OAT 
Our neighbours tell me oft. in jelling talk. 
Of alhes, leather, oat-meal , bran, and chalk. Gay. 
O'AT-STRAW, f. Often ufed for the oat itfelf. See 
Avena. The Hem of the oat.—For your lean cattle, 
fodder them with barley-ftraw firll, and the oat-Jlraio laft. 
Mortimer. 
O'AT-THISTLE, f. An herb. Ainfworth. 
OATA'RA, one of the fmall Society illands, fouth- 
eafl of Ulietea. 
O'ATEN, adj. Made of oats ; bearing oats : 
When fhepherds pipe on oaten draws, 
And merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks. Shahefpeare. 
OATES (Titus), a very fingular charaCler, was born 
about the year 1619. He was educated at Merchant- 
Taylors’ fchool, whence he removed to Cambridge. 
When he left the univerfity, he obtained orders in the 
church of England, though in his youth he had been a 
member of a Baptill meeting in Ratclifte Highway. In 
1677 he became a convert to the church of Rome, and 
entered himfelf a member of the fociety of Jefuits. He is 
chiefly known as the informer of the Popifh plot, of wdiich 
a full account is given in our article England, vol. vi. p. 
687, 8. For this pretended difcovery he received a penfion 
of 1200I. per ann. was lodged in Whitehall, and proteCled 
by the guards ; but fcarcely had king Janies afcended the 
throne, when he took ample revenge of the fufferings 
which his information had occafioned to the monarch’s 
friends : he was thrown into prilbn,and tried for perjury 
with refpeCt to what he had aflerted as to that plot. Being 
conviCled, he was fentenced to-fland in the pillory five 
times a-year during his life, to be whipt from Aldgate to 
Newgate, and from thence to Tyburn, which fentence, 
fays Neal, was exercifed with a feverity unknown to the 
Englilh nation. “ The impudence of the man,” fays the 
lriftorian Hume, “ fupported itfelf under the convi&ion ; 
and his courage under the punilhment. He made folemn 
appeals to heaven, and proteflations of the veracity of his 
teftimony. Though the whipping was fo cruel, that it 
was evidently the intention of the court to put him to 
death by that punilhment, yet he was enabled, by the care 
of his friends, to recover; and he lived to king William’s 
reign, when a penfion of 400I. a-year was fettled upon 
him. A confiderable number of perfons adhered to him 
in his diftreffes, and regarded him as a martyr to the pro- 
teftant caufe.” Fie was unqueftionably a very infamous 
character, and thofe who regarded the pretended popifli 
plot as a mere fiction, fay, that he contrived it out of re¬ 
venge to the Jefuits, who had expelled him from their 
body. After having left the whole body of diflenters 
for thirty years, he applied to be admitted again into the 
communion of the Baptilfs, having firft returned to the 
church of England, and continued a member of it fix- 
teen years. In 1698 or 1699, he was rellored to his place 
among the Baptifts, from whence he was excluded in a 
few months as a rliforderly perfon and a hypocrite: he 
died in the year 1705. He is defcribed by Granger as a 
man “of cunning, mere effrontery, and the moll confuin¬ 
mate falfehood.” Hume defcribes him as “ the mod in¬ 
famous of mankind ; that in early life he had been chap¬ 
lain to colonel Pride; was afterwards chaplain on-board 
the fleet, whence he had been ignominioully difmilfed on 
complaint of fome unnatural practices : that he then be¬ 
came a convert to the Catholics; but that he afterwards 
boafted that his converfion was a mere pretence, in or¬ 
der to get into their fecrets and to betray them.” Hume’s 
Rill. Toulmin’s Edition of Neal, vol. iv. and v. 
OATH, f. \aith, Goth, at), Sax. eid, Iceland, from 
the German che, ee, The diftance between the noun oath 
and the verb Jwear is very oblervable, as it may (how that 
our oldell dialeCt is formed from different languages.] 
An affirmation, negation, or promile, corroborated by 
the alteration of the Divine Being.—Thofe called to any 
office of truft, are bound by an oath to the faithful dil- 
charge of it: but an oath is an appeal to God, and there- 
O A T 355 
fore can have no influence, except upon thofe who be¬ 
lieve that he is. Swift. 
