Titus Oates - Early Life

Early Life

Titus Oates was born in Oakham. His father, Samuel, was the rector of Marsham in Norfolk before becoming an Anabaptist during the Puritan Revolution and rejoining the Church of England at the Restoration. Oates was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and St John's College, Cambridge. Known as a less than astute student, he was ejected from both colleges. A few months later, he became an Anglican priest and Vicar of the parish of Bobbing in Kent. During this time Oates was charged with perjury having accused a schoolmaster in Hastings of sodomy. Oates was put in jail, but escaped and fled to London.

In 1677 he got himself appointed as a chaplain of the ship Adventurer in the English navy. He was soon accused of buggery (i.e., sodomy, which was a capital offence in England at the time) and spared only because of his clergyman's status.

After the navy he joined the household of the Catholic Duke of Norfolk as an Anglican chaplain. On Ash Wednesday in 1677 he was received into the Catholic Church. Oddly, at the same time Oates agreed to co-author a series of anti-Catholic pamphlets with Israel Tonge, whom he had met through his father Samuel, who had once more reverted to the Baptist doctrine.

He is described by Dryden in Absalom and Achitophel thus—