Popish Plot
The Popish Plot was a fabricated conspiracy theory promulgated by Titus Oates in late 1678, alleging that Jesuits and Catholic nobles planned to assassinate King Charles II, ignite a new Great Fire of London, massacre Protestants, and establish absolute Catholic rule under James, Duke of York.[1][2] Oates, a disreputable former clergyman expelled from Jesuit seminaries for misconduct and known for perjury, invented the narrative in collaboration with Israel Tonge, drawing on forged documents and unsubstantiated claims to exploit pervasive Protestant fears of popery amid European Catholic military advances and domestic succession debates.[3][4] Though swiftly undermined by evidentiary contradictions—such as Oates's inability to produce reliable witnesses or documents beyond his own depositions—and ultimately exposed as a hoax through judicial scrutiny under Charles II's direction, the plot triggered mass hysteria, parliamentary investigations, and the wrongful execution of approximately 35 Catholics, including priests and laymen convicted on perjured testimony.[5][6] Politically, it fueled the Whig campaign for the Exclusion Bill to bar James from the throne, precipitated the downfall of Lord Treasurer Danby, and intensified factional strife culminating in the brief triumph of Exclusionist forces before royalist backlash restored order.[7][8] The episode exemplifies how charismatic fabrications, amplified by print media and public processions, can manipulate collective anxieties, leading to miscarriages of justice despite the absence of causal mechanisms for the purported plot.[9]Historical Context
Origins of English Anti-Catholicism
English anti-Catholicism originated with the Henrician Reformation in the 1530s, when King Henry VIII's desire for an annulment from Catherine of Aragon, denied by Pope Clement VII, prompted a political schism from Rome. The Act in Restraint of Appeals (1533) asserted royal jurisdiction over ecclesiastical matters, followed by the Act of Supremacy (1534), which declared Henry the Supreme Head of the Church of England and required oaths of allegiance rejecting papal authority.[10] These measures, driven by dynastic and financial motives including the dissolution of monasteries (1536–1541), framed the papacy as an illegitimate foreign power interfering in English sovereignty, sowing seeds of theological and political distrust among Protestants who viewed Catholic allegiance as dual loyalty.[10] Under Mary I (r. 1553–1558), the brief Catholic restoration intensified animosities through the persecution of Protestants, with approximately 280–300 individuals burned at the stake for heresy, including high-profile figures like bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley.[11] [12] This "Marian persecutions," aimed at reversing Edward VI's Protestant reforms, were chronicled in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments (1563), which portrayed Catholics as cruel persecutors and became a cornerstone of Protestant martyrology, embedding narratives of Catholic intolerance into English identity.[13] Elizabeth I's reign (1558–1603) solidified anti-Catholicism via the Elizabethan Settlement, including the Act of Supremacy (1559) naming her Supreme Governor of the Church and the Act of Uniformity enforcing Protestant worship, with recusancy fines for non-attendance. Pope Pius V's bull Regnans in Excelsis (1570) excommunicated Elizabeth and absolved subjects of allegiance to her, interpreting it as papal endorsement of rebellion and prompting harsher laws, such as the 1585 Act against Jesuits and Seminarists, which deemed Catholic priests traitors punishable by death.[14] [13] Events like the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588), backed by Catholic Spain, and foiled plots such as the Babington Plot (1586), reinforced perceptions of Catholics as agents of foreign invasion and absolutism, associating "popery" with threats to parliamentary liberty and national independence.[13]Restoration Religious and Political Tensions
Following the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, Parliament sought to re-establish Anglican supremacy through the Clarendon Code, a series of laws from 1661 to 1665 that suppressed religious dissent. The Corporation Act of December 1661 required municipal officeholders to receive Anglican communion and swear allegiance to the monarchy, effectively barring nonconformists.[15] The Act of Uniformity in 1662 mandated episcopal ordination and assent to the revised Book of Common Prayer, resulting in the ejection of approximately 2,000 Puritan ministers from their parishes.[15] Subsequent measures, including the Conventicles Act of 1664 prohibiting gatherings of more than five nonconformists for worship and the Five Mile Act of 1665 restricting ejected ministers' movements, intensified divisions between the established Church of England and Dissenters, fostering resentment among Presbyterians and other Protestants while leaving Catholics—already marginalized by longstanding penal laws—under continued suspicion.[16] These enactments prioritized Anglican uniformity over Charles II's initial promises of toleration in the Declaration of Breda, highlighting parliamentary wariness of religious pluralism amid fears of renewed civil strife.