Portrait of an Informer: A 17th Century Moral.

Informers crop up when populations are in the grip of fear, and they are all fundamentally alike. Titus Oates, who invented the Popish Plot, can serve as the model. With the aid of his clerical friend, Oates drew up an elaborate account of a plot for the conquest of the British Isles, supposedly devised by the Pope and handed over to the Jesuits for elaboration and execution. It involved stirring up rebellions in Ireland and Scotland and fomenting discontent in England through the dislocation of trade and the spread of disloyal ideas by Jesuits planted everywhere as secret agents.