In Our Time - Titus Oates and his 'Popish Plot'

Episode Date: May 12, 2016

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Titus Oates (1649-1705) who, with Israel Tonge, spread rumours of a Catholic plot to assassinate Charles II. From 1678, they went to great lengths to support their scheme, forging evidence and identifying the supposed conspirators. Fearing a second Gunpowder Plot, Oates' supposed revelations caused uproar in London and across the British Isles, with many Catholics, particularly Jesuit priests, wrongly implicated by Oates and then executed. Anyone who doubted him had to keep quiet, to avoid being suspected a sympathiser and thrown in prison. Oates was eventually exposed, put on trial under James II and sentenced by Judge Jeffreys to public whipping through the streets of London, but the question remained: why was this rogue, who had faced perjury charges before, ever believed?WithClare Jackson Senior Tutor and Director of Studies in History at Trinity Hall, University of CambridgeMark Knights Professor of History at the University of WarwickAndPeter Hinds Associate Professor of English at Plymouth UniversityProducer: Simon Tillotson.

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time, for more details about in our time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, in 1678, Titus Oates claimed he'd discovered a Catholic conspiracy to shoot King Charles II. He knew all the details. He'd invented every one of them himself. It's one of the great works of historical fiction.

For three years, his fabricated purpose plot inflamed fears that there were secret Catholics in power, conspiring to returning and to Catholicism under the King's brother James, Duke of York. Soon, Charles banned Catholics from London, crowds paraded, burning effigages of the Pope through the city, vigilantes hunted for signs of supposed sympathizers, throwing them in prison, there were executions of innocent priests, lords, even archbishops. Titus hathes basked in the adulation of a grateful public, though he is eventually caught out, the fear of plots and of the mob left a deep mark on politics and redishes. religious tolerance for decades.

With me to discuss Titus Oates and his Popish Plot are Claire Jackson, Senior Tudor and Director of Studies in History at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge, Mark Knights, Professor of History at University of Warwick, and Peter Hines, Associate Professor in English, at Plymouth University. Claire Jackson, what was the problem about being a Catholic in 1670s, England? Well, I think we need to draw a distinction, perhaps,

between day-to-day realities and popular perceptions. probably a theme we're going to come back to this morning about what actually happened and realities. But the day-to-day reality is that Catholics are a very small minority. The sort of underground nature of Catholic devotion makes it quite difficult to know exactly how many, but maybe 60,000 out of a population of maybe 5 to 5.5 million. So just over 1% or even in a densely cosmopolitan city like London, not more than 2%, but disproportionately perceived to be a much greater threat than that. On a day-to-day basis, the majority of Catholics would simply want to continue,

knew they're practicing their pre-Reformation faith. They'd want to stay under the radar of the state. But there was a whole edifice of penal laws dating back to the Elizabethan and Jacobian periods that made attendance at Church of England services on a weekly basis compulsory for all men and women, adult men and women, also to take communion three times a year. And if people failed to do that, they were liable to be indicted or prosecuted for recusancy. And some of the fines facing them would be quite large, things like standing fines of £20 a month, which a modern multipliers are quite difficult, but maybe something like £2,000 a month. So really quite ruinous. And again, I think we've probably come back to that difference between the general, I mean the default reflex perception

for a lot of English would be that Catholics pose a huge threat. But when it came to individuals that they actually knew, people in their locality, neighbours, friends, they might be much more nervous about indicting somebody that would then face financial ruin. So I think, again, there's a sort of difference between realities and perceptions. It's strange though, isn't it? You've talked about 1 or 2% in a population of 5 million, clustered mainly in Lancashire and in London, although they were scattered all over the place,

and yet it flared up into this enormous conflagration, which lasted over three years. What is it about this 1 or 2% that is potentially going to cause so much trouble? What history is brought to that bonfire before it's lit? Well, history casts a very long shadow over this period, I mean, right back to the Reformation, it's been part of Protestant thinking that there is a popish plot that flares up in different times and different places. So going back to the Elizabethan period, there were lots of conspiracies associated with Mary Queen of Scots, then there was the threat of the Spanish Armada, then there was the gunpowder plot, then there was the Irish rebellion of 1641.

And this becomes a very persuasive historical area that wiped out almost all the Protestants. Yes, that was aimed at sort of annihilating Protestants in Ireland. and one of the themes that we hear in the Popish plot is 41 has come again. So there's a great sort of historical rationale for leaving in a sort of generic Popish plot. But also geographically, Protestantism is not doing that well at this stage in the sort of European geopolitics. It's being consigned to the northern peripheries, the big European superpowers, France and Spain are Catholic.

