RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Nun Oates
of Calvin (1874-77) and is the author (in Swedish) of " Bible Dictionary " (1868) and " Library of Biblical Antiquities" (1874).
NYVALL, DAVID: Lutheran; b. at Vail, in the parish of Karlskoga, Varmland, Sweden, Jan. 19, 1863. He was educated at the gymnasium of Gafle, the University of Upsala (1882-84), and the Carolingian Medical Institute, Stockholm (1884- 1885). Leaving Sweden for the United States, he was instructor in a private school in Minneapolis, Minn. (1886-87), pastor of the Swedish Evangelical mission church, Sioux City, la. (1887-88), instructor in the Swedish department of the Chicago Theological Seminary (1888-90), instructor and principal of a private school in Minneapolis and assistant editor of the weekly Veckobladet (1890-91), presi-
dent of the same school when enlarged and taken under the control of the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant (1891-94), and president of the North Park College, Chicago (the new Covenant school), and instructor in New Testament, Swedish, and other subjects in the same institution (1894-1905). Since 1905 he has been president of Walden College, Mc- Pherson, Kan. He has also been secretary of the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant (1896-1903). In theology he is an orthodox Lutheran. He has written: Versi och Saga (Minneapolis, Minn., 1890), poems; Minnesblad (Chicago, 1892), six addresses to the young; Medsols (1898), three patriotic addresses to the young; Soken Guds Rike (1901), addresses to the young; Skogsdrillar (1901), poems; and My Business (McPherson, Kan., 1905), eight addresses to the young.
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OATES, TITUS: The inventor of the famous Popish Plot; b. at Oakham (9 m. s.e. of Melton Mowbray) about 1649; d. at London July 12 or 13, 1705. The son of a Baptist clergyman, he studied at Merchant Taylors' school and at Cambridge, took orders in the Church of England; was a chaplain in the navy; and entered the Roman Catholic Church with the pretense, it is claimed, of obtaining the secrets of the Jesuits; he tarried for some time in the Jesuit houses of Valladolid and St. Omer. He was expelled from these institutions for misconduct; but, while he was an inmate, he had heard of a meeting of Jesuits held in London; and " on his expulsion," as John Richard Green says, " this single fact widened in his fertile brain into a plot for the subversion of Protestantism and the death of the king." About this time (1678) there was a good deal of suppressed anxiety among the Protestants of England in view of the machinations and activity of the Roman Catholics, and the well-known sympathy with them of Charles II., and especially of the duke of York, heir to the throne. Oates took advantage of this state of the public mind, and claimed to have evidence of a huge Popish Plot for the extirpation of Protestantism. He had the matter brought to the notice of the king, who probably smiled at it; and made public affidavit to the alleged facts before Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey, justice of the peace, deposing to a narrative consisting of forty-three articles, soon after increased to eightyone, the majority of which were palpably invented. The excitement over the revelations was intense. Lord Shaftesbury, who had just been released from prison, for political reasons fell in with the popular feeling, and exclaimed, " Let the treasurer cry as loud as he pleases against Popery, I will cry a note louder." The popular agitation was increased to frenzy by the murder of Godfrey, which was construed into an attempt to stifle the plot. The two houses of Parliament instituted an investigation of the matter and concurred in the opinion that a plot existed. Five peers, including Arundel and Bel-
lasys, were sent to the Tower. Patrols guarded the streets; chains were drawn across them, and the houses supplied with arms. Parliament at the end of the year (1678) passed a bill excluding Roman Catholics from both houses, which was left unrepealed for a century and a half. The excitement was beginning to subside, when one Bedloe, stimulated by the reward which had been offered, appeared on the scene, and again aroused the national frenzy to its former intensity by more circumstantial and irritating revelations than those of Oates. He swore to a plot for the landing of an army and the massacre of the Protestants. Oates had been treated like a hero, and assigned rooms at Whitehall, with a pension of 1,200 pounds. But a revulsion of public feeling took place after the execution of Stafford in 1680; and the duke of York, whom he had severely accused, secured a verdict for defamation of character, in 1684. Oates was condemned to pay a fine of 100,000 pounds, and sent to prison. On the accession of the duke to the throne in 1685, Oates was tried and convicted of perjury and was sentenced to be put in the pillory annually, be whipped from Oldgate to Newgate, and from thence to Tyburn, to pay a heavy fine, to be stripped of his canonical habits, and to be imprisoned for life. Taken back again to prison, he recovered from the exceedingly severe whipping. After the accession of William and Mary, the conviction of Oates was declared to have been illegal (1689), and he was not only pardoned, but granted an annual pension of five pounds a week, which was suspended at the instance of Queen Mary in 1693, but restored and increased, in 1698, to 300 pounds per annum.
Bibliography: The best modern book is J. Pollock, The Popish Plot, London, 1903. Consult further: The Discovery of the Popish Plot, London, 1679; T. Knox, The Tryal of T. Knox and J. Lane for a Conspiracy to Defame . . Dr. Oates, ib. 1680; C. M. Clode, Titus Oates and the Merchant Taylors' Company, ib. 1890. A large literature of contemporaneous writers is indicated in the British Museum Catalogue under ". Oates, Titus."
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