A PROFANE HISTORY OF EARLY MODERN OATHS

• Published in: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Vol. 11; pp. 37 - 63
• Main Author: Spurr, John
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.12.2001
• Subjects: Blasphemy; Casuistry; Christian history; Clergy; Loyalty oaths; Medieval literature; Oaths; Perjury; Protestantism; Religious rituals
• ISSN: 0080-4401; 1474-0648
• DOI: 10.1017/S0080440101000032

IT was a dark November night in 1680 when a gang of masked men burst into Robert Robinson’s isolated house, waking the household with the clatter of their riding boots, swords and muffled curses, and snarling at Robinson, ‘Old rogue, where is thy money?’ After ransacking the room and breaking open a chest, another of the gang ‘did hold a Bible to Robert Robinson to swear whether he had any more gold or silver than what they had taken from him’. Robinson swore that he had no more and ‘Mr Lodge did laugh when he heard Robert Robinson sworn.’ Now the burglary of Robert Robinson’s house near the village of Old Hutton, Westmorland, at about 1.00 am on 4 November 1680 had some very odd features, but none so curious as Mr Lodge’s laughter when the old man was forced to swear. Edmund Lodge was the local schoolmaster and curate. In 1678 he had leased Robinson’s house for three years and the old man was now a ‘tabler’ or lodger in his own home. In time Lodge would move on to be the vicar of Clapham in Lancashire, where he died in 1696. But before then he would be tried and acquitted as one of this band of coiners and robbers. Some of these same desperadoes said that the raid on Robinson’s house had been Lodge’s idea. Circumstantial evidence suggests that Lodge had told the thieves that Robinson had more than £40 in a chest ‘ready to be taken away’; and when the gang broke in, Lodge indulged in a lot of phoney-sounding play-acting with them – one thief shouting at him, ‘damn you for a dog, hold your peace or I will cut your flesh from your bones’.