Pen for a Party: Dryden's Tory Propaganda in Its Contexts 9781400872787

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P E N F O R A PA RTY

PEN FOR A PARTY DRYDEN'S TORY PROPAGANDA IN ITS CONTEXTS

PHILLIP HARTH

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

Copyright © 1993 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicaNon Data Harth, Phillip, 1926Pen for a party: Dryden's Tory propaganda in Lts contexts I Phillip Harth. cm.

p.

Includes bibliographLcal references and index. ISBN 0-691-06972-7 (acid-free paper) 1. Dryden, John, 1631-1700-Pohtical and social views.

2. Politics and literature-England-History-17th century.

3. Great Britain-Politics and government-1660-1688. 4. Conservatism-England-History-17th century. 5. Conservative Party (Great Britain) 6. Dryden, John, 1631-1700-Prose. 7. Propaganda, English. PR3427.P6H37

1993

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92-27140

This book has been composed in Adobe Sabon Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources Printed in the United States of America 10

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The Design, I am sure, is honest: but he w ho draw s his Pen for one Party, m ust expect to m ake Enemies of the other. For, W it and Fool, are Consequents of W hig and Tory: A nd every m an is a Knave o r an Ass to the contrary side. “To the R eader,” A bsalom a n d A cbitophel

CONTENTS

ix

P r e fa c e

CHAPTER I

T he P u lp it

3

CHAPTER 2

P arliam en t a n d th e Press

18

CHAPTER 3

T he N a tio n ’s Savior

62

CHAPTER 4

T he A ssociation

138

CHAPTER 5

A Second R e sto ra tio n EPILOGUE

206

269

APPENDIX I

Political A llusions in D ry d e n ’s P rologues a n d E pilogues, 1 6 7 8 -1 6 8 4 273 APPENDIX 2

T he M isplaced Lines in Absalom , a n d A c h ito p h e l A b b r e v ia tio n s a n d N o te o n D o c u m e n ta tio n N o te s

287

In d e x

329

279 286

PREFACE

HIS BO OK BRINGS a new perspective to bear on D ryden’s liter­ ary activity on behalf of Charles II and his policies during the closing years of th a t m o n arch ’s reign. D ryden’s great public poem s of this period— A bsalom and A chitophel and The M edall—along w ith his dram atic w orks of the same era— T he D u ke o f Guise and A lbion and Albanius— have com m only been considered against a broad histori­ cal background of public events—the Popish Plot, the Exclusion Crisis, the “T ory R eaction”— th a t may serve well enough to identify D ryden’s topical allusions, but can th ro w very little light on the noticeable differ­ ences am ong these w orks o r on the specific purposes for w hich they were w ritten. It is understandable, therefore, th a t such differences are m ost often attributed to changes in D ryden’s attitudes rath er th an in his strate­ gies, while the specific purposes differentiating these individual w orks re­ m ain for the m ost p art unexam ined. It is my thesis in this book th a t the im m ediate contexts of these w orks are n o t the w ell-know n historical events themselves b u t a constantly de­ veloping series of propaganda offensives, both T ory and W hig, designed to influence public opinion tow ard fluctuating conditions and to attract popular support for the im m ediate policies adopted by either side in re­ sponse to each new developm ent. Since it is the public’s perception of events th a t is at issue in these contests between the m akers of opinion on either side, the issues th at p arty propagandists choose to em phasize and the relative im portance they attribute to events will often differ consider­ ably from those fam iliar in m odern historical accounts. In relating politi­ cal developm ents from the perspective o f party propaganda, therefore, I have had to isolate and bring forw ard certain historical episodes, now little noticed, th a t nevertheless acquired considerable im portance at the time. Accustom ed to relying on the clergy o f the Established C hurch to de­ velop habits of obedience in the faithful th a t should prove adequate to any emergency, the governm ent of Charles II w as slow to respond to the Exclusion Crisis by developing new organs o f public opinion specifically adapted to this unprecedented challenge to its authority. Instead, it al­ lowed the W higs to seize the initiative and, by choosing issues m ost ad­ vantageous to themselves, to dictate the term s o f public debate between governm ent and opposition. It w as only in 1681, a few m onths before D ryden tardily joined the ranks of T ory propagandists, th a t the govern­ m ent’s publicists began developing the m achinery by w hich, in spite o f occasional setbacks, they w ould eventually win public acquiescence in the

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e x tra o rd in a ry m easures a d o p ted to defeat the W hig opposition. T his p ro ­ cess could n o t begin, how ever, until the Tories h a d learned to exploit the enorm ous advantages for m olding public o p inion available to the p a rty in pow er, to tak e the offensive against their o p ponents so th a t they rath e r th a n the W higs could now select the issues for public debate, an d , p er­ haps m ost im p o rta n t, to capitalize on new an d unexpected developm ents am id the rapidly fluctuating events betw een 1681 an d the end o f C h a r­ les’s reign. C onsequently the T ory p ro p ag a n d a of this p erio d is by no m eans a single entity. It consists of three successive cam paigns, in each of w hich D ryden particip ated fully. These three cam paigns have n o t previ­ ously been identified in this w ay, yet each w as initiated by separate events, characterized by distinct issues, and aim ed a t influencing public opinion in su p p o rt of different, th o u g h com plem entary, policies. Since new tu rn s o f events, and the appearance of new p ro p ag a n d a cam paigns to exploit them , occur in a m atte r o f w eeks, n o t years, their identification depends o n being able to date publications, w hich are the stuff o f p ro p ag a n d a , m ore precisely th an is norm ally possible w hen deal­ ing w ith seventeenth-century texts. Luckily, the period o f political crisis w ith w hich I am concerned affords a degree o f chronological precision rare for th a t century. The em ergence o f new spapers, beginning in m id1679, w ith w hich to present the case for either p arty , m akes possible the close dating of an enorm ous a m o u n t of W hig a n d T o ry p ro p a g a n d a — n o t only these p a rtisa n journals them selves, b ut also the num erous p u b ­ lications advertised for sale in them . But these, and every other source o f inform ation of this kind, are overshadow ed in im portance by the vast collection of poem s, pam phlets, broadsides, an d o th er publications form ed by N arcissus Luttrell a n d n o w preserved in som e half-dozen re­ search libraries in England, the U nited States, a n d A ustralia. Beginning I Ja n u ary 1680, a fo rtu n ate tim e for m y subject, L uttrell recorded the price, and also a d ate, on the title page o f every pub licatio n he acquired. It is still w idely assum ed th a t these precise dates (day, m o n th , an d year) record the tim e o f L uttrell’s purchase of the respective w orks. But in an article som e years ago in The B o o k C ollector (6 [1957]: 1 5-27) th a t deserves to be better know n, Jam es M . O sborn, w hose know ledge of the L uttrell collec­ tio n w as p robably unparalleled, proved beyond any reasonable d o u b t th a t w h a t L uttrell h a d recorded in each case w as the d a te o f p u blication, a conclusion I have a d o p te d in p u ttin g these w o rk s to use in my o w n study. It is a pleasure to record obligations I have incurred to a n um ber o f insti­ tu tio n s and individuals in the course o f w riting this book. M y research w as su p p o rted at various stages by an A m erican C ouncil of Learned Soci­ eties Fellow ship, by a Senior R esearch Fellow ship a t the W illiam An-

drews C lark M em orial Library, by various grants from the G raduate School of the University of W isconsin, and by a continuing senior m em­ bership in the Institute for Research in the H um anities of the University of W isconsin, M adison. I wish to thank the staffs of the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the H untington Library, the N ew berry Library, the University of W isconsin Library, the W illiam A ndrews Clark M em orial Library, and Yale University Library for their help on m any occasions. I am grateful to friends and colleagues w ho have m ade my task easier in various ways, am ong them W . J. C am eron, Ju d ith M ilhous, G erard Reedy, Alan R oper, John W allace, and H o w ard W einbrot; I am indebted to James W inn for several valuable suggestions th a t I was able to p u t to good use; and I welcom e the opportunity of acknow ledging R obert H um e’s characteristic generosity in sharing his unequaled know ledge of R estoration dram a on m ore occasions than I can now rem em ber. Loretta Freiling and my colleagues at the Institute for Research in the H um anities have m ade my w ork easier and pleasanter. But my w arm est thanks are due as always to my wife Sydney, w ho has never tired in her encourage­ m ent and support. I gratefully acknow ledge perm ission from the University of W isconsin Press, the W illiam A ndrews C lark M em orial Library, and the University of California Press to include excerpts from several of my earlier essays: “Legends N o Histories: The Case of A bsalom and A chitopheli” in Studies in E ighteenth-C entury Culture, ed. H aro ld E. Pagliaro (M adison: University of W isconsin Press, 1975), 4:13—29. C opyright (c) 1975 by The A m erican Society for Eighteenth-C entury Studies. “ D ryden’s Public V oices,” in N e w H om age to John D ryden (Los A n­ geles: W illiam A ndrews C lark M em orial Library, 1983), pp. 1—28. C opy­ right (c) 1983 by The W illiam A ndrews C lark M em orial Library, Univer­ sity of California, Los Angeles. “D ryden in 1678-1681: The Literary and H istorical Perspectives,” in The G olden and the Brazen World: Papers in Literature and H istory, 1650—1800, ed. John M . W allace (Berkeley: University of C alifornia Press, 1985), pp. 5 5 -7 7 . C opyright (c) 1985 by The Regents of the Uni­ versity o f California.

