The power of lying. The Popish Plot Part 2

For part one, see my post of yesterday.

When Titus Oates presented his ‘evidence’ to the Privy Council, King Charles II tore it to shreds, but Oates had the support of the London mob, and standing up to him publicly - that was quite another matter. It would have caused an almighty row.

So the king did nothing to save from execution at least 15 people he must have known to be innocent, while Oates was heaped with honours and money.

But gradually people became more and more sceptical about Oates' claims, and in 1681 Charles had him arrested and imprisoned. And when the king was succeeded by his brother, the Catholic James II, who Oates had denounced, the perjurer was imprisoned for life, put in the pillory and whipped through the streets of London.

The story was not quite over, though. When James was deposed by his daughter Mary and his son-in-law, William III, Oates was pardoned, released and given a pension.

Bloody Assizes + 326

This day…..326 years ago saw the last battle (touch wood!) fought on English soil.    The rebel army of Charles II’s illegitimate Protestant son, the Duke of Monmouth, was decisively defeated by the forces of his uncle, the Catholic King James II, at Sedgemoor in Somerset.

The battle was followed by a ferocious campaign of repression in the West Country.   The royalist commander set up a line of gibbets along the road to Bridgwater, and hanged a captured rebel from each one.   Monmouth was found disguised as a shepherd and beheaded.

Next Colonel Percy Kirke, and his fearsome soldiers ironically nicknamed ‘Kirke’s Lambs’, summarily executed another 100 during the course of a week, before he was recalled for being too lenient.   So in early September, Judge Jeffreys set out on his ‘Bloody Assizes’.

Jeffreys’s speciality was abusing and terrifying defendants and any witnesses who spoke up for them – ‘lying, snivelling, canting Presbyterians’ and that kind of thing.    Altogether, he hanged more than 300, and had more than 800 transported.     Three years later, James II was fleeing the country, as he was deposed by William of Orange.