The consequence was that the public, which rarely discriminates nicely, could not, at that moment, be easily brought to believe in the reality of any Jacobite conspiracy.
That Fuller's plot is less celebrated than the Popish plot is rather the fault of the historians than of Fuller, who did all that man could do to secure an eminent place among villains.

Every person well read in history must have observed that depravity has its temporary modes, which come in and go out like modes of dress and upholstery.

It may be doubted whether, in our country, any man ever before the year 1678 invented and related on oath a circumstantial history, altogether fictitious, of a treasonable plot, for the purpose of making himself important by destroying men who had given him no provocation.

But in the year 1678 this execrable crime became the fashion, and continued to be so during the twenty years which followed.

Preachers designated it as our peculiar national sin, and prophesied that it would draw on us some awful national judgment.