And Protestantism is flourishing, but very much on the fringes of Holland, Northern Germany, Scandinavia, Scotland and England. but there's always again Ireland out to the west. So this fear of potential encirclement geographically plus a history of popish plots is really quite a toxic mix. But on the whole, you're telling the listeners now that on the whole, when Charles comes to the throne after Cromwell, there are few Catholics, and they're going about their business

and they're not really troubling anyone. Well, few Catholics could afford to pay those kind of recusancy fines. there's probably a lot of people that we term church papists who simply to protect their own sort of well-being, their livelihoods would continue to practice on a sort of clandestine basis but would attend Anglican Service weekly and would occasionally take communion simply not to be liable for recusancy laws. But again, there's probably a difference within the Catholic community

between the majority of people trying to stay under the state's radar and simply be quiet, who had a record of civil war loyalty to the king, but then fear of post-Reformation orders like the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, who are literally on a mission with international finance and backing to re-Catholicise England and bring it back into the fold. That they would be the much smaller minority, but again, one that would loom much larger in the popular imagination. Yes, the sort of Pope's stormtroopers in a way, weren't they? Mark Knights, what was it about Charles II's personal views that made people anxious? So I think there's a longer history

going back to his troubles really before his restoration in 1660 when he had been in exile and courting the favour of Catholic powers in order to regain his throne. So there's a Catholicising influence on him even before he takes to the throne. But once he is restored in 1660, he seeks to moderate

the rather punitive religious settlement that Parliament wanted to impose, both on Catholics and on Protestant dissenters, that's to say people who couldn't conform to the established Church of England. And Charles in 1662 and then again in 1672, tried to use his power as king to suspend the legislation which had been enacted against Catholics. And that created a lot of suspicion about his real intention. coupled to that was the fact that his brother, James Duke of York,

had also, by the late 1660s, shown evidence of his distancing from the Church of England and embracing the Catholic faith. And so Charles's problem really was about perceptions of Catholicism at court. And those are also exacerbated by the fact that from 1670, his mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth, was both Catholic and French, and therefore sort of personified the two fears that Englishmen at the time had about the threat from popery. Yes, and he did try, didn't he?

He tried to be more inclusive, and it didn't last very long. That's right. These attempts in 1662 and 1672 to meet, ameliorate the punitive laws against the Catholics was very soon reversed by Parliament. They weren't having any of that. The Clarendon Code. That's right. So in the early 1660s, there's a set of new penal laws passed against the Catholics

and against the Protestant dissenters to try and buttress the restored Church of England. and Charles worked quite hard to try and unpick some of that, but the forces in Parliament were overwhelming. And yet in politics he was stuck because he wanted to make alliances with France, didn't he, the most powerful part of Europe, which suited the English at that time to make an alliance with them, and they, of course, were Catholic.

That's right, and in 1672, England went to war against the Dutch, the other only really major Protestant power in Europe at the time in alliance with Catholic France. And that was one of the big turning points, I think, in popular opinion. Why was the king taking Protestant England to war against Protestant Holland in alliance with the Catholic France? And that retrospectively seems a turning point to it. So Edward Deering, for example, who keeps a diary in this period.

period, records in 1681, that that's one of the major turning points in this anxiety about the growth of popery and arbitrary government, as Andrew Marvell was to put it. So there's a general residual worry about Catholics, you've talked about the Spanish Amada and Guy Fawkes and so on. That's festering away, and people know about that. And people got through the Reformation, although a lot of them don't like it, but they're holding onto it. And then this, so these are embers which can be. brought to flames quite quickly and we have our man Titus Oates

Peter and you're going to tell us about this disastrous magnificent fabricator Well Titus Oates Yeah it was something of a rogue The history of disappointment and humiliation And failure And failure, yes, through his education

And he was He was a son of a Baptist preacher He was born in 1649 And he was a It's quite useful to separate him into several periods, his education, his time as a Protestant preacher, and then the time when he gets in amongst the Catholics, which is really important in 1677. But it's worthwhile just outlining a few details about Pope's history.

And so he was sent to a couple of schools, and he was expelled from schools, usually for reasons to do with money. He got into disputes about money. He went up to Cambridge. He was sent to Gonville and Keyes College. He was transferred to St John's College and then he was kicked out of Cambridge again over a dispute about money. So he left Cambridge without a degree. You wouldn't pay for a coat that somebody had made for him. Exactly, yeah, a dispute over a bill with a tailor. By 1670 he's managed to get a licence to preach and he takes holy orders.

And in 1673 he gets himself into a living in the village of bobbing in Kent. But this goes very badly. He's accused by his parishioners of drunkenness, lewd behaviour, unorthodox views, blasphemous views, even of stealing. So money comes into this again. He's stealing for whatever reason. So he dismissed from this living. He returns to Hastings, where his father has a living.

