Popish Plot

According to History Professor Victor Stater, the Popish Plot was,

In 1678, two men invented a story that many prominent Catholics were involved in a murderous plot to kill the king - Charles II. The story sparked a crisis and sent many people to their deaths. Although the lies of the Popish Plot were eventually found out, the damage had already been done. Read on to find out more about this strange episode in Restoration history.

Popish Plot: Meaning

The 1678 Popish Plot was a fabricated conspiracy invented by a Church of England priest, Titus Oakes, which caused mass anti-Catholic hysteria in England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Titus Oates claimed that there was a network of Catholics who sought to assassinate King Charles II. The outcome was a frenzy of anti-Catholic sentiment in Britain, leading to the executions of 22 innocent Catholic men.

However, in the end, Oates' web of lies was uncovered and he was arrested for perjury.

Popish Plot: Background

To understand why the Popish Plot could even occur, we must first take a look at the rise of anti-Catholicism in England from the Reformation onwards.

Reformation

In 1533, Henry VIII broke away from the Church of Rome and established his own Church, the Church of England. He also ordered the dissolution of the monasteries. This massively decreased the power of the Catholic Church in Britain.

Henry's son, Edward VI, embarked on a strong Protestant reform when he came to the throne, but he died after only a few years, leaving his half-sister, Mary, as the Queen of England.

Fig. 1 - King Henry VIII broke with the Church of Rome to establish his own church - the Church of England. He also disbanded all the Catholic monasteries in England.

Mary was a devoted Catholic, and she tried to reverse her father and brother's religious reforms so that she could make England Catholic again. During her reign, many Protestants were burned at the stake, and she even married a foreign Catholic prince, Philip II of Spain, which led Catholicism to be associated with foreign powers and persecution.

When Mary died in 1558, her half-sister Elizabeth I made Britain a Protestant nation once more, and she hanged many Catholics during her reign. However, there were several Catholic plots against her which sought to assassinate Protestant Elizabeth and replace her with her Catholic cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. In addition, in 1588, Philip II of Spain attempted to invade England with his Spanish Armada. Although the plan failed, these events meant that Catholicism increasingly became associated with foreign invasions and treason.

The Early Stuart Era

Soon after the Stuart King James I came to the throne in 1603, the Gunpowder Plot was uncovered - a Catholic conspiracy to blow up both King and Parliament on 5 November 1605. Had it succeeded, nearly all of the government would have been killed. Moreover, it had been created by English Catholics, not foreign powers. This caused Catholicism to be seen as an even more dangerous threat in Britain.

By the time Charles I, who was married to a Catholic French woman, came to the throne, Parliament and much of Britain were fiercely Protestant. It was partially due to Charles' religious reforms, which reintroduced several Catholic rituals, that the English Civil War broke out in 1642. This led to a decade of Puritan rule under Oliver Cromwell.

Restoration

Charles II was an Anglican, and under the terms of the Restoration, laws were created to exclude all religious dissenters from the established Church of England (including Catholics).

During both the Great Plague of London in 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666, anti-Catholic sentiment grew in hostility, since public rumour linked these disasters to the Catholics.

Furthermore, many Protestants became increasingly anxious about the religious beliefs of the monarchy itself. Charles II was married to a Catholic princess, and he had pro-Catholic sympathies. In 1672, he passed a royal declaration that suspended all laws punishing religious dissenters. Furthermore, because Charles II did not have any legitimate children, the throne would one day pass to his brother, James the Duke of York, who was himself a Catholic. This led to fears among many Protestants that Britain would 'fall' to Catholicism once more.

Titus Oates: Popish Plot

Titus Oates (1649-1705) was a priest in the Church of England.

In 1677, Oates began writing a series of anti-Catholic pamphlets with Israel Tonge, a doctor of theology. At the same time, he became increasingly involved with the Catholic Church, even becoming a Catholic in 1677 and going to train as a Catholic priest in Spain. However, his Jesuit teachers were shocked by his opinions, and he was expelled after just a year from the training college.

Fig. 2 - Portrait of Titus Oates by Artist Thomas Hawker.

When he returned to London after having been expelled, Oates rekindled his friendship with Tonge. Oates claimed that his entire rationale for going to train as a Catholic priest in a Jesuit training college was so that he could learn more about the 'secrets' of the Jesuits. The two men crafted a long manuscript together that accused the Catholic Church in England of attempting to assassinate Charles II, naming nearly 100 Catholics who were supposedly in on the plot. They leaked the manuscript to Charles II's chemist.

