During his banishment, he resided generally in Paris. In 1675, Talbot, in poor health, obtained permission to return to England, and for two years he resided with a family friend at Poole Hall in Cheshire. Towards the close of 1677, he petitioned the Crown for leave "to come to Ireland to die in his own country", and through the influence of James, Duke of York his request was granted. Shortly after that, the Popish Plot was hatched by Titus Oates, and information was forwarded to James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, to the effect that a rebellion was being planned in Ireland, that Peter Talbot was one of the accomplices, and that assassins had been hired to murder the Duke himself. Ormonde was in private deeply sceptical about the existence of the Plot, remarking of the alleged assassins that they were such "silly drunken vagabonds" that "no schoolboy would trust them to rob an orchard"; but he thought it politically unwise to show his doubts publicly. Though he was sympathetic to Oliver Plunkett, who was also arrested in connection with the alleged Plot and was later to die on the scaffold, he had always been hostile to Talbot.