PEN F O R A PARTY

Chapter I TH E PULPIT

H E SERIES o f political crises th a t began in 1678 an d cam e to m onopolize the a tte n tio n of D ry d e n a n d m o st o th er litera ry fig­ ures d u rin g th e closing years o f C harles IEs reign m ay strik e the observer as th e very antithesis o f th e o u tw a rd h a rm o n y w ith w hich the reign h ad begun in 1 6 6 0 .1 Y et those w h o spoke a n d w ro te fo r the g o v ern ­ m ent d uring the E xclusion Crisis a n d its a fte rm a th w ere in m an y cases exploiting a legacy of political rh eto ric in h erited from the fram ers o f the R e sto ra tio n S ettlem ent a n d its apologists. It is w ith the R e sto ra tio n , therefore, th a t w e m u st begin.

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O n the day o f C harles II’s triu m p h a n t e n try in to his capital, 29 M ay 1660, J o h n Evelyn w itnessed the procession, w hich he reco rd ed in his diary: I stood in the strand, Sc beheld it, Sc blessed God: And all this without one drop of bloud, 8c by that very army, which rebell’d against him: but it was the Lords doing, et mirabile in oculis nostris: for such a Restauration was never seene in the mention of any history, antient or modern, since the returne of the Babylo­ nian Captivity, nor so joyfull a day, & so bright, ever seene in this nation: this hapning when to expect or effect it, was past all humane policy.2 T he procession en d ed a t W hiteh all w here, in th e B anqueting H ouse, the speaker of the H o u se o f C om m ons, Sir H a rb o ttle G rim sto n , addressed the king in the presence of all the m em bers: “T he restitu tio n o f y o u r M ajesty to the exercise o f Y our ju st a n d m o st in d u b itab le N ative R ight of Soveraignty, an d the deliverance o f y o u r people from B ondage and Slavery h a th been w ro u g h t o u t a n d b ro u g h t to pass, by a m iraculous w ay o f D ivine Providence beyond a n d above the reach an d c o m p re h en ­ sion o f o u r un d erstan d in g s, a n d therefore to be ad m ired , im possible to be ex p ressed .” 3 By the tim e the d ay o f solem n thanksgiving fo r C h a rle s’s resto ra tio n w as observed a m o n th later, o n 28 Ju n e, its m iraculous c h a ra c te r h ad becom e fixed in the n a tio n a l consciousness. P reaching before the king at W hiteh all o n th a t occasion, G ilbert Sheldon, th e fu tu re a rch b ish o p of C a n te rb u ry , a llu d ed to G eneral M o n ck as “ a D eliverer, never to be

m entioned w ith o u t H o n o u r, no r to be fo rg o tten in the Prayers of all good peo p le,” but im m ediately cautioned his congregation th a t “w hoever w ere the Instrum ents o f ou r deliverance, we m u st still rem em ber to raise up ou r th o ughts to him by w hose pow er they w ro u g h t it, and give him the glory of all; since nothing is m ore certain th a t none did it, none could do it b u t h e .”4 In m aking D ivine Providence responsible for the R esto ratio n , these civil an d religious leaders w ere m oved by the same consideration th a t had led Evelyn to conclude th a t it w as “the L ords d o in g ” since it had h a p ­ pened “w hen to expect o r effect it, was p a st all h u m an e policy. ” It w as the im probability of the R esto ratio n on n atu ral grounds— the inadequacy of any h u m an causes to account for so unlikely an event— th a t led m ost Englishm en to accept a supern atu ral cause as the only reasonable ex p la­ natio n . As Sheldon rem inded his congregation, AU w e did or could do toward a Settlement proved nothing worth, all attempts vain, no Treaties, no A rm ies, no Endeavors by our selves or others that wished well to our Peace did us good, though never so probable, never so hopeful; they were all lost and frustrate, all vanished into nothing. H ow visible was Gods hand in it, when all rash and unreasonable a ttem pts prospered w ith some, while others failed in the best and m ost probable? And either the w o rst C oun­ sels were follow ed (as it usually happens w hen God determines to judge and afflict a sinful N ation) or the best never prospered, but when brought to ripe­ ness miscarried in the birth. Thus it constantly was, and thus it w ould have been till w e had been utterly consum ed, had not he had mercy on us.5

T w o m o n th s later, on 29 A ugust, P arliam ent set its official seal on the m iraculous natu re o f the R esto ratio n w hen it secured the royal assent to “An A ct fo r a Perpetual A nniversary T hanksgiving o n the N ine and T w entieth D ay o f M a y ,” w hich began by declaring th a t “A lm ighty G od, the King o f Kings and sole D isposer o f all earthly crow ns an d kingdom s, h a th by his all-sw aying providence a n d po w er m iraculously dem on­ strated in the view o f all the w o rld his transcendent m ercy, love and g ra­ ciousness to w a rd s his m ost excellent M ajesty C harles the Second . . . by his M ajesty’s late m ost w onderful, glorious, peaceable and joyful re sto ra ­ tio n . . . and th a t w ith o u t the least opposition or effusion o f b lo o d .” In grateful acknow ledgm ent of this singular m iracle, it w as ordered th a t its anniversary be observed “ in every church, chapel an d o th er usual place of divine service and public p ra y e r” th ro u g h o u t the kingdom “ in all suc­ ceeding ages,” an d th a t “ all and every perso n and persons inhabiting w ithin this k in g d o m ” atten d the thanksgiving service each year.6 Finally, as one of its concluding acts before being dissolved on 29 D e­ cem ber, the C onvention P arliam ent enacted sim ilar provisions fo r a sec­ ond perpetual anniversary, th a t of the execution o f C harles I on 30 Jan u -

ary, w hich, as a day of n a tio n a l h u m ilia tio n an d m o u rn in g , w o u ld serve as a c o u n te rp a rt to the day o f joyful th anksgiving to m a rk th e double anniversary of th e k in g ’s b irth a n d re sto ra tio n . T o g e th er these tw o a n ­ n u a l solem nities w o u ld co n tin u e to rem ind all E nglishm en o f the d e p th o f ab asem en t fro m w hich Providence h a d m iraculously delivered them . In establishing th e anniversary serm ons, P a rlia m e n t w as actin g from m ore co m p lex m otives th a n sim ple piety a n d g ratitu d e . It w as endorsing a n d tak in g m easures to p e rp e tu ate th e belief th a t the recen t p o litical set­ tlem en t w as a n act o f G od co m m an d in g the assent o f all Englishm en, w h atev er th eir religious differences. T he p ro v id e n tia l c h a ra c te r o f this settlem en t legitim ated the new regim e, a n d th e g o v ernm ent, by insuring th a t subjects w o u ld be co n tin u o u sly rem in d ed o f this fact, w as pu b lish in g its ow n credentials. W h a t one recen t h isto ria n h as called “ the incredible tangle o f cab als, allegations, ru m o rs, in su rrectio n s, a n d a b o rtiv e attem p ts to rev o lt in the 1 6 6 0 s ,” each breeding fears o f m ore conspiracies still concealed, served as periodic rem inders to the go v ern m en t th a t th e R es­ to ra tio n S ettlem ent co u ld com e u n d o n e as quickly as it h a d been m ad e .7 In p ro p a g a tin g th eir ow n no d o u b t sincere belief in a m ira cu lo u s R e sto ­ ra tio n w hose agents w ere n o m ore th a n in stru m en ts o f P rovidence, d i­ vines a n d statesm en w ere em ploying a tactic th a t w o u ld be rep eated a g en eratio n later, in 1 6 89, to legitim ate a n o th e r bloodless rev o lu tio n benefiting the C h u rch o f E ngland. O n th a t occasion also the A nglican clergy w o u ld assure tro u b le d E nglishm en th a t th e change in g o v e rn ­ m en t h a d ta k e n place th ro u g h th e in terv en tio n of Providence, w hile P a r­ liam en t w o u ld once m o re follow suit by declaring, in its p ro cla m a tio n o f W illiam an d M a ry as k in g a n d queen, th a t “it has p lea s’d A lm ighty G o d , in his g rea t M ercy to this K ingdom , to vouchsafe us a M iraculous D eliverance from P opery a n d A rb itra ry P o w e r ,” in w hich th e Prince of O ran g e h a d acted sim ply as G o d ’s chosen in stru m e n t.8 Indeed, w h a t D ry d en w ro te of th e vicissitudes o f go v ern m en t d u rin g the In terreg n u m could be applied to every n ew regim e fro m one end o f the cen tu ry to the o th er: “ O bserve th em all along, a n d P rovidence is still th e prevailing A rgum ent: T hey w h o h a p p e n to be in p o w e r, will ever urge it against th o se w h o are u n d e rm o st; as they w h o are depress’d, w ill never fail to call it P e rse c u tio n .” 9 As a m eans o f claim ing divine san ctio n fo r th e political, ecclesiastical, a n d social changes th a t accom panied a n d follow ed the R e sto ra tio n , b o th m arty rd o m a n d th anksgiving serm ons assum ed p a rtic u la r im p o rta n c e .10 W h en P rovidence m iraculously intervenes in th e affairs of a n a tio n , T h o m as S prat, the fu tu re bishop of R ochester, p o in te d o u t, “ it'is w ith a peculiar design o f p unishing, o r rew ard in g , o r fo rew arn in g m a n k in d .” 11 T h e m arty rd o m serm ons w ere in ten d ed to rem ind E nglishm en th a t the ex ecution o f C harles I h a d been p e rm itted as a pro v id en tial judgm ent

