In this investigation Shaftesbury took the lead. Whatever his personal ambition may have been, his public aims in all that followed were wise and far-sighted. He aimed at forcing Charles to dissolve the Parliament and appeal again to the nation. He aimed at driving Danby out of office and at forcing on Charles a ministry which should break his dependence on France and give a constitutional turn to his policy. He saw that no security would really avail to meet the danger of a Catholic sovereign, and he aimed at excluding James from the throne. But in pursuing these aims he threw himself from that moment wholly on the plot. He fanned the popular panic by accepting without question some fresh depositions in which Oates charged five Catholic peers with part in the Jesuit conspiracy. Two of these five, Lords Arundell and Bellasys, had in fact taken part in the preliminary conference which led to the Treaty of Dover. Of this nothing was known, but the five were sent to the Tower and two thousand suspected persons were hurried to prison. A proclamation ordered every Catholic to leave London. The train-bands were called to arms, and patrols paraded through the streets to guard against the Catholic rising which Oates declared to be at hand. Meanwhile Shaftesbury turned the panic to political account. He fiercely demanded in the House of Lords the exclusion of the Duke of York from the king's Council, and his demand was repeated in an address of the Commons. Charles met the attack with consummate skill. Anticipating the future Exclusion Bill, he declared himself ready to sanction any measures which secured the Protestant religion so long as they left untouched the right of hereditary succession and the just power of the Crown. Shaftesbury retorted by forcing through Parliament at the end of 1678 a bill which excluded Catholics from a seat in either House. The exclusion remained in force for a century and a half; but it had really been aimed against the Duke of York, and Shaftesbury was defeated by a proviso which exempted James from the operation of the bill.
The plot, which had been supported for four months by the sole evidence of Oates, began to hang fire at the opening of 1679; but a promise of reward brought forward a villain named Bedloe with tales beside which those of Oates seemed tame. The two informers were pressed forward by an infamous rivalry to stranger and stranger revelations. Bedloe swore to the existence of a plot for the landing of a Catholic army and a general massacre of the Protestants. Oates capped the revelations of Bedloe by charging the queen herself at the bar of the Lords with knowledge of the plot to murder her husband. Monstrous as such charges were they revived the waning frenzy of the people and of the two Houses. The peers under arrest were ordered to be impeached. A new proclamation enjoined the arrest of every Catholic in the realm. A series of judicial murders began with the trial and execution of Coleman which even now can only be remembered with horror. But the alarm must soon have worn out had it only been supported by perjury. What gave force to the false plot was the existence of a true one. Coleman's letters had won credit for the perjuries of Oates, and a fresh discovery now won credit for the perjuries of Bedloe.