[16] Charles II's personal inclinations toward Catholicism exacerbated these religious frictions, as evidenced by his 1662 marriage to the Portuguese Catholic Catherine of Braganza and his brother James, Duke of York's, open conversion, which became public in 1673.[17] The secret Treaty of Dover in 1670, negotiated with France's Louis XIV, committed Charles to eventual conversion to Catholicism and military support against the Dutch Republic in exchange for annual subsidies, though the religious clause remained concealed from Parliament and the public.[18] This alignment with Catholic France, perceived as promoting absolutism akin to Louis's regime, alarmed Protestant elites who associated popery with tyranny and foreign domination, a sentiment rooted in historical events like the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and the reign of Mary I.[19] Charles's Declaration of Indulgence in 1672, suspending penal laws to permit nonconformist public worship and private Catholic practice, aimed to secure support for the Third Anglo-Dutch War but provoked backlash from Anglican MPs, who viewed it as undermining the Church of England and advancing Catholic interests.[16] Parliamentary response crystallized in the Test Act of 1673, which required civil and military officeholders to receive Anglican communion, abjure transubstantiation, and swear against the Pope's deposing power, thereby excluding Catholics and forcing James to resign as Lord High Admiral.[19][17] Charles consented reluctantly to fund his war efforts, but the act underscored deepening political rifts between the crown's court faction and an emerging Country opposition, wary of monarchical overreach and Catholic infiltration.[19] These tensions, compounded by economic strains from naval defeats and Charles's reliance on French pensions, eroded trust in the regime, priming England for hysteria over alleged Catholic threats by the late 1670s.[16]Invention of the Plot
Titus Oates's Background and Motivations
Titus Oates was born in 1649 at Oakham, Rutland, the son of Samuel Oates (1610–1683), a clergyman originally aligned with Anabaptist groups before conforming to the Church of England under the Restoration and serving as rector at Marsham, Norfolk, and later All Saints, Hastings.[20] Samuel had faced expulsion from military chaplaincy in 1654 for sedition and imprisonment for nonconformity, reflecting a family history of religious volatility and legal troubles that may have influenced Oates's later instability. Oates received early schooling at Merchant Taylors' School, entering in June 1665 but being expelled within a year, followed by attendance at Sedlescombe School. He matriculated as a poor scholar at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1667, transferring to St John's College in early 1669, where contemporaries described him as a "great dunce"; he left without a degree amid debts and academic failure.[20] Ordained an Anglican deacon and priest, Oates was instituted as vicar of Bobbing, Kent, on March 7, 1673, but his clerical career quickly unraveled due to misconduct. He served as curate at All Saints, Hastings, in 1674, where he leveled a false accusation against parishioner William Parker, leading to his own arrest, imprisonment, and eventual escape by early 1675 after indictment for perjury and immorality.[20] Briefly employed as a naval chaplain around 1675–1677, possibly aboard a ship under Sir Richard Routh, Oates was discharged within months for dishonesty, insubordination, and general misconduct.[20][21] In late 1676, while acting as a chaplain to Protestants in the household of the Catholic Duke of Norfolk, Oates encountered Jesuit circles and began collaborating with the anti-Catholic cleric Israel Tonge on inflammatory writings against the order. Oates's professed conversion to Catholicism on Ash Wednesday 1677 appears insincere, serving as a pretext to infiltrate Jesuit seminaries: he entered the English Jesuit college at Valladolid, Spain, in April 1677 but was expelled on October 30 for blasphemy and disruptive behavior, then joined St. Omer College in Flanders on December 10, 1677, only to face expulsion again on June 23, 1678, for similar reasons including alleged immorality.[20][22] Returning to London on June 27, 1678, these repeated rejections from Catholic institutions, compounded by his prior professional failures, fueled personal resentments that historians attribute as key drivers for fabricating the Popish Plot allegations later that year.[20] Opportunistic traits—described by contemporaries and analysts as audacious, inventive, and unscrupulous—aligned with broader anti-Catholic prejudices in Restoration England, enabling Oates to exploit public fears for financial reward (he received over £945 in parliamentary payments within a year) and influence, rather than ideological conviction.[20][22] His mendacious character, evident in consistent patterns of perjury and deceit across roles, underscores a motivation rooted in revenge against a rejecting establishment and self-advancement amid chronic unemployment and poverty.[20]Collaboration with Israel Tonge and Fabrication Details
