637 



GATES, TITUS. 



OBADIAH. 



manuscript in the Brit, Mug., 7331, f. 127), says that he made eight , 

 transcripts of the large collection of Mohammedan traditions, by 

 Eokhari, entitled ' Sahib," for each of which he was paid the enormous ; 

 sum of one thousand dirhems, or about sixty-five pounds sterling. He 

 dedicated his large work to Almalek An-nasser Kalaun, sultan of Egypt 

 (reigned from A.H. 678 to 689), a liberal patron of letters, by whom he ; 

 was munificently rewarded. 



Complete copies of Nuwayri's work are exceedingly scarce. We are 

 however assured that it is entire in the. library of the University of 

 Leyden. The Escurial library possesses one volume, containing parts 

 xi. and xii, (' Catal.,' No. 1637.) There are also several loose volumes ! 

 at Paris belonging to different sets, and among them one supposed to 

 have been written by Nuwayri himself. (' Bib. Reg. Pan. Cat.,' No. 702.) | 



Various extracts from the work of Nuwayri have been published at i 

 different periods. Keiske was the first who mentioned the work, in 

 his ' Prodigmata ad Hagi Khalifas Tabulas,' Leyden, 1766. Albert 

 Schultens next gave a slight notice of the historical part of his work, 

 together with a few extracts from it, at the end of his ' Mouumeuta 

 Vetustiora Arabum,' published at Leyden, in 1740. Again, in 1786, 

 Reiske made use of it for his ' Historical Notes,' published as a con- 

 tinuation to his translation of Abu-1-fedii (Hafnias, 1789-94). Schultens 

 published also a Latin translation of some fragments of Nuwayri in 

 the collection entitled ' Historia Vetustissimi Imperil Joctanidarum in t 



Arabia Felice.' That chapter of the fifth ' fenn ' which treats of the 

 conquest of Sicily by the Mohammedans was next translated, first 

 into Latin, by Roaario Gregorio, and printed in folio at Palermo, 1790, 

 and inserted in the collection entitled 'Rerum Arabicarum qua; ad 

 Historiam Siculam spectant, amplissima collectio,' and then into 

 French, by Mr. J. J. A. Caussin ; and Mr. James Lassen Rasinussen 

 published, in his 'Additamenta ad Historiam Arabum ante Islam- 

 ismum,' Copeuh., 1821, some fragments of the same work, in Arabic 

 and Latin, respecting some curious customs of the Arabs who preceded 

 Mohammed. 



(Haji Khalfah, Sanhfu-dh-dhan&n, a bibliographical dictionary, in 

 the British Museum ; At-soyutti, History of Egypt, ib. ; Bib. Rich., 

 No. 7331, fol. 70, v. et passim.) 



NYMPHODO'RUS, a surgeon, whose date is not exactly known, 

 but who must have lived some time before Christ. He is mentioned 

 by several ancient authors as the inventor of a machine for reducing 

 luxations of the femur (Cels. ' De Med.' lib. viii. cap. 20 ; Gal. ' Com- 

 ment, in Hippocr. de Artie. Libr.,' torn, xviii. pars i. p. 736, ed. Kiihn), 

 and also of a sort of box (yKwaaoKontiov) for fractures of the limbs 

 (Oribas., ' De Machinam.,' cap. 24.) He is probably the same person 

 as Nymphodotus mentioned by ^Etius (' Tetrab.' iii., Serm. i. caps. 45, 

 49), Paulus .^Egineta (lib. vii. cap. 12), and Galen ('De Composit. 

 Medicam. per Genera,' lib. vi. cap. 14, torn. xiii. p. 926, ed. Kiihn). 







f\ ATES, TITUS, was born about 1620. He was the son of a riband- 

 weaver, who, having seceded from the Anabaptists, among whom 

 he was a preacher, conformed to the doctrines of the English established 

 church, took orders, and held a benefice. He was educated at Merchant 

 Taylor's school in London, and at the University of Cambridge. Having 

 received ordination, he became chaplain to the Duke of Norfolk, who 

 also settled him in a small living. He was subsequently accused of 

 perjury, but he escaped conviction, and became chaplain in one of the 

 king's ships, from which he was disgracefully expelled. Shortly after 

 be embraced Roman Catholic doctrines, entered the college at St. Umer, 

 and resided for some time among the students. On his return from a 

 mission to Spain in 1677, the Jesuits, who were heartily tired of their 

 convert, dismissed him from their seminary ; and it is probable that 

 resentment for this dismissal, combined with a prospect of gain, 

 induced him to contrive the 'Popish Plot,' which alone has preserved 

 his name from being forgotten. 



In September 1678 he made a disclosure before Sir Edmundbury 

 Godfrey, a noted and active justice of the peace, and afterwards before 

 the Council and the House of Commons, to the effect " that the pope j 

 felt himself entitled to the possession of England and Ireland on j 

 account of the heresy of prince and people, and had accordingly ; 

 assumed the sovereignty of these kingdoms ; that power to govern 

 them had been delegated by the pope to the Society of Jesuits, who, 

 through Oliva, the general of their Order, had issued commissions 

 appointing various persons whom they could trust to the chief offices 

 of state, both civil and military. Lord Arundel (he said) was to be 

 chancellor ; Lord Powia, treasurer ; Lord Heliosis, general of the papal ' 

 army ; Lord Stafford, paymaster ; Sir William Godolphin, privy seal ; 

 and Coleman, secretary of state. All the dignities too of the church, ' 

 he alleged to be newly appropriated, and many of them to Spaniards 

 and other foreigners. Two men named Grove and Pickering, he 

 declared, were hired to shoot the king, and that Sir George Wakeman, 

 the queen's physician, had engaged to poison him, the queen herself 

 being privy to the scheme. He also stated that the Roman Catholics 

 were to rise in different districts of the kingdom, and that every means 

 would be adopted for the extirpation of Protestantism." His evidence 

 was confirmed by two men named Tonge and Bedloe, especially the 

 latter, a man of low extraction and bad reputation. For the list of 

 persons, both Jesuits and men of importance in this kingdom, who 

 Buffered imprisonment and execution through the accusations of Oates, 

 we must refer to the general histories of the time. 