upon a people who had departed from righteousness, just as the thanks­ giving sermons proclaimed the restoration of Charles II as a providential deliverance of that people from their sufferings. Thus Sheldon declared in his sermon celebrating Charles’s return that “as ’tis He, and He only that brings us into danger, that layes afflictions on us for our sins (. . . . Just our case, we served him so, he served us so; our great sins brought his great judgments upon us. And) so again ’tis He, and He only that must remove those afflictions, that must deliver out of those dangers.” 12 But while the anniversary sermons originated with the Restoration and served as a means of commemorating that event as well as the earlier tragedy that had made it necessary, they took their place as part of a much older homiletic tradition in the Established Church. The notion that ser­ mons were an indispensable means of buttressing the civil order was al­ ready a century old at the time of the Restoration, and accepted as a matter of course by the Anglican clergy.

“The great Business of government,” Robert South reminded the mem­ bers of Lincoln’s Inn in 1660, “is to procure obedience, &c keep off dis­ obedience: Sc the great springs upon which those two move are Rewards and Punishments answering the two ruling affections of mans mind, Hope and Fear.” Hence the crucial importance to the state of sermons that will instill these dispositions into the minds of the populace. Were not these frequently thundred into the understandings o f men, the M agis­ trate m ight enact, order and proclaime, Proclamations might be hung upon Walls and Posts, and there they might hang, seen and despised, more like M al­ efactors, then Lawes: But when Religion binds them upon the Conscience, Conscience will either perswade or terrify men into their practice. . . . If there was n ot a M inister in every Parish, you w ould quickly find cause to encrease the number o f Constables: And if the Churches were not imployed to be places to hear Gods Law, there w ould be need of them, to be Prisons for the breakers of the Lawes o f m en.13

Somewhat less bluntly, John Tillotson, later to become archbishop of Canterbury, explained to the members of the same society why religion offers the most dependable means of instilling those hopes and fears that encourage obedience: And that n o t only fo r W rath, and out o f fear o f the Magistrates Power, which is but a weak and loose Principle o f Obedience, and will cease when ever men can Rebel w ith safety, and to advantage; but out o f Conscience, which is a firm and constant, and lasting Principle, and w ill hold a man fast, when all other

Obligations will break. He that hath inbibed the true Principles of Christianity, is not to be tempted from his Obedience and Subjection, by any worldly Con­ siderations; because he believes that whosoever resisteth Authority, resisteth the Ordinance o f God·, and that they who resist, shall receive to themselves damnation.14 A p a rt from biblical tex ts such as R om . 13:2, w h ich T illo tso n is q u o tin g fro m m em ory here, the m o st im p o rta n t p ro n o u n c e m e n t on th e religious d u ty o f obeying kings a n d m ag istrates w as th e “ H om ily ag ain st D iso b ed i­ ence a n d W ilful R eb ellio n ” in the second o f th e tw o B ooks o f H om ilies, w hose special a u th o rity as a rep o sito ry o f “ godly a n d w holesom e d o c ­ trin e ” is set fo rth in the thirty-fifth of the T h irty -n in e A rticles. O ccasioned by the N o rth e rn R ebellion o f 1569, this hom ily, w h ich consists o f six p a rts, w as sep arately pu b lish ed in 1570 a n d m ad e a p e rm a n e n t p a rt o f the H om ilies th e follow ing year in hopes o f discouraging all fu tu re a t­ tem p ts on the c ro w n by p resen tin g civil obedience as one o f the m o st serious religious obligations co m m an d ed by G od. It is th e arg u m e n t o f all six p a rts “ th a t Kings an d Princes, as w ell the evil as th e g o o d , do raign by G o d s O rd in an c e an d th a t Subjects are b o u n d e n to obey th e m ” ; th a t “such Subjects, as are diso b ed ien t o r rebellious ag ain st th eir Princes, d is­ obey G od, a n d p ro cu re th eir o w n d a m n a tio n ” ; a n d th a t rebellion is “the greatest o f all m ischiefs” as w ell as “the w o rst of all vices.” But the th ird p a r t o f the “ H o m ily ag a in st D isobedience a n d W ilful R e b e llio n ” in p a r ­ tic u la r is devoted to show ing “w h a t a n ab o m in a b le sin a g a in st G od and m an R ebellion is, an d h o w d readfully th e w ra th o f G od is kindled and inflam ed against all R ebels, an d w h a t h o rrib le plagues, p u n ish m en ts, and deaths, an d finally etern al d a m n a tio n d o th h a n g over th eir h e a d s.” So terrible is this crim e, in fact, “th a t all sins possible to be co m m itted ag ain st G od o r m an , be co n tain ed in R e b e llio n .” 15 C onvinced th a t obedience to princes w as o n e o f th e cen tral principles o f C h ristian ity a n d th a t im p a rtin g this principle to the faith fu l w as one of th eir chief duties, A nglican clergym en after the R e sto ra tio n p erfo rm ed this o b lig atio n in th eir p u lp its o n an y n u m b er o f occasions. T h e n u m e r­ ous serm ons o n this subject th a t Evelyn reco rd ed testify th a t they m ight be p reach ed a t any o p p o rtu n ity , n o t sim ply a t a n n iv ersary services.16 B ut because the serm ons co m m em o ratin g the royal m arty rd o m an d the R es­ to ra tio n (along w ith th e 5 N o vem ber serm ons in stitu ted u n d er Jam es I to m em orialize th e pro v id en tial discovery o f th e G u n p o w d e r Plot) enjoyed official sanction as a prin cip al m eans o f rem inding E nglishm en of their civic duties, they are p a rticu larly valuable fo r tracin g this subject. It w as never, o f course, the p u rp o se of the an n iv ersary serm ons solely to a tte st the pro v id en tial c h a ra c te r o f the events they com m em orated. O nce th a t p o in t h a d been sufficiently established, th eir e n d u rin g im p o r­ tance w o u ld be n o t historical b u t p recau tionary. As R o b e rt T w isse

pointed o u t in a m arty rd o m serm on in 1665, it w as hoped th a t by th eir annual observance o f this solem nity Englishm en “will n o t onely lam ent w h a t is past, b u t likewise dread the th o ughts o f attem p tin g the like VilIany for the fu tu re .” 17 it w as as analogues available to fit any new p o liti­ cal crisis th a t the royal m arty rd o m a n d the m iraculous R esto ratio n w ould prove their lasting w o rth , for w h a t these cases of providential judgm ent and deliverance chiefly testified w as th a t G od continues to punish rebel­ lion a n d rew ard loyalty w herever they occur. In the interest of proving th a t useful thesis, preachers did n o t have to rely on these instances alone. All “rem arkable occurrences of P rovidence,” Isaac B arrow declared in his 5 N ovem ber serm on of 1673, are set before our eyes to cast us into a very serious and solemn frame; to abash, and deter us from offending, by observing the danger o f incurring punishments like to those which w e behold inflicted upon presumptuous transgressors. . . . They do plainly demonstrate, that there is no presuming to escape, being de­ tected in our close M achinations by G od’s All-seeing Eye; being defeated in our bold Attempts by G od’s All-mighty Hand; being sorely chastised for our Iniq­ uity by G od’s impartial Judgment. Extreamly blind and stupid therefore must we be, or monstrously sturdy and profane, if such experiments o f Divine Power and Justice do not awe us, and fright us from sin.18

Cases w here p a rticu la r or special Providence w as acknow ledged to have intervened m iraculously in affairs of state to change the course o f events w ere com paratively rare in seventeenth-century E ngland. G eneral or com m on Providence continually oversaw h u m an affairs, of course, th ro u g h the norm al o p eratio n of the laws of na tu re , b u t the needless m ul­ tiplication of latter-day m iracles, associated w ith R om an C atholic errors, w as discouraged am ong the A nglican faithful. “ It is a dangerous m istake, into w hich m any G ood m en fall,” Sprat w arn ed , that w e neglect the D om inion o f G o d over the W orld, if w e do not discover in every Turn of human Actions many supernatural Providences, and miraculous Events. Whereas it is enough for the honor o f his G overnm ent, that he guids the whole Creation, in its w onted cours o f Causes, and Effects: as it makes as much for the reputation o f a Prince’s w isdom , that he can rule his subjects peaceably, by his know n, and standing Laws, as that he is often forc’d to make use of extraordinary justice to punish, or reward.19

