Most of the following I gleaned from WIKIPEDIA so it’s not exactly Holy Writ. Like the Curate’s Egg in the Punch Cartoon I have found Wikipedia good in parts. Three hundred plus years after the scoundrel’s death the story of bobbing and weaving, perjury, buggery, jiggery-pokery and anti-popery you may find both funny-peculiar and funny-haha.
Titus Oates, was the son of Samuel Oates. Samuel was not only a man of his time, but a man of his times, trimming his sails to the winds. He was a Clergyman of the Church of England under Charles I but when Charles got the chop he became a Baptist during the Puritan Revolution. He recognised his error on the Restoration of the Monarchy, re-joined the Church of England and was made Rector of All Saints Church in Hastings.
Titus Oates was born in 1649 and spent two years at Cambridge University and left without a Degree, but having “gained a reputation for homosexuality and a canting fanatical way.” He falsely claimed he had a degree, was ordained in the Church of England and became Vicar of Bobbing, in Kent, and then Curate to his father in Hastings. While in Hastings he accused a schoolmaster of sodomy with one of his pupils, hoping to get the schoolmaster’s post. The charge was proven false and Oates charged with perjury, but he skipped off to London and avoided gaol.
In London he signed on as Chaplain on HMS Adventurer. When the ship visited Tangier he was accused of Buggery, a capital offence. His Clerical status saved his neck, but he was dismissed the service. The same year (1676) he was arrested in London to face trial for perjury in Hastings.
He escaped again, and back in London joined the household of the Catholic Duke of Norfolk, as an Anglican Chaplain to those of the family who were Protestant. But again he lost his position.
On Ash Wednesday 1677 Titus Oates was received into the Catholic Church But, at the same time agreed to co-author anti-Catholic pamphlets with one Israel Tongue, whom he met through his father Samuel who had reverted to Baptist Doctrine. Next Oates got involved with Jesuits at St Omer in France and the Royal English College at Valladolid in Spain bot was expelled from St Omer in 1678.
Back in London Oates re-contacted Israel Tonge, claiming that he’d pretended to become a Catholic to learn about the Jesuits and heard about a Jesuit plot to murder Charles II. He arranged for Charles II to hear about it but the King was unimpressed, but asked the Earl of Danby to deal with it. Danby got the Privy Council to question Oates, who made scores of allegations about Catholic Religious Orders including 541 Jesuits. Oates and Tongue swore an affidavit before a magistrate who was found murdered shortly afterwards.
The King personally cross-examined Oates, caught him out and ordered his arrest.
Then Parliament stepped in, threatening a constitutional crisis, had Oates released, given a State Apartment in Whitehall and the huge sum of £1,200 per year. A great number of innocent Catholics, including Archbishop Oliver Plunket were hanged, drawn and quartered on Oates’ perjured evidence. And for 150 years Wren’s Monument in Pudding Lane was emblazoned with the falsehood that the Great Fire of London was started by “Papists.”
I think there really ought to be a GUILD OF TITUS OATES for those who maintain that Michael Foot was a Soviet Agent and those in MI5 and/or MI6 who spread the lie that Harold Wilson was a Soviet Agent and the so called public servants and media hacks who, by their dishonesty deny the public the chance to make informed political and other choices.
After three years a backlash against Oates (and the Whigs) set in and he was ordered to leave his Whitehall apartments. He refused and began to denounce the King and his brother the Duke of York. He was arrested for sedition, fined £100,000 and thrown in prison.
In 1685 the Duke of York succeeded his bother as James II. Oates was retried for perjury, convicted, stripped of his clerical dress, and made stand in the pillory at the gate of Westminster Hall, where he was pelted with eggs.The next day he was tied to a cart and whipped from Newgate to Aldgate. He was sentenced to be whipped five days a year until the end of his life. Unfortunately James II lost the throne in 1690 and Oates’s punishment was discontinued. He lived on until 1705, and though his faction was in power he was universally despised.
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