On the 6th of 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, 3 with the king for him as well as for Langhorne and Plunket.
A detachment of this force, consisting of 200 Yaos and Sikhs under Lieut.-Colonel Plunket, was attacked on the 17th of April and overwhelmed.
Plunket showed amazing diligence in furthering the cause of his Church.
He was as conspicuously deficient in the statesmanship as he was in the oratorical genius of such men as Flood, Plunket or Grattan.
Examples of acts of indemnity are two private acts passed in 1880 to relieve Lords Byron and Plunket from the disabilities and penalties to which they were liable for sitting and voting in the House of Peers without taking the oath.