212 LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. to another, having no certain dwelling-place, and yet preaching with. the boldness and perseverance of a martyr. Once, .with the aid of his friends,'he built a chapel. But after preaching there a single sermon, he was obliged to flee into the country to escape imprisonment. When he attempted to occupy it again, the meet- ing was repeatedly broken up by the king's drums heating under the windows. In the end, he was glad to dispose of it at a great pecuniary sacrifice, that it might become a chapel of ease to the parish within which it was built. All this while he was "in deaths oft," groaningunder almost incredible anguish as his com- plicateddiseases gained on his declining strength : and yet so intense and indefatigablewas the energy of his mind, he was producing volume after volume, as rapidlyas if he had been a man of per- feet health and unbroken literary leisure. In 1678, the jealousyand alarm in respect to Popery, which had long been rising, and for which theproceedings of the court and of the Catholics had given abundant cause, broke out into asudden and irresistible panic. The whole nation was thrown into a ferr ment by the alledgeddiscovery of a "Popish plot," thepurpose of which was said to be to murder the king, to put the duke of York on the throne, and to suppress the Protestant`heresy by fire and swdrd. That the Papists were at that time extensively consult- ingand plStting for the restoration or their religion in Great Britain, andwere hoping great things from the expected succession of the duke of Ywork, whowas 'one of them, is unquestionable. That the discoveriesof Oates and others, by which the nation was thrown into so terrible a panic, were false, is equally beyond dispute. But such was the excitement of all sdrts of people, that many Papists of distinction, priests and laymen, were put to death under the forms of Iaw for a supposed participation in the "bloody and hellish plot." In connection with this excitement, a desperate effort was made in parliament to secure the liberties and Prot- estant religion of the nation, by excluding the duke of York from his succession to the crown. This emergency united in one phalanx the more nioderate and liberal members of the established church and the Protestant dissenters. Several parliaments endeavor- ed the reliefof the persecúted Protestants ; but the bishops in the houseof lords generally voted against such measures, and the king was willing to have a body of men so uncompromising still at his mercy. The persecution still went on,with occasional intervals of partial repose, till the death of the king in -1685. James. II., a professed and bigoted Papist, succeeded to the throne; and though at first all was tranquillity and confidence, as is usual with the Englishpeople at the accession of a new sovereign, soon the fears, which had formerly agitated the nation, began to
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