[1] His obsession was so great that he wrote many articles denouncing the Roman Catholic Church and containing conspiracy theories about Rome's insatiable quest for power.
[3] He made very little money from his writing, for which he blamed the Government's hostility, but which the historian J. P. Kenyon attributed to his appallingly "turgid and incoherent" prose style.
So excited was Tonge by the contents of the Narrative that through his friend, the chemist Christopher Kirkby, who assisted the King with his chemical experiments, he managed to obtain an audience with Charles II, where he summarised Oates' claims.
Danby agreed that the matter deserved inquiry, despite opposition from another leading minister, Sir Joseph Williamson, who knew Tonge and believed he was insane.
[4]: 62 Tonge then took two crucial decisions: firstly he persuaded Oates to swear to the truth of his allegations before the much-respected magistrate, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey.
[4]: 76 Oates, on the other hand, gave a superb performance: so detailed and convincing was his story that the Council ordered the arrest of all the leading Jesuits accused, as well as Edward Coleman, former secretary to the Duke of York (later James II & VII.
However J. P. Kenyon, in his classic study of the Plot, concludes that Tonge truly believed Oates' lies, because they confirmed his own fixed belief in a Jesuit conspiracy.