He becomes a curate for a while. But at this moment, he did something very extraordinary, which has resonances later. He accuses a schoolmaster. It seems like a prefabricated scheme to get himself a job in a school. He accuses a schoolmaster of sodomy with a pupil. which is a total fabrication and this is discovered

and he's bound over and he pending trial but he flees to London so it's a catalogue of disgrace really that's emerging and then he gets chucked out of

it becomes an naval chaplain and gets chucked out of their for sodomy exactly yeah accusations of so here we have our man and he comes to 1677 when he conversed to Catholicism why did he do that Well, he represented that in contradictory ways. Initially, he said, he did it in order to go undercover to discover a plot. When the plot was at his height and he was enjoying the success of the plot,

this was the reason. He put himself in danger, he says, for king and country, put his soul and body in danger by converting to Catholicism in order to provide decent cover in order to uncover a plot. But later, he changed that story and said, that it was a genuine conversion. Actually, the term he used, I said, was, I was seduced by

the popish sirens into a belief into the Catholic church. But nonetheless, he self-aggrandized himself again. This was a divine hand of providence had placed him amongst the Catholics to find out the plot. One of the many curiosities about his life that intrigued me that, he had this patron, didn't he? When he converted to Catholicism,

sent him to one place in Europe, which is very important that he goes to Europe after another. He failed at the first place. He failed at the second place. One he didn't know enough Latin. B, he got into the second one, he got into trouble again. But he's being well looked after by this bloke. Why is that? Well, there are various reasons. So Father Richard Strange is the head of the Jesuit order in England,

and he takes him under his wing. Now, one historian, John Kenyon, assumed that this was because the reason he managed to get credibility with Father Strange or getting him with the Catholic Church was because of his homosexuality which is one way of thinking about it there are more generous reasons

homosexuality can be generous yeah I mean in sense no that was a sort of dispersion cast upon him but I think another reason that might be that Father Strange generally saw a soul to be saved and he generally saw a very clever man perverse way he was.

But you're right, he sent him off to Spain, to an English college in Spain, and then he left there under disgrace, came back to England, but Father Strange had faith in him again, he took him off to Saint-Amer in North France, but he left there in disgrace again, back in England.

And this is where... It's a wonderful pedigree, isn't it? This man is going to turn England upside down for three years. Execution, unbelievable. So this is the chap we have on our hands, Claire. Right, he teamed up with somebody called Israel Tong. Israel Tong was a...

You tell us briefly about Israel Tong, his vehementalty Catholicism, and then let's get cracking. Yeah, it was a bit of a toxic mix between the two individuals. So Tong is much older, born 1621s. He's already in his late 50s compared to Oates who's in his late 20s. and Tong is perhaps I mean there are dimensions to his character that are less attractive

but he's perhaps a bit more straightforward I mean he's an academic who's got various degrees but again has a life of sort of serial disappointments failures that then engender this sort of seething resentment so he's elected a fellow of a college in the 1650s the short-lived Cromwellian College in Durham

but then it closes he's a chaplain to an Anglican chaplain to a garrison in Dunkirk but then it's sold to the French but then worst of all he's given a really ambitious opportunity to take a living in the city of London, St. Mary Staining in June 1666, but less than three months later there's the Great Fire of London and his whole church and parish go up in flames. And he blamed as the Catholics, as many people did. And it seems to really breed in him a persecution complex, a belief that this Popish plot is out there. So the key thing is,

and I haven't found it yet, well, I haven't. Why did, how did they work this up, the two of them? Well, I think he is looking for somebody to give this credibility. Oates is clever, as you've said. I mean, he knows which buttons to press with people. So he flatters tongue and even claims that he's been offered 50 pounds by the Jesuits to assassinate tongue for anti-Jesuitical writings that he'd written that actually hadn't been very successful and were feeding this persecution complex. So Oates sort of flatters tongue and says, you know, we should work together and give, and he's offering.

Why does he need tongue? Well, tongue can offer money. I mean, this is somebody who's come with a serial history of expulsion and all sorts of things. For Tongue, this is somebody who's claiming to have details on plots that he believes in his own mind are out there. Where did he get the idea? Just one time, I know it's ridiculous. Where did he get the idea from? Because it ran and around. Where did he sit down in which pub, which time did he sit down and say, I know, I've got a cunning plot. Sorry, oats?

We're on oats. Well, I was it to go No, no, I'll have a go. What, Peter, he thought. Well, I think Oates was, as Claire said, he was destitute in poverty. This career of serial disappointments, he was in London and he needed to take it with somebody.

He'd met Israel Tong briefly before, and he falls back on his company because here's some access back into London society. And he strings Tong along. He claims he's still undercover as a Jesuit, you know, in form around the Jesuit. it. And Tongue buys this story completely.

