by many undeniable proofs brought against them by the aforesaid Witness and others that came in against them they were legally convicted and condemned and have since received the just reward of their horrid and unparallel'd Villany at the Tiburnian Trident. The Body of this martyred Worthy attended by the Magistrates of the City and many of the Nobility and Gentry in a numerous company was carried to one of the principal Churches in the West parts of the City where after an elegant Oration made upon the Occasion by an eminent Prelate of the Albonian Church it was with many Tears and Lamentations afterwards decently interred An Honest Worthy Loyal Magistrate Who was the Proto-Martyr for the State His Death preserved our Lives by pointing out The curs'd Designs the Papists were about The Justice as an Enemy to their Cause Must dye could they as well have kill'd the Laws Oh happy Rome how would the Devils Brats Insult and we no Laws nor Magistrates To punish them The Sword of Justice yet Is keen and we have men to manage it And maugre all the Plots they have devis'd All are not Godfrey'd yet nor Arnoldis'd His Name shall live and we shall live to see Their Plots to end in their own Tragedie The murther of this Loyal Gentleman gave so great a light to the Discovery of the Petropolitan Designs that the Great Senate of the Nation being now met together were pleased to take notice of it and after having examined me and some other Evidences that were summoned in upon the particulars of the Plot they came to this unanimous Resolution which was recorded in their Iournals That there has been and is a damnable and hellish Plot contrived and carryed on by the Popish Recusants for assassinating and murthering the King and for subverting the Government and destroying the Protestant Religion by Law established This being made matter of Record by one of the three grand Estates of the Kingdom is a sufficient Confirmation to all the World of the reality of the Petropolitans Design against us But said Phileroy my Narrative having wasted time I must be now obliged to return to my Company and leave the rest to the next Convenience we shall have of meeting So for this time we brake up our Conference and going back to the Company we had left in the other room we took a glass or two with them and then friendly parted It was not long after this meeting that I was by the Impulse and Extasie of these Visions transported to a solitary place not far from the City but near adjoyning to the Tiburnian Trident become now sacred in the Eyes of the Petropolitans by the Martyrdom of their Confederates where I discovered a tall Person halting and limping along in a strange untoward posture and now and then reeling as if he were falling to the ground I imagined that something extraordinary was the cause of his disorderly motions and that he was either drunk or troubled with some kind of Epileptick fits to be resolved of which and out of Compassion to his Condition I drew towards him but going to take hold of him he flew from me like the Wind and I took hold of nothing whereupon I concluded he was a Spirit but being now my self an extasied Person I dreaded no apparitions but pursued the Spectrum for a better acquaintance Upon my next View of him he began to make an hellish noise that scarred me ten times more than the sight of him and withal his Tongue hanging out of his Mouth swelled and of a loathsom black colour I saw him snapping it betwixt his Teeth in a most cruel manner so that the blood seemed to run about his Jaws and sometimes with one of his hands he seemed to tear and scratch the other in the like unmerciful manner his actions appeared to me a strange kind of selfe-revenge such like as the Petropolitans use to inflict upon themselves in way of Pennance but for what cause or to what purpose I know not wherefore to be resolved I asked him two or three Questions which as soon as he could get his mortified Tongue into his mouth he civilly answered me First I demanded what he he was He told me he could not tell but asked me what I was for he never saw any thing like an humane creature since he came out of the other World Why what World said I do you think we are in now I know not replyed he but it is a strange World to me having lost my friends company estate hopes nay and my body too all in an instant your body man said I why what Body have you now or have you any at all I cannot tell replyed he what I am or where I am whatever form I appear in to you you need not fear me for I assure you I can neither bite nor scratch having left my body lately at
which last part of the Sentence was presently after executed upon him in the presence of thousands of People who were not any of them so commiserate of his Sufferings as to pity him but on the contrary were so enraged that had it not been for a strong Guard placed about him to keep them off he had certainly perished by their fury No better fare all those That once declare themselves the Peoples Foes The Law keeps Bounds but the unbounded Crue Think what they can inflict on such is due The latter part of his Sentence as to Fine and Imprisonment after he had continued some little time indurance was by I know not what sinister means remitted and he freed Here I may not omit to acquaint you with another Design of theirs against Captain Lobed acted by the Grand Cashier himself with whom the Captain having some business about getting in of moneys which he was to receive out of his Office the Cashier knowing who he was began to sift or rather to trappan him with questions as Whether he was not hired by some Christian Lords to give evidence against the Petropolitans Which he denying as well