ABSTRACT

The Popish Plot informer William Bedloe had an amazing career, at least if his seventeenth-century biographer is to be believed. The Life & Death of Captain William Bedloe (1681) tells how the gentleman Bedloe was corrupted by a gang of duplicitous Catholic priests into a life of crime. He carried out many ‘Eminent Cheats’, including masquerading as the German ambassador’s steward, duping assorted tradesmen, and tricking the Prince of Orange out of a substantial sum. Of the many tricks described in the Life, perhaps Bedloe’s most impressive feat was dressing himself as a woman and entering a nunnery where he got ten nuns pregnant. At this time, the anonymous biographer adds, Bedloe was also working for Catholic plotters who were scheming to murder Charles II, burn London, and destroy the Protestant religion. However, in 1678, ‘the Adorable Providence of GOD’ ensured that Bedloe came forward to vindicate Titus Oates’s allegations of a Popish Plot.1 Bedloe was able to confirm that Catholics were responsible for the murder of the magistrate Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey and to reveal the role of Catholic nobles in plotting against the king. Bedloe, the biographer concluded, defied the Jesuits until he died a pious death in 1680.