Read over Julia’s heart, thy firft bed love. 
For whofe dear fake thou then didlt rend thy faith 
Into a thoufand oaths; and all thofe oaths 
Defcended into perjury to love me. Shakefpeare. 
When learning was at its lowefl flate in this kingdom, 
few of the engagements between individuals were com¬ 
mitted to writing; but the clergy, from their extenfive 
influence, rendered valid all tranfaClions between man 
and man, by making the parties laluteand fwear by the 
crofs ; and it was only by very flow degrees that obliga¬ 
tions of fucli a nature became legalized in any other 
manner. The clergy, however, as might naturally be 
expeCled, contrived to turn this confidential reliance 
upon confidence to their own advantage. In all difputed 
points they were, of courfe, applied to ; and never failed, 
in fuch cafes, to become more or lefs participators in the 
contelled property. This avaricious fpirit of the clergy 
was fometimes refilled; but the laity feldotn profited by 
oppofition, and in general conformed. Some, indeed, 
who were aware of the weaknefs of their rights, craftily 
procured the protection of the ecclefiaftics, by volunta¬ 
rily making them parties in the property at iffue, knowing 
but too well the flrong probability they fecured of carry¬ 
ing their point, with fuch powerful coadjutors, however 
doubtful might be their claims. With this view, many, 
religning their eflates to monafleries or other religious 
eflablifhments, contented themfelves with taking ieafes 
for their own lives; and, by thefe nefarious means, the pro¬ 
perty of the church fo rapidly augmented, that at laft it 
amounted to a third of the allual rental of the kingdom ! 
To this wily and interelled contrivance, of the transfer 
of property by oath, has been affigned many of the excla¬ 
mations to w-hich the vulgar ignorant ltill habituate 
themfelves ; to fwear by the Crofs, or by the Rood, its 
Saxon appellation, was in former times not only admiffi- 
ble, but neceifary. The advancement of learning intro¬ 
duced a number of written agreements, proportionate to 
its progrefs; and the Reformation, by robbing the cruci¬ 
fixes of their afcribed powers, put a total flop to the an¬ 
cient mode of ratifying private contrafts; and oaths, or 
appeals to images, no longer retained their former in¬ 
fluence. The people gave free indulgence to the ufe of 
terms before held facred ; they wiflied even to deride every 
appearance of their former fuperditions, and, by a too 
ardent and ignorant zeal, brought into common ufage, 
and on every frivolous occafion, afieverations of the moll 
folemn nature. Of thefe, many examples yet remain : 
fome amply expreffive of their meaning ; others fo much 
changed by vulgar ufage, or by vicious and altered founds, 
as almoft to have loft their primitive tendency. By the 
Crofs; by the Rood; by the Holy Rood ; by the Mais; 
&c. &c. &c. (peak for themfelves, eacli too plain to need 
comment; while Zounds, Zooks, Z'Death, and Oons , 
require explanation : the three firft are contractions of 
his wounds, his hooks, his death, the Z being only a fto- 
venly mode of pronouncing the S hard ; and the latter, 
Oons, a Hill more corrupt and hafty contraction of his 
wounds; all pointing to the bufferings of our Saviour on 
the crofs; while to thefe may be added the yet more ob- 
fcure but extended oath of Odd Splutter her Nails, or 
Gots Pint and hur Nails, fignifying “ God’s blood, and 
the nails which faftened him to the crofs.” “ By my 
Faith,” was alfo another common oath which has def¬ 
cended to us; and it went to exprefs that thofe who 
ufed it, no longer believed in thofe fuperftitious tenets 
which before they dared not fo much as doubt. 
Sir John Perrot, a fuppofed natural foil of Henry the 
Eighth, is alleged to have been the firft who fiwore by 
God’s wounds, which queen Elizabeth adopted as her 
favourite and ul’ual expletive: the ladies of the court 
foftened it down to Zounds. There was formerly an ex- 
preffion very current, that “ Swearing came in at the head, 
4 but 
