proceed to France to inform Louis XIV of the English king's desire to be reconciled to Roman Catholicism, and of his want of ready money. In June 1669 Arundell returned with Louis's assent to the secret Treaty of Dover with Charles, which was signed in the following year. Popish Plot In 1678 Titus Oates and his associates announced that Arundell was a chief mover in the Popish Plot against Charles II, which they professed to have discovered; it was a complete fabrication. According to the evidence of these informers, attempts had been made by the Catholics of England, in league with Louis XIV, to raise an army of 50,000, which was to be placed under the command of Lord Arundell, William Herbert, 1st Earl of Powis, and John Belasyse, 1st Baron Belasyse. Some of the witnesses asserted that the Pope had issued a commission to Arundell to be Lord Chancellor as soon as the present ministers had been removed, and that Arundell had for many years been actively employed in arranging the details of the plot. Between October 1678 and February 1684 he was imprisoned in the Tower of London, along with other "Popish" peers, on the accusation of Titus Oates. The charges were patently absurd: among other unlikely accusations, Arundell was alleged to have conspired with his fellow Catholic peer, William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford (who was executed in 1680 for his supposed part in the Plot), although it was common knowledge that following a bitter quarrel they had not spoken to each other for some 25 years. Far from having any motive to kill the King, both were well aware of how much they had gained from his policy of religious tolerance. As Stafford sensibly remarked, simple self-interest dictated that the Catholic peerage should remain loyal to Charles ll, who in his later years was an all but open Catholic himself, whereby: "we have no interest but to be quiet". Arundell was friendly with Lord Belasyse, who like Arundell suffered a term of imprisonment as a supposed Plotter, and with the civil servant Edward Colman, an ardent Catholic who was executed for his supposed part in the Plot in December 1678, but there is no reason to think that there was anything sinister about these friendships. During his imprisonment in 1679, Arundell wrote five short religious poems, published in a single folio sheet in 1679, and reissued in