So there's not a close alliance between the two of them. He's using Tongue. I get all that. And it's all very good background. But when did they say, let's work out a plot that somebody's going to kill the king and we know who and we're going to benefit from. Well, it is interesting that Tong is very keen that this is something that's written down. I mean, he, at any point, Oates could sort of abscond again and all this sort of credibility

that Tong sees of a plot would vanish with him. So that's why he's very keen that Oates should swear his articles or his deposition. Because Mark Knights, what Oates could bring, although we haven't cracked the creative moment yet, what Oates could bring was a lot of stuff. I mean, he'd been around. The fact that he'd been in Europe, as Peter was saying, meant that he picked up an awful lot about the way the Catholics and particularly the Jesuits operated. And so he was in a sense, he had used, as it were, the talents that an undercover agent should have. So he could bring to the table lots of names, lots of instances, some of them accurate in the event, or the whole capsule fabricated.

So can you give us some idea of, I've just outlined it very crudely, the substance of his claims? Yes, and it's important to recognise, of course, that he embellishes it over a long period of time, but initially the core of it was that there was this Jesuit plot to reconvert England forcibly to Catholicism.

And that involved assassinating Charles the second the black bastard as the Jesuits called him in short hand and she says all they wanted to say in too isn't

and Oates revealed quite graphic details about how this was to be accomplished named individuals who were alleged to have attempted to shoot the king and their locks on their

muskets jamming at the crucial moment or Jesuits being sent with footlong daggers which were six inches wide to plunge into the king so really graphic detail was a silver bullet there yeah there was all sorts of things and and the foolishness of the king having the same walk in the same park most days exactly James exactly

but it's incredibly detailed because as you say he has these snippets of information. He's able to say on a certain day, on the 24th of April 1678, for example, there was this big consult of all the Jesuits in London, 50 of them, who were all in this plot. And so that type of evidence has a certain credibility about it. If you didn't know, how do you sift through that

if you're the government trying to work out whether there's any substance to this at all? He's got a basic credibility. He's got a fantastic memory as well about all the inventions that he's made. And he's very bullish about it all. He can tell a good story. Can I go across to Peter Hines now?

So he's got the good story. He made it up, Tongues, bankrolling him and an accomplice. And an intermediary as well, because Tongue knows people who know the king. So he's got his setup. So how did it gain real traction? It could be just another ridiculous notion floating in the edges of King James Park.

I'm going all over the place. James Park, right? How did it gain traction? There are a number of ways, I think. To start with, to develop what Mark was saying about the details of the plot, that's really important. You mentioned the silver bullet,

this idea that Charles is in St James Park every day. well he oates accuses two men John Grove and Thomas Pickering of attempting to assassinate the King of St James's Park and his regular walk by shooting him but this has failed on a number of occasions that Flint was loose in the rifle the gunpowder was wet

lots of lurid details like they chose to chew the bullets to make them jagged in order that would do more damage and make it more possible to kill Charles a second so these details are really resonant really lots of lovely colour he puts into the details. But what's also important is that it's not simply a plot that he's going to happen. Here is a plot that's ongoing.

We've been damn lucky that Charles isn't dead already because people are trying to assassinate him right now. So this is quite a resonant detail as well. But going back to Claire's point, he made lots of grander claims, slightly vague claims about invasion forces and rebellion. So 20,000 Scots apparently were prepared. to rise in rebellion.

A similar number in Ireland. There were 20,000 infantry men, 5,000 cavalry ready to rise in Ireland. France, importantly, was ready to provide troops and arms and ship them over to Ireland. So this idea of Catholic encirclement was really big. So the small details and the big detail, the bigger picture were important.

Didn't the King's diplomatic service and his secret agents have a better access to information than Oates? I mean, couldn't the King say, look, this is rubbish. My chap in Ireland says this is rubbish. My chap in Scotland says this is rubbish. Couldn't you do that? Was that not possible? Well, I'm not sure how organised the bureaucracy was in the period in those places. Clearly not, because they didn't get any information. It was just a question.

Okay, Claire, in 1678, there was a major factor which really pushed it forward and gave it serious importance. And that was the discovery of the body of Sir Edmund Godfrey at the bottom of Primrose Hill, a London suburb now, but then out in the country. And why was that important? So this is the magistrate before whom Oates has been on two occasions in September 1678 to swear the accuracy and the truthfulness of his depositions. He is a fairly straight-laced, he's often described as quite a querulous individual,

who is clearly a little bit discomfited, not only by the sort of radical, sort of serious nature of the allegations, doesn't follow them up officially, immediately, obviously talks to people, suffers a sort of unquietness of mind. Yes, he's Protestant, but although he's quite a straight-laced person

who takes his responsibilities as a magistrate very seriously in terms of suppressing vice, he's not known as a rabid, sort of anti-Catholic magistrate. But it's clearly discomfited by obviously a lot of what Oates has said to him, but then disappears on Saturday in October, Saturday. So they've gone to him to get it down on tongue, wants it down on paper. This is sworn evidence. This is not messing about. They've been to a proper, Protestant, serious magistrate, reliable figure, and who believes them? So this is now a

