Historic Rhymes: From the Popish Plot to the Putinish Plot

In 1678, two religious fanatics, Titus Oates and Israel Tonge, created a long document that supposedly revealed a plot led by the Pope, and to be carried out by English Jesuits, to kill King Charles II of England. Oates and Tonge used subterfuge to bring the document to the King’s attention. Although he dismissed it, the document touched off sweeping investigations that eventually led to the execution–including by drawing and quartering–of 22 innocent individuals.

The controversy over the “Popish Plot” convulsed England for three years. It helped feed the controversy over the Exclusion Bill (designed to prevent Charles’ Catholic brother James from succeeding to the throne).

Eventually the public became convinced that Oates’ and Tonge’s charges were fabrications, and the frenzy abated. But not without political consequence: those politicians of the faction which would become to known as the Whigs who had been most ardent for the prosecution of the Plot and the Exclusion Bill were widely branded as subversives and extremists, and went into eclipse for some years (until the then James II was overthrown by William of Orange). The Popish Plot first empowered, then fatally undermined, the Whigs.

In the end, everything in the Oates-Tonge dossier was found to be a complete fabrication.

Twain said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Substitute Putin for the Pope, and Steele for Oates, and what has transpired for the last three years in the US does rhyme with what happened in England around 340 years ago.