John Gavan
Blessed John Gavan (1640–1679) was an English Jesuit and victim of the Popish Plot, wrongfully executed for conspiracy to murder Charles II. He was beatified in 1929.
Life
He was born in London in 1640, to a family originally from Norrington in Wiltshire. He was educated at the Jesuit College at St. Omer's and began his priesthood in Staffordshire, one of the strongholds of the Catholic faith in England. On the Feast of the Assumption, 1678, he took his final vows to the Society of Jesus at Boscobel House, the home of the Penderel family, famous for sheltering Charles II after the Battle of Worcester. Among the witnesses were two other martyrs of the Popish Plot, William Ireland and Richard Gerard of Hilderstone. The ceremony was followed by dinner, and the guests then viewed the Royal Oak in which the King had hidden.[1]
This ceremony caused great trouble during the Popish Plot, when Stephen Dugdale, one of the main instigators of the Plot, learned of it and accused the guests of conspiring to kill the King. Until January 1679 Gavan had escaped arrest largely because Titus Oates, the originator of the Plot, did not know him. On hearing Dugdale's testimony the Government issued a reward for Gavan's arrest on 15 January:[2] he fled to London and took refuge at the Imperial Embassy. Arrangements were being made to smuggle him out of England; but a spy called Schibber denounced him and he was arrested on 29 January. The Embassy did not claim diplomatic immunity for him, apparently because he was seized in the stables and was thus technically outside the precincts of the Embassy proper when he was arrested. [3]
Trial and execution
Gavan was tried on 13 June 1679 with Thomas Whitbread, John Fenwick, William Barrow and Anthony Turner. A bench of seven judges tried them, headed by the Lord Chief Justice, Sir William Scroggs, a firm believer in the Plot, and deeply hostile to Catholic priests in general.[4] Gavan, who acted as the principal spokesman for all five accused, mounted a spirited defence which led one historian to call him one of the ablest priests of his generation.[5] Attempts by Roman Catholic witnesses to prove that Titus Oates had been at St Omer's on crucial dates when he claimed to be in London failed, as the judges argued that Catholic witnesses could receive a papal dispensation to lie on oath, and were therefore less credible than Protestants. Gavan had far greater success exposing the inconsistencies in Oates' own testimony: in particular Oates could not explain why he had not denounced Gavan in September 1678 when he first made his accusations against Whitbread and Fenwick. Gavan concluded his defence with a long and eloquent plea of innocence, despite constant interruption from Scroggs.[6]
Scroggs, in his summing-up to the jury, admitted that he could not remember all the evidence (judges then did not take notes, apparently because they had no desks to write on)[7] but made it clear to the jury that he expected a guilty verdict, which the jury duly brought in after fifteen minutes. The five were sentenced to death the next day.
They were hanged at Tyburn on 20 June 1679.[8] The behaviour of the crowd suggests that public opinion was turning in favour of the victims. According to witnesses the crowd stood in perfect silence for at least an hour while each of the condemned men made a last speech maintaining his innocence; finally Gavan led them in an act of contrition.[9]