sworn document that can shake in everybody's faces. And then quite soon after it, I think a few weeks after. Two weeks afterwards, he disappears on Saturday the 12th of October. And then on Thursday the 17th of October, his body is discovered in a ditch, as you said, near Primrose Hill. Later, it's shown that there are sort of strangulation marks around his neck, and his own sword has been very sort of viciously driven through him, emerging, sort of on his chest emerging out his back. And this is the event, the catalyst, that sort of electrifies or transforms what's been a sort of lingering alarm and anxiety and perhaps skepticism into, for those who are looking for it, concrete evidence that there must be a plod. out there. Can you be even more specific about why it sets off the alarm bells? Because this is somebody

who was in possession of this information who has now either known too much or been taken out if you believe that Sir Edmund Barry Godfrey was murdered by papists. And we still don't know humanity. We still, it's one of the great unsolved murders of history. And right from the outset, there are people who come up with other theories. But this is really where public opinion begins to really play its own agency. Because as far as the public opinion are concerned, this is now proof, if proof were needed, that there is a popish plot out there. There are blood 30s Jesuits, and it will only be a matter of time before somebody else is taken out. Mark Knights, so we now have two levels going on here.

We have a growing belief in Oates, and we have a beginning, an embryonic disbelief. Now, who were the disbelievers in what he was saying? The disbelievers initially included the king. so when Oates was initially revealing his information, he gave some details which Charles II knew to be false. Charles was there. Charles was there, he was listening to all this. So at one point Titus Oates describes Don John of Austria,

who he claimed to have met as a tall, fair man, and Charles II knew him as a short, dark man. So there were some clear problems with some of the evidence, But it's not really until, I think, the summer of 1679, sometime after these initial revelations, that real skepticism starts to kick in. And that's largely because, in a sense, Oates and his cronies pushed the story too far.

So they make the accusation that Charles's queen has been involved in the plot. and the allegation is that Catherine had encouraged and even paid her physician to poison the king. Now, Charles, as everyone knows, had a rather colourful sexual life outside of the marriage chamber. And I think he felt an obligation to his wife to vindicate her. and so the trial of Wakeman, as it occurs in the summer of 16th. You're reaching ahead. I mean, the skepticism bit is okay, but we're in 1679. We've got two years of uproar to go.

The skepticism is a little bit. The uproar and the widespread belief in it and the panic that ensues is a very big bit, and that's what we're talking about. And we'll come to Wakeman in a moment. You want to get him over with now? Well, it could do now, because he's the physician who was accused of poisoning or attempting to poison the king

and his trial is the first real test of Oates' evidence. Because Oates accused him of course. And the presiding judge, a guy called Sir William Scroggs, goes out of his way to question Oates' evidence because there was a lot riding on this. if Wakeman was convicted, the Queen would be implicated and that way a very, very large crisis lay. So Scrogg's steers a very neat path

between trying to expose the faults of Oates' testimony whilst still trying to maintain a belief in the plot of the whole. Wakeman got off, nobody believed him, and the plot roared even louder, didn't it, Claire? How many executions were... As a direct result, promotes his claim? Well, the key thing, going back a moment, to Barry Godfrey's death,

is that it also introduces a whole new cast of informers, people who can now claim to be able to solve this mystery and introduce other evidence against different people. Because there's money in informing. There's huge amounts of money, and the sorts of people... Who is giving it, and what sort of money? Usually secret service funds. When one begins to look at some of the amounts of money,

and you try and multiply them... up for people who have come from pretty dodgy backgrounds. I mean, there's a whole sort of cast of people who begin to enter. It's also coincidental that a few days after Barry Godfrey's body is found, Parliament meets. So Barry Godfrey's body's found on the Thursday, and by chance, Parliament happens to meet on the Monday, and immediately sets up its own inquiry. So what was really quite a limited knowledge of this plot, and notes his claims, suddenly becomes much wider. Privy Council looking into it. Yeah, but then the Commons look into it. Charles sets up his own powers to look into it.

