Danby absconded. The commons passed a bill, appointing him to surrender
himself before a certain day, or, in default of it, attainting him. A
bill had passed the upper house, mitigating the penalty to banishment;
but after some conferences, the peers thought proper to yield to the
violence of the commons, and the bill of attainder was carried. Rather
than undergo such severe penalties, Danby appeared, and was immediately
committed to the Tower.
While a Protestant nobleman met with such violent prosecution, it
was not likely that the Catholics would be overlooked by the zealous
commons. The credit of the Popish plot still stood upon the oaths of a
few infamous witnesses. Though such immense preparations were supposed
to have been made in the very bowels of the kingdom, no traces of them,
after the most rigorous inquiry, had as yet appeared. Though so many
thousands, both abroad and at home, had been engaged in the dreadful
secret, neither hope, nor fear, nor remorse, nor levity, nor suspicions,
nor private resentment, had engaged any one to confirm the evidence.
Though the Catholics, particularly the Jesuits, were represented as
guilty of the utmost indiscretion, insomuch that they talked of the
king's murder as common news, and wrote of it in plain terms by the
common post, yet, among the great number of letters seized, no one
contained any part of so complicated a conspiracy.
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