It is absolutely imperative to be familiar with the particulars of the Exclusion Crisis: without such information, Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel does not yield its myriad surprises, revelations, critiques, and satirical observations.
The brother of English King Charles II, James, Duke of York, converted to Roman Catholicism in 1673, sending post-Restoration England into a panic. A former Jesuit named Titus Oates informed the King of the “popish plot,” a plan to murder him with two silver bullets from Rome and establish a Catholic monarchy. His information seemed plausible even though he was a dissolute character, and an investigation began. Sir Edmond Godfrey, the magistrate assigned to investigate, was found dead, heightening the tension and fear in the country.
A parliamentary inquiry found that Oates’s story was without merit, but there was information about a secret correspondence between the Duke of York’s secretary and the French government. Over eighty people were arrested; thirty-five were tried and executed for treason.
Oates’s claims, though unfounded, were revived and expanded upon. The Green Ribbon Club, which met in a London tavern, largely spearheaded the plan in 1679 to exclude the Duke of York from the throne. They canvassed, circulated petitions, gave public speeches, and gathered demonstrations of thousands of people. A key component of their message was anti-popish sentiment.
The House of Commons passed the Exclusion Bill, leading Charles to dissolve Parliament and call for new elections. The second Exclusion Parliament House of Commons did the same thing, though, voting to bypass the Duke of York in favor of Mary and William of Orange (in committee, however, James, the Duke of Monmouth and Charles II’s eldest illegitimate son, was proposed as successor). The House of Lords rejected this, and Charles dissolved Parliament again.
In 1681, Parliament came together at Oxford once more, but they were frightened of the king by now—and frightened of the possibility of another civil war. The King dissolved the Oxford Parliament again, and appealed to the country.
The exclusionist coalition gained the name of “Whigs,” a term originally meaning “horse thieves”; their opponents were the “Tories,” a word that originally meant “thieving outlaws.” Both groups had power in London, and both groups took advantage of the expiration of the Licensing Act—an act that had censored the press—to flood the country with pamphlets, political cartoons, poems, and more. As a scholar for the University of Massachusetts’s project on the era explains, “This propaganda was deeply shaped by historical memories. Whig tracts and sermons reminded readers of popish plots and atrocities going back to the sixteenth century, and attempted to drive home the message that papists had always been enemies to Parliament and liberty as well as Protestantism. Tories responded by portraying Whigs as successors to the puritan rebels of the Civil War period, accusing them of repeating the demagogic strategy that had brought down the government of Charles I and ushered in the tyranny of Oliver Cromwell. Tories attempted to counter Whig pope-burning processions with rival demonstrations in which they burned a figure called John Presbyter.”
In 1681, Charles made a secret deal with Louis XIV of France to eliminate his financial dependence on Parliament. The Tories and the court launched numerous attacks on the Whigs, upped the publication of their own materials, and brought some Whigs to trial. There was an attempt to impeach the Earl of Shaftesbury, the architect of the Exclusion Bill, but a Whig jury did not indict him. He was forced into exile in Holland, where he died in 1683.
Charles reorganized London’s government to give the Tories more power. A plot to assassinate the king (known as the Rye House Plot) was uncovered in 1683, and its conspirators were executed and/or committed suicide. Charles did not summon Parliament in 1684, but there was little dissension. For the rest of his rule, he had almost complete power over the country.
