Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/309

 with the virulence of a disease. The indiscretion of the Duke of York, the bigotry of the mob, the violence of Shaftesbury and his partisans, and the pusillanimity of Charles, all co-operated with the incautious display of activity made by the papists in England to sustain the imposture of which Oates was the mouthpiece.

Of the numerous portraits of Oates the best is that drawn and engraved ad vivum by R. White, with the inscription ‘Titus Oates. Anagramma Testis ovat,’ which was probably executed in 1679. (The fine example in the British Museum print-room is reproduced in ‘Twelve Bad Men,’ ed. Seccombe, p. 95.). A very similar portrait is that engraved by R. Tompson after Thomas Hawker. In 1685 portraits of him in the pillory, or as ‘Oats well thresh't,’ became the fashion, and there are several Dutch prints of him, in one of which he is represented in the pillory, surrounded by the heads of seven of his victims, while underneath is a representation of his flogging, with inscriptions in Dutch and in French. In the ‘Archivist’ for June 1894 is a facsimile of a typical letter written by Oates. 

OATLANDS, HENRY. [See, 1639–1660.] O'BEIRNE, THOMAS LEWIS (1748?–1823), divine and pamphleteer, born at Farnagh, co. Longford, about 1748, received his first education at the diocesan school of Ardagh. His father, a Roman catholic farmer, then sent him with his brother John to St. Omer to complete his training for the priesthood. John remained in the paternal creed, but Thomas adopted protestant views; and it is said that the two brothers, with their opposite forms of belief, afterwards ministered in the same Irish parish. In 1776 O'Beirne was appointed chaplain in the fleet under Lord Howe. While with the fleet in America he preached a striking discourse at St. Paul's, New York, the only church which was preserved from the flames during the calamitous fire of September 1776. On his return to England, when the conduct of the brothers Howe was condemned, O'Beirne vindicated their proceedings in ‘A Candid and Impartial Narrative of the Transactions of the Fleet under Lord Howe. By an Officer then serving in the Fleet, 1779.’ About this time he became acquainted with some of the whig leaders, and wrote in their interest in the journals of the day. George Croly, in the ‘Personal History of George IV,’ i. 156, &c., attributes the connection to a chance meeting of O'Beirne with the Duke of Portland and Fox in a country inn. In the early months of 1780 he contributed to a daily newspaper a series of articles as ‘a country gentleman’ against Lord North. The first six were reprinted in a pamphlet,