kingdom. At the beginning of 1674 Plunket thought it prudent to hide, and to write in the name of Thomas Cox. One Sunday in January, after vespers, he travelled through snow and hail to the house of a country gentleman whose reduced circumstances left him little to fear from the recusancy laws. After some months the persecution slackened, and on 23 Sept. he ventured to write officially in his own name to his archiepiscopal brother of Tuam, but the letter is addressed to ‘Mr. James Lynch.’ Archbishop Lynch was himself driven into exile, but Plunket was well thought of in high official quarters, and was not seriously molested (Memoir, p. 207). When Ormonde succeeded Essex as viceroy in 1677, there was for a while little change in Plunket's position. Titus Oates made his first depositions respecting the ‘Popish Plot’ in September 1678, and in October Archbishop Talbot, who had been allowed to return to Ireland, was in consequence consigned to the prison where he died. In November Plunket went to Dublin to attend the deathbed of his old master and namesake, the bishop of Meath, and on 6 Dec. he was committed to the castle.
Plunket was kept for about six weeks in the castle in solitary confinement, but nothing appeared against him, and the rule was soon relaxed. MacMoyer and his fellow-perjurers, who accused Plunket of sharing in the Irish branch of the ‘Popish Plot,’ went over to England, and carefully rehearsed their part, returning to Ireland with instructions from the politicians who managed the plot. Special orders were sent that the prisoner should be tried by an exclusively protestant jury. Ormonde had the venue laid at Dundalk at the July assizes, 1680. This was in Plunket's own diocese, where he and his accusers were equally well known, and the result was that no witnesses were forthcoming. The trial was necessarily postponed, and in October orders came that it should take place in London. There were precedents for such a course, notably that of Connor, lord Maguire [see Maguire, Connor, 1616–1645]. Plunket had nearly exhausted his slender resources by paying the exorbitant charges of his Dublin gaoler, and was brought to London at the public expense. He arrived between 28 Oct. and 6 Nov., when the committee for examinations allowed him pen, ink, and paper. Two days later he petitioned the king and the House of Lords that he might be maintained in prison, and that his servant might be allowed access to him. Richardson, the governor of Newgate, reported a conversation in which he seemed to acknowledge that there was a plot of some kind in Ireland, but nothing was elicited from him at the bar of the lords. On 7 Jan. 1680–1 he was allowed to send to Ireland for some money of his—less than 100l.—which was in Sir Valentine Browne's hands (Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. ii. 168).
One grand jury refused to find a bill because the witnesses contradicted each other, but a second was more easily convinced, or practice may have made MacMoyer and his associates more plausible. Plunket lay in Newgate until 3 May 1681, when he was arraigned in the king's bench. He demurred to the jurisdiction, on the ground of his previous arraignment in Ireland, but this was overruled, and the trial at his request was fixed for 8 June, to enable him to bring over evidence. This apparently liberal respite was useless, for the Irish courts refused to compromise their independence by forwarding records without direct orders from the crown, and the English judges refused to receive parole evidence as to previous convictions of the witnesses. There were also delays from bad roads and want of money, and Plunket had to meet the charge of high treason without witnesses and without counsel. Chief-justice Pemberton, who had just succeeded Scroggs, and who afterwards defended the seven bishops, behaved with more decency, though scarcely with more fairness, than his predecessor. The puisne judge Thomas Jones (d. 1692) [q. v.] and William Dolben (d. 1694) [q. v.] were also severe on the prisoner. Sir Robert Sawyer [q. v.] conducted the case as attorney-general, with Finch, Jeffreys, and Maynard. The case against him was that he had conspired to bring a large French army to Ireland. For that purpose, it was said, he had collected money, and Carlingford was to be the place of disembarkation. As Plunket pointed out, one had only to look at a map of Ireland to see that no foreign enemy would go to Carlingford. The money collected by him was for the service of his church, and he had never had any communication with the French government. Plunket freely confessed that he had done everything that an archbishop of his church was bound to do, and that there might be matter for a præmunire. As for treason, the evidence, as we now read it, is so absurd that it is hard to understand his conviction by the jury after a quarter of an hour's deliberation.
After conviction Plunket solemnly said, ‘I was never guilty of any of the treasons laid to my charge, as you will hear in time, and my character you may receive from my Lord-chancellor of Ireland [Michael Boyle], my Lord Berkeley, my Lord Essex, and the Duke of Ormonde.’ Essex told the king that Plunket was innocent, and that the evi-
