Robert Walpole foiled the Atterbury Plot by preventive arrests and
holding those he suspected illegally without bail or trial. When
Parliament met and the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, he used show
trials, decided by votes along party lines and depending on forged
evidence, to curb the Tory party, to reuinted the Whig party and to
consolidate his hold on power. Rich in new material, this book unravels
for the first time the scale and international dimension of a plot which
posed the most serious challenge to the Hanoverian regime before the '45
rebellion.