Defoe was brought before the Lords Justices, and committed for trial.
He was liberated, however, on bail, and in spite of what he says about his resolution not to meddle on either side, made an energetic use of his liberty.

He wrote _The Secret History of One Year_--the year after William's accession--vindicating the King's clemency towards the abettors of the arbitrary government of James, and explaining that he was compelled to employ many of them by the rapacious scrambling of his own adherents for places and pensions.

The indirect bearing of this tract is obvious.

In October three pamphlets came from Defoe's fertile pen; an _Advice to the People of England_ to lay aside feuds and faction, and live together under the new King like good Christians; and two parts, in quick succession, of a _Secret History of the White Staff_.

This last work was an account of the circumstances under which the Treasurer's White Staff was taken from the Earl of Oxford, and put his conduct in a favourable light, exonerating him from the suspicion of Jacobitism, and affirming--not quite accurately, as other accounts of the transaction seem to imply--that it was by Harley's advice that the Staff was committed to the Earl of Shrewsbury.