Titus Oates (15 September 1649-13 July 1705) was an English Anglican priest who fabricated the "Popish Plot", a supposed Catholic conspiracy to kill King Charles II of England.
Biography[]
Titus Oates was born in Oakham, Rutland, England in 1649. He left Cambridge without a degree, having been deemed "a great dunce" by his tutor, and he gained a reputation for homosexuality while in college. After falsely claiming to have a degree, he gained a license to preach from the Bishop of London, and he was ordained a priest of the Church of England on 29 May 1670. He was jailed for perjury after accusing a scoholmaster in Hastings of sodomy, but he escaped jail and joined the Royal Navy. He was arrested in English Tangier for sodomy and was spared execution only because of his clerical status, and he was dismissed from the navy in 1676. That same year, he was rearrested in London for perjury charges before escaping. He joined the household of the Catholic Henry Howard, 7th Duke of Norfolk as chaplain to his Protestant servants, but he soon lost this position. On Ash Wednesday in 1677, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church, but he concurrently agreed to co-author a series of anti-Catholic pamphlets with Israel Tonge. While infiltrating the Catholic Church, he trained as a priest in Valladolid, Spain, and he later falsely claimed to have become a Catholic Doctor of Divinity. Claiming to have learned the secrets of the Jesuits, he and Tonge wrote a lengthy manuscript fabricating a "Popish Plot" by Jesuits to kill King Charles II of England; Queen Catherine of Braganza's doctor George Wakeman and Mary of Modena's secretary Edward Colman were named among the conspirators, as were Archbishop Peter Talbot of Dublin, Samuel Pepys MP, and John Belasyse, 1st Baron Belasyse. In November 1678, King Charles interrogated Oates about the plot and discovered a number of inconsistencies, and he proceeded to have him arrested. However, the ensuing outcry led Parliament to force Oates' release, and he was given a state apartment in the Palace of Whitehall. After the execution of 15 innocent men over the next three years, public opinion began to turn against Oates, especially after Archbishop Oliver Plunkett of Armagh was hanged, drawn, and quartered on suspicion of his involvement in the fabricated plot. On 31 August 1681, Oates was banisehd from whiethall and arrested for denouncing the King and his Catholic brother, James, Duke of York. After James acceded to the throne in 1685, he had Oates imprisoned for life and whipped through the streets of London five days a year for the remainder of his life. He was pardoned by King William III of England in 1689, and he died in obscurity in 1705.