The most curious history that I have to tell you, is a malicious, pretty successful, and yet most clumsy Plot executed by the papists, in which number you will not be surprised at my including some Protestant divines, against the famous Bower,(660) author of the History of the Popes.  Rumours were spread of his being discovered in correspondence with the Jesuits; some even said the correspondence was treasonable, and that he was actually in the hands of a messenger.  I went to Sir George Lyttelton, his great friend, to learn the truth; he told me the story:  that Sir Harry Bedingfield, whom I know for a most bigoted Papist in Norfolk, pretended to have six letters from Bower (signed A. B.) in his hands, addressed to one Father Sheldon, a Jesuit, under another name, in which A. B. affected great contrition and desires of reconciliation to that church, lamenting his living in fornication with a woman, by whom he had a child, and from whom he had got fifteen hundred pounds, which he had put into Sheldon’s hands, and which he affirmed he must have again if he broke off the commerce, for that the woman insisted on having either him or her money; and offering all manner of submission to holy church, and to be sent wherever she should please; for non mea voluntas sed tua fiat:- -the last letter grieved at not being able to get his money, and to be forced to continue in sin, and concluded with telling the Jesuit that something would happen soon which would put an end to their correspondence-this is supposed to allude to his history.  The similitude of hands is very great-but you know how little that can weigh!  I know that Mr. Conway and my Lady Ailesbury write so alike, that I never receive a letter from either of them that I am not forced to look at the name to see from which it comes; the only difference is that she writes legibly, and he does not.  These letters were shown about privately, and with injunctions of secrecy:  it seems Hooke, the Roman historian, a convert to Popery, and who governs my Lord Bath and that family, is deep in this plot.  At last it got to the ears of Dr. Birch, a zealous but simple Than, and of Millar the bookseller, angry at Bower for not being his printer—­they trumpeted the story all over the town.  Lord Pultney was One who told it me, and added, “a Popish gentleman and an English clergyman are upon the scent;” he told me Sir H. Bedingfield’s name, but Would not the clergyman’s.  I replied, then your lordship must give me leave to say, as I don’t know his name, that I suppose our doctor is as angry as Sir Harry at Bower for having written against the church of Rome.  Sir G. Lyttelton went to Sir Harry, and demanded to see the letters, and asked for copies, which were promised.  He soon observed twenty falsehoods and inconsistencies, particulary the mention of a patent for a place, which Sir George obtained for him, but never thought of asking till a year and a half after the date of this letter; to say nothing of the inconsistence of his taking a place