Israel Tonge

Israel Tonge (aka Ezerel or Ezreel Tongue) (11 November 1621 – 1680) was an English divine and a informer in the "Popish" plot. Alan Marshall, ‘Tonge, Israel (1621–1680)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004]

He was born at Tickhill, near Doncaster, the son of Henry Tongue, minister of Holtby, Yorkshire. He graduated from University College, Oxford and became a schoolmaster at Churchill, Oxfordshire where he became interested in gardening, alchemy, and chemistry. In 1656 he became a doctor of theology, and taught grammar at the Cromwellian College at Durham until its closure in 1659. Following the Restoration, he held a succession of livings. He became chaplain of the garrison of Dunkirk until this was sold to the French in 1661. On 26 June 1666 he became rector of St Mary Staining. The church burnt down during the Great Fire of London.

Tongue blamed the Jesuits for both his own and London's losses. His obsession was so great that he wrote many articles denouncing the Roman Catholic Church and containing conspiracy theories about the Rome's insatiable quest for power. [>Pollock, John p.9] From 1675, Tonge was acquainted with the fervently anti-Catholic physician, Sir Richard Barker. Barker provided Tonge with food, lodgings, and money. He encouraged Tonge's anti-Catholic studies and had him appointed as rector of Avon Dassett in Warwickshire - although according to Tonge "illegall practices" prevented him taking up the position.

Barker also sponsored the baptist preacher Samuel Oates. In 1677 at the physician's barbican home, Tonge met Samuel's son, Titus Oates. Tonge provided Titus with money and the two agreed to co-author a series of anti-Catholic pamphlets. In fact Titus converted to Catholism and left England for the English College at St Omer. At the time Tonge was puzzled by Oates's disappearance but he would later claim that he encouraged Oates actions in order to learn more about the Jesuits.

On Oates return he further stoked Tonge's paranoia with stories of Jesuit conspiracies, including a plot against a feared anti-Catholic author - Tonge himself.

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