COLEMAN, EDWARD, BL.

Controversialist, intrigant, and victim of the Popish Plot; b. Suffolk, sometime before 1650; d. Tyburn, London, Dec. 3, 1678. Coleman, a Puritan and a Cambridge graduate, became a Catholic about 1670, certainly before 1673, and shortly thereafter assumed the office of secretary to Mary of Modena, wife of James, Duke of York and the king's brother. In this capacity Coleman engaged in frequent correspondence with civil and ecclesiastical authorities at the French court concerning aid for a Catholic revival in England under the leadership of the newly converted Duke of York, and conducted able polemical exchanges with Edward Stillingfleet and Gilbert Burnet. When in September 1678 Titus Oates made his revelation of a "popish plot," Coleman confidently accepted arrest and interrogation (see oates plot). To the arraignment of high treason, on the testimony of Oates and William Bedloe that he had conspired with a French Jesuit, several Irish cutthroats, and the royal physician, to murder the king and foment rebellion against Parliament, he replied that he had indeed discussed foreign subsidies for influencing parliamentary elections and reinstating the Duke of York in the Admiralty, but that none of this corresponded to the perjured charges made against him. He was nevertheless found guilty and executed as a traitor.

Bibliography: j. gillow, A Literary and Biographical History or Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics from 1534 to the Present Time (London-New York 1885–1902; repr. New York 1961) 1:532–536. For a résumé of Oates's charges, see h. foley, ed., Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, 7 v. (London 1877–82) 5.1:97–109. d. ogg, England in the Reign of Charles II, 2 v. (Oxford 1934). j. w. ebsworth, The Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900 (London 1885–1900; repr. with corrections, 21 v. 1908–09, 1921–22, 1938) 4:744–745.

[r. i. bradley]