But then the Commons set up their own parliamentary committees, and then almost the Court of Public Opinion decides that somebody needs to be found guilty. And although Wakeman is acquitted, there's quite a cast of characters before that, lesser people, if you like, on the sort of political scale of things, who are nevertheless convicted on the testimony of these informers, particularly in relation to Godfrey's death. And the other interesting thing sort of culturally is the extent to which Barry Godfrey becomes this sort of Protestant martyr very quickly for the whole plot.

and that's the point also at which sort of disbelief in the plot almost becomes, as people describe it, its own form of heresy, that the minute now you start saying, I'm not so sure about this, then there's a sort of type of heresy going on. So it rolls over in this most extraordinary way that it just, you've talked very clearly

Mark about the lack of evidence and something. It doesn't see the matter. It's got its own head of steam. It rolls, if you disbelieve, that proves you're concealing something, then come to your house, wreck your house, look for stuff. And it's on that strange, how many people, I mean, I mean, there's no respecter of titles, Lords, Archbishops executed. Absolutely. I mean, in the end, it's probably about 23 individuals that are executed,

sort of directly related to the plot and then about another seven or something, die in prison. But the sheer seriousness of what is going on here, and Scroggs does explain that at the very first trial of Sir Edward Coleman and says to Oates, you know, to take away a man's life on a fall. oath is murder, and that's precisely why perjury and punishments are so vicious. But yes, I mean, as almost today, whenever a great event happens, there's enormous pressure on the authorities to find those responsible and bring them to justice. And then one begins to see Barry Godfrey appearing on medals and playing cards and in processions. And, you know, he sort of becomes very sort of central to the whole plot's credibility. Talking about processions, they were part

of the action, weren't they? We had the post. The marches with the effigy of the Pope at one stage, the effigy was filled with alive cats, so when they burned him the cats, squealed, and that was supposed to be the Pope in hell. Is that right? That's right. These processions are absolutely fascinating. They've been very well-organised processions. There must have been some financial support, some serious financial support for these processions.

They happened on the 17th of November, the Accession Day of Queen Elizabeth I. That was an important resonance as well, the kind of Protestant Queen. couldn't help but it was from resonate in certain ways in this Catholic crisis. But they were extraordinary events. These floats, the pageants as they were called, about a dozen of them would process through London with various different figures displayed. It's claimed that 200,000 people were there,

two-fifths of the population. Yeah, I don't know. I think that's an exaggeration from an invested person, but it couldn't have been too outlandish in an exaggeration for it to have any credibility. So tens of thousands, at least, I would imagine, extraordinarily well attended. People were clamouring actually to get the best positions.

You know, there were places being sold near Temple Bar where the final culmination of the procession happened, where this effigy was, the Pope was tipped into the fire. There were the window places were being sold for the vast sums of money. People were clamouring to get to see this culminating moment. It's a wonderful example of public demonstration and a performance event. So I would, Mark, there would Mark nice. some politicians who welcomed this. It played into their hands. Who were they? Absolutely. So as Claire was

saying, these revelations come just at the start of parliamentary session. And there are forces in Parliament who want to bring down two big beasts. The first is Charles II's Prime Minister, the Earl of Dambi. And Dambi was impeached. That's to say there's a formal parliamentary trial process launched against Danby. The bigger scalp is that of James Duke of York, the king's brother, because he was the next heir to the throne. The king had no children. The king had no children, no legitimate children anyway. And MPs, many MPs in Parliament were petrified of the prospect of a popish successor to use the language of the day.

And they used the popish plot as a way of bringing the succession issue into Parliament and to bring in legislation which would exclude James from the succession. So it gets more and more fascinating

because this fiction takes off and he's being very heavily criticised which takes off and it is uncontrollable and yet it feeds into other facts. So the facts of history determined by the fiction of this man. Peter, can you just briefly tell us? It began to achieve written form as well.

It's put out an extraordinarily expensively produced book, the true narrative of the horrid plot. Yes, these narratives were fascinating. It was interesting that it wasn't until April 1679 that an official document came out detailing the actual events of the plot. And so there's a lot of speculation and rumour that had been buzzing around since

the Privy Council met in September 78, which actually would go back to the point about traction, couldn't help but fuel the uncertainty the rumours flying around. People were debating the details of the plot, not the substance of it, really. That was quite important. But these narratives were a publishing phenomenon really.

The usual sort of pamphlet discourse you would have in the period would be these quartet, small paperback form. This was a big, folio, fine paper, wonderfully printed. Who was paying for it? Well, it was funded by booksellers. So they were looking for a market and they got a market? So they got their money back on the open market. Okay, Claire Jackson, what we brought in