Notwithstanding the almost universal credence which was given 

 to him at the time, it has subsequently been placed beyond doubt 

 that the plot which Oates pretended to reveal was an infamous fabrica- 

 tion. His circumstances, his character, the nature of his evidence, the 

 manner of its production, not at one time but at several times, though 

 he had previously professed to have told all that he knew, the mode 

 in which the first disclosure was made, together with inconsistency 

 ami errors, evidently betray imposture. It may be urged, that the 

 universal credit given to Oates's evidence at the time is a strong proof 

 that his itory waa true. There are circumstances however which 

 account for the ready belief with which his accusations were received, 

 although they do not prove their truth. 



The English Protestants had long apprehended an attempt on the 

 part of tbe Roman Catholics to restore their religion and re-establish 

 thi'ir power; and their anxiety on this account had latterly been 

 augmented in some degree by the conduct of the king, and in n still 

 greater degree by the Duke of York's open profession of the old religion 

 and his attachment to its adherents. Moreover there were imme- 



diately connected with Oates's disclosure two events giving it an 

 apparent corroboration, which was eagerly assumed to be ronl by the 

 feverish minds of contemporary partisans. The first of these was the 

 sudden and violent death of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, the magistrate 

 who had taken Oates's depositions. No proofs could be adduced to 

 show the manner of his death whether he committed suicide or was 

 murdered but the fact that he had taken Oates's evidence, and had 

 been active in searching out the supposed plot, was sufficient to convince 

 the Protestants, excited as they then were, that he had been murdered 

 by Roman Catholics, partly out of revenge and partly to aid the escape 

 of their conspirators. The second apparent corroboration of Oates's 

 evidence, which, though no real confirmation, bad at the time an 

 influence in maintaining its credibility, is, that it led to the discovery 

 of a plot, though not such a plot as he disclosed. (Hallam, 'Const. 

 Hist.' ii. p. 571.) Oates denounced Coleman, the secretary of the 

 Duchess of York; and upon searching his house, there were found, 

 among his correspondence with Pere la Chaise, papers which proved a 

 combination for the purpose of re-establishing Roman Catholicism iu 

 England. That it was a plot, that it was on the part of the Roman 

 Catholics, and discovered through Oates, was sufficient in the then 

 state of public feeling to reflect credit on his disclosures, though 

 Coleman's plans did not coincide with the schemes which Oates 

 pretended to have discovered. 



During the closing years of Charles II.'s reign, Oates was protected 

 by the government, and received a pension of 1200Z. a year. In the 

 following reign, as might be expected, his enemies revenged themselves. 

 The Duke of York had not long succeeded his brother on the throne, 

 before Oates was tried and convicted of perjury, sentenced to imprison- 

 ment for life, and to be whipped and stand in the pillory at intervals. 

 The punishment was enforced with such dastardly brutality, as to leave 

 no doubt that it was intended under cover of carrying out the sentence to 

 take away his life. He lived however until 1705, and after much urgent 

 petitioning received during a part of William's reign, a second pension 

 of 400i. a year. Grainger says that there have been published under 

 his name, though for a clergyman he was an illiterate man, ' A Narra- 

 tive of the Popish Plot ;' ' The Merchandise of the Whore of Home ;' 

 and ' Eikon Basilike, or a Picture of the late King James.' 



OBADl'AH was one of the twelve minor Hebrew prophets. The 

 name corresponds to the common Arabian name Abdallah, meaning 'a 

 servant of God;' it occurs several times in tho Old Testament (1 Kings 

 xviii. 3; 1 Chron. iii. 21 ; vii. 3; ix. 16; 2 Cbron. xvii. 7; xxxiv. 12); 

 but neither of the persons mentioned in these passages appears to have 

 been the prophet, about whose personal history we know nothing. 

 His prophecy appears from internal evidence (verses 11-14, 20) to 

 have been written shortly after tho destruction of Jerusalem iu the 

 year B.C. 587. He was therefore contemporary with Jeremiah; and 

 we find a striking resemblance between some passages in these two 

 prophets (compare Obadiah 1-4, 5, 6, 8, with Jer. xlix. 14-16, 9, 10, 7). 

 The question here is, which of these writers copied from the other ? 

 We know that Jeremiah quoted other prophets, and therefore it is 

 nothing strange to find in him a quotation from Obadiah ; and critics 

 who have carefully examined the passages in question have thought 

 that those in Jeremiah bear marks of having been copied from Obadiah. 

 The reason why tbe book of Obadiah has been placed so much out of 

 its chronological order in the Hebrew Bible is thought to be, because 

 its subject is so closely connected with the last verses of the prophecy 

 of Amos, which immediately precedes it. 



Tho prophecy of Obadiah is tho shortest book in the Old Testament, 

 consisting of only one chapter. The prophet denounces tho destruction 



