Popish Plot

5 Key excerpts on "Popish Plot"

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  eBook - ePub

  Aspects of Recusant History

  • T.A. Birrell, Jos Blom, Frans Korsten, Frans Blom, Jos Blom, Frans Korsten, Frans Blom(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  1CATHOLIC ALLEGIANCE AND THE Popish Plot

  A study of some Catholic writers of the Restoration period *

  * Originally delivered as an inaugural lecture on 16 March 1950 on the occasion of Birrell’s appointment as Reader in English Literature at the Catholic University of Nijmegen (now Radboud University Nijmegen).

  I have chosen to speak this afternoon on the subject of Catholic Allegiance and the Popish Plot of 1678, a subject which involves the study of some Catholic writers of the Restoration period. The writers with whom I propose to deal are Roger Palmer, Earl of Castlemaine, Dom James Maurus Corker, monk of the English Congregation of the Order of St Benedict, and Fr John Warner, Provincial of the English Province of the Society of Jesus. You may reasonably wonder why, out of the wide variety of topics which English Literature presents, I should have chosen a subject with which the majority of you are, I imagine, totally unfamiliar. You may even doubt whether the works of the writers with whom I am about to deal are entitled to the name of literature at all for you will find none of them mentioned in such a repository of orthodox critical opinion as the Cambridge History of English Literature.

  To the charge of irrelevance and obscurity, I would make two answers. Firstly, that this is a Catholic University, and that here, if anywhere, we should be interested in the study of Catholic writers of other countries, and of how they, as individuals, reacted to a given political situation. The Popish Plot was the last nationwide persecution of Catholics in England.

  Secondly, I would call your attention to the present topical significance of the situation with which English Catholics were confronted nearly two hundred years ago. In Eastern Europe at the present time, many millions of Catholics are having to decide which things are, and which things are not Caesar’s, and the outcome of their decisions is, for many of them, literally a matter of life and death. Now the number of martyrs in the Popish Plot persecution was, in contrast with some modern persecutions, comparatively small. Between 1678 and 1681 twenty-five1 priests and laymen died on the scaffold, and more than a dozen others are known to have died in prison.2

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  The Stuart Age

  England, 1603–1714

  • Barry Coward, Peter Gaunt(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  25 and anyone who dared to cast doubts on the plot’s authenticity was in danger of his life. In the light of all this, therefore, the first important question to ask about the Popish Plot is why, given that the story told by Oates and Tonge was patently false and was quickly seen to be so by a few of those who took the trouble to investigate, was such widespread and for a time almost universal credence given to it?

  The most important explanation lies in the anti-Catholic tradition which it has been seen was so strong in seventeenth-century England. Many people found the Popish Plot story convincing because it was unoriginal and incorporated much English anti-Catholic mythology. To Oates and Tonge’s audience the present ‘plot’ was an obvious sequel to the Catholic conspiracies in the early seventeenth century, including the Gunpowder Plot, the outbreak of the Civil War, the ‘murder’ of Charles I and the Great Fire. In the summer of 1678, political events had intensified people’s fears of Catholicism; Oates and Tonge could not have produced their story confirming those fears at a more propitious moment. In the early stages also Oates convinced many sceptics by his confident performance before the privy council and at the bar of the House of Commons. (This was less true later on, when at some of the trials of alleged conspirators he seemed to lose his nerve.) It was difficult to disbelieve someone who ‘remembered’ dates and places of conspiratorial meetings in such an authoritative way. This helps to explain why the privy council was so impressed when Oates at the council meeting on 28 September identified the Jesuit authors of five incriminating letters received by Thomas Bedingfield, James’s confessor, even though he was only shown a line or two of each letter. The obvious explanation – that Oates or Tonge had forged the letters – was ignored. The privy council was ‘amazed’ and from then on ‘this very thing took like fire, so that what he said afterwards had credit’.26 Oates was also fortunate that among those he implicated in the ‘plot’ was an ex-secretary to James and his wife, Edward Coleman, who for many years since 1673 had corresponded with Jesuits and French agents discussing wild schemes to help the Catholic cause in England. When Coleman was arrested and his correspondence seized, the fact that Oates failed to recognize Coleman when they first met was forgotten. The Coleman papers appeared to substantiate the Popish Plot story. What finally dispelled all doubts was the news of the disappearance on 12 October of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, the JP who had taken Oates’s original depositions, and the discovery five days later of his body, which had been strangled and stabbed with his own sword. Later investigators have spent a lot of time speculating about the unknown cause of Godfrey’s death; was it suicide, or murder by strangulation or by a sword, or a suicide made to look like murder?27

