In consequence of Shaftsbury’s violent opposition to the Duke, and the court party, there was a Bill of Indictment of High Treason, read before his Majesty’s Commissioners of Oyer and Terminer in the Sessions-House at the Old Bailey, but the Jury found it Ignoramus; upon which, all the party rejoiced at the deliverance of their head.  These disturbances gave Mr. Settle an opportunity to display his abilities, which he did not neglect to improve, by which means he procured so formidable an antagonist as Mr. Dryden, who was obliged by his place of laureat, to speak, and write for the court.  Dryden had formerly joined Mr. Settle, in order to reduce the growing reputation of Shadwell, but their interest being now so opposite, they became poetical enemies, in which Settle was, no doubt, over-matched.  He wrote a poem, however, called Azaria and Hushai, in five sheets, 4to. designed as an answer to Mr. Dryden’s poem called Absalom and Achitophel.

Soon after this, if we may credit the Oxford Antiquary, Settle changed sides, and turned Tory, with as much violence as he had formerly espoused the interest of the Whigs.  He published in 1683, in eight meets in folio, a Narrative; the first part of which is concerning himself, as being of the Tory side; the second to shew the inconsistency, and contradiction of Titus Oates’s Narrative of the Plot of the Popish Party, against the Life of King Charles ii. at the time when that Monarch intended to alter his ministry, to have consented to the exclusion of his brother, and taken measures to support the Protestant interest.  This Oates was in the reign of James ii. tried, and convidled of perjury, upon the evidence chiefly of Papists, and had a severe sentence pronounced, and inflicted upon him, viz.  Imprisonmehd for life, twice every year to stand on the pillory, and twice to be severely whipt; but he received a pardon from King William, after suffering his whippings, and two years imprisonment, with amazing fortitude, but was never allowed again to be an evidence.  While Settle was engaged in the Tory party, he is said, by Wood, to have been author of Animadversions on the Last Speech and Confession of William Lord Russel, who fell a sacrifice to the Duke of York, and whose story, as related by Burnet, never fails to move the reader to tears.  Also Remarks on Algernon Sidney’s Paper, delivered to the Sheriffs at his Execution, London, 1683, in one sheet, published the latter end of December the same year.  Algernon Sidney was likewise murdered by the same kind of violence, which popish bigotry had lifted up against the lives of some other British worthies.

He also wrote a heroic poem on the Coronation of the High and Mighty Monarch James ii.  London 1685, and then commenced a journalist for the Court, and published weekly an Essay in behalf of the Administration.  If Settle was capable of these mean compliances of writing for, or against a party, as he was hired, he must have possessed a very sordid mind, and been totally devoid of all principles of honour; but as there is no other authority for it than Wood, who is enthusiastic in his temper, and often writes of things, not as they were, but as he would wish them to be, the reader may give what credit he pleases to the report.