Sacred and p rofane history, how ever, offered a n abundance of p rovi­ dential judgm ents against evildoers th a t could supplem ent the dw indling list of recent interventions com m em orated in the anniversary serm ons. The greatest single repository of divine retributions, of course, w as to be found in the historical books o f the O ld Testam ent. C iting the w ords o f St. Paul, “ now all these things happened u n to them for ensam ples” (I C or. 10:11), W illiam W hitaker, the p ro m in e n t E lizabethan divine, h ad observed:

T he m ean in g of th e place is, th a t w e sh o u ld acco m m o d a te th e events o f the an c ie n t Jew ish p eo p le to o u r in stru c tio n , so as th a t, ad m o n ish ed by th eir ex am ­ ple, w e m ay learn to please G od, an d av o id id o la try and o th e r sins. . . . T he Jew s w ere p u n ish ed w h en they sinned: th erefo re, if w e sin in like m an n e r, w e shall b ear a n d p ay to G o d sim ilar penalties. H e h a th set before us th e p u n ish ­ m e n t o f the Jew s p o u rtra y e d as it w ere in a p ictu re, th a t w e m ay c o n sta n tly have it b efore o u r eyes.20

T he fou rth p art o f the “H o m ily against D iso b ed ien ce and W ilfu l R eb el­ lio n ” is d evoted to singlin g o u t som e o f the m o st n otab le “ exam p les set o u t in Scriptures, w ritten for ou r eternal e r u d itio n ,” from w h ich w e can learn G o d ’s abhorrence o f rebellion and the terrible p un ish m en ts he has m eted o u t in the past. D raw in g a d istin ction b etw een sed ition and treason, the h o m ily ch o o ses as its ch ief exam p le o f sed ition the b eh avior o f C orah and h is a sso ciates, w h o challen ged the au th ority o f M o se s and A aron. Som e o f th e C a p ta in s w ith th e ir b a n d o f m u rm u rers n o t dying by any usual o r n a tu ra l d eath o f m en, b u t th e e a rth opening, they w ith th e ir wives, children, an d fam ilies, w ere sw allo w ed q u ick d o w n in to H ell. W hich h o rrib le d e stru c­ tio n s o f such Israelites as w ere m u rm u re rs ag ain st M o ses, a p p o in te d by G od, to be th eir H ead an d ch ief M ag istrate, are reco rd ed in th e B ook o f N u m b ers, an d o th e r places, o f th e Scriptures, fo r p e rp e tu a l m em o ry an d w a rn in g to all S ub­ jects, h o w highly G od is displeased w ith th e m u rm u rin g and evil speaking of Subjects a g a in st th e ir Princes.

T urnin g to trea so n , th e h om ily continues: N o w co n cern in g actu al R ebellion, am o n g st m an y exam ples th e re o f set fo rth in th e holy Scriptures, th e exam p le o f A b sa lo m is n o tab le: w h o en trin g in to c o n ­ spiracy ag ain st K ing D a v id his f a th e r ,. . . a g re a t tree stretch in g o u t his arm , as it w ere for th a t p u rp o se, cau g h t h im by the g rea t a n d long bush o f his goodly h air, lap p in g a b o u t it as he fled h astily b are-h ead ed u n d e r th e said tree, a n d so han g ed him u p by the h air o f his h ead in th e air. . . . A fearful ex am ple o f G ods p u n ish m e n t (good people) to consider. N o w A c h ito p b e l, th o u g h otherw ise an exceeding w ise m an , yet th e m ischievous C o u n sello r o f A b sa lo m , in this w icked R ebellion, for lack of an H a n g m a n , a convenient Servitor fo r such a T ra ito r, w e n t a n d h an g ed u p him self. A w o rth y end o f all false R ebels, w ho ra th e r th e n they sh o u ld lack d u e ex ecu tio n , w ill by G ods ju st ju d gm ent, b e ­ com e H a n g m e n u n to them selves.21

T h u s, since the early years o f E lizabeth ’s reign, these n otab le exam p les o f traitors and sed ition ists from sacred history h ad been appearing in the n um erou s ed itio n s o f th e H o m ilie s— som e tw o d ozen o f th e secon d b o o k by th e tim e o f the R estoration — w h ich p rovided the A n glican clergy w ith m o d els th ey co u ld use for their o w n serm on s. It is n o t surprising th en to find S heldon, in his R estoration serm on discussed earlier, fo llo w in g an

account of D avid’s troubles at the time of Absalom ’s rebellion w ith a rem inder of M oses’s difficulties from C orah’s sedition.22 But if the Homilies helped popularize Absalom, Achitophel, and Corah as the most im portant biblical traitors and seditionists, the O ld Testa­ m ent itself offered a far richer fund of examples, since, as George StradIing pointed out in his m artyrdom sermon of 1675, “there will be Rebels while there be Kings, and never greater store of such than am ong the Jews, whom the Prophets frequently style A Rebellious N a tio n .”23 A host of these disobedient subjects peopled the anniversary sermons, am ong w hom the traitor Zim ri and the seditionist Shimei were tw o of the m ost popular. Such examples of rebellion could be discussed at some length and their sensational punishm ents recounted in detail, but, as their re­ peated appearance in the pulpit converted them into homiletic com m on­ places, a simple allusion w ould often serve the preacher’s purpose, or a brief catalogue of Old Testament rebels th a t coupled the same familiar examples again and again. “N one of all those persons guilty of rebellion in Scripture, w ent to their Graves in peace,” w arns the preacher at a C am ­ bridge Restoration service in 1660, “ Achitophel, Absalom , Sheba, Abner, Abiathar, Joab, Athaliah, Zim ri, Adoniah ”24 “N ow if not the highest, if not D athan, nor Corah . . . may open their lips against Moses·, how much lesse the son of Shelomith, one of the meanest of the people?” asks a preacher in 1662. “If neither Nabal, nor Achitophel, nor Absalom may speak evil of David·, how much lesse Shimei a Benjamite, or Sheba the son of Bichri?”ls “In sacred Story,” declares a 30 January preacher in 1674, “you find Moses, though the meekest and mildest man the W orld then had, yet is mutinied against, and like to be deposed by Corah and his Complices. D avid is a m an after Gods own heart, yet fowl-m outhed Shimei bespattereth him, and fair-tongued Absalon stealeth aw ay the peoples hearts from him .”26 In their role as examples, these biblical rebels, seditionists, and usurp­ ers function in the sermons as brief and forceful analogues. W hen used as cautionary examples, their deterrent effect for a Restoration congrega­ tion depends on the assum ption th a t like causes produce like effects, or, in W hitaker’s w ords above, “ if we sin in like m anner, we shall bear and pay to God similar penalties.” W hen used in m artyrdom sermons as ex­ amples of “how dreadfully the w rath of God is kindled and inflamed against all Rebels,” in the words of the “ Homily against Disobedience,” it is their likeness to the English regicides th at confirms the enorm ity of that recent crime. Their m odern counterparts need not resemble them in other respects, however, nor replicate the terrifying m anner in which bib­ lical rebels met their ends. William Sancroft, the archbishop of Canter­ bury, preaching a sermon before the House of Lords in 1678, noted th at “the season is chang’d ” since O ld Testament times,

indeed, when the Sea divided, and suddenly turn’d green M eadow ; and when an Angei w ent forth, and dispatcht so m any Thousands in a N ight. . . . , . . T he Glory of G od descends n ot visibly now adayes upon our Palaces, as o f old upon the Tabernacle o f the Congregation, to rescue our M oses and Aaron from being massacred by a desperate Knot o f Mutineers: N o r doth the Earth open her M outh any longer, to sw allow up our Rebels and Traitors alive. 'Tis a Scepter o f ordinary Justice, not a R od o f W onders, that fills the H and of our G overnours.27

It is enough that such biblical exam ples prove how heinous in G od’s sight are all cases of disobedience to princes. If he no longer chastises m alefac­ tors in as direct and spectacular a m anner as before, he now punishes them through second causes, o r w here, like Crom well, Bradshaw , and Ireton, they escape punishm ent in this life, he will surely exact a terrible retribution in the next. By repeatedly associating these O ld Testam ent exam ples w ith the exe­ cration of treason and sedition, the anniversary serm ons fostered a m en­ tal habit th a t w ould figure prom inently in the propaganda of the Exclu­ sion Crisis and its afterm ath. But a far m ore im p o rtan t contribution to the popularity of historical analogy in th a t pro p ag an d a can be traced to an ­ other feature of m any anniversary sermons; the use o f extended and often elaborate parallels between past and present.

