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3:4 
SHORT STUDIES, 
Charles had no son, and the Duke of York was 
not Catholic only, but fanatically Catholic. Lord 
Russell led the opposition in Parliament. He shared 
to the bottom of his heart in the old English dread 
and hatred of Popery. He impeached Buckingham 
and Arlington. He believed to the last in tle 
reality of the. Popish plot, and he accepted Oates 
and Dangerfield as credible witnesses. He carried 
a Bill prohibiting Papists from sitting in Parliament. 
If Papists could not sit in Parliament, still less 
ought they to be on the throne, and the House of 
Commons, under his influence, passed the Exclusion 
Bill, cutting off the Duke of York. Russell carried 
it with his own hands to the House of Lords, and 
session after session, dissolution after dissolution, 
he tried to force the Lords to agree to it, No 
wonder that the Duke of York hated him, and 
would not spare him when he caught him tripping. 
When constitutional opposition failed, a true Russell 
would have been content to wait. But the husband 
of Lady Rachel drifted into something which, if not 
treason, was curiously like it, and under the shadow 
of his example a plot was formed by ruder spirits to 
save the nation by killing both the Duke and the 
King. Lord Russell was not privy to the Rye House 
affair, but he admitted that he had taken part in a