Crime -- Great Britain; Criminals -- Great Britain; Executions and executioners; Tyburn gallows (London, England)
On May 8 and 9, 1685, Oates was tried on two indictments for perjury. The
evidence was full and complete. The sentence passed upon him was that he
should pay a fine of a thousand marks on each indictment: that he should
be stripped of his canonical habits: that he should be put in the pillory
at Westminster and at the Royal Exchange: that he should be whipped from
Aldgate to Newgate, and on the next day but one from Newgate to Tyburn.
Further, that on April 24, as long as he lived, he should stand in the
pillory at Tyburn: every ninth of August in the pillory at Westminster:
on every tenth of August in the pillory at Charing Cross: on every
eleventh of August in the pillory near the Temple Gate, and on every
second of September, in the pillory at the Royal Exchange.
Of the sentence and its execution more presently.
Dangerfield was, next to Oates and Bedloe, the worst of the informers. He
also was brought to trial. He was condemned to be put in the pillory and
whipped. On July 4, 1685, he was being brought back from Tyburn, having
been whipped on the road thither, when a Mr. Francis jeered at him, as he
sat in the coach. Dangerfield replied by an insult, and Francis struck
at him with a cane, the point of which entered Dangerfield’s eye. Of the
wound he died the next day. For this, Francis was tried, found guilty of
murder, and executed at Tyburn, he being carried thither in a coach.[198]
Miles Prance, a third informer, was also brought to trial. He had been
dragged into the business of informing by Bedloe, and, in fear of his
life, concocted a story of Godfrey’s murder. He confessed his perjuries,
and was, in consequence, let off with standing in the pillory, a fine and
a whipping being remitted.
To return to Oates. In sentencing him the judge remarked upon the
inadequacy of the punishment allotted by the law to a perjurer whose
false testimony had shed innocent blood. Indeed, if the punishment of
death was ever due to any man, it was due to Oates. The whipping was so
severe that none but Oates could have survived it. That he did survive
was hailed by his partisans as a miracle.
Luttrell records that in September, 1688, “Oates stood in the pillory
over against the Royal Exchange, according to annual custom.” This was
his last appearance in the pillory prior to his re-establishment as
Protestant champion by the following resolution of the House of Commons:—
=1689.= _June 11._ Resolved that the Prosecution of Titus Oates, upon
Two Indictments for Perjury in the Court of King’s Bench, was a design
to stifle the Popish Plot: And that the Verdicts given thereupon were
corrupt: And that the Judgments given thereupon were cruel and illegal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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