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Popish Plot

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.04 sec.
Popish Plot: see Oates, Titus Oates, Titus, 1649–1705, English conspirator. An Anglican priest whose whole career was marked with intrigue and scandal, he joined forces with one Israel Tonge to invent the story of the Popish Plot of 1678.
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Popish Plot

(1678) In English history, a fictitious but widely believed rumour that Jesuits planned to assassinate Charles II and replace him with his brother, the Catholic duke of York (later James II). The rumour was fabricated by Titus Oates, who gave a sworn deposition of his “evidence” to a London justice of the peace. When the latter was found murdered, a panic among the people was followed by accusations and trials, leading to the execution of about 35 innocent people. When Oates was finally discredited, the panic subsided.



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And Bellabarba makes a strong case for seeing it as the first of a series of highly damaging scandals associating the court with popery and plotting, which continued under James and would culminate disastrously in the Popish Plot rumors of 1638-41.
In the highly charged atmosphere produced by the Thirty Years' War, Milton thus played on fears of a popish plot, accusing the late king of having been not only an absolutist ruler but an agent of Catholic forces threatening to dominate the whole of Europe.
Furthermore, rumors and testimonies that constituted the Popish Plot depended upon their representation in print: "Without the press, these trials would have had limited audiences and limited impact: the press did more to bring the Popish Plot into the public sphere than the courts or the scaffold did .
 
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