Although Charles II was initially inclined to ignore the manuscript as nothing more than absurd, his Privy Council and Parliament took the accusations extremely seriously. The matter escalated when a prominent Protestant MP, Sir Edmund Godfrey, was found murdered - causing widespread panic about Catholicism in London. The House of Lords asked Charles II to ban all Catholics from a radius of 20 miles around London, which Charles II reluctantly approved.

In October 1678, Oates accused five Catholic lords of involvement in a plot against the King's life. They were duly imprisoned, and one was executed. The following month, Oates claimed that the Queen, who was a Catholic, was working with the King's physician to poison him. Charles II was furious and had Oates arrested, but Parliament worked to secure Oates' release.

The hysteria continued. The House of Commons was searched for gunpowder, and rumours abounded about Catholics. Twenty-two innocent men were executed, the last being Oliver Plunkett, the Archbishop of Armagh in Ireland.

After the Plot

By 1681, it had become clear that Oates was fabricating his evidence. He was arrested and given a fine of £10,000.

When James II came to the throne, he had Oates charged for perjury. The death penalty was not permitted for this type of crime, so the jury decided that Oates should be banned from the priesthood and publicly whipped every year. Oates spent the next three years in prison, but he was released shortly after William and Mary came to the throne in 1689 and given an annual pension.

Oates died a little later in 1705, forgotten by the British public.

Popish Plot: Conspirator

Although Oates was the main driver behind the Popish Plot, other figures were also involved. The most significant of these, who helped Oates to come up with the idea of the Catholic conspiracy, was Israel Tonge.

Israel Tonge

Israel Tonge was a doctor of divinity, schoolteacher, and chaplain. He was highly involved in helping Oates come up with the idea of the Popish Plot, and was the person who first suggested to Oates that he should write a manuscript about it. The two men planned that Tonge should 'happen' to find the manuscript in a gallery. This duly went ahead.

However, Tonge was known to be eccentric, and perhaps mad. When he testified about the plot with Oates to the Privy Council, the council decided that Tonge was out of his mind and they discounted his evidence.

Other conspirators

Most of the conspirators were men of high standing, such as clergymen Tonge and Oates. Two others who decided to falsify evidence to join Oates' plot were Stephen Dugdale, a steward to a Catholic nobleman, and Edward Turbeville, a Catholic soldier, who falsely claimed that Lord Stafford had hired him to assassinate King Charles II.

Popish Plot: Consequences

There were two key outcomes of the Popish Plot: anti-Catholic hysteria and the Exclusion Bill.

1) Anti-Catholic Hysteria

At the time, the Popish Plot led to mass anti-Catholic hysteria, ultimately resulting in twenty-two executions of prominent Catholics. Between 1678 and 1681, nine Jesuits were executed and twelve further Jesuits died in prison.

Furthermore, 'ordinary' Catholics also suffered, particularly those living in London who were forced to leave their homes and businesses once Charles II ordered that Catholics were not allowed within a 20-mile radius of London in 1678.

2) The Exclusion Crisis

The Popish Plot leant urgency to the fears that many in Parliament already felt about the prospect of James II, a Catholic, becoming King. Therefore, in 1679, the Earl of Shaftesbury proposed to the House of Commons that James should have his right of succession to the throne excluded because of his religion. Because it seemed likely that the Bill would go ahead and be passed into law, Charles II used his royal prerogative to shut Parliament down.

Fig. 3 - Portrait of James II by artist Peter Lely. The Whigs under the Earl of Shaftesbury wanted to exclude James from the line of succession to the English throne.

After this, several more attempts were made to pass the Exclusion Bill into law. Although these were all ultimately unsuccessful, the matter succeeded in creating two new political parties for the first time in English politics. The Tories backed Charles II and wanted James to remain within the succession. The Whigs wanted James to be excluded from it.

As a result, historian Victor Stater argues that the real legacy of the Popish Plot was that:

Popish Plot: Short Summary

The Popish Plot was a fabricated story about a Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Charles II in 1678. Its chief architect was an English clergyman, Titus Oates.

Parliament took the threat extremely seriously, and a wave of anti-Catholic hysteria swept Britain. Twenty-two Catholics were executed, and more were imprisoned on suspicion of involvement in the plot. Moreover, the hysteria helped precipitate the Exclusion Crisis - the attempt to exclude James the Duke of York from the line of succession to the throne. This split Parliament into two parties, the Whigs (who were for exclusion) and the Tories (who were against James' exclusion).

However, eventually, the truth came out that Oates had been inventing the entire story. He was arrested for perjury and banned from the priesthood. When William and Mary came to the throne in 1688, they released him and granted him an annual pension.