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n There was a change in public perception, as thenWhigs were thought to be manoeuvring for political position rather than for thengeneral good, intolerant and antagonistic, whereas Charles II began to be seennas steady, restrained and open to compromise, and sympathy shifted in hisnfavour. Lord Chief Justice Scroggs sensed the change of mood and moved hisnposition accordingly, and began to acquit persons accused by Oates.
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| Titus Oates |
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nThe mostnprominent was Sir George Wakeman, the Queen’s physician, was had, apparently,nbeen paid £15,000 by the Jesuits to poison the King. Oates swore that he hadnnot seen Wakeman before and then gave evidence that he had seen him twicenbefore, which when pointed out, Oates said that he was ill and asked to benexcused, which Justice Scroggins refused. Bedloe accused Scroggins of notnsumming up correctly and Scroggins, in effect, told him to shut up. The jurynasked if they could bring a verdict of guilty of misprision of treason, werentold that they couldn’t, so instead returned a not guilty verdict.
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| The Tryal of G Wakeman |
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nSo Oates,nBedloe and the other regular witnesses were not believed in this case, marking the beginning ofntheir downturn. The following day, the Portuguese ambassador called in personnon Scroggins, to thank him on behalf of the Queen. Wakeman went to thencontinent until things cooled down. Scroggins was suspected of being bribed,nthere was talk of a barrel of gold being delivered to his house, andnParliament, prompted with stories of drunkenness and bad language supplied bynOates and Bedloe, looked into charges of bias in his cases, called for hisnremoval from the bench, and achieved this aim in April 1681.
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| Titus Oates – An Exact Discovery – 1679 |
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nTitus Oatesnbrought charges against Adam Elliott that were disproved, with Oates beingnfined £20 in a retaliatory case brought by Elliott. Oates had claimed thatnElliott, a parson, had been captured at Barbary, converted to Islam, murderednhis master and escaped, a story which fell apart when this ‘master’ turned upnin the retinue of the ambassador of Morocco, very much alive and well innLondon, (he also asserted his right to owning Elliott, and demanded that hisnslave return to Morocco with him). In April 1681, Oates’s allowance was reducednto £2 per week, and removed all together in August of the same year, when henwas also banned from court.
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| Titus Oates, the Pope and the Devil |
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nIn May 1684, Oates was arrested at the Amsterdamncoffee-house on charges of using defamatory language about the Duke of York andnbrought before the infamous Judge Jeffreys who, after a brief trial, found himnguilty and fined him £100,000. Unable to pay this vast sum, Oates was loadednwith heavy chains and cast into the King’s Bench prison. His situation worsenednin February 1685, when Charles II died (after a deathbed conversion tonCatholicism) and his brother became King James II. The new King had two chargesnof perjury brought against Oates and he was tried again on the new charges.nJeffreys presided again and told the jury, even before they retired, that Oatesn“… has deserved much more punishment than the laws of this land can inflict.”
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| Titus Oates in the Pillory |
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nFound guilty of the misdemeanours (perjurynwas not a felony, so did not carry the death penalty), he was fined a furthern2,000 marks, stripped of his clerical garb, was sentenced to parade all thencourts of Westminster wearing a paper above his head declaring his crimes andnthen made to stand in the pillories at Westminster-Gate and at Royal Exchangenfor an hour each on two days with the same paper above him, and to be whippednby the public hangman from Aldgate to Newgate on one day and from Newgate tonTyburn two days later. He would be close confined for life and also, for thenrest of his life, on five days per year, he was to stand for two hours in thenpillories around London.
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| Oates in the Pillory and Oates flogged |
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nThe whippings were a particularly savage punishment –nJack Ketch, the hangman, tied Oates to the back of a horse-drawn wagon, andnwith a whip made with six lashes, he flogged Oates as he passed through the streets.nAfter a day in Newgate prison, an insensible Oates was dragged out and tied tona tumbrel, and Ketch recommenced the flogging. It is estimated that Oatesnsuffered over three thousand lashes and that his back was entirely stripped ofnskin – it was probably hoped that this would kill him (naval floggings of onenhundred lashes often killed a man), but he lay in gaol for ten weeks as hisnback healed. Then he was loaded with chains and thrown into a cell, until thendays came round when he was taken out and pilloried (prisoners often died innthe pillory when unsympathetic crowds pelted them with stones).
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| Titus Oates in the Pillory |
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nAnother versionnsays that Oates was treated well in prison, received numerous gifts fromnProtestant well-wishers and even had an illegitimate son by a bed-maker in thenKing’s Bench prison. He was released in 1688, when William and Mary wereninvited to take the crown in the Glorious Revolution after James II wasndeposed, (William, Prince of Orange, was James’s nephew and son-in-law, Marynwas James’s eldest surviving daughter by his first wife, Anne Hyde), but as thenHouse of Lords debated the legality of his sentence, Oates sent a petition forna bill to reverse his sentence to the House of Commons. Such was the positionnbetween the two Houses that whatever the one decided, the other would decidenthe opposite; one wag suggested that as Oates had been flogged from Newgate tonTyburn, the sentence should be reversed and he should be flogged from Tyburn tonNewgate. The Lords sentenced him back to prison for breach of privilege but thenprorogation of Parliament in August 1688 freed him again, and the Commonsnmanaged to get him a pension of five pounds a week.
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| Titus Oates and the Popish Plot – 1816 |
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nSo Oates married anMuggletonian widow, Mrs Margaret Wells of Bread Street, who had nothing much innthe way looks but did have £2,000, causing much ribald conversation in thenLondon coffee-houses. He pressed the King for an increase and was granted £500nto clear his debts with £300 per year for life, and with some small economicalnrespite, he rejoined the Baptists as a minister. That didn’t last long, as theynobjected to his bad language and his insistence on wearing clerical garb, andnafter a case of assault and an attempt to defraud a widower, he was expellednfrom the sect as ‘a disorderly person and a hypocrite.’
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| Titus Oates |
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nHe died in 1705,nand he has been described as ‘the bloodiest villain since the world began,’nwhich is some going, considering the competition. Roger North, the lawyer andnbiographer wrote,
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n“In a word, he was a most consummate cheat, blasphemer,nvicious, perjured, impudent, and saucy, foul-mouth’d wretch, and, were it notnfor the Truth of History and the great Emotions in the Public he was the causenof, not fit to be remembered.”n
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nHe was directly responsible for the deathsnof thirty-five people by judicial murder, and indirectly responsible for thendeaths and misery of many thousands of innocent people through his lies andnfabrications.
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nAnd what of the other players …
