Unscrupulous Mr Oates

How far would you go for money, for power?

Would you go as far as selling someone out? To change your rhetoric, your whole life, even murder?

Turns out you don’t have to be a genius; more a profiteer of fortune, a good memory and the ability to argue your case, even in adversity, and still win.

Life was tough in the seventeenth century in England. The Monarchy would topsy-turvy with the government who were wrestling with a growing resentment among the population, set to a background of hatred, for its inherited bible bashers and blow-ins from across the borders.

London was an overcrowded, dirty, diseased city. Many people who came to the capital did so for work but conditions were so poor; sanitation, cleanliness and hygiene was a huge problem as were violence, theft, infections and early mortality rates.

As the nation struggled with its own sense of belonging, not eased by a huge divide between the Catholic and Protestant churches who were embroiled in a political fight to govern the land, the country was descending into civil war.

Assassination plots on leaders of state, particularly Kings, were commonplace, with both James I and Charles II both in receipt. However it’s the former pushing his obsession with Witchcraft and the execution of “witches” that became one of the most evil and macabre journeys of the 17th Century.

So if you could make your way in this world, you could count yourself lucky. 

Mr Oates would find himself to have fallen on the right side of the fence.

Born in Rutland, England in 1649, his early life was dominated by the cultural landscape, with uncertainty plaguing his education, becoming a Baptist during the Civil War. He did manage to attend Cambridge (Corpus Christi College) but his naive habit of leaving prematurely would be a marker of his personality to come, eventually quitting St John’s College. Without a Degree.

Being a liar, coupled with a particularly good memory, would prove to be a strong ally, in the absence of any real wit, as he gained a licence to preach from the Bishop of London, by falsely claiming he did indeed have a degree.

At the age of 21 (May 1670) he was ordained as a priest of the Church of England.

His taste for tipping the scale in his own favour was begining to take a notable turn, as he was involved in a sexual abuse claim involving a school master and a school pupil. It later transpired that Oates was guilty of fabricating the lies to have the school master struck off to claim the position as his own. The case was dropped due to the lack of any truth and Oates himself was facing charges of perjury himself..

By now he had fled back to London and, in his mid twenties, became a Chaplain in the British Navy. He travelled with his ship but the unscrupulous Mr Oates was able to find himself in trouble again, this time with a second case of buggery in his history (sexual assault) and was dismissed from the Navy, after only 12 months. 

Oates was no stranger to thinking bigger of himself and allowing his narcissistic nature to paint  a grand picture. A man who could claw his way to a profitable situation but seemingly also find himself returned back to the start. Always a stone’s throw from a serious crime, only to be absolved due to his clerical status, or his esteemed position at the time. Facing arrest and prosecution for perjury, he seemed to befriend the right people to help evade his crimes. Reinvention is an absolute world, the cunning the better!

Having been ordained into the Church of England, he was again quick at work and was received by the Catholic church at the ripe old age of 28. Around the same time he had become friendly with the rather strange individual, Israel Tonge, a particularly narrow minded and shallow man, a perfect foil for Oates to step off, and ironically also a devout anti-catholic.

Enjoying the limelight perhaps, Titus Oates travelled to Spain and France to continue his education, a deeper delving into Catholicism and ultimately towards gaining a priesthood. Larger than life and now ultimately unstoppable, his own views were becoming more outspoken, a lazy and disrespectful attempt to learn Latin coupled with more lies of earning a Doctor of Divinity saw him expelled from both colleges and was London bound again.

Returning to London, now in his late twenties, with numerous claims of male sexual assault and perjury cases stacking up he rekindled his relationship with Israel Tonge. He knew however, even with being so far gone at this stage, any claims he and Tonge would make would have a strong chance of landing with a writhing and discordant English public.

In a bizarre and twisted plot, Oates and Tonge began to fabricate a concoction of lies, by ways of written propaganda, placing the Catholic church in the centre of a plot to assassinate King Charles II. According to both, the Jesuits (a society of Jesus with its headquarters in Rome) were allegedly supposed to carry out the murder. Jumping on the divide within the masses, they seized the initiative of the deep hatred between the protestants and Catholics at the time. Upon being questioned about the plot, Oates made 43 allegations against members of the Catholic order (including 541 Jesuits).

Despite Oates’ patchwork reputation, he once again proved to be the master of deceit, recounting the names of prominent Jesuit members, apparently in letters, that could be conceived as corresponding to the assassination. Such was his skill in recounting the correct names and falsely claiming their involvement, his case closed with a list of now 81 names. Groundswell and hysteria was growing. Amazingly, he was awarded a squad of soldiers and began to close in on his victims.

Say something with enough conviction and you could say anything. Anything for money, for power, for greed, for chance. And for those stupid enough to believe, it seemed to serve him well. He even made a claim that the Queen was working with the King’s doctor to poison the King, but this was drawing him some unwanted attention from the King himself.

A meeting between King Charles II and Oates ensued and despite the traps set by the King, again Oates perjured himself and was arrested, but as only a cat with nine lives like Titus Oates could, with the threat of a constitutional crisis on the cards, parliament overruled the King and forced through Oates’s release. Giving him an apartment and amazingly, an allowance! 

He was lauded as a hero.

So what becomes of a man that will do anything for money?

After years of persecuting innocent Catholics and the death of at least 15 people, not least the high profile, and suspicious, Oliver Plunkett, who was hanged, drawn and quartered, public opinion began to question the nature of Oates’s lies. Lord Chief of Justice in England, William Scoggs, declared that many of those executed and on trial were in fact innocent. Backlash began to turn.

When James II came to the throne in 1685 he had Oates arrested, convicted of perjury, stripped of his Clerical titles and sentenced to life in prison. The full shame came over the next three days of floggings, pillory, egg pelting and public humiliation. It was suggested that the penalties were so severe that the aim was to kill Oates, by means of ill treatment (with Judges openly regretting that they could not impose the death penalty for perjury).

In a final act of mystery, after serving 3 years of jail time, William of Orange and Mary II arrived to jointly rule England in 1689 and pardoned the disgraced Oates, freeing him and granting him a pension.

His controversy hereafter never reached any public spotlight, even after striking a woman with his cane shortly before his death. He died almost completely anonymous, reverting back to the obscurity from which he came.

A man of blinding arrogance, once dubbed a “shame to mankind” was a ferocious liar, a fantasist but above all, a snake charmer. The spoils of greed were like the hands of Midas, a poisonous touch that, from the outside, seemed to be driven by the very disdain with which he viewed the world and more importantly, people. 

Never a limit set.

Never a line too far crossed.

With all his holy smoke..

The unscrupulous Mr Oates.

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