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Updated: June 8, 2025
Eachard wrote his book about the Contempt of the Clergy, numbers of these answerers immediately started up, whose memory, if he had not kept alive by his replies, it would now be utterly unknown that he were ever answered at all. No one who is familiar with Swift's tracts on Church reform can doubt that he had read Eachard's work with minute attention, and was greatly influenced by it.
Eachard mentions "a great supper in the city," given in compliment to Oates by "twenty eminent rich citizens;" and Sir John Reresby writes of meeting him at the dinner-table of Dr. Gunning, Bishop of Ely. Nothing could exceed the insolence and arrogance of the impostor.
Such was the end of the popish plot, which, says Archdeacon Eachard, "after the strictest and coolest examinations, and after a full length of time, the government could find very little foundation to support so vast a fabrick, besides downright swearing and assurance; not a gun, sword, nor dagger, not a flask of powder or dark lanthorn, to effect this strange villainy, and with the exception of Coleman's writings, not one slip of an original letter of commission among those great numbers alledged to uphold the reputation of the discoveries."
It did not, indeed, lead immediately to practical reform, but it advanced the cause of reform by inspiring and bringing other initiators into the field. And pre-eminent among these was Swift. Swift was evidently well acquainted with Eachard's work. In the apology prefixed to the fourth edition of the Tale of a Tub in 1710, he speaks of Eachard with great respect.
It is remarkable that Eachard says nothing about two causes which undoubtedly contributed to degrade the Church in the eyes of the laity: its close association with party politics, and the spread of latitudinarianism, a conspicuous epoch in which was marked some twenty-six years later in the Bangorian controversy.
Laurence Eachard, Archdeacon of Stowe, states Dr. Tonge was "a man of letters, and had a prolific head filled with all the Romish plots and conspiracies since the reformation." According to this author, Tonge took Oates into his house, provided him with lodging, diet, and clothes; and when the latter complained he knew not where to get bread, the rector told him "he would put him in a way."
I tried to do it, but found it a "knotty" subject, and, like the texts Eachard speaks of, "would not easily come in pieces." With all my efforts, it could not be made to "split handsomely." This, and all other suggestions of criticism, are gratefully received and respectfully considered.
Archdeacon Eachard tells us this man "was one of a base birth and worse manners, who from a poor foot-boy and runner of errands, for a while got into a livery in the Lord Bellasis's family; and having for his villainies suffered hardships and want in many prisons in England, he afterwards turned a kind of post or letter carrier for those who thought fit to employ him beyond sea.
The author, John Eachard, was born about 1636, at what date is doubtful, but he was admitted into Catherine Hall, Cambridge, in May 1653. Becoming Fellow of the Hall in 1658, he was chosen, on the death of Dr. Lightfoot, Master. His perfectly uneventful life closed on the 7th of July 1697.
After this, finding Oates a man of great ingenuity and cunning, "he persuaded him," says Archdeacon Eachard, "to insinuate himself among the papists, and get particular acquaintance with them; which being effected, he let him understand that there had been several plots in England to bring in popery, and that if he would go beyond sea among the Jesuits, and strictly observe their ways, it was possible there might be one at present; and if he could make that out, it would be his preferment for ever; but, however, if he could get their names, and some information from the papists, it would be very easy to rouse people with the fears of popery."
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