James, the King's brother, who was to become King. He was a Catholic. He was known to be a Catholic. Can you tell us his state of mind while this was going on? Yeah, I mean, this makes him very very, very. vulnerable. There's been discussion about the dangers of a popish successor, but in this kind of mood of panic and hysteria, those become all the more acute. I mean, bringing

in legislation to try and exclude him on the grounds of Catholicism isn't the only option. I mean, people have been talking about this for some time. They've been talking about the possibility that Charles might be induced to divorce his Catholic Queen, Catherine Baganza and Maria Protestant, or that he might retrospectively legitimize his eldest

illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, or that limitations might be placed James, then he would be treated almost as a sort of region. There would be a regent put in place. But this actually becomes a bit more urgent. I mean, if Charles really is liable to be assassinated in the park any day, we don't have time to wait for him to get divorced and marry someone else and have children. So it does place James and his position in really under the spotlight. And there's a lot of debate in Parliament about whether if the sort of restrictions that have been placed on Catholics, that they should be placed within a sort of 20-mile exclusion zone

around London, shouldn't James, shouldn't that apply to James as well? And there is sort of arguments on both sides saying people saying keep him near, keep him near Charles, don't send him into the arms of people like Louis the 14th. But eventually Charles decides quite decisively to both sort of banish James first to sort of Brussels and the Hague and then to Scotland, as well as also to banish his eldest son, the Duke of Monmouth. And one begins to see a bit of a rivalry between those two because Monmouth becomes the Protestant sort of savior to the question of the succession. If only it could be found that really Charles had married, Mormon's mother Lucy Walter.

And just as there's a sort of traction about people's readiness to believe in Titus Oates' plot, you can see the sort of positive desire of people to believe in a black box that would show that ultimately Charles and Lucy had been married. And it's Charles who comes out and says, publicly many times, I've only ever been married to Queen Catherine.

This isn't going to work. But James, meanwhile, is in the Hague or is in Brussels or is in Scotland, having to find out about exclusion remotely. Now, we have to, I'm afraid, we have to go like the clappers for the next few minutes because it's been wonderful talking about it

but it came to an end after three years and we've talked about executions, demonstrations, changes in the history based on fictitious evidence and so on. How, can you give us the two main factors that made it Peter out? I'm sorry about this Peter. Well I think

developing a point that was made earlier that it began with oats and his evidence and there were lots of proclamations were being issued to bring in other influence to get more information on the plot. And this had the effect of drawing lots of disreputable people in. And the more witnesses that came in, the more unsavory characters that were drawn in,

and the less credible the evidence got over time. And more and more people were being caught out in trials. There was the wonderful name Thomas Dangerfield came in. Stephen Dougdale came in, giving evidence as well. But often this evidence didn't take, and they were discredited as witnesses. So over time, the cast of characters becomes incredibly flaky. And the king didn't get assassinated.

Exactly, that's a very good point. Mark, what happened to Titus Oats? So let's say his cover is blown. Yes. We're using this jug. No, my, it is. So what happens to? So initially not a lot, and it's not until 1684,

that the wheels really come off for Titus Oates. So that's six years on? Yes, I mean, it's quite a significant period. So initially it's the result of, James Duke of York, taking an action against Oates for having called him a traitor. And a huge fine of £100,000 is imposed on Oates and he's slung into prison. And then there are two further trials later in 1684 for perjury. And Oates is put in the pillory, lots of stuff thrown at him.

He's whipped through London on two occasions. he says his back, he's got thousands of lashes on it, and he's slung into prison, where he languishes for the entire reign of James II from 1685 to 1688. Come the revolution of 1688, with the invasion of William, the displacement of James,

Oates is released from prison, he's rehabilitated a little bit, he's given back a small pension, he re-enters the limelight, but he never quite recaptures his, his earlier glory. But it does live for 1727, which isn't a bad life. And finally, can you tell us, was this inevitable, or was this the action of this strange man? Well, I think these sort of plots were a recurrent feature of the 17th century, but I think

the period that Mark's just been talking about, I mean, what's really happened to sort of bring the wheels off the plot is that the political ground has changed. Charles II, through strategic use of the prerogative, and actually seizing the ground, playing on people's fears is that if 41 has come again, that means civil war. It actually promotes a sort of backlash of loyalism. So Charles II regains Parliament and discredits this whole idea of incipient panic. Well, thank you and thank you very much for going at such speed.

Thanks, Clare Jackson, Mark Knights and Peter Hyde. Next week we'll be talking about the muses, the Greek goddesses on Mount Helicon. Thank you very much for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. We're now on Twitter. BBC in our time.

What did we miss out? Ireland. We mentioned it twice. I mentioned it. I mean, it's interesting. It's almost the sort of the dog that didn't bark. I mean, if this plot really was going to have traction, one would have felt that there would have been much more resonances in Ireland. And actually, through strategic management of the King's representative of Ireland,

Ormond, it doesn't sort of become the wide-scale panic that one might have. But that was what I was asking you earlier, Peter. Weren't the King's contacts in places like Ireland better than that? So when Oates said, oh, there's going to be 20,000 people and 5,000 cabaret in Ireland, the King said, oh, no, there aren't my bloke over there, says, no way, that's happening. In contrast to that, Oates was providing details of places and people that the King could have no access to, these Jesuit seminaries, to counterbalance all of that. So while some of the more implausible claims might have been tested,

there was such a wealth of salacious detail that needed an investigation. So I think that's one of the reasons why, you know, the bureaucracy couldn't creep into these corners, certainly in Spain and France. And actually some of the real evidence is in code. I mean, Oates has a lucky strike about the Duchess of York, James's wife's former secretary, Edward Coleman. Letters are found. They do actually contain damaging details, but they take a long time to be decoded from sort of shorthand and things. And in the end, as Coleman says, they have extraordinary claims in them. They're not treasonable, but, you know, that sort of knowledge only was flushed out as a result of the plot investigation.

