Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/576

 562 GATES OATH are enumerated, only two of which are natives of this country (A. striata and A. Smithii), and they have no economical value. A. pra- tensis, the perennial oat, and A. flavescens, the yellow oat, are common in the pastures of Eu- rope. Oat grass (arrhenatherum avenaceum) is much like an oat, but has its lower floret staminate only ; it belongs to the same sub- tribe with avena, and was formerly called A. elatior. It is a native of Europe, and was in- troduced to our farmers 50 years ago with the absurd name of Andes grass ; it is again re- ceiving the attention of farmers. GATES, Titns, the contriver of the "popish lot," born in England about 1620, died in ondon, July 23, 1705. He was the son of a clergyman, was educated at Cambridge, took orders, and held several curacies, but lost them by committing perjury in two malicious pros- ecutions. Subsequently he was dismissed in disgrace from a chaplaincy in the navy. With a Dr. Tonge, Teonge, or Tongue, he con- cocted a plan for informing against Eoman Catholics, in regard to whom there was a strong popular feeling of distrust. In 1677 he professed to be a Catholic, but was succes- sively expelled from the Jesuit colleges at Val- ladolid and St. Omer. He returned to England in June, 1678, and drew up a narrative of a Jesuit conspiracy to murder the king and sub- vert the Protestant religion. Tonge laid it before the king, who paid no attention to it. Nevertheless Oates enlarged the story until it comprehended a vast scheme for the seizing of the kingdom by the Jesuits, and implicated all the principal Catholic gentlemen in England, and even the queen ; and he swore to the truth of it before Sir Edmondbury Godfrey. A war- rant was issued for seizing persons and papers, but the only evidence found was the expression in the papers of the duchess of York's secre- tary of a hope for the speedy reestablishment of the Catholic religion. Within a month Sir Edmondbury Godfrey died, whether by murder or suicide was unknown, and a great demon- stration was made at his funeral. Thence arose an excitement such as had never been known in London, in which both government and people seemed to lose their senses. Catholics were arrested and their houses searched, White- hall was fortified, the streets were patrolled, and popish assassins were supposed to be lurk- ing in every shadow. Oates was lodged in Whitehall, had guards assigned him, and re- ceived a pension of 1,200 per annum. The party opposed to the court used the plot for po- litical purposes, and the court has been strongly suspected of getting it up for its own. In November, 1678, the trials of the accused Cath- olics began ; and numbers of them were con- victed, amid the applause of the populace. At the end of two years the bad character of Oates and the improbability of his story began to be considered ; and when Lord Stafford was exe- cuted for complicity in the plot, in December, 1680, public feeling began to turn. In a civil suit for defamation brought against Oates by the duke of York, the jury gave 100,000 dam- ages, and Oates was imprisoned as a debtor. Soon after the accession of James II., in 1685, he was convicted of perjury on two indict- ments, and was sentenced to pay a fine of 2,000 marks, and to be pilloried, whipped, imprisoned for life, and pilloried five times a year in differ- ent parts of the kingdom. He was nearly killed in the first pillory, and his partisans raised a riot for his rescue. At the whipping he received 1,700 blows, and had to be drawn away on a sledge. Yet he survived it all, and on the accession of William of Orange his sen- tence was annulled, and he afterward received a pension of 5 a week. OATH, a solemn act by which one calls God to witness the truth of an affirmation or the sincerity of a promise. In all times and among all nations men have agreed in reposing singular trust in declarations made under such a sanction. In primitive and in all purer states of society, solemn oaths, it would seem, have been uni- versally taken in the name of superior be- ings. Among the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans there came to be a familiar distinction between their greater and their lesser oaths. The same is probably true of other nations. The less solemn forms of adjuration included oaths by sacred objects, or by things peculiarly dear to those who employed them. Thus, the Jews swore by Jerusalem and by the temple ; the Greeks as well as the Romans by the souls of the dead, by the ashes of their fathers, by their life or the lives of their friends, by their heads, and their right hands. These forms had their origin partly too, perhaps, in the cus- tom of touching, during the recital of the usual formula, some object sacred to or suggestive of the divinity invoked ; so that, as during the administration of the oath the swearer laid his hand upon a crucifix as a sacred symbol, or touched the altar while he swore by the God in whose honor it was raised, he came at last to swear not by the divinity, but by the altar or the "good rood" itself. When the Jew took his most solemn oath, he laid his hand upon the book of the law and swore by the God of Israel ; but the ordinary oaths were by heaven, the altar, or the temple. Public oaths were administered in Athens in the names of Jupiter, Neptune, and Minerva ; purgato- ry oaths were taken in the names of Jupiter, Neptune, and Themis ; and judges swore by Jupiter, Ceres, and Helios. Numa command- ed the Romans to swear by Fides. After the murder of Caesar, the senate decreed that the citizens should swear by his genius. It was subsequently common to swear by the majesty or by the life or welfare of the emperor. The ancient Scandinavians and Germans swore by their gods. Among both races it was custom- ary, while repeating the oath, to rest the hand on some special object. This was sometimes significant of the god addressed, and sometimes reminded the swearer of the punishment which