in which the right of the Lords was asserted. In April 1673, he was appointed Lord Privy Seal, and was disappointed at not obtaining the Great Seal the same year on the removal of Lord Shaftesbury. In the bitter religious controversies of the time, Anglesey showed great moderation and toleration. In 1674 he is mentioned as endeavouring to prevent the justices from putting into force the laws against the Roman Catholics and Nonconformists. In the panic of the "Popish Plot" in 1678 he exhibited a saner judgment than most of his contemporaries and conspicuous courage. On 6 December he protested with three other peers against the measure sent up from the Commons enforcing the disarming of all convicted recusants and taking bail from them to keep the peace; he was the only peer to dissent from the motion declaring the existence of an Irish plot; and though believing in the guilt and voting for the death of Lord Stafford, he interceded, according to his own account, with the king for him as well as for the barrister Richard Langhorne and Oliver Plunkett, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. His independent attitude drew upon him an attack by the notorious informer Dangerfield, and in the Commons by the Attorney General, Sir William Jones, who accused him of endeavouring to stifle the evidence against the Romanists. In March 1679 he protested against the second reading of the bill for disabling the Earl of Danby. In 1681, Anglesey wrote A Letter from a Person of Honour in the Country, as a rejoinder to the Earl of Castlehaven, who had published memoirs on the Irish rebellion defending the action of the Irish and the Roman Catholics. In so doing Anglesey was held by Ormonde to have censured his conduct and that of Charles I in concluding the "Cessation", and the duke brought the matter before the council. Anglesey was by now disillusioned about the efficacy of the Council, complaining bitterly that Councillors were kept in ignorance of what passed between the King and the Secretaries of State. In 1682 he wrote The Account of Arthur, Earl of Anglesey ... of the true state of Your Majesty's Government and Kingdom, which was addressed to the king in a tone of censure and remonstrance, but appears not to have been printed till 1694. In consequence he was dismissed on 9 August 1682,