Israel Tonge, aka Ezerel or Ezreel Tongue, was an English divine.
17 Facts About Israel Tonge
1.
2.
Israel Tonge was an informer in and probably one of the inventors of the "Popish" plot.
3.
Israel Tonge graduated from University College, Oxford and became a schoolmaster at Churchill, Oxfordshire where he became interested in gardening, alchemy, and chemistry.
4.
Israel Tonge became chaplain of the garrison of Dunkirk until this was sold to the French in 1661.
5.
Israel Tonge blamed the Jesuits for both his own and London's losses.
6.
Israel Tonge's obsession was so great that he wrote many articles denouncing the Roman Catholic Church and containing conspiracy theories about Rome's insatiable quest for power.
7.
From 1675, Israel Tonge was acquainted with the fervently anti-Catholic physician, Sir Richard Barker.
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Titus Oates 8.
Israel Tonge encouraged Tonge's anti-Catholic studies and had him appointed rector of Avon Dassett in Warwickshire, but "illegall practices", claimed Tonge, prevented him from accepting the position.
9.
In 1677 at the physician's Barbican home, Israel Tonge met Samuel's son, Titus Oates.
10.
Israel Tonge provided Titus with money and the two agreed to co-author a series of anti-Catholic pamphlets.
11.
At the time Israel Tonge was puzzled by Oates's disappearance but he would later claim that he encouraged Oates's actions to learn more about the Jesuits.
12.
Israel Tonge was at least sufficiently impressed to ask the Lord Treasurer, Danby, to investigate.
13.
Danby agreed that the matter deserved inquiry, despite opposition from another leading minister, Sir Joseph Williamson, who knew Israel Tonge and believed he was insane.
14.
Israel Tonge then took two crucial decisions: firstly he persuaded Oates to swear to the truth of his allegations before the much-respected magistrate, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey.
15.
At the hearing, Israel Tonge himself made a bad impression: his reputation for eccentricity, if not outright madness, was well known, and he was "altogether smiled at ".
16.
Israel Tonge's reputation has suffered through his close association with Oates, and some historians have bracketed them together as a pair of perjurers.
17.
Kenyon, in his classic study of the Plot, concludes that Israel Tonge truly believed Oates' lies, because they confirmed his own fixed belief in a Jesuit conspiracy.