Titus, the infamous fabricator of the "Popish Plot," was born about 1619. From the very first he was an apostate and a deceiver. He left the Anabaptists, among whom he had been trained, and after studying at Cambridge, accepted a benefice in the Church of England. With this position his life and opinions were soon found to be glaringly inconsistent; and he entered a Jesuit college in France. Even there his conduct was too unprincipled to be endured; and in 1677 he found himself obliged to take up the profession of a scheming vagabond. It was then that Oates, animated probably by the hope of gain and the love of low intrigue, resolved to take advantage of the alarm into which the English nation had been thrown on account of the suspected Popish inclinations of Charles II., the avowed Popish opinions of the Duke of York, and the growing confidence of the Papists in general. He patched up a chimerical story, and communicated it to the government at London as a plot which had been formed by the Roman Catholics. The capital, he said, was to be set on fire, the citizens massacred, the king assassinated, Ireland invaded by a French army, and certain Papists whom he named placed in the high offices of the state. This fabri- cation realizing the apprehensions in the public mind, and seeming to be corroborated by certain events, gained universal credence. The government were at their wits' end; all London was instantly on the alert for the expected attack; and the people, hurried on by the blind instincts of hatred to their foes and gratitude to their supposed saviour, rushed into an extreme course of action. Oates was raised to the summit of popularity and power; a pension of L900 a year was conferred upon him; nothing less magnificent than a suite of apartments in Whitehall Palace was thought worthy of lodging his precious person; and whenever he appeared in public he was greeted by the unbonneted populace. The fresh fictions which he continued to invent regarding the plot were also received without hesitation. With the aid of certain worthless associates, he procured the conviction of many innocent Roman Catholics, and was the main cause of a series of judicial murders which extended over the space of two years. By that time, however, the nation was opening its eyes upon the monstrous system of deceit by which it had been duped, and a storm of retribution was gathering against the head of the arch offender. On the accession of James II. in 1685, he was tried before the Court of King's Bench, was convicted of perjury, and was sentenced to be first pilloried and whipt at the cart's tail, and then to be imprisoned for life. The former part of the punishment was executed with a severity which was evidently intended to kill him. The latter part was broken off by the accession of William III., and the simultaneous re-action in the state of public feeling. The trial of Oates was then declared by Parliament to have been illegal; his crimes were pardoned by the king; and he was allowed to skulk away into obscurity with a pension of L300 a-year. He died in 1705. (For the particulars of the "Popish Plot," see BRITAIN. See also Lord Macaulay's History of England.)