Parallels, unlike exam ples, consist of m ore th an a simple analogy. They involve com parison of tw o persons or events a t some length, and in con­ siderable detail. In the anniversary serm ons they figure as a m ethod of accom m odation in w hich the preacher “runs a p arallel” between his scriptural text and the G unpow der Plot, the royal m artyrdom , or the m i­ raculous Restoration. The earliest person to draw a biblical parallel w ith the royal m artyr­ dom was the victim himself. O n the scaffold, Bishop Ju x o n read the king the lesson appointed for 30 January in the Book of C om m on Prayer. By coincidence it w as M atthew , chapter 27, on C hrist’s passion and death. Charles rem arked on the appropriateness o f the lesson, and in doing so inspired a custom th a t w ould flourish after the R estoration, w hen m any preachers drew elaborate parallels between C hrist’s sufferings and those of the Royal M artyr, exploiting the lm ita tio Christi them e in the interest of sanctifying the m em ory o f Charles I.28 But just as often, m artyrdom preachers drew extensive parallels between C harles’s sufferings and those of such biblical victims as Abel in Genesis, Z edekiah in 2 Kings, and Stephen in the Acts of the Apostles.29

T he m odel for these hom iletic parallels, as for th eir secular co u n te r­ p a rts, w as o f course P lu tarch ’s Lives. O f his tw enty-tw o surviving pairs o f G reek and R o m a n lives, eighteen still retain the separate “ c o m p a ri­ so n s ” in w hich P lutarch draw s an explicit a n d detailed parallel betw een the individuals w hose lives and characters are related in th e preceding narratives. T he invariable feature o f these parallels is th a t the m ost re­ m ark ab le actions of the tw o individuals are b o th co m p ared a n d c o n ­ tra ste d , their differences being as indispensable to P lu tarch ’s conception of a parallel as their sim ilarities.30 “T he C om parison of N u m a w ith L ycurgus,” for exam ple, begins in typical fashion: Having thus finished the Lives o f Lycurgus and N um a; w e shall now (though the work be difficult) compare their Actions in that manner together, so as easily to discern wherein they differed, and wherein they agreed. It is apparent that they were very agreeable in the actions o f their lives, their M oderation, their Religion, their civil Arts and political Government were alike; and both insinuated a belief in the people, that they derived their Laws and Constitutions from the Gods: yet in their peculiar manner o f managing these excellencies, there were many circumstances which made a diversity.31

W hereu p o n P lutarch proceeds to exam ine these circum stances in detail. In every case he weighs a n d balances the behavior an d m o tiv atio n of the p a ir under scrutiny, praising one individual and censuring the o th er in those respects w herein they differ, alth o u g h in sum m ary each will prove to have excelled his o p posite n u m b e r in certain instances and to have fallen sh o rt in others. In ad apting P lu ta rc h ’s m eth o d of parallel lives to th eir serm ons, the anniversary preachers su b stitu ted fo r biography an episode o f biblical h istory found in their scrip tu ral tex t, w hich they first ex pounded to their congregations in the usual m an n er before applying it to the p resent occa­ sion by ru nning a parallel betw een p a st and present. T hey m odified Plu­ ta rc h ’s practice, o f course, by in troducing a w ide variety o f individuals— rebels and loyal subjects as well as their aggrieved rulers— and, since the episodes tu rn e d on the intervention of Providence, by considering them sub specie aeternitatis. But they consistently ad h ered to P lu ta rc h ’s indis­ pensable pro ced u re o f bringing o u t differences as w ell as sim ilarities in the parallel. O n the w hole, preachers tended to favor the likenesses be­ tw een the English regicides an d n o to rio u s biblical rebels, an effective m eans of denigrating the enem ies o f C harles I an d his heir. In the case of the rulers, how ever, they dw elt on differences betw een the English m onarchs and their biblical co u n terp arts as well as sim ilarities, the p ro p o r­ tions varying from one serm on to an o th er, in o rd er to enhance the im p o r­ tance o f the R oyal M a rty r o r his s o n .32 This procedure is aptly expressed by the title of Sim on F o rd ’s m arty r­ dom serm on of 1661: Parallela dusparallela. In the case o f C harles I the

p arad o x of the unparalleled parallel is used to magnify his tragedy (and consequently his stature as a m artyr) by insisting th at, in spite o f the many similarities betw een his circum stances and those of earlier victims, his sufferings inevitably exceeded theirs. Essentially, these serm ons offer an a fortiori argum ent th a t first treats the royal tribulations on a scale of bibli­ cal im portance and then further raises them to a status unique in hum an history. In these accounts, the infam ous m urders of Abel and Zedekiah, the protom artyrdo m o f Stephen, and (digressing from the scriptural text to supply further analogues from profane history) the fatal depositions of Edw ard II, R ichard II, and C onradin, king of N aples, pale in com parison w ith the suprem e tragedy in W hitehall. “If I had the Liberty o f choosing a T ext this day, no t onely out of the Sacred Bible, but out of any other H istory in the w o rld ,” a m artyrdom preacher declared in 1664, “ I sup­ pose it w ould be impossible to find a Parallel for th a t Tragedy which England this day saw acted; there never having been such a piece o f VilIany acted in the W orld before.” 33 In sermons com m em orating the R estoration, the p arad o x of the u n ­ paralleled parallel is used to p o rtray G od’s mercies on this occasion as sim ilar in kind to earlier instances of Providence but unprecedented in degree, since the plight from w hich C harles was rescued (as well as his ow n im portance) was greater than th a t of his biblical predecessors. Peter Heylyn, for exam ple, preaching the 29 M ay serm on at W estm inster Abbey in 1661, first expounds his text, one of D avid’s psalm s of th an k s­ giving relating “to his deliverance from the house o f Saul” while still a youth, before turning to the “ parallel betw ixt the Persons” of D avid and Charles II, where, explicitly citing P lutarch’s authority, he emphasizes the differences between the tw o m onarchs over their similarities. A parallel, right w orthy o f the pen o f Plutarch, if any such were found am ongst us; but, such as seems to have been done in part already, by laying before you D a v id ’s troubles and his great deliverance. And therefore passing by those things w hich apply them selves, and those in which the Story o f both Princes seems to make but one; w e will observe the m ethod which is used by Plutarch, in laying dow n the points in w hich they differ, or, those wherein one party seems to have prehem inence above the other.34

Heylyn then proceeds to discuss seven m ajor differences between C h ar­ les’s circum stances and D avid’s, all o f w hich give the English king “pre­ em inence” above his illustrious predecessor because C harles’s trials were greater than D avid’s o r his person and behavior superior. Thus, Charles II “was born a Prince. . . . W hich cannot be affirmed of D avid, n o r of D avid’s Ancestors. . . . A nd as his Birth w as higher, so his Fall w as lower, and his afflictions so m uch g reater.” O r again, “we do n o t find th a t D avid ever hazarded his ow n person in the day of Battail. . . . W hich gave him means and opportunity to provide for himself, though all his Forces had

been routed, and their General taken. But our great M aster put himself into the head of his Army [at W orcester], . . . charged and recharged through the thickest of his enemies, the first th a t came into the field, and the last th a t left it.”35 N othing was m ore responsible for indelibly imprinting in the public mind certain specific biblical parallels with the tw o Stuart kings than the lessons in the Book of Com m on Prayer ordered for the anniversary ser­ vices. Preachers m ight ad o p t any num ber of scriptural texts for their ser­ mons on these occasions, but the same lessons were read year after year, and heard by everyone attending the service. In the new anniversary service for the m artyrdom of Charles I, sepa­ rately published in 1661 and incorporated in the revised Book of Com ­ mon Prayer the following year, M atthew , chapter 27, now consecrated by the com fort it had offered Charles on the scaffold, was retained as the second lesson of the day. But the scriptural passage chosen for the first lesson was the opening chapter of 2 Samuel, in which David m ourns the death of Saul and orders that the Amalekite claiming responsibility for his death be put to the sword, declaring: “Thy blood be upon thy head; for thy m outh hath testified against thee, saying, I have slain the L ord’s anointed. . . . Ye daughters of Israel* weep over SaulT 3i The choice of Saul, D avid’s unjust persecutor yet the L ord’s anointed w hom no one dared touch w ith impunity, was useful for emphasizing that no circumstances, however egregious, can ever justify regicide, since subjects are bound to obey all kings and princes, “the evil as well as the good.” But at the same time it suggested a parallel w ith the sainted Charles in which the dissimilarities far outweighed the resemblances. Ford nearly despaired of showing how Saul’s death could “ be accomo­ dated by way of Parallel to the sad occasion o f this daies Solem nity,” observing that “there is little to be seen, but Concordia discors, an agree­ m ent in nothing but this, th a t there is scarce any Circumstance wherein they agree,” and com paring himself to the “Painter, who to set off the vast bigness of an Elephant, draw s a M ouse by his side.”37 Nevertheless, preachers proved equal to the challenge. The form al symmetry of some of these exercises is suggested by Gilbert Burnet’s m artyrdom serm on of 1675, the first p art expounding three respects where “the Parallel of Saul and our M artyred King hath held good,” the second part balancing these w ith three other respects in which they widely differed to Charles’s advantage. The obvious reason for m aking D avid’s lam entation over Saul in 2 Samuel the first lesson of the m artyrdom service was the implied parallel between Israel and England led in national m ourning by the successors to their slain kings: David and Charles II. In this way the lesson for 30 Jan u ­ ary was deliberately meshed w ith those for the other tw o anniversaries. •20

