Maurus Corker (baptised James; 1636 – 22 December 1715) was an English Benedictine who was falsely accused and imprisoned as a result of the fabricated Popish Plot, but was acquitted of treason and eventually released.
The Crown was determined to save Wakeman, and Lord Chief Justice William Scroggs, formerly a firm believer in the Plot, now turned on Oates and the other informers, denouncing them as liars.
[6] Through influential friends Corker was granted a reprieve (in fact it does not seem that any of the convicted priests were executed, and the aged David Kemiss was allowed to die in prison) and he was detained in Newgate.
[7] One of his fellow prisoners at Newgate was Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh, with whom he formed a close friendship, and whom he prepared for his execution, which took place on 11 July 1681.
On the accession of James II of England in 1685, Father Corker was released and kept at the court as resident ambassador of Prince-Bishop Ferdinand of Bavaria, the Elector of Cologne.
In 1687 he erected the little convent of St. John at Clerkenwell, where religious services were held for the public, but which was destroyed by a mob, on 11 November 1688, during the Glorious Revolution.
Eleven or twelve more editions were published between 1748 and 1813, and a reprint appeared in the Pamphleteer in 1819, and again with the title of The Catholic Eirenicon, in friendly response to Dr. Pusey, London 1865.