When Oates formed his alliance with Dr. Ezrael Tonge, rector of St. Michael’s in Wood Street, is uncertain. The point is not without importance. If Oates came first to Tonge in the summer of 1678, the fact would be so far in his favour that he may have sought a good market for wares which he believed to be in some degree sound. If he took directions from Tonge before his visit to the Jesuit seminaries, the chance of his sincerity would be much diminished. Simpson Tonge, the rector’s son, afterwards composed a journal of these events. Unhappily his statements are without value. Hoping for reward at one time from Oates, at another from his enemies, Tonge contradicted himself flatly, urging for the informer that Oates had sought his father only after the return from St. Omers; against him, that the two had, during an intimacy of two years, designed the Popish Plot before ever Oates went abroad.[18] Judgment must therefore be suspended; but it is notable that King Charles thought the evidence as to the intrigue between Oates and Tonge unworthy of credence. Simpson Tonge was taken to Windsor in the summer of 1680 to reveal his knowledge. He left there papers in which evidence of the facts was contained. Charles examined them, and told Sydney Godolphin that “he found them very slight and immaterial,” and refused to see Tonge again.[19] At whatever point co-operation began, acquaintance between the two men was likely enough of long standing. Tonge had been presented to his living by Sir Richard Barker, the ancient patron of Samuel Oates. A natural tie thus existed, now to be developed by circumstances into strong union. The doctor was an assiduous labourer in the Protestant vineyard. His fear of Popery amounted to mania. Volumes poured from his pen in denunciation of Catholic conspiracies. A catalogue was afterwards made of Tonge’s library. Its character may be judged from the titles of the following works:—_Massacres threatened to Prevent, Temple and Tabernacle, Arguments to suppress Popery._[20] He had co-operated with John Evelyn in translating _The Mystery of Jesuitism_, a work which King Charles said he had carried for two days in his pocket and read; “at which,” writes Evelyn, “I did not a little wonder.”[21] When fame overtook him, Tonge raised the ghost of Habernfeld’s Plot and spent some ingenuity in turning the name of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey to _Dy’d by Rome’s reveng’d fury_, that of Edward Coleman to _Lo a damned crew_. Now he passed a bashful and disappointed life. Needy and full of silly notions, he divided his time between the detection of Jesuitry and the study of obscure sciences. Here was beyond doubt the man to interest himself in Oates. For Oates had brought back from beyond seas a prodigious tale, calculated to set the most unpractical alarmist in action.