The first lesson for the older anniversary service, th a t of 5 N ovem ber in thanksgiving for the discovery of the G unpow der Plot, w as 2 Samuel, chapter 22, D avid’s song of deliverance from his enemies (a version of the Eighteenth Psalm). In the new anniversary service for the restoration of Charles II, also separately published in 1661 and incorporated in the re­ vised Book of C om m on Prayer the following year, the scriptural text cho­ sen as the first lesson of the day w as 2 Samuel, chapter 19, in w hich D avid returns to Jerusalem from exile following the defeat of A bsalom ’s rebel­ lion. “And Absalom, w hom we anointed over us, is dead in battle. . . . So the king returned, and came to Jordan. A nd Judah came to Gilgal, to go to m eet the king, to conduct the king over Jo rd a n .”39 The im plicit parallel w ith Charles’s return from an exile also originating in rebellion and his trium phant entry into his capital m ade the choice of this lesson practically inevitable. Ford, preaching on the day of solemn thanksgiving a m onth after the R estoration to o k place, had anticipated those w ho w ould later design the thanksgiving service by choosing 2 Samuel, chapter 19, as his text. “It is a m atter of greatest w onder to m e,” he tells his congregation, “to observe how exactly the tw o Histories run parallel. Insom uch th a t it w ere no hard m atter for an ingenious phancy, by altering the N am es o f D avid, A bsa­ lom , Joab, Abisbai, Z a dock, A biathar, Shim ei, Z iba, M ephibosheth, Jor­ dan, &Cc. into others proper to our late affairs, to insert verbatim the greatest part o f the Chapter into a Chronicle of these T im es.”40 But Ford is even m ore interested in the disparities between the tw o histories, and, like H eylyn preaching on D avid’s earlier exile under Saul, he singles out seven m ajor differences between D avid’s circumstances at the time of A bsalom ’s rebellion and C harles’s recent plight, conclud­ ing, as we m ight expect by now , th a t we “ may easily perceive, that, in point of mercy, and miracle, King D avids restitution came sh o rt of King Charles7s.” Thus, David was only restored after a great battle, whereas “our Soveraign is recalled by Parliament, and resetled in the royall Throne w ithout a blow -striking, or a b l o o d y - n o s e O r again, “D avids banishm ent (in all probability) was n o t as m any w eeks, as our Soveraigns was years, (for if it had, M ephibosheth had been in a nasty pickle a t his return, seeing the H o ly G host tells us, he had n o t so m uch as w ashed his cloathes, fro m the day the K ing departed to that day,) and by conse­ quence this mercy to our Soveraign after tw elve years banishm ent, vastly exceeds D avids.”41 Jo h n Parker, bishop of Elphinstone, on the other hand, preaching on the sam e text the n ex t year a t the first o f the anni­ versary services for the R estoration, chooses to dwell m ostly on the Like­ nesses between C harles’s recent exile and th a t of David at the time of A bsalom ’s rebellion.42 T hus all three of the anniversary services conferred central im portance

on 2 Sam uel and the im plied parallel betw een D avid an d the English king. In ordering th a t these lessons be read a t the anniversary services, the a u ­ thorities indirectly insured th a t the sam e tex ts w ould often be chosen for the serm ons as well. A t the anniversary service fo r 2 9 M ay th a t Pepys atten d ed in 1661, the te x t chosen by the vicar o f W altham stow e for his serm on w as, like Bishop P ark er’s, 2 Sam uel, c h ap ter 19, and it is reaso n ­ able to assum e th a t m any preachers follow ed the sam e convenient p rac ­ tice in num erous serm ons th a t w ere never published.43 N o t all, o f course, o r even m o st anniversary preachers ra n elaborate parallels betw een their scriptural texts and the event being com m em o­ rated. But w hen they did so, their choice o f tex t w as governed by its spe­ cial appropriateness to the occasion. It is im p o rta n t to rem em ber th a t w hile disparities are as essential to P lu tarch ’s conception of a parallel as are likenesses, the differences w ould be of no significance if they w ere n o t grounded on m eaningful sim ilarities. M o re th a n one episode from the O ld Testam ent is capable o f suggesting significant parallels w ith the royal m arty rd o m or the R esto ratio n , b u t no tw o will offer quite the sam e ad ­ vantages. It becom es the p reach er’s responsibility, therefore, in accom ­ m o d atin g his tex t to the occasion, to stress those features of the biblical story th a t can be ap p ro p riately com pared and con trasted w ith the event com m em orated, w hile ignoring o r m inim izing those th a t cannot. T hus w hen the preacher of a 29 M ay serm on chose 2 Sam uel, chapter 19, he w ould relate the entire story of A bsalom ’s rebellion— its rise, p ro ­ gress, an d defeat in chapters 1 5 -1 8 as well as D av id ’s triu m p h a n t retu rn to Jerusalem in ch ap ter 19— in the course o f expounding his text. But w hen he proceeded n e x t to apply his tex t to the occasion by com paring D avid and C harles, he w ould usually ignore A bsalom ’s rebellion and D av id ’s flight from his capital, circum stances m ore analogous to those o f the king’s father, an d com m ence his parallel w ith 2 Sam. 19:9—14 (the actual beginning of the lesson for the anniversary service), w here, follow ­ ing the death o f A bsalom , “ all the people w ere a t strife th ro u g h o u t all the tribes of Israel” until “they sent this w o rd u n to the king, R etu rn th o u , and all thy serv an ts.” So w hen Bishop P arker finishes relating the story of A bsalom ’s rebellion and is ready to apply his te x t to the circum stances of the R estoration, he declines to “ lead your atte n tio n into the parallel and application, as I did into the story o f the T ext, th ro u g h the m any contriv­ ances and m anagem ents o f the R ebellion, and shew you how our Sover­ eign becam e an exile from these K ingdom es, as D a vid from H ierusalem ; this w ere to rake in the dunghill, or to open P andora’s box, and so infec­ tion m ight flie a b ro a d .” Instead, he announces th a t he will “ begin m y application of the storie, w ith the T ex t” fo r the day, concerning D av id ’s retu rn to Jerusalem a t the invitation of his people.44 As long as the a n n i­ versary preachers continued to accom m odate the A bsalom story to the

resto ra tio n o f C harles II, D av id w o u ld com pletely o v e rsh a d o w A bsalom and A chitophel as th e p ro ta g o n ist o f a d ram a in w hich the pivotal event w as his triu m p h a n t re tu rn fro m exile, n o t the rebellion th a t preceded it. In the p ro p a g a n d a o f th e E xclusion Crisis an d its a fte rm a th , parallels d raw n fro m b o th sacred a n d p ro fan e histo ry w o u ld figure pro m in en tly , yet even w h en the sam e biblical stories as before w ere used, they w o u ld have to be a cco m m o d ated to very differen t circum stances from those m ade fam iliar in the anniversary serm ons. T hese hom ilies alone c a n n o t acco u n t fo r the freq u en t use of p arallels as a m eans o f p raise o r blam e d u rin g the last years o f C h arles’s reign, but they played a significant role in fam iliarizing the public w ith this an cien t rh eto ric a l strategy, a n d in p o p u larizin g the choice o f c ertain episodes o f sacred h isto ry fo r th a t p u rp o se. But parallelism w as n o t the only legacy o f A nglican hom iletics to the defenders o f g o v ern m en t policy in the years o f crisis a fter 1678. T he m i­ raculous in terv en tio n of Providence co m m e m o ra te d in the thanksgiving serm ons year after year served as a p e rp etu al rem in d er th a t th e R e sto ra ­ tion settlem en t h a d been divinely san ctio n ed ; in a tim e o f n a tio n a l em er­ gency, as w e shall see in the final c h a p te r, th a t sam e them e w o u ld be refurbished, a n d A nglican preachers w o u ld celebrate yet a n o th e r p ro v i­ dential in terv en tio n as confirm ing th e g o v e rn m e n t’s earlier ch arter. M o st im p o rta n t, by using the p u lp it to persu ad e the faith fu l to reg a rd ob ed i­ ence to kings a n d m ag istrates as one o f th eir m o st serious religious obliga­ tions, a n d rebellion as the m o st heinous o f sins, the clergy o f the E stab ­ lished C h u rch w o u ld co n tin u e to ex p lo it an in v aluable o p p o rtu n ity for su p p o rtin g th e resto re d m onarchy.

