ABSTRACT
Arson was among the most serious of crimes in early modern England, particularly in an old city such as London. Buildings were usually framed with wood, were often physically attached together for entire blocks, and typically housed multiple families on several floors. The act of arson described here was at a minimum expected to destroy one house, which also housed several tenants, and could have had the unintended consequence of setting London ablaze. The crime described in this chapbook was committed fourteen years after the Great Fire of London in 1666. A horrible event still in the living memory of many inhabitants of London, this conflagration destroyed much of the old city of London. It claimed more than 13,000 buildings, 80 parish churches, and the homes of nearly 100,000 people, and resulted in extensive restoration projects that are still visible today. This crime was made worse by the author’s belief that the arsonist, Elizabeth Owen, was a Jesuit agent, possibly acting on the orders of her “cousin” and that many similar “firing-plots” had been ordered by the Jesuits. This event occurred in the midst of the Popish Plot (1678–81), a conspiracy concocted by Titus Oates, who alleged that the Jesuits – a secretive Catholic order that travelled incognito into Protestant countries – were conspiring to assassinate King Charles II so that his brother James, the duke of York, a confirmed Catholic, could take the throne. Though later revealed to be a seditious libel for which Oates was subsequently imprisoned for perjury, the Popish Plot resulted in the execution of several suspected traitors, the unsuccessful parliamentary “exclusion crisis” that sought to remove James from the line of succession because of his religion, and an ongoing hysteria that was assuaged only by James’s abdication in 1688, during the so-called “glorious revolution”. Shortly after, Oates was granted a royal pardon and a state pension for life for his services to the state. Whether or not Elizabeth Owen and her “cousin” were Jesuit agents, this anonymous author certainly knew how to tap into current national fears to sell his chapbook.