he might the other then began to trie him another way by promises of great Preferments and Rewards to corrupt him to fail in his Evidence But this neither being taken at last he proceeds the Devils usual method to Menaces threatning That if he would not serve them at home a Vessel was ready which should transport him far enough from doing any service against them The effect of this threatning Captain Lobed soon after found though not in specie the Grand Cashier maliciously misrepresenting him to the King so that the Guards that were allowed him for his Protection were now set over him as Spies of which discouragement Lobed gave an account to the King who graciously took the same into consideration and ordered a remedy Many good Services said Phileroy notwithstanding all these discouragements did this worthy Captain Lobed perform in the discovery of this Plot and would have done more had not Death prevented him by cutting him off in the midst of his days and of our hopes in the Wesâ— parts of Albonia a thing which the Petropolitans at first rejoiced at but with little reason as afterwards appeared when they understood that by his dying attestations of a thousand times more credit than any of their treasonable Martyrs he did before an eminent Judge of Albonia and one of the Royal Council upon Oath assert the truth of all that ever he deposed against the Petropolitans in relation to the present Plot and at the same time his loyal Spirits then expiring were passionately affected with the resentments he had of the danger he should leave the King in by the means of this cursed Conspiracy with hearty Prayers to God to protect him against it But to proceed with my Narrative There was one other of the Witnesses or Discoverers that came not off so happily with them as I and Captain Lobed did one Darever a Gentleman by Birth a Scote-britain who being in Franconia at the time when our Noble Cambrian Duke the Flower of Chivalry at this day commanded the Albonian Forces that were sent over to assist that King in his Wars The said Darever was imployed as Agent for the Albonian Militia at the Franconian Court and at the same time getting an acquaintance with an Albonian Lady a zealous Votary of the Petropolitan Religion she acquainted him with the present designs of introducing Petropolitanism into Albonia and of making the great Albonian Duke King of that Country upon taking off our present Sovereign whom God preserve And hereupon engaged him by his Interest to introduce one Peter titular Arch Bishop of Lâ—â—dub in Bogland to the Franconian King which he did Peter presenting him with a Letter and other Papers had private conference with him for half an hour The substance of which Peter afterwards told him was to propose ways to the Franconian Prince to relieve the persecuted as he called them Petropolitans in Albonia but more especially in Bogland by undertaking their Protection furnishing them with Arms and securing one of their principal Ports for his own use Darever being now acquainted with their treasonable Designs to which before he was a Stranger discovered the same to an Albonian Knight then at the Court for his assistance to communicate it to the King of Albonia but he revealing the matter to a Brother of the titular Bishops a Petropolitan and Colonel in the Army and of Darevers intention to discover it at his return to Albonia the Colonel and his Party hereupon threatned him that if he ever attempted such a thing he should be certainly committed to the Great Tower at Londinopolis or some other Prison by their Procurement Notwithstanding the Loyal Gentleman though with much difficulty escaping their revengeful hands got safe into Albonia where he intended to acquaint the Cambrian Duke who is esteemed a great Enemy to the Petropolitans and was now likewise returned from Franconia with this Design but before he could get an opportunity to speak with him the Petropolitans had made their interest at Court against him whereupon being had up before one of the Royal Secretaries he was without any Examination or proof of any crime against him sent to the Great Tower where after some Moneths stay he was examined by the Lieutenant of that place to whom he discovered what he intended to have said to the Cambrian Duke concerning this Design But this was so little satisfactory to the Lieutenant how prepossest or how much a Friend to the Petropolitans I know not that he charged Darever himself with a Design against the said Duke and threatned to torture him if he did not confess it This was and is one Artifice of the Petropolitans by their powerful interests to gain so firm a possession of credit in persons perhaps otherwise unbyassed as the defence of an Innocent person whose Interest shall not bear weight with theirs shall not be able to remove it Most mighty Slander one said well What is it thou canst not do Canst change the place of Heaven for Hell And make a Friend a Foe A Foe to Treason make a Malefactor And the Discoverer himself the Actor Under this suspicion yet unproved of an Enemy to the State and the same suspition kept warm by the interest of his malicious Adversaries this poor Gentleman was continued a Prisoner in a dark and uncouth Dungeon within the Tower a place assigned onely for the worst of Malefactors for the space of four years in which time as it is Romanced of St. George in his seven years Imprisonment in the Persian Court he became so savage in his looks overgrown with hair and mean in apparel that they that were acquainted with him before could now hardly know him But from these miseries he was at last released by the happy Convention of the Albonian Senate The two Grand Estates thereof