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n What a piece of work was Titus Oates. Born in 1649,nhe was sent to Merchant Taylor’s School in 1655 but was expelled in his firstnyear. He entered Cambridge University as a poor scholar in 1667, wherenaccording to his tutor, Dr Thomas Watson,
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n“He was a great dunce, ran intondebt; and, being sent away for want of money, never took a degree.”n
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nNevertheless, he managed to ‘slip into orders’ of the established churchnand became his father’s curate at All Saints, Hastings. Oates père et filsnbrought false charges of sodomy against a local schoolmaster, William Parker,nbut the case was quashed, with Oates Sr losing his living and Oates Jr chargednwith perjury, fined £1,000 and thrown into prison at Dover.
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| Titus Oates |
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nHe escaped fromngaol, hid out in London for a while and then inveigled his way into thenchaplain’s post on HMS Adventurer. Within months, he was charged withnsodomy but escaped the death penalty because of his clergyman’s status. He thennmoved on to become Anglican minister to the Duke of Norfolk (who just happenednto be a Catholic), and on Ash Wednesday 1677, Titus Oates converted tonCatholicism.
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| Colegio de los Ingleses – Valladolid |
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nHe travelled to Spain, to the Colegio de los Ingleses atnValladolid, where he was to study with the Jesuits but within five months henhad managed to get himself expelled and returned to England, claiming to haventaken the degree of Doctor of Divinity, an impossibility as only Catholicnpriests took this degree in Spain and Oates was never ordained. The English Jesuitsnpleaded his case to their continental counterparts and on December 10thn1677, he entered the seminary at St Omer’s, France (which later relocated tonStonyhurst, Lancashire), but by June 1678, with predictable inevitability, hisnoutrageous and obnoxious behaviour caused his expulsion.
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| Titus Oates |
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nOates was, by allnaccounts, repellent within and without. He was short, with bowed legs and broadnshoulders, topped by a bull-neck and a large, moon-faced head. His eyes werensmall and deep-set beneath a low, heavy brow, his mouth was more of a slit thatnbisected his purple face, and his chin long and monstrous. He spoke not with sonmuch as a voice but with a rasping whine or an insolent bark.
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| A Plot hatched by the Pope in Rome |
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nBack in London,nOates renewed his association with Israel Tonge, a rabid anti-Catholicnparanoiac who blamed the Jesuits for the ills suffered by himself and hisncountry, and who was in all likelihood insane. Oates convinced the excitable Tongenthat his conversion was a clever front and he had used his time abroad to infiltratenthe Jesuit ranks, learning of their plans to kill the King and take control ofnEngland. This nonsense was just what Tonge would have wanted to hear, and henand Oates spent July and August producing a manuscript outlining the PopishnPlot, the
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n‘True and Exact Narrative of the Horrid Plot and Conspiracy of thenPopish Party against the life of His Sacred Majesty, the Government, and thenProtestant Religion’.n
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| Titus Oates – An Exact Discovery |
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nOates and Tonge detailed how the Pope had declarednhimself Lord of the kingdoms of England and Ireland, that Jesuit agents were atnwork fomenting rebellions in Ireland and Scotland, that plans were afoot for ansecond Great Fire in London, that French Jesuits were ready to invade England,nand that Charles II was a bastard and an excommunicated heretic who was to benkilled. One Titus Oates had been sent by the Jesuits to assassinate one IsraelnTonge because of his sterling work in uncovering their sinister machinations.
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| King Charles II |
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nOates and Tonge named ninety-nine prominent Catholics who were involved in thenPlot, together with 541 Jesuits in England, and told tales of a meeting at thenWhite Horse Tavern in The Strand, where Jesuits had laid plans to shoot thenKing with silver bullets, to have him stabbed, to have him attacked by fournIrish ruffians, and to have him poisoned by the Queen’s own physician. Oatesnhid a manuscript in the wainscot at Sir Richard Barker’s house, and Tongen‘found’ it on the following day. It was shown to Christopher Kirkby, a chemistnwho had assisted Charles II in his scientific experiments. Kirkby went to thenKing and informed him of the manuscript’s existence, but Charles was scepticalnand asked Kirkby for proof of the Plot.
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| Earl of Danby |
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nKirkby offered to bring Tonge to thenKing, who then appointed the Earl of Danby to look into the matter, but Tongenlied to Danby saying that he had only found the manuscript and knew nothing ofnits author, and urged him to keep it all secret, lest the plotters find theynwere discovered and flee. The King remained sceptical and urged restraint,nadding that word of assassinations might put ideas into people’s heads. Butnword of the claims spread to the King’s brother, the Duke of York, who urgednCharles to take the threats seriously; there were, after all, so many and just somenof them might be genuine. Against his better judgement, Charles brought thenmatter to the Privy Council, which requested that Oates be brought before it tongive testimony. And so it was that first on September 6th 1678 andnagain on September 28th, Titus Oates and Israel Tonge went before anmagistrate to swear oaths that the testimony they would give to the PrivynCouncil would be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
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| Titus Oates swears his oath |
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nThatnmagistrate was Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey.
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nAnd what happened to him next changedneverything.
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