Erect thyself, thou monumental brass,
High as the serpent of thy metal made,
While nations stand secure beneath thy shade!—P. [236.]
Titus Oates, once called and believed the Saviour of his country, was one of the most infamous villains whom history is obliged to record. He was the son of an anabaptist ribbon-weaver, received a tolerably good education, and, having taken orders, was preferred to a small vicarage in Kent. Here the future protestant witness was guilty of various irregularities, for which he was at length silenced by the bishop, and by the Duke of Norfolk deprived of his qualification as chaplain. At this pinching emergency he became a papist, either for bread, or, as he afterwards boasted, for the purpose of insinuating himself into the secrets of the Jesuits, and betraying them.[324]
The Jesuits setting little store by their proselyte, whose talents lay only in cunning and impudence, he skulked about St Omers and other foreign seminaries in a miserable condition. Undoubtedly he had then the opportunity of acquiring that list of names of the order of Jesus with which he graced his plot, and might perhaps hear something generally of the plans, which these intriguing churchmen hoped to carry through in England by means of the Duke of York. Of these, however, he must have had a very imperfect suspicion; for the scheme which is displayed in the letters of Coleman, the duke's secretary, does not at all quadrate with the doctor's pretended discovery. When confronted with Coleman, he did not even know him personally. When the king asked him about the personal appearance of Don John of Austria, he described him, at a venture, as a tall thin black man, being the usual Spanish figure and complexion; but, unfortunately, he was little, fair, and fat. In a word, it was impossible such a villain could have obtained a moment's credit, but for the discovery of Coleman's actual intrigues, the furious temper of the times, and the mysterious death of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey. On that last occasion he displayed much dexterity. There was some difficulty in managing the evidence, whether to bring the assassination to the conspiracy, or the conspiracy to the assassination; but Oates contrived the matter with such ingenuity, that the murder became a proof, and the plot became a proof of the murder, to the universal conviction of the public. As to Oates' other qualities, he was, like every renegade, a licentious scoffer at religion, and, in his manners, addicted, it is said, to the most foul and unnatural debaucheries. When we consider his acts and monuments, it is almost impossible to believe, how so base a tool should have ever obtained credit and opportunity to do such mighty mischief.[325]
As for his family, to which Dryden alludes a little below, "he would needs," says North, "be descended of some ancient and worshipful stock; but there were not so many noble families strove for him, as there were cities strove for the parentele of Homer. However, the heralds were sent for, to make out his pedigree, and give him a blazon. They were posed at the first of these, but they made good the blazon for him in a trice, and delivered it authenticamente, and it was engraved on his table and other plate; for he was rich, set up for a solemn housekeeper, and lived up to his quality."[326]
Dryden compares Oates to the brazen serpent raised up in the wilderness, by looking on which, the Israelites were cured of the bites of the fiery snakes. Sprat had applied the same simile, in a favourable sense, to Oliver Cromwell:
Thou, as once the healing serpent rose,
Was lifted up, not for thyself, but us.