Titus Oates (September 15, 1649 - July 12/13, 1705) was an English perjurer who fabricated the Popish Plot a fictitious conspiracy concocted between 1678-81 that gripped the Kingdoms of England and Scotland in anti-Catholic hysteria. Oates alleged that there existed an extensive Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Charles II, accusations that led to the executions of at least 22 men. His web of accusations soon unravelled. He was arrested for sedition, sentenced to a fine and thrown into prison. Retried, he was convicted and sentenced for perjury, stripped of clerical dress, imprisoned for life, and to be "whipped through the streets of London five days a year for the remainder of his life." He was taken from his cell wearing a hat with the text "Titus Oates, convicted upon full evidence of two horrid perjuries" and put into the pillory at the gate of Westminster Hall, where people pelted him with eggs. The next day he was pilloried in London and the third day was stripped, tied to a cart, and whipped from Aldgate to Newgate. He spent the next three years in prison. In 1689, upon the accession of the Protestant William of Orange and Mary, he was pardoned and granted a pension. He died in 1705, at the age of 55.