Titus Oates, having returned to England in mid-1677 after failed attempts to join Jesuit orders abroad, encountered Israel Tonge, a royal chaplain and fervent anti-Catholic cleric known for his obsessions with prophecies foretelling the downfall of popery.[23] Tonge, rector of St. Michael's Wood Street and author of anti-Jesuit tracts, provided Oates lodging and clerical guidance as Oates fabricated claims of insider knowledge from his purported infiltration of Catholic seminaries in Valladolid and Paris.[23] Their collaboration intensified in the summer of 1678, when Oates, facing potential exposure as a fraudulent priest, convinced Tonge of a grand Jesuit-orchestrated conspiracy; Tonge, crediting divine inspiration, assisted in structuring Oates's disjointed stories into a formal accusatory manuscript.[23][6] The fabrication process relied on Oates's embellishments of real events and documents, such as Jesuit texts like the Monita Secreta (a known forgery exposing alleged Jesuit intrigue) and rumors of Irish Catholic unrest, woven into a narrative of systematic treason.[23] Oates alleged attendance at secret consultations in London during April and May 1678, where Jesuits supposedly planned Charles II's assassination via poison, pistols, or strangulation, followed by a Protestant massacre akin to the St. Bartholomew's Day events and the elevation of James, Duke of York, to the throne under papal control.[6] Tonge contributed by verifying Oates's "oath" as a Jesuit initiate and drafting affidavits, including an initial set of accusations presented to Treasury official Christopher Kirkby on 6 September 1678, though substantive depositions followed later that month.[23] No physical evidence, such as the purported signed commissions for murder or invasion plans Oates claimed to have seen, was ever produced, and the duo's method involved naming prominent Catholics—like Edward Colman and provincial Jesuits—to lend plausibility while avoiding immediate disproof.[23] By late September 1678, Oates expanded the claims into 43 articles sworn before magistrate Edmund Berry Godfrey, implicating over 100 individuals in a supposed network funded by the Pope and Louis XIV for a French-backed invasion.[23] Tonge's role extended to lobbying figures like the Earl of Danby for official attention, framing the plot as fulfillment of his earlier apocalyptic predictions, though subsequent investigations revealed Oates's geographical and chronological inconsistencies—such as misdescribing foreign dignitaries he claimed to have met—and his history of perjury in naval courts-martial.[23][6] The absence of independent corroboration, combined with Oates's opportunistic motives amid personal destitution, underscores the invention as a calculated hoax exploiting Restoration-era fears, with Tonge's fanaticism enabling its propagation rather than skeptical scrutiny.[23][6]Initial Investigations
Depositions and Early Official Responses
In August 1678, Titus Oates, in collaboration with Israel Tonge, first alerted authorities to the alleged Popish Plot through a note delivered to King Charles II on August 13 while the king walked in St. James's Park.[24] The king, initially alarmed, promptly arranged private examinations of Oates, during which inconsistencies emerged, including Oates's inability to demonstrate knowledge of French despite claiming to have overheard plotters speaking it, leading Charles II to express private doubts about the informer's credibility.[25] On September 6, 1678, Oates and Tonge formally deposed before Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, a Westminster justice of the peace known for his Protestant zeal, swearing to a narrative accusing Jesuits and Catholic nobles of conspiring to assassinate Charles II, burn London, and install James, Duke of York, as a Catholic monarch.[26] Godfrey meticulously recorded Oates's 43-point affidavit, which detailed supposed meetings at the White Horse Tavern and assignments of roles to figures like Edward Colman for securing French support.[19] These depositions, while not immediately publicized, prompted initial official inquiries, including orders from the Earl of Danby, the king's chief minister, to investigate named individuals. Early official responses remained cautious; on September 28 and 29, Oates testified before the Privy Council, reiterating claims of imminent regicide planned for early October, yet the council's actions were limited to precautionary arrests without widespread alarm.[19] Charles II, informed directly, continued to view the allegations with skepticism, reportedly remarking on Oates's perjurious tendencies based on prior interrogations, though the lack of decisive dismissal allowed the narrative to persist amid existing anti-Catholic tensions.[27] Godfrey's subsequent mysterious death on October 12, found strangled with his own sword, dramatically shifted responses, transforming depositions into presumed validations of a genuine threat and spurring broader investigations.[28]Sir Edmund Godfrey's Role and Murder
Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey (c. 1621–1678), a Westminster justice of the peace noted for his upright character and Protestant leanings, administered the sworn depositions of Titus Oates and Israel Tonge on 28 September 1678, formally recording their claims of a Jesuit-led conspiracy to murder King Charles II, install his Catholic brother James as a puppet ruler, and ignite a French invasion aided by rebellion.[29] Godfrey, who had previously shown interest in suppressing Catholic activities, copied the depositions and personally delivered them to the king at Whitehall on 1 October, urging action, but Charles II dismissed the allegations as implausible given Oates's unreliable background.[23] Following this rebuff, Godfrey vanished; he was last seen alive on 12 October 1678 near his residence in Westminster. His body was discovered on 17 October in a ditch off the path to Primrose Hill, partially concealed by a loose pile of hay from an adjacent field, with his own cane alongside. Examination revealed ligature marks indicating strangulation as the primary cause of death, with the neck vertebrae dislocated and contusions on the chest and arms; a deep sword wound pierced the breast, pinning the corpse upright against a hedge, though minimal blood at the scene suggested the stabbing occurred post-mortem or elsewhere.[30] A coroner's inquest, convened promptly, concluded on 19 October that Godfrey had been wilfully murdered by unknown assailants, a verdict that excluded suicide despite his known episodes of melancholy and hypochondria. The original depositions, sealed and initialed by Godfrey, were recovered from his body, heightening suspicions of foul play to suppress evidence. Oates seized on the death to assert Catholic culpability, claiming Godfrey was garroted by plot agents to retrieve the papers, thereby lending apparent credibility to the fabricated scheme amid existing anti-Catholic tensions.[23][31] Investigations, pressured by parliamentary Whigs, targeted Catholic suspects; silversmith Miles Prance, employed at the Bavarian ambassador's residence, was arrested in December 1678 and, after repeated questioning verging on torture, confessed to procuring three Irish assassins—Lawrence Hill, Robert Green, and Henry Berry—who allegedly strangled Godfrey at his home before transporting and staging the body. Prance's testimony, though coerced and inconsistent, led to the trio's trial in February 1679; Green and Berry were convicted on circumstantial evidence and perjured witness accounts, hanged and quartered on 25 and 28 February despite protesting innocence, while Hill died in custody. These executions, lacking forensic corroboration and reliant on retracted elements of Prance's story, amplified public hysteria but later unraveled as the plot's falsehoods emerged.[30][31] The case's enduring mystery fuels scholarly debate: while 17th-century partisans attributed it to papists, post-Restoration analyses, including John Kenyon's, posit suicide as plausible given Godfrey's documented despondency and the self-inflicted appearance of the sword wound, arguing strangulation could result from self-asphyxiation attempts common in period suicides. Conversely, forensic reassessments in works like Andrea McKenzie's The Mysterious Death of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey (2019) contend the combined trauma—evidencing manual overpowering and relocation—points to homicide, potentially by Protestant factions exploiting or engineering the incident to discredit James and catalyze exclusion efforts, rather than Oates's Catholic culprits. Absent conclusive evidence, such as no deathbed confessions or matching weapons, the death exemplifies how unverifiable violence sustained the Popish delusion despite the informers' perjuries.[32][33]Escalation of Hysteria
Parliamentary Hearings and Public Disclosures
Parliament convened on October 21, 1678, for its seventeenth session amid growing alarm over the alleged Popish Plot, with the House of Commons promptly appointing a committee of secrecy to investigate Titus Oates's claims and the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey.[20] [34] Oates testified before the House of Commons at its bar on October 23, 1678, detailing his fabricated narrative of a Jesuit-led conspiracy to assassinate King Charles II, which the Commons received as credible evidence warranting further inquiry.[20] The House of Lords similarly formed a committee on October 23 to examine witnesses, conducting inquiries for ten days but yielding inconclusive initial results, while Oates appeared again before the Lords on October 30–31, 1678, expanding on accusations against specific Jesuits and nobles.[20] [34] On November 1, 1678, both Houses passed a joint resolution declaring the existence of a "damnable and hellish Plot" by Popish recusants aimed at assassinating the king, subverting Protestantism, and imposing Catholic rule, based primarily on Oates's and William Bedloe's depositions.[20] Parliamentary hearings intensified scrutiny of figures like Edward Coleman, whose papers—seized after Oates's confrontation on September 30, 1678—revealed correspondence with French agents, interpreted as corroboration despite lacking direct ties to assassination plans.