Lot 186

A PART SET OF 'HORRID POPISH PLOT' PLAYING CARDS BY HUNT & SONS

after a design by Francis Barlow, with captions beneath, composed of four suits, the paper images c.1678 and later laid onto card c.1800, each c.9cm x c.5.5cm, complete with Hunt & Sons 'Duty Paid' original paper wrapper and a contemporaneous handwritten note explaining the cards

Condition Report:	click here
Estimate:	£700 - £1,000
Hammer price:	£950

Bidding ended. Lot has been sold.

Note: The Popish Plot was a fabricated conspiracy of anti-Catholic sentiment which gripped Great Britain between 1678-1681.

Invented by the renegade priest and fantasist Titus Oates (1649-1705), the conspiracy contended that Jesuit priests planned to kill King Charles II and replace him with his Catholic brother James, Duke of York.

Whilst Oates was eventually convicted of perjury, imprisoned and flogged in 1685, many completely innocent men were executed on suspicion of being involved in the ‘Plot’, as commemorated by these cards.

Of special note in our Winter Auction is lot 83, a portrait of Sir Roger L’Estrange (1616-1704) who, as former press censor for Charles II and later pamphleteer, was a vociferous and contemporaneous opponent of Oates, claiming rightly that the ‘Plot’ was a hoax.

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