St John Plessington, Priest and Martyr

Abstract

The world of the late seventeenth century was a very different one from that of a hundred years earlier. Religious tensions seemed to have fallen into the background. A new London was rising out of the fire of 1666 around the slowly growing walls of Wren's Cathedral, the foundation stone of which was laid in 1675; this was the age of Dryden, Pepys, and Isaac Newton. For the most part Catholics and Protestants got on together as neighbours, not asking too many questions. The penal laws, though still on the Statute Book, were disregarded. Yet for all its seeming modernity, there was a darker side to late seventeenth century English society. The world of the restored Stuart monarchy reflected a society lacking confidence, subject to scares and alarms. Popular fears of a restoration of Catholicism, a mood of discontent in the country, and political intrigue in Court and Parliament all contributed to what Lingard describes as ‘one of the most extraordinary occurrences in our domestic history’:1 the hysteria generated by a plot purported to have been uncovered by Titus Oates, information of which was given to Charles II by his laboratory assistant during his usual early morning walk one summer day in 1678.