Titus Oates | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Oates byGodfrey Kneller | |
| Born | (1649-09-15)15 September 1649 |
| Died | 13 July 1705(1705-07-13) (aged 55) London, Kingdom of England |
| Occupation | Priest |
| Known for | Fabricating thePopish Plot |
| Parents |
|
| Military career | |
| Allegiance |  England |
| Branch |  Royal Navy |
| Years of service | 1675–76[1] |
| Rank | Naval chaplain |
Titus Oates (15 September 1649 – 12/13 July 1705) was an English priest who fabricated the "Popish Plot", a supposedCatholic conspiracy to killKing Charles II.
Titus Oates was born atOakham inRutland. His father was the Baptist minister Samuel Oates (1610–1683), of a family ofNorwich ribbon-weavers.[2][3] Samuel was a graduate ofCorpus Christi College, Cambridge, and became a minister who moved between theChurch of England (sometime rector ofMarsham, Norfolk)[2] and theBaptists; he became a Baptist during theEnglish Civil War,[4]: 5 rejoining the established church at theRestoration, and was rector of All Saints' Church atHastings (1666–74).[4]: 3 [1]
Oates was educated atMerchant Taylors' School and other schools. At Cambridge University, he enteredGonville and Caius College in 1667 but transferred toSt John's College in 1669;[5] he left later the same year without a degree.[1] A less than astute student, he was regarded by his tutor as "a greatdunce", although he did have a good memory.[4]: 5 [3] At Cambridge, he also gained a reputation forhomosexuality and a "Canting Fanatical way".[1]
By falsely claiming to have a degree, he gained a licence to preach from theBishop of London.[1] On 29 May 1670 he was ordained as apriest of the Church of England. He wasvicar of the parish ofBobbing in Kent, 1673–74, and thencurate to his father at All Saints', Hastings. During this time Oates accused a schoolmaster in Hastings ofsodomy with one of his pupils, hoping to get the schoolmaster's post. However, the charge was shown to be false and Oates himself was soon facing charges ofperjury, but he escaped jail and fled to London.[1] In 1675 he was appointed as achaplain of the shipHMS Adventure in theRoyal Navy.[6]: 54–55 Oates visitedEnglish Tangier with his ship, but was accused ofbuggery, whichwas a capital offence, and spared only because of his clerical status.[6]: 54–55 He was dismissed from the Navy in 1676.
In August 1676, Oates was arrested in London and returned to Hastings to face trial for his outstanding perjury charges, but he escaped a second time and returned to London.[1] With the help of the actorMatthew Medbourne[Note 1] he joined the household of the CatholicHenry Howard, 7th Duke of Norfolk as an Anglican chaplain to those members of Howard's household who were Protestants. Although Oates was admired for his preaching, he soon lost this position.[1]
OnAsh Wednesday in 1677 Oates was received into theCatholic Church.[3] Oddly, at the same time he agreed to co-author a series of anti-Catholic pamphlets withIsrael Tonge, whom he had met through his father Samuel, who had once more reverted to the Baptist doctrine.[7]
He is described byJohn Dryden inAbsalom and Achitophel (published 1681) thus—[4]: 7
Sunk were his eyes, his voice was harsh and loud,
Sure signs he neither choleric was nor proud:
His long chin proved his wit, his saint-like grace
A church vermilion and a Moses' face.
Oates was involved with theJesuit houses ofSt Omer inFrance and theRoyal English College atValladolid inSpain. He was admitted to the training course for the priesthood in Valladolid through the support ofRichard Strange, head of the English Province, despite a lack of basic competence inLatin[3] and later claimed, falsely, that he had become a CatholicDoctor of Divinity. His ignorance of Latin was quickly exposed, and his frequently blasphemous conversation, and his attacks on the British monarchy, shocked both his teachers and the other students.Thomas Whitbread, the new Provincial, took a much firmer line with Oates than had Strange and, in June 1678, expelled him from St Omer.[6]: 58
When he returned to London, he rekindled his friendship withIsrael Tonge. Oates claimed that he had pretended to become a Catholic to learn about the secrets of the Jesuits and that, before leaving, he had heard about a planned Jesuit meeting in London.
Oates and Tonge wrote a lengthy manuscript that accused the Catholic Church authorities in England of approving the assassination of Charles II. The Jesuits were supposed to carry out the task. In August 1678, King Charles was warned of this alleged plot against his life by the chemist Christopher Kirkby, and later by Tonge. Charles was unimpressed, but handed the matter over to one of his ministers,Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby; Danby was more willing to listen and was introduced to Oates by Tonge.
The King'sPrivy Council questioned Oates. On 28 September, Oates made 43 allegations against various members of Catholicreligious orders—including 541 Jesuits—and numerous Catholic nobles. He accusedSir George Wakeman, QueenCatherine of Braganza's doctor, andEdward Colman, the secretary toMary of Modena,Duchess of York, of planning to assassinate Charles.