[34] The Commons passed a Test Act on November 7, 1678, mandating anti-Catholic oaths, and on November 20, the Lords approved a bill disabling papists from parliamentary seats, exempting only the Duke of York.[34] These proceedings, fueled by Oates's unverified oaths, led to the issuance of warrants for Catholic arrests and heightened political divisions, with the session prorogued on December 30, 1678, amid ongoing probes.[20] Public disclosures amplified the hysteria, beginning with Oates's publication of a 68-page folio, True and Exact Narrative, in late 1678, which named 99 alleged conspirators and circulated widely to vindicate his claims.[20] Godfrey's funeral on November 5, 1678, attended by over 1,000 mourners and 72 clergymen at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, became a spectacle of anti-Catholic outrage, with sermons and broadsides portraying his death as proof of Jesuit murder.[34] Mob violence ensued, including searches of Catholic homes for arms and assaults on recusants, exacerbated by a royal proclamation on November 26, 1678, ordering Popish recusants to depart London within days, which displaced thousands and filled prisons.[20] [34] Pamphlets proliferated, such as those detailing Bedloe's depositions on Godfrey's killing at Somerset House, selling rapidly alongside ballads and medals depicting Oates as a savior, sustaining public credulity despite evidentiary gaps later exposed in trials like William Wakeman's acquittal on July 18, 1679.[20]Trials and Executions of Alleged Conspirators
The initial trial stemming from Titus Oates's depositions was that of Edward Coleman, a Catholic secretary to Mary of Modena, Duchess of York, held on November 27, 1678, before the Court of King's Bench. Coleman was accused of high treason for conspiring to assassinate King Charles II and subvert the Protestant government, with evidence primarily consisting of incriminating letters seized from his residence that discussed financial support from Catholic powers for English Catholics, alongside Oates's direct testimony naming him as a key plotter. Despite Coleman's denials and lack of corroborative proof beyond Oates's word, the jury convicted him within hours, influenced by public anti-Catholic fervor and parliamentary agitation. He was sentenced to be drawn, hanged, and quartered, with execution carried out at Tyburn on December 3, 1678.[35][36] Subsequent trials accelerated amid escalating hysteria. On December 17, 1678, at the Old Bailey, Jesuit priest William Ireland, Benedictine lay brother Thomas Pickering, and gentleman John Grove faced charges of plotting the king's murder—Ireland and Grove for allegedly hiring assassins, Pickering for a failed attempt using poisoned bolts. The prosecutions relied heavily on Oates's and informer William Bedloe's uncorroborated oaths, contradicted by alibis and implausible details such as Pickering's supposed marksmanship with a crossbow, yet convictions followed swiftly due to the judges' bias and crowd pressure. Ireland, Pickering, and Grove were executed by drawing and quartering on January 24, 1679, maintaining their innocence to the end.[37][38] Further convictions targeted Catholic laymen and priests. On February 28, 1679, Protestant informers Stephen Dugdale and Edward Turberville's testimonies led to the executions of Catholic gentleman Robert Green and priest Lawrence Hill for complicity in the assassination scheme, and priest Thomas Sherwood for harboring Jesuits—none substantiated by physical evidence, only perjured accounts amid widespread credulity.[38][36] The most notorious group trials involved Jesuits, prosecuted under praemunire for their order's alleged supremacy to the pope over the king, bypassing direct plot evidence. On June 13, 1679, provincial Thomas Whitebread, William Harcourt, John Fenwick, and John Gavan were convicted at the Old Bailey based on Oates's fabrications of their roles in coordinating the conspiracy, despite forensic disproof of key claims like forged commissions and alibis placing them elsewhere; Anthony Turner received a delayed pardon. These five were hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn on June 20, 1679, in the largest mass execution of the panic, with Gavan's dignified speech protesting the injustice drawing public sympathy. Additional Jesuit trials in August and December 1679 resulted in executions of figures like Robert Johnson and further priests, totaling over a dozen religious by year's end.[39][38]| Conspirator | Role | Trial Date | Execution Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Edward Coleman | Secretary to Duchess of York | November 27, 1678 | December 3, 1678 |
| William Ireland SJ | Jesuit priest | December 17, 1678 | January 24, 1679 |
| Thomas Pickering | Benedictine lay brother | December 17, 1678 | May 26, 1679 |
| John Grove | Catholic gentleman | December 17, 1678 | January 24, 1679 |
| Robert Green | Catholic gentleman | February 1679 | February 28, 1679 |
| Lawrence Hill | Secular priest | February 1679 | February 28, 1679 |
| Thomas Sherwood | Priest | February 1679 | February 28, 1679 |
| Thomas Whitebread et al. (5 Jesuits) | Jesuit leaders | June 13, 1679 | June 20, 1679 |