A True Narrative of the Horrid Hellish Popish-Plot 2

"A True Narrative of the Horrid Hellish Popish Plot" is a late seventeenth-century English

broadside Broadside or broadsides may refer to: Naval * Broadside (naval), terminology for the side of a ship, the battery of cannon on one side of a warship, or their near simultaneous fire on naval warfare Printing and literature * Broadside (comic ...

ballad A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or ''ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and ...

telling the story of the contemporary anti-Catholic scare in England known as the

Popish Plot The Popish Plot was a fictitious conspiracy invented by Titus Oates that between 1678 and 1681 gripped the Kingdoms of England and Scotland in anti-Catholic hysteria. Oates alleged that there was an extensive Catholic conspiracy to assassinate C ...

. ''A True Narrative of the Horrid Hellish Popish Plot'' is also the title of an early picture-story and prototypical

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

with

speech balloon Speech balloons (also speech bubbles, dialogue balloons, or word balloons) are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comics, and cartoons to allow words (and much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing a char ...

s, created by Francis Barlow in c. 1682 and based on the same historical event.

Synopsis

The narrator of the ballad begins by placing theirself firmly on the side of the anti-Catholics by declaring to tell They then go on to tell the murder of the knight Sir

Edmund Berry Godfrey Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey (23 December 1621 – 12 October 1678) was an English magistrate whose mysterious death caused anti-Catholic uproar in England. Contemporary documents also spell the name Edmundbury Godfrey. Early life Edmund Berry Godf ...

, a member of Parliament and a staunch Protestant. The narrator describes as a fitting place for the murder a back-court of

Somerset House Somerset House is a large Neoclassical complex situated on the south side of the Strand in central London, overlooking the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge. The Georgian era quadrangle was built on the site of a Tudor palace ("O ...

, presumably because many people gather there, making it easier to disguise a murder. Godfrey's body is handled very roughly by his murderers: When his body begins to decay, and in order to conceal the murder, the killers place his corpse on horseback to

Soho Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was develop ...

and drive his own sword through his body, leaving his money and making sure his shoes are clean, to make it seem as if he has been killed by a thief. The murder of Godfrey is an attempt by participants in the plot to bring the vengeance of "th excess of Jesuitical rage" upon London by stealing from and setting fire to its houses, which they have attempted to do many times before. The narrator may even be attributing blame for the

Great Fire of London The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through central London from Sunday 2 September to Thursday 6 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall, while also extending past the ...

of 1666 to the plotters: The narrator then credits the fraudster and informer

William Bedloe William Bedloe (20 April 165020 August 1680) was an English fraudster and Popish Plot informer. Life He was born at Chepstow in Monmouthshire. He was probably the son of Isaac Bedloe, himself the son of an Irish Army officer, and a cousin of Wi ...

for knowledge of Jesuits conniving their way into Londoners' homes disguised as drivers of goods vehicles, porters, chimney-sweeps, or coal sellers and then sabotaging the homes. The narrator then tells how there was a meeting between the conspirators in April at a place called the White Horse.

Library/archival holdings

Th
English Broadside Ballad Archive
at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...

holds three seventeenth-century

versions of this tale: two copies in the

Huntington Library The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, known as The Huntington, is a collections-based educational and research institution established by Henry E. Huntington (1850–1927) and Arabella Huntington (c.1851–1924) in San Mar ...

's "miscellaneous" collection (both numbered 183923) and another in the

Crawford Crawford may refer to: Places Canada * Crawford Bay Airport, British Columbia * Crawford Lake Conservation Area, Ontario United Kingdom * Crawford, Lancashire, a small village near Rainford, Merseyside, England * Crawford, South Lanarkshire, a ...

collection at the

National Library of Scotland The National Library of Scotland (NLS) ( gd, Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba, sco, Naitional Leebrar o Scotland) is the legal deposit library of Scotland and is one of the country's National Collections. As one of the largest libraries in the ...

. All three of these documents contain cartoon illustrations.

Francis Barlow's comic

In 1682 Francis Barlow made a series of etchings about the Popish Plot, ''A True Narrative of the Horrid Hellish Popish Plot'', picturing all the events in a chronological order with emphasis on

Titus Oates Titus Oates (15 September 1649 – 12/13 July 1705) was an English priest who fabricated the " Popish Plot", a supposed Catholic conspiracy to kill King Charles II. Early life Titus Oates was born at Oakham in Rutland. His father Samuel (1610� ...

and his eventual arrest. The work is an early example of a

, where the characters use

s and narration is told underneath each image. It combines a balloon comic with

text comic Text comics or a text comic is a form of comics where the stories are told in captions below the images and without the use of speech balloons. It is the oldest form of comics and was especially dominant in European comics from the 19th century u ...

format.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:True Narrative of the Horrid Hellish Popish-Plot 17th-century broadside ballads 17th-century etchings Ballads Cultural depictions of Titus Oates Historical comics Comics set in the 17th century Comics set in the United Kingdom Political art Popish Plot