Edward
Coleman, John Fenwick, John Gavan, Robert Green,
John Grove, Thomas Harcourt (aka Whitebread or
Whitbread) William Harcourt, Lawrence Hill,
William Howard, William Ireland (aka Ironmonger),
Thomas Jenison, Richard Langhorn, Oliver Plunkett,
Thomas Thwing and Anthony Turner, all condemned in
the so-called "Popish Plot" of 1679, together with
their co-defendant and chronicler James Maurice (or
Maurus) Corker; also William Bedloe, Stephen Dugdale
and Titus Oates, the perjurers who witnessed against
them, and Edmund Berry Godfrey and James Sharp,
whose murders added to the general panic.
The
events surrounding the testimony of Titus Oates
(1649-1705) and his associates (1679-81) must rank
among the most shameful miscarriages of justice in
English history. Sixteen innocent men were executed
(barring one, who apparently escaped) for their part
in an alleged plot to kill the king (Charles II),
together with eight Catholic priests executed in the
ensuing purge against Catholics, but the real death
toll was much higher. According to one (admittedly
partisan) account, "Hundreds of innocent people died
through the Oates Plot; one Jesuit, William
Culcheth, reckoned that four hundred perished in
prison, some of them victims of the plague" (Bernard
Basset, SJ, The English Jesuits, 1967). The
account given in The
Catholic
Encyclopedia, while obviously also
not ideologically neutral, makes less extravagant
claims, and is probably a pretty fair summary of
events.
With the wisdom of hindsight,
there seems little enough excuse for the
authorities, and the public generally, to have lent
the credence they did to the assertions of a plot,
but in partial mitigation we should take into
account the violence of the times, and the fear that
this engendered. The murder of Sir Edmund Berry
Godfrey (1621-78), justice of the peace for
Westminster, is often cited as having fuelled the
flames of popular panic, and the murder (of which I
include a newspaper report, below) of James Sharp
(1613-79), Archbishop of St. Andrews, was just one
of a number of events that added to the general
sense of unease. However, Sharp was killed by
Scottish Covenanters and, whoever killed Godfrey, it
was almost certainly not the Catholic priests at
whose doorstep the blame was laid. The willingness
of the public to blame the Catholics in general -
and the Jesuits in particular - cannot be easily
rationalised.
Oates was expelled as army
chaplain for stirring up sedition in 1649 and
expelled from his church living for "improper
practices" (DNB) in 1674. Over the next
couple of years he started to inveigle himself into
secret meetings of Catholics, with a view to
betraying them for profit, and professed himself to
be converted to Catholicism in 1677. He entered the
Jesuit college at Valladolid, in Spain, but was
expelled five months later for "scandalous
behaviour" (DNB). He somehow managed to get
admitted to the seminary at St. Omer, and was again
expelled, after which he began to dream up a
fictitious Catholic plot to murder the king, Charles
II. William Bedloe (1650-1680) and Stephen Dugdale
(1640?-1683), equally unsavoury characters who had
also wormed their way into Catholic confidence,
chipped in with further accusations and, swept up in
a national panic, the courts were hasty to condemn
and gainful employment for the executioners ensued.
Bedloe fell ill and died, Dugdale drank
himself to death, and Oates was finally exposed as a
perjurer in 1685, when the Catholic James II came to
the throne. He was sentenced to a punishment
possibly even more horrific than the fate meted out
to those executed on his evidence. "Oates was...to
stand in the pillory annually at certain specified
times, to be whipped upon Wednesday, 20 May, from
Aldgate to Newgate, and upon Friday 22 May, from
Newgate to Tyburn and to be committed close prisoner
for the rest of his life" (DNB). Somehow,
though, he not only survived the beatings and other
privations but, on the accession of the Protestant
William III in 1689, obtained release and a pension.
The work shown here cites the
testimony (letters, poems, dying speeches, etc.) of
numerous of those executed. In alphabetical order,
these are, Edward Coleman, a Protestant convert to
Catholicism, thought to have joined the Jesuits, and
(I think) the only one of those condemned who
apparently had been involved in any kind of intrigue
(he engaged in a correspondance that was probably
treasonable from 1674 to 1675), John Fenwick (vere
Caldwell), S.J., John Gavan, S.J., Robert Green,
John Grove, Thomas Harcourt (vere Whitebread
or Whitbread), S.J., William Harcourt (vere Aylworth)
who,
according to the DNB, escaped to
Holland and died there in September, 1679,
though I doubt it, since I have here his speech
before execution on June 20th, 1679 (!), Lawrence
Hill, William Howard (i.e., Viscount Stafford),
William Ireland (aka Ironmonger), S.J., Thomas
Jenison, who died in prison, Richard Langhorn, Dr.
Oliver Plunkett (Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and
titular primate of Ireland), Thomas Thwing and
Anthony Turner, S.J.
These testimonies were gathered
by James Maurice (or Maurus) Corker, a Benedictine
monk and a convert from Protestantism, who was
himself accused on Oates's testimony, but acquitted
at trial (July 18th, 1679). However, he was kept in
prison anyway (at Newgate), and on January 17th,
1680, was tried again and sentenced to death for
treason. The sentence was not carried out, and he
was released on the accession of James II. After
James's abdication (1688), Corker was forced to
leave England, and became Abbot of Lamspring
(Westphalia) in 1690. The work featured below is
just one of his works vindicating the victims of the
Oates Plot.
 |
A Remonstrance of Piety and Innocence,
containing The Last Devotions and
Protestations of Several Roman-Catholicks,
Condemned and Executed on Account of the
Plot. Faithfully taken from their own
Mouths as they spoke them, or from the
Originals Written and left under their own
hands. To which are annexed certain
Lessons. Psalms and Prayers, selected out
of Holy Scripture... Hereunto is also
added a Summary of Roman Catholick
Principles... (London:
1683, 12mo, pp. 190). Some of the accounts
of the condemned are taken from other
sources; others were printed here for the
first time. The additional material serves mainly to demonstrate that
treason, lying under oath, etc., are
contrary to Catholic doctrine. A very good
copy, in a recent leather binding.
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The
London
Gazette. Numb. 1406. Published by
Authority. From Thursday May 8. to Monday May 12.
1679. (Printed by Tho. Newcomb in the Savoy, 1679.
Single sheet folio). "Edinburgh, May 4. A Horrid
Murder having been yesterday committed upon James
late Archbishop of St. Andrews, Primate and
Metropolitan of this Kingdom, the following
Proclamation hath been ordered by His Majesties
Privy Council to be published, for the Apprehending
of the Assassinates." Not directly connected with
the Popish Plot, but shows the level of public
anxiety and the willingness to blame Catholics; the
author rails against the "Bloody and Jesuitical
Principles" which give rise to such murders,
although the perpetrators later turned out to be
Scottish Presbyterians.
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