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  No longer available |Learn more

  Complete Works by David Hume. Illustrated

  Treatise of Human Nature, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and others

  • David Hume(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing

    (Publisher)

  It is remarkable, that the only resource of Spain, in her present decayed condition, lay in the assistance of England: and, so far from being in a situation to transport ten thousand men for the invasion of that kingdom, she had solicited and obtained English forces to be sent into the garrisons of Flanders, which were not otherwise able to defend themselves against the French. The French too, we may observe, were at that very time in open war with Spain, and yet are supposed to be engaged in the same design against England; as if religious motives were become the sole actuating principle among sovereigns. But none of these circumstances, however obvious, were able, when set in opposition to multiplied horrors, antipathies, and prejudices, to engage the least attention of the populace: for such the whole nation were at this time become. The Popish Plot passed for incontestable: and had not men soon expected with certainty the legal punishment of these criminals, the Catholics had been exposed to the hazard of a universal massacre. The torrent, indeed, of national prejudices ran so high, that no one, without the most imminent danger, durst venture openly to oppose it; nay, scarcely any one, without great force of judgment, could even secretly entertain an opinion contrary to the prevailing sentiments. The loud and unanimous voice of a great nation has mighty authority over weak minds; and even later historians are so swayed by the concurring judgment of such multitudes, that some of them have esteemed themselves sufficiently moderate, when they affirmed, that many circumstances of the plot were true, though some were added, and others much magnified. But it is an obvious principle, that a witness who perjures himself in one circumstance is credible in none and the authority of the plot, even to the end of the prosecutions, stood entirely upon witnesses. Though the Catholics had seen suddenly and unexpectedly detected, at the very moment when their conspiracy, it is said, was ripe for execution, no arms, no ammunition, no money, no commissions, no papers, no letters, after the most rigorous search, ever were discovered, to confirm the evidence of Oates and Bedloe. Yet still the nation, though often frustrated, went on in the eager pursuit and confident belief of the conspiracy: and even the manifold inconsistencies and absurdities contained in the narratives, instead of discouraging them, served only as further incentives to discover the bottom of the plot, and were considered as slight objections, which a more complete information would fully remove. In all history, it will be difficult to find such another instance of popular frenzy and bigoted delusion.

  In order to support the panic among the people, especially among the citizens of London, a pamphlet was published with this title: “A narrative and impartial discovery of the horrid Popish Plot, carried on for burning and destroying the cities of London and Westminster, with their suburbs: setting forth the several consults, orders, and resolutions of the Jesuits concerning the same: by Captain William Bedloe, lately engaged in that horrid design, and one of the Popish committee for carrying on such fires.” Every fire which had happened for several years past, is there ascribed to the machinations of the Jesuits, who purposed, as Bedloe said, by such attempts, to find an opportunity for the general massacre of the Protestants; and, in the mean time, were well pleased to enrich themselves by pilfering goods from the fire.

  The king, though he scrupled not, wherever he could speak freely, to throw the highest ridicule on the plot, and on all who believed it, yet found it necessary to adopt the popular opinion before the parliament. The torrent, he saw, ran too strong to be controlled; and he could only hope, by a seeming compliance, to be able, after some time, to guide and direct and elude its fury. He made, therefore, a speech to both houses; in which he told them, that he would take the utmost care of his person during these times of danger; that he was as ready as their hearts could wish, to join with them in all means for establishing the Protestant religion, not only during his own time, but for all future ages; and that, provided the right of succession were preserved, he would consent to any laws for restraining a Popish successor: and, in conclusion, he exhorted them to think of effectual means for the conviction of Popish recusants; and he highly praised the duty and loyalty of all his subjects, who had discovered such anxious concern for his safety.

