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Titus Oates is standing in the pillory while two men drive a cart with gallows past him. Mezzotint. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection.
An incubus or devil is sitting on top of the gallows looking at the perjurer
The pillory is a contrivance for the punishment of offenders, consisting usually of a wooden framework erected on a post or pillar, and formed, like the stocks, of two moveable boards which, when brought together at their edges, leave holes through which the head and the hands of an offender where thrust, in which state he was exposed to public ridicule, insult and molestation
The pillory is inscribed with "perjury, perjury"
Titus Oates was a homosexual renegade Anglican parson with a capacious memory and a fertile imagination, who revealed the Popish Plot through an intermediary in 1678 and subsequently invented further complications. In the ensuing popular excitement, not one person was killed on the street, but 35 Catholics were executed. After the plot faded away, Oates lost his allowance from the King in 1681. Under James II he was found guilty of perjury, fined and imprisoned for life, with regular whippings and appearances in the pillory. Under William III he was given a free pardon. He died in comparative obscurity in 1705
The flogging of Titus Oates in 1685 was an outstanding instance of penal flogging. He was sentenced to be pilloried and afterwards whipped from Aldgate to Newgate, and in two days time from Newgate to Tyburn, which, as the judges well knew, was equivalent to sentencing the man to be flogged to death. That Oates survived this frightful torture was due to his enormous physical strength and iron constitution, not to the clemency of the court or the mercy of the executioner
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