biography
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1649–1705)
|
| biography:
| Conspirator and perjurer, born in Oakham, Leicestershire, C England, UK. He studied at Cambridge, and took Anglican orders, but was dismissed from his curacy for misconduct. Having feigned conversion to Catholicism and attended Jesuit seminaries on the continent, in 1678 he made public details of a fictitious Jesuit plot to murder Charles II and restore Catholicism. This ‘Popish Plot’ caused widespread panic, and at least 35 innocent people were tried and executed for complicity in it; but suspicion of Oates gradually grew and two years later he was found guilty of perjury, flogged, and imprisoned for life. The Revolution of 1688 set him at liberty, and he was granted a pension. |
|
|