Although Oates may have selected the names randomly, or with the help of the Earl of Danby, Colman was found to have corresponded with a French Jesuit, Father Ferrier, who was confessor toLouis XIV, which was enough to condemn him. Wakeman was later acquitted. Despite Oates's unsavoury reputation, his confident performance and superb memory made a surprisingly good impression on the council. When he named "at a glance" the alleged authors of five letters supposedly written by leading Jesuits, the council were "amazed". As Kenyon remarks, it is surprising that it did not occur to the Council that this was useless as evidence if Oates had written all the letters himself.[6]: 79
Others whom Oates accused included William Fogarty,Archbishop Peter Talbot of Dublin,Samuel PepysMP, andJohn Belasyse, 1st Baron Belasyse. With the help of Danby, the list grew to 81 accusations. Oates was given a squad of soldiers and he began to round up Jesuits, including those who had helped him in the past.
On 6 September 1678, Oates and Tonge approached an Anglican magistrate, SirEdmund Berry Godfrey, and swore an affidavit before him detailing their accusations. On 12 October, Godfrey disappeared, and five days later his dead body was found in a ditch atPrimrose Hill; he had been strangled and run through with his own sword. Oates subsequently exploited this incident to launch a public campaign against the "Papists" and alleged that the murder of Godfrey had been the work of the Jesuits.
On 24 November 1678, Oates claimed the Queen was working with the King's physician to poison the King. Oates enlisted the aid of "Captain"William Bedloe, already known as a fraudster. The King personally interrogated Oates and caught him out in a number of inaccuracies and lies. In particular, Oates unwisely claimed to have had an interview with the Regent of Spain,Don John, inMadrid: the King, who had met Don John atBrussels during his Continental exile, pointed out that Oates's hopelessly inaccurate description of his appearance made it clear that he had never seen him. The King ordered his arrest. However, a few days later, with the threat of aconstitutional crisis, Parliament forced the release of Oates, who soon received astate apartment inWhitehall and an annual allowance of £1,200.
Oates was heaped with praise. He asked theCollege of Arms to check his lineage and produce acoat of arms for him and subsequently received the arms of a family that had died out. Rumours surfaced that Oates was to be married to a daughter ofAnthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury.
After nearly three years and the execution of at least 15 innocent men, opinion began to turn against Oates. The last high-profile victim of the climate of suspicion wasOliver Plunkett, Roman CatholicArchbishop of Armagh, who washanged, drawn and quartered on 1 July 1681.William Scroggs, theLord Chief Justice of England and Wales, began to declare more people innocent, as he had done in the Wakeman trial, and a backlash against Oates and hisWhig supporters took place.
On 31 August 1681, Oates was told to leave his apartments in Whitehall, but he remained undeterred and even denounced the King and his Catholic brother, theDuke of York. He was arrested forsedition, sentenced to a fine of £100,000 and imprisoned in theKing's Bench Prison.[2]
When the Duke of York acceded to the throne in 1685 as James II, he had Oates retried, convicted and sentenced forScandalum Magnatum (Latin, meaning "slander of magnates," or "scandal of the magnates"), stripped of clerical dress, imprisoned for life, and to be "whipped through the streets of London five days a year for the remainder of his life".[8] Oates was taken from his cell wearing a hat with the text "Titus Oates, convicted upon full evidence of two horrid perjuries" and put into thepillory at the gate ofWestminster Hall (nowNew Palace Yard), where passers-by pelted him with eggs. The next day he was pilloried in London and the third day was stripped, tied to a cart, and whipped fromAldgate toNewgate. On the next day, he was whipped from Newgate toTyburn.
The presiding judge at his trial wasJudge Jeffreys, who stated that Oates was a "shame to mankind", despite the fact he himself had helped to condemn innocent people on Oates's perjured evidence. Jeffreys recognised that evidence admitted in the second perjury trial had not been believed in a previous trial when sworn in contradiction to Oates's own evidence, and regretted that evidence now freshly presented had not been available, particularly at the trials of Ireland and of the five Jesuits (at the latter of which he presided) as, "it might have saved some innocent blood".[9] So severe were the penalties imposed on Oates that it has been suggested by among othersThomas Babington Macaulay that the aim was to kill him by ill-treatment, as Jeffreys and his fellow judges openly regretted that they could not impose the death penalty in a case of perjury.
Oates spent the next three years in the King's Bench Prison.[2] In 1689, upon the accession of the ProtestantWilliam of Orange andMary, he was pardoned and granted a pension of £260 a year, but his reputation did not recover. The pension was later suspended, but in 1698 was restored and increased to £300 a year. Oates died on 12 or 13 July 1705, by then an obscure and largely forgotten figure.
Francis Barlow made acomic strip about the Popish Plot and Oates in c. 1682 namedA True Narrative of the Horrid Hellish Popish Plot, which is generally considered the earliest example of a signed balloon comic strip.[10]
Oates was played byNicholas Smith in the 1969 BBC TV serialThe First Churchills. InCharles II: The Power and The Passion (2003),Eddie Marsan played Oates.
