Tonge was now devoting all his energies to the production of diatribes against the jesuits, whom he suspected of plotting an English version of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. In return for food and shelter Oates readily joined him in his literary labours, and for a short period lodged in the Barbican, where Tonge was then living in Sir Richard Barker's house (State Trials, vii. 1321), ‘the more conveniently to discourse with the doctor about their common purpose.’ In 1677, under Tonge's directions, Oates began ‘The Cabinet of Jesuits Secrets opened,’ a somewhat colourless account of the supposed methods adopted by the order for obtaining legacies, said to be translated from the Italian; it was issued, ‘completed by a person of quality,’ in 1679. But the acquisition of such an ally as Oates enabled Tonge to greatly enlarge the sphere of his activities. Convinced that a jesuit plot was in progress, Tonge's object was to ‘make the people jealous of popery.’ That once effected, he convinced Oates that their fortunes would be made. The books produced little effect; a more potent stimulus to public opinion was needed. Oates proved an instrument absolutely devoid of scruples. He set himself laboriously to learn the secrets of the jesuits, haunted the Pheasant coffee-house in Holborn and other favourite resorts of the catholics, with whom he lost no opportunity of ingratiating himself. In April 1677 he formally professed reconciliation with the church of Rome. He picked up acquaintance with Whitbread, Pickering, and others of the fathers at Somerset House, where Charles's queen-consort had her private chapel, and eagerly sought admission among the jesuits. Consequently he embraced with much satisfaction an offer of admission to a college of the society abroad. He embarked in the Downs in the spring of 1677, and entered the Jesuit Colegio de los Ingleses at Valladolid on 7 June in that year. In about five months, however, his scandalous behaviour procured his summary and ignominious expulsion. In memory of his sojourn in Spain, Oates subsequently styled himself D.D. of Salamanca; but this assumption had no foundation in fact, and was justly ridiculed by Dryden, Tom Brown, Sir Roger L'Estrange, and others. Oates also stated at a later date that he had been sent to Madrid as jesuit emissary, to treat with the general of the order, Paulus de Oliva, concerning the conspiracy against England; but in 1679 the muleteer who conducted Oates to and from Valladolid was found, and his testimony conclusively proved that Oates could not have visited either Salamanca or Madrid (Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. ii. 98; cf. Bagford Ballads, ii. 667). He returned to Tonge with very little information; his patron deemed it indispensable that he should increase it; so on 10 Dec. 1677 he obtained admission as a ‘younger student’ (though he was now twenty-eight) to the English seminary at St. Omer. He kept a footing there until 23 June 1678, when an inevitable expulsion precipitated his disclosures (Florus Anglo-Bavaricus, Liège, 1685). He returned to Tonge, who was then lodging in the house of one Lambert, a bell-founder in Vauxhall, and the pair managed to involve in their schemes one Christopher Kirkby, a Lancashire gentleman, whose interest in chemistry had introduced him to the notice of Charles II.
The fictitious details of the ‘popish plot’ were fabricated during the six weeks that followed Oates's return. With a view to starting it upon its career, Kirkby was instructed by his companions to apprise the king of a pretended secret design upon his life, as Charles was walking with his spaniels in St. James's Park on 12 Aug. 1678. Kirkby was backed up by a paper giving details, which was prepared by Oates, and was submitted to Danby by Tonge (Eachard). Oates himself did not appear in the matter until 6 Sept. 1678, when, in company with Tonge, he visited Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey [q. v.], a well-known justice of the peace, and deposed to the truth of a long written narrative, giving particulars of a comprehensive plot against the life of Charles II, and the substitution of a Roman catholic ministry for that in existence, with the Duke of York as king. The original narrative consisted of forty-three articles or clauses; but, by assiduous labour in the course of the next three weeks, Oates managed to raise this number to eighty-one. He knew just enough about the personnel of the jesuits in London to fit the chief actors in his plot with names, but the majority of the details were palpably invented, and the narrative teemed with absurdities. The drift of his so-called revelation was to the effect that the jesuits had been appointed by Pope Innocent XI (a pontiff whose policy was in reality rather directed against the jesuits and all extremists within the church) to supreme power in England. The ‘Black Bastard,’ as they called the king, was a condemned heretic, and was to be put to death. Père la Chaise had lodged 10,000l. in London for any one who would do the deed, and this sum was augmented by 10,000l. promised by the jesuits in Spain, and 6,000l. by the prior of the Benedictines at the Savoy. Three schemes were represented as actually on foot. Sir George Wakeman, the