Chapter 2 PARLIAMENT AND THE PRESS

H E PR O PA G A N D A on behalf o f the governm ent in w hich Dryden w as to play so active a role in the last years o f C harles II’s reign w as designed to justify a series of m aneuvers th a t the co u rt had been constrained to a d o p t, under pressure from P arliam ent an d the public, since the au tu m n o f 1678. U ntil early 1681 those m aneuvers were carried o u t in a series of in term itten t contests betw een the king an d P ar­ liam ent in w hich m any of the C ro w n ’s prerogatives w ere a t stake. But beyond W estm inster lay an aroused public w ith w hose tem per the king m ust contend, and on the outcom e o f this w id er contest m ight depend his continued possession of the th ro n e. In June 1677, his lo rd treasu rer, the earl of D anby, had w arn ed him in a private m em o ran d u m th a t “till hee can fall into the h u m o u r of the people hee can never bee great nor rich, and w hile differences continue prerogative m ust suffer, unlesse hee can live w ith o u t P arliam ent. ” 1 A year later the Popish Plot hysteria began an d the king w as to feel the force o f D a n b y ’s w arning. W hile the suspicions of his people grew an d festered, the king found his prerogatives being eroded as he struggled w ith fo u r successive parliam ents. W hen he dis­ solved the last o f them in M arch 1681, he had found a w ay to live w ith o u t Parliam ent an d to begin recovering his prerogatives. But he still m u st deal w ith the h u m o r o f his people if he hoped to insure the stability o f his throne. A gainst Parliam ent his w eapons h ad been a series o f cautious th rusts an d tactical retreats by w hich he h ad gained the tim e he needed. In dealing w ith the public he cam e increasingly to rely on p ro p ag an d a as a m eans o f allaying p o p u la r fears a n d w inning som e m easure of acceptance for his policies.

T

It was o f course the w idespread belief in the existence of a Popish Plot th a t first aroused public hysteria. Its disclosure by T itus O ates and Israel Tonge in the late sum m er of 1678 created terro rs in the public m ind th a t w ere confirm ed by the discovery o f Sir E dm und Berry G odfrey’s body in O ctober, and increased as W illiam Bedloe, M iles Prance, Stephen D ugdale, an d o th er inform ers cam e fo rw ard in the follow ing m o n th s to add fu rth er details to the story and im plicate m ore parties in the plot. But it is easy to exaggerate the role of the Popish Plot in the ensuing political cri-

sis. T h e p erio d d u rin g w hich public hysteria over th e supposed c o n sp ir­ acy w as a t its height— th e era o f sensational revelations an d trials o f the victim s in o p en c o u rt— lasted only a year: from the discovery o f G o d frey ’s body in O c to b e r 1678 u n til the early a u tu m n o f 1679. T h e trials an d convictions o f the five Jesuits an d o f th eir law yer R ich ard L a n g h o rn — w h a t J o h n K enyon calls “ the last of the g rea t P lo t tria ls ”— to o k place in Ju n e 1679, an d the circuit trials u p a n d d o w n the land— “ the g reat h o lo ­ c a u st o f th e P lo t,” in K enyon’s w o rd s— follow ed in Ju ly a n d A ugust.2 But the event th a t h erald ed the tu rn in g o f th e tide also to o k place in July 1679: th e tria l and acq u ittal of Sir G eorge W a k em a n , the q u e e n ’s ph y si­ cian, along w ith th ree B enedictine m o n k s in the face of testim o n y from the sam e fo u r Plot w itnesses— O ates, Bedloe, Prance, a n d D ugdale— w hose credibility h a d u n til th en borne all before it.3 In a few m ore m o n th s th e em otions engendered by the P opish Plot h a d becom e a sm oldering b ra n d th a t could ignite the fires o f public u n rest only as new fuel w as ad d ed . Its lasting im p o rtan ce w as th a t by m agnifying th e pu b lic’s a p p re ­ hensions o f E nglish C atholics a t hom e a n d F rench C atholics a b ro a d it gave the p a rliam e n ta ry o p p o sitio n a n o p p o rtu n ity to use th o se fears to w in increasing m ajorities in the H o u se of C o m m o n s, to focus them g ra d ­ ually o n the p ro sp ect of a Popish Successor, an d to create from them p o p u la r su p p o rt fo r a c o n fro n ta tio n w ith th e C row n. O nce this situ a tio n h a d been achieved, the E xclusion C risis cam e to u su rp public a tte n tio n a n d the Popish P lot becam e a p a rt o f this larger issue. In this new state o f affairs, th e king, w hose life h a d been th e subject o f p o p u la r fears a t the tim e o f th e P lot, w as to becom e a prin cip al targ e t o f suspicion him self. B ut this co u ld n o t o ccu r u n til th e p o p u la r im ag in atio n h a d been sated on daggers, poiso n s, a n d n ig h t riders, a n d co u ld be diverted to less sp ectacu ­ lar dangers. It w as w hile pu b lic p an ic over the P lo t prevailed th a t the first tw o o f the fo u r p a rliam en ts o f 1678—81 to o k place. F ro m this p o p u la r a g ita tio n they w o u ld acquire a c h a ra c te r th a t differed n o ticeably fro m th a t o f the tw o later parliam en ts, held a t the heig h t o f th e E xclusion Crisis. But already w e can find developing those o p p o sin g views o f the k in g ’s actio n s as “just p rero g a tiv e s” or “ a rb itra ry p o w e r” th a t w ere to divide the n a tio n by 1681. “T h e re are tw o R easons fo r calling P a rlia m e n ts,” H en ry Pow le re ­ m inded the H o u se o f C om m ons in N o v em b er 1680, “ one for raising of M oney, th e o th er fo r m ak in g L aw s, as the Legislative P ow er, u p o n any new em ergencies.”4 F or the king the first of these tw o reaso n s w as often the m o re com pelling. H is o rd in a ry revenue m ight suffice fo r dom estic m anagem ent, b u t w ars o r p re p a ra tio n s fo r w a r— th e stu ff o f foreign p o l­ icy in th e seventeenth century— en tailed e x tra o rd in a ry expenses th a t co u ld only be m et fro m supplies v o ted by P arliam en t. In the a u tu m n of

1678 the king w as badly in need of m oney. H e h ad persuaded P arliam ent to finance an expeditionary force the previous spring as a prelude to a id ­ ing the D utch against the French. But these prep aratio n s for w ar h a d been overtaken by peace negotiations, a n d P arliam ent h ad voted supplies in June for disbanding these unnecessary forces w hich w ere arousing the usual suspicions of a standing arm y in tim e o f peace. Instead, the king h ad used the m oney to m aintain the arm y as a m eans of coercing France into com ing to an agreem ent. N o w the French h ad signed a peace treaty w ith the D utch, the arm y’s pay w as seriously in arrears, and fresh supplies m ust be voted to pay off an d disband the forces. T he king h ad no choice but to sum m on Parliam ent again, only three m onths after it had last been prorogued. T o Parliam ent, com ing together on 21 O ctober 1678, fo u r days after the discovery o f G odfrey’s body, the second reason for calling p a rlia ­ m ents w as far m ore im p o rta n t a t this m om ent th an the first. The m em ­ bers w ere intent upon investigating the Popish Plot and m aking laws to deal w ith this new emergency. W ithin six w eeks th e H ouse o f C om m ons had exam ined T itu s O ates and ordered the arrest of five C atholic peers on his testim ony; they h ad quickly passed a Test Bill to exclude C atholics from sitting in either house of Parliam ent; they had passed a resolution, w ith w hich the Lords concurred, ·“T h a t this H ouse is o f O p inion, th a t there h a th been, and still is, a dam nable and hellish Plot contrived and carried on by the Popish R ecusants, for the assassinating and m urdering the King; and for subverting the G overnm ent; and ro o tin g o u t and de­ stroying the P ro testan t R eligion” ; they had listened to the treasonable correspondence betw een E dw ard C olem an, the duke of Y o rk ’s form er secretary, and Pere La Chaise, confessor to Louis XIV; and they had im peached the five C atholic peers, now lodged in the T ow er, of high treaso n .5 B ut D anby w as still lord treasurer, and w ith his su p p o rt the position of the duke o f Y ork, the king’s b rother and heir in default o f any legitim ate royal offspring, rem ained unshaken despite his open avow al of the C ath ­ olic faith. N either the Plot w itnesses n o r C olem an’s correspondence had directly im plicated him; a debate in the C om m ons on a m otion th a t in view of his recusancy the duke “ w ithdraw him self from the K ing’s person and councils” h ad been adjourned w ith o u t com ing to a vote; and w hen the Lords am ended the Test Bill w ith a proviso exem pting the duke from its stipulations, D anby m anaged to m uster enough strength for the am endm ent to pass the C om m ons by tw o votes. T he H ouse of C om m ons now w as at leisure to tu rn to the problem of the infam ous standing arm y and the necessity of voting supplies a second tim e to disband it. Lest the natio n be deprived of arm ed security w hen a Popish Plot w as supposed to be afoot, the C om m ons began by passing a

