Blue Plaque Trail:

Titus Oates

On November 5th we remember Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot of 1606, but less well known is the scandalous affair of the Titus Oates’ false ‘Popish Plot’ less than half a century later, which marked an extraordinary episode of national paranoia and prejudice that resulted in widespread persecution and the execution of 35 innocent (mostly Catholic) people.

Born in 1649 to a Baptist preacher father, Oates attended Merchant Taylor’s School, from which he was expelled, before finding a place in Sedlescombe school near Hastings. From here he somehow managed to get a place at Cambridge, despite being described by one of his contemporaries as ‘the most illiterate dunce, incapable of improvement’. Before he could complete his studies he fell into debt and was thrown out. He then took Holy Orders as a Church of England minister and officiated in several parishes, including acting as chaplain to his father, who was rector of All Saints Church here in Hastings, living at Torfield Cottage on Old London Road (now marked by a blue plaque).

In 1674 Titus and his father maliciously trumped up a charge (of sodomy – a capital offence at the time) against a local schoolmaster, a plan which backfired and ended up with Titus driven out of the parish then imprisoned, awaiting trial for perjury. He managed to escape and became a chaplain in the Royal Navy, but was expelled in less than a year following ‘drunken blasphemy’ and ‘sexual misconduct’ with other sailors. At this point, he met Dr. Israel Tonge, an obsessive, half-mad rector, who was trying to whip-up public feeling against Roman Catholics. Oates offered to help, and they hatched a plan whereby Oates would pretend to convert to Catholicism, infiltrate the Jesuits, and discover and expose their plots.

He was later admitted to the Catholic Church as a repentant prodigal son, but was expelled 5 months later. Not so easily put off, he gained admittance to the seminary at St Omer’s, but after just a few months was expelled for ‘scandalous conduct’. Having failed to uncover any plot, Oates set to work fabricating his own and returned to Tonge with the tale of a Catholic plot to assassinate the Protestant King Charles II and put his Catholic brother, James Duke of York, on the throne. This was to be followed by rebellion and civil war, preparing the way for a French invasion and bringing England, Scotland and Ireland into ‘the Pope’s dominion’. Details of the plot were passed on to the King and Oates was summoned to explain, first privately, then before the Privy Council, and finally in front of Parliament. Although Oates’ story was seen by many as the disjointed, rambling, flimsy fabric of lies that it was, others seized upon it as a ‘political contrivance’ for their own ends. The story gained sensational publicity at an early stage when the magistrate before whom he swore his first deposition turned up murdered a few days later. England was in the grip of an economic depression and there was already much anti-Catholic feeling. The ‘Popish Plot’ helped whip this up into a frenzy.

As one contemporary chronicler recorded: "The capital and the whole nation went mad with hatred and fear... Everywhere justices were busied in searching houses and seizing papers. All the gaols were filled with Papists. London had the aspect of a city in a state of siege.. Patrols marched up and down the streets. Cannon were planted round Whitehall. No citizen thought himself safe unless he carried under his coat a small flail loaded with lead to brain the Popish assassins."

In the trials that followed, 35 people, mostly Catholic priests, were found guilty as traitors and executed. Oates’ popularity soared and he styled himself ‘the saviour of the nation’. He was rewarded with a state apartment in Whitehall and a generous annual allowance. But his rapid ascent was followed by an almost equally rapid fall from grace; the anti-Catholic frenzy subsided and increasing numbers of people came to question the truth of his stories. He could not seem to refrain from compulsive lying, but he went too far when he accused the Duke of York (the future James II) of being a traitor. The result was a fine of £100,000, followed by a conviction for sedition and perjury and a sentence to be whipped, pilloried and thrown into prison (in 1680). The notorious Judge Jeffries remarked that Oates was ‘a shame to humanity’ and ‘has deserved more punishment than the laws of this land can inflict’ and when James came to the throne he had Oates re-tried and his sentence extended to life imprisonment and annual pillory for good measure.

In 1688 when James II lost his throne in ‘The Glorious Revolution’, William of Orange was crowned as William III and Oates got a pardon and a pension. He married a wealthy widow and went into retirement, but was never far from some kind of sordid intrigue, and in 1691 he tried to fabricate another ‘Popish plot’ which this came to nothing. In 1693 his pension was withdrawn by Queen Mary (the daughter of James II, whom he had accused of being a traitor). He then became a Baptist minister for a while, but was again expelled for a financial scandal. He was to die in obscurity on 12 July 1705.

In 2005 a poll in BBC’s History Magazine, Oates was voted the 17th Century’s ‘worst Briton’ and was equal-third place in ‘worst Briton of the last 1000 years’ (beaten only by Jack the Ripper and Thomas Beckett).