incredulity. To bolster up the case a fresh packet of five forged letters was concocted (31st August); but the forgery was transparent, and even Sir William Jones, the attorney-general, though a violent upholder of the plot, dared not produce them as evidence.
Oates now (6th September) made an affidavit before Sir Edmond Berry Godfrey (q.v.) to an improved edition of his story, in eighty-one articles. Among the persons named was Coleman, secretary to the duchess of York, whom Godfrey knew, and to whom he sent word of the charges. Coleman in turn informed the duke, and he, since the immediate exposure of the plot was of the utmost consequence to him, induced Charles to compel Oates to appear (28th September) before the privy council. Here Oates delivered himself of a story the falsehood of which was so obvious that the king was able to expose him by a few simple questions. At this moment an accident most fortunate for Oates took place. Amongst the papers seized at his request were Coleman’s, and in them were found copies of letters written by the latter to Père la Chaise, suggesting that Louis should furnish him with money, which he would use in the French and Catholic interest among members of parliament. Among them, too, were these passages: “Success will give the greatest blow to the Protestant religion that it has received since its birth”; “we have here a mighty work upon our hands, no less than the conversion of three kingdoms, and by that perhaps the utter subduing of a pestilent heresy, which has so long domineered over great part of the northern world.” The credit of Oates was thus, in the eyes of the people, re-established, and Coleman and others named were imprisoned. Charles was anxious for his brother’s sake to bring the matter to a conclusion, but he dared not appear to stifle the plot; so, when starting for Newmarket, he left orders with Danby (see Leeds, Duke of,) that he should finish the investigation at once. But Danby purposely delayed; an impeachment was hanging over his head, and anything which took men's minds off that was welcome.
On the 12th of October occurred the murder of Godfrey, and the excitement was at its highest pitch. On the 21st of October parliament met, and, though Charles in his speech had barely alluded to the plot, all other business was put aside and Oates was called before the House. A new witness was wanted to support Oates’s story, and in November a man named William Bedloe came forward. At first he remembered little; by degrees he remembered everything that was wanted. Not even so, however, did their witness agree together, so, as a bold stroke, Oates, with great circumstantiality, accused the queen before Charles of high treason. Charles both disbelieved and exposed him, whereupon Oates carried his tale before the House of Commons. The Commons voted for the queen’s removal from court, but, the Lords refusing to concur, the matter dropped. It was not, however, until the 18th of July 1679 that the slaughter of Jesuits and other Roman Catholics upon Oates's testimony and that of his accomplices was to some extent checked. Sir George Wakeman, the queen’s physician, was accused of purposing to poison the king, and the queen was named as being concerned in the plot. The refusals of Charles to credit or to countenance the attacks on his wife are the most creditable episodes in his life. Scroggs had intimation that he was to be lenient. Sir Philip Lloyd proved Oates to have perjured himself in open court, and Wakeman was acquitted. On the 26th of June 1680, upon Oates’s testimony, the duke of York was presented as a recusant at Westminster. But the panic had now worn itself out, and the importance of Oates rapidly declined; so much so that after the dissolution in 1682 he was no more heard of during Charles’s reign, but enjoyed his pension of £600 or £900, it is uncertain which, in quiet. Shortly before the death of Charles, James brought, and won, a civil action against Oates, with damages of £100,000; in default of payment Oates was taken to prison; while there he was indicted for perjury, and was tried in May 1685, soon after the accession of James II. He was convicted and received a severe sentence, with repeated floggings, the execution of which was expected to kill him, and which was rigorously carried out; but to the astonishment of all he survived.
Oates was in prison for three and a half years. Upon the flight of James, and during the excitement against the Catholics, he partially gained his liberty, and brought an appeal against his sentence before the Lords, who, while admitting the sentence to be unjust, confirmed it by a majority of thirty-five to twenty-three. The Commons, however, passed a bill annulling the sentence; and a conference was held in which the Lords, while again acknowledging that legally they were wrong, adhered to their former determination. The matter was finally settled by Oates receiving a royal pardon, with a pension of £300 a year. The remainder of his life was spent in retirement, varied by a good deal of sordid intrigue. In 1691 he became acquainted with William Fuller, whom he induced to forge another plot, though not with the success he had himself attained. He married a wealthy widow in 1693, but his extravagance soon brought him into straits. In 1696 he dedicated to William III. a book called Eikon Basilike, an elaborate tissue of invection against “the late king James.” In 1698 he obtained admission as a member of the Baptist Church, and used to preach at Wapping; but in 1701, as the result of a financial scandal, he was formally expelled from the sect. He died on the 12th of July 1705.
Authorities.—Oates’s, Dangerfield’s and Bedloe’s Narratives; State Trials; Journals of Houses of Parliament; North’s Examen; the various memoirs and diaries of the period; Fuller’s Narrative; Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel; Burnet’s History; Narcissus Luttrell’s Relation. Lingard’s History gives an exhaustive and trustworthy account of the Popish terror and its victims; and the chief incidents in Oates’s career are graphically described by Macaulay. On the question of the place of his education see Notes and Queries (22nd December 1883). See also T. Seccombe’s essay in Twelve Bad Men (1894), where a bibliography is given.
OATH (O. Eng. âdh), a term which may be defined as an asseveration or promise made under non-human penalty or sanction. The word is found throughout the Teutonic languages (Goth.Aiths, Mod. Ger. Eid), but without ascertainable etymology. The verb to swear is also Old Teutonic (Goth. svaran, Mod. Ger. schwören); this word, too, is not clear in original meaning, but is in some way connected with the notion of answering—indeed it still forms part of the word answer, O. Eng. and-swarian; it has been suggested that the swearer answered by word or gesture to a solemn formula or act. Among other terms in this connexion, the Lat. jurare, whence English law has such derivatives as jury, seems grounded on the metaphorical idea of binding (root ju, as in jungo); the similar idea of a bond or restraint may perhaps be traced in Gr. ὅρκος. It may be worth notice that Lat. sacramentum (whence Mod. Fr. serment) does not really imply the sacredness of an oath, but had its origin in the money paid into court in a Roman lawsuit, the loser forfeiting his pledge, which went to pay for the public rites (sacra); thence the word passed to signify other solemn pledges, such as military and judicial oaths.
Writers viewing the subject among civilized nations only have sometimes defined the oath as an appeal to a deity. It will be seen, however, by some following examples, that the harm or penalty consequent on perjury may be considered to result directly, without any spirit or deity being mentioned; indeed it is not unlikely that these mere direct curses invoked on himself by the swearer may be more primitive than the invocation of divinities to punish. Examples of the simplest kind of curse-oath may be seen among the Nagas of Assam, where two men will lay hold of a dog or a fowl by head and feet, which is then chopped in two with a single blow of the dao, this being emblematic of the fate expected to befall the perjurer. Or a man will stand within a circle of rope, with the implication that if he breaks his vow he may rot as a rope does, or he will take hold of the barrel of a gun, a spear-head or a tiger’s tooth, and solemnly declare, “If I do not faithfully perform this my promise, may I fall by this!” (Butler in Journ. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, 1875, p. 316). Another stage in the history of oaths is that in which the swearer calls on some fierce beast to punish him if he lies, believing that it has the intelligence to know what he says and the power to