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  England's Wars of Religion, Revisited

  • Glenn Burgess, Charles W. A. Prior(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In the wake of the Irish Rebellion, allegations of Popish Plots multiplied and contributed significantly to the ‘polarization of opinion in England’. 9 Most historians agree that until October 1641, and indeed even until whatever triggered the failed arrest of the Five Members of Parliament in January 1642, no Civil War had been on the horizon. 10 But once the Parliament had moved to raising arms and the king had left London, the issue of the defence of the realm by the Parliament as Great Council of the king gained significance. 11 A good deal not only of the actual raising of the militias, opposed by ordinary subjects as in Somerset and Kent, 12 but also of the legitimacy of whatever remained in London of the Parliament originally assembled, did rest less on the plausibility of the constitutional rationale of the Great Council of Parliament, or of Parliament as supreme court of jurisdiction itself, or on other explanations made as the crisis went along, 13 but on the plausibility of the dangers associated with the alleged immediate threat of the Irish rebellion, a possible popish invasion and on the subsequent struggle for control of armed forces between King and Parliament. This threat might have been a major contributing factor as to why in 1642, in contrast to 1688, the ‘centre failed to hold’. 14 And it is this threat that might have gained in plausibility by decades of news about the Continental Counter-Reformation. Pamphlet propaganda was an important ingredient in shaping the perception of threats and fears, one of ‘the two seed plots of this warre’. 15 To an extent, it was a tool with a view to ‘capturing the middle ground’. And it appears that Charles’ opponents had achieved such a capture to a significant extent by January 1642. 16 Hardly any Englishmen participating in the events of 1640 to 1642 had been a contemporary to the sixteenth-century French wars of religion

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  The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part F.

  From Charles II. to James II.

  • David Hume(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  Thus came to a period a parliament which had sitten during the whole course of this reign, one year excepted. Its conclusion was very different from its commencement. Being elected during the joy and festivity of the restoration, it consisted almost entirely of royalists; who were disposed to support the crown by all the liberality which the habits of that age would permit. Alarmed by the alliance with France, they gradually withdrew their confidence from the king; and finding him still to persevere in a foreign interest, they proceeded to discover symptoms of the most refractory and most jealous disposition. The Popish Plot pushed them beyond all bounds of moderation; and before their dissolution, they seemed to be treading fast in the footsteps of the last long parliament, on whose conduct they threw at first such violent blame. In all their variations, they had still followed the opinions and prejudices of the nation; and ever seemed to be more governed by humor and party views than by public interest, and more by public interest than by any corrupt or private influence.

  During the sitting of the parliament, and after its prorogation and dissolution, the trials of the pretended criminals were carried on; and the courts of judicature, places which, if possible, ought to be kept more pure from injustice than even national assemblies themselves, were strongly infected with the same party rage and bigoted prejudices. Coleman, the most obnoxious of the conspirators, was first brought to his trial. His letters were produced against him. They contained, as he himself confessed, much indiscretion: but unless so far as it is illegal to be a zealous Catholic, they seemed to prove nothing criminal, much less treasonable against him. Gates and Bedloe deposed, that he had received a commission, signed by the superior of the Jesuits, to be Papal secretary of state, and had consented to the poisoning, shooting, and stabbing of the king: he had even, according to Oates’s deposition, advanced a guinea to promote those bloody purposes. These wild stories were confounded with the projects contained in his letters; and Coleman received sentence of death. The sentence was soon after executed upon him.[*] He suffered with calmness and constancy, and to the last persisted in the strongest protestations of his innocence.

  Coleman’s execution was succeeded by the trial of Father Ireland, who, it is pretended, had signed, together with fifty Jesuits, the great resolution of murdering the king. Grove and Pickering, who had undertaken to shoot him, were tried at the same time. The only witnesses against the prisoners were still Gates and Bedloe. Ireland affirmed, that he was in Staffordshire all the month of August last, a time when Oates’s evidence made him in London. He proved his assertion by good evidence; and would have proved it by undoubted, had he not most iniquitously been debarred, while in prison, from all use of pen, ink, and paper, and denied the liberty of sending for witnesses. All these men, before their arraignment, were condemned in the opinion of the judges, jury, and spectators; and to be a Jesuit, or even a Catholic, was of itself a sufficient proof of guilt. The chief justice,[**] in particular, gave sanction to all the narrow prejudices and bigoted fury of the populace. Instead of being counsel for the prisoners, as his office required, he pleaded the cause against them, browbeat their witnesses, and on every occasion represented their guilt as certain and uncontroverted. He even went so far as publicly to affirm, that the Papists had not the same principles which Protestants have, and therefore were not entitled to that common credence, which the principles and practices of the latter call for. And when the jury brought in their verdict against the prisoners, he said, “You have done, gentlemen, like very good subjects, and very good Christians, that is to say, like very good Protestants, and now much good may their thirty thousand masses do them;” alluding to the masses by which Pickering was to be rewarded for murdering the king. All these unhappy men went to execution, protesting their innocence; a circumstance which made no impression on the spectators.

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