I mean, you didn't exaggerate, did we? I mean, there was this uproar, there were this huge marches, there was this fear, there were people's houses were raided. Well, that's one of the interesting factors. The streets of London are something to factor in here, because if you imagine in 1678, the revelations are made in September, imagine yourself in the boots of a Londoner on the street you have this the militia is doubled

security around Whitehall and Westminster is really tight this would be noticeable there's Oates and the King's militia running around London arresting people searching houses proclamations are coming out almost daily asking for information

all this is confirming evidence that something is afoot then you have these wonderful slices of good fortune with Oates suggesting that Edward Coleman the secretary to the Duchess of York is involved in the plot and discover a cache of letters. He couldn't have known that,

but he just puts him in the frame and it happened. The death of Godfrey also, this comes in. That's the fascinating thing, isn't it? And that just boosts the plot. The death of Godfrey is the fascinating. The other fact to bear in mind here is that the government loses control of the press. So in May 1679, the government lost its ability to prevent print from appearing on the streets that it hadn't already seen.

And that leads to an enormous explosion. in the amount of printed propaganda that's available on the streets. And that feeds this public appetite for news about the plot and stimulates it. And there's this vast sort of rumour mill, which is encouraged by all this print. And it's incredibly inventive. Roger Lestrange, the chief propagandist for the government, produces vast amounts of very lively propaganda

put casting doubt on Oates's testimony and then Oates's supporters come out and Oates himself comes out with printed confirmations and so on so you get this really interesting printed debate going on I just can't quite comprehend and I'm sure you can but I can't how this man who'd been such a disaster without being silly about it or without being

but fired ejected, rejected again and again turned out to be able to put that thing together and hold it together. It seems extraordinary. I mean, people at the time who watched him voiced exactly those sorts of opinions. He's either the most adroit and greatest liar that ever existed, or he's telling the truth.

And it's actually, it's always the sort of things that Mark's been talking about, the depth of detailed circumstantial evidence. And there's phenomenal memory. I mean, he's got, you know, all these students are out there preparing for exams. He's got exactly the skills that are required. He's got the ability of sort of intense,

quick, factual recall, an ability to marshal evidence, an ability to have lucky strikes. But it reminded me if you saw sort of witch hunts in the States, in Germany, here and so on, it had that dynamic, Peter. Yes, and there were MPs were actually rooting out, trying to root out Catholics in the period, William Waller was very invested in trying to uncover subversive Catholic activity, and people made it their mission sometimes to go and take this opportunity to ferret out Catholics. settle a private school. Exactly. And, you know,

what could argue the penal laws that Claire set out earlier weren't being enforced as rigorously as they might have been against Catholics. And this was the opportunity to stiffen those up and to root out Catholic priests that are hiding, to root out the Jesuits in England. I mean, even people we don't normally associate with Islam and Samuel Pepys. You know, we tend to lose sight of Peep's. But, you know, Pepys' own clerk is cited as a witness

in the murder of Barry Godfrey. I mean, actually, there's a perfectly good alibi and he gets acquitted. But then Peeps himself finds himself in prison for six weeks in 1680 in his capacity as Admiralty of the Navy because he's been very close to James Duke of York and he's accused of piracy, popery and treachery. So Popery can often get yoked to these other ways of settling schools. And he's bailed for a huge sort of £30,000 bail or something,

about £2 million. And it's a harrowing experience for Peep's because he's in prison on capital charges. It's worth also saying that we touched on the political dimensions of this, but those political dimensions have major ramifications. So this is the period that sees the emergence of a two-party system in Britain for the first time with identifiable wigs and Tories labels that were to last another 150 years. And it's directly out of the Popish plot ferment. It's directly out of the Popish Plot Firmant that there's a major rethinking of political ideas. So John Locke and Algin and Sydney, who have this major imprint on British political

thought and American political thought, start to write their major works in the immediate aftermath of the Popish plot. Both of them sign a petition to Charles II, urging him to let Parliament sit in the autumn of 1680. And when he refuses to do that, they start thinking about well what are the proper limits of the king's power and start to go back to new principles of government? Here's our producer, Sam and Tillotson. Sorry to stop this, but who would like tea or coffee? There are many more history and discussion programmes

from Radio 4 to download for free. Find these on the website at BBC.co.uk. com.uk slash radio 4.