bill to p u t p a rt o f the m ilitia on a w a r fo o tin g . This m oved th ro u g h the L ords w ith o u t c o m m e n t, b u t th e king, perceiving th a t it w o u ld deprive him o f his prero g ativ e o f c o n tro llin g th e m ilitia, h a d recourse to a n o th e r p rerogative he h a d n o t exercised since 1662 a n d vetoed the bill. Surprised an d irrita te d , the C om m ons n o w voted supplies fo r d isb an d in g the arm y but, to insure th a t this tim e the m o n ey w o u ld be p u t to th e use fo r w hich it w as intended, they specified th a t it sh o u ld be p a id in to th e C h am b er o f the C ity o f L o n d o n ra th e r th a n th e E xchequer. T h e L ords, alerted by n o w to th re a ts to th e ro y al p rero g ativ e, insisted o n am en d in g a bill th a t “w o u ld have inv ad ed th e K ing’s declared P ow er a n d A u th o rity .” T h e C om m ons angrily rejected the am en d ed bill am id cries of “L et it fall!” 6 T heir tem p er w as due to an event th a t h a d occurred tw o days earlier, h a u n tin g them fo r the rest o f the session. O n 19 D ecem ber R alp h M o n ta g u , th e fo rm er English a m b a ssa d o r a t Paris, disclosed to th e C o m m o n s th e unsuccessful neg o tiatio n s D an b y h a d carried on w ith th e F ren ch the p revious spring fo r a subsidy to allo w the king to dispense w ith p a rliam e n ts fo r tw o o r th re e years. These h a d tak en place at th e very tim e P a rlia m e n t w as v o tin g m oney fo r the arm y, so th a t, as Sir T h o m as C larges p o in te d o u t to the m em bers, “ H ere w as M oney given fo r a W a r w ith France, a n d here is a Peace m ade, a n d six m illions o f Iivres yearly to be given fo r it, to prev en t th e m eeting o f the P a rlia m e n t.” 7 A roused to a frenzy by this new s, the C o m m o n s v o ted to im peach D a n b y o f high tre a so n , heedless o f S erjeant M a y n a rd ’s p ro p h ecy th a t th e n e x t p a rlia m e n t w o u ld m ak e good: “T h e business o f the Im ­ p eachm ents of the L ords in th e T o w er is n o w im pending. . . . A nd w hilst y ou h u n t this o n e h are, you will lose five.” 8 T he L o rd s, am o n g w h o m D an b y n u m b ere d m an y friends a n d su p p o rte rs, declined to com m it him to custody, a n d a d eadlock developed betw een the tw o houses th a t b ro u g h t all business to a h a lt. In th e m id st o f this im passe, th e king p ro ­ ro g u ed P arliam en t on 30 D ecem ber to the follow ing F ebruary. T he king h a d suffered a serious setback. H e h a d raised no m oney, h a d seen several o f his prero g ativ es th re a te n e d , a n d h a d been com pelled in the face o f h ysteria over th e Popish P lot to give his co n sen t to a Test A ct th a t infringed a n o th e r o f his prerogatives. F o r as W illiam W illiam s rem inded the C om m ons, “ C a n n o t th e K ing call w h a t L ords he pleases in to the H o u se of Peers? A nd yet he passed th a t A ct, to exclude his o w n p o w er, th a t they c a n n o t sit w ith o u t the O a th s a n d T est.” 9 W ith his lo rd tre a su re r in disgrace a n d his fo rm er m ajo rity a sham bles, the king decided to dissolve P arliam en t on 2 4 J a n u a ry 1679 a n d to o rd er elections fo r a n ew p a rliam e n t, su m m o n ed to m eet in M a rc h . H is decision w as greeted w ith general rejoicing. T he C avalier P arliam en t h a d lasted som e eighteen years, few er th a n h a lf its p resent m em bers w ere veterans o f the last general election held in 1661, a n d the o p p o sitio n h a d been calling

for its dissolution since 1674. The elections th a t now ensued greatly in­ creased the num ber of opposition m em bers in the new C om m ons and sorely disappointed the king. Y et these elections w ere n o t, in fact, fought on p arty lines.10 A p art from local interests, the issue o f g reatest im p o r­ tance in the w inter of 1 6 7 8 -7 9 w as the continued investigation o f the Popish Plot a n d the prosecution o f the conspirators. This w as n o t a party issue, since everyone professed abhorrence of the Plot, b u t it ensured the retu rn of candidates w ho w ere eager to pursue their q u a rry all the w ay to W hitehall if necessary. N evertheless, the king w as now desperate for m oney and the newly elected m em bers m ust be called together w ith o u t delay.

The new parliam ent th a t assem bled on 6 M arch 1679 has come to be kn o w n as the first Exclusion Parliam ent, because it was during its m eeting th a t a bill w as first introduced to exclude the duke o f Y ork from the throne. But in its character and concerns it w as related m uch m ore closely to the final session of the previous parliam ent, w hich it follow ed by only tw o m onths, than to the other tw o Exclusion Parliam ents, w hich w ere to tak e place a year and a half o r tw o years later. It to o k its p o p u lar m andate from the hysteria still in full cry over the Popish Plot rath er th an from the em otions later generated by the high tide of the Exclusion Crisis. Com ing after so sh o rt an interval, it n aturally found its chief concerns in the unfin­ ished business left over from the preceding parliam ent— the investigation of the Plot and the prosecution o f D anby a n d the five C atholic peers— just as the king’s ow n concern was w ith raising the same m oney he had failed to o b tain on the earlier occasion. T he first act of the C om m ons, in fact, after losing a w eek in a quarrel over the choice of a speaker, w as to re­ solve th a t a com m ittee inspect the Jo u rn al of the H ouse so th a t, as one m em ber declared, “we m ay know how we left affairs the last Parliam ent, and th a t we m ay the better know w h a t we have to d o .” 11 They th en sent the Lords a message requesting th a t D anby be com m itted to custody, and settled back to hear the Plot witnesses retell an d em broider their story for the benefit of the new m em bers. O n 22 M arch the king cam e dow n to W estm inster a n d announced to Parliam ent th a t he had granted D anby a p a rd o n u n d er the G reat Seal. This w as a hazardous step th a t w as to prove futile as well. By attem pting to p ard o n D anby before he cam e to trial in the H ouse of Lords, the king w as laying him self open to charges of interfering w ith justice an d en­ croaching on the privilege o f Parliam ent. H e w as also inviting a challenge to one of his m ost im p o rtan t prerogatives. But the king w as intent on saving D anby n o t only because the lord treasu rer had been carrying o u t the king’s instructions in the negotiations fo r w hich he now sto o d in peril

of his life, but because Charles was anxious to prevent any further revela­ tions th a t w ould alm ost certainly come to light at D anby’s trial. The Com m ons w ere aroused to fury. T w o days later they voted the king an address of expostulation against “the Irregularity and Illegality of the P ardon” and “the dangerous Consequence of granting Pardons to any Persons th a t lie under an Im peachm ent o f the C om m ons o f E ngland.”12 N ext day a message from the Lords inform ed them th a t the upper house had a t last agreed to com m it D anby to custody, only to find th a t he had flown. W hen, in an effort to forestall m ore severe m easures, the Lords sent them a bill of banishm ent against D anby, the C om m ons threw it out uncerem oniously and answered by sending the Lords a bill o f attainder to go into effect if D anby did n o t surrender by 21 April, The Lords am ended the bill to convert it into a bill of banishm ent, the Com m ons stubbornly rejected the am endm ents, and a struggle ensued between the tw o houses in which at last, on 14 April, the Com m ons prevailed. In the face of this abject surrender by the Lords, the king was to o intim idated to veto the bill of attainder, yet he shrank from incurring the odium his father had borne for assenting to a similar bill against Strafford in 1641. H e there­ fore yielded, giving D anby perm ission to surrender to Black Rod the next day, w hich rendered the bill m oot. In the m idst of this furor the Com m ons had taken up the D isbandm ent Bill again, m oved n o t by generosity tow ard the king b u t by hatred of a standing army. W hat had been a sore point to the previous parliam ent, asked to pay a second time for disbanding an arm y th a t had been illegally kept in existence since the previous sum m er, had become a festering w ound now th a t it was know n the preparations for w ar w ith France had been a sham. There w as considerable sentim ent am ong the opposition members for simply disbanding the forces w ith o u t voting m oney to pay them off. As W illiam G arrow ay suggested, “I w ould have you declare them disbanded, and they are disbanded, and then see w ho dares head them .” 13 But their fear of the arm y mingled w ith a sense of justice p er­ suaded them to heed the argum ents of such as Sir W illiam Coventry w ho cautioned, “I w ould n o t give an alarm to those w ho have arm s in their h ands,” and rem inded them th a t “the soldiers could n o t help their being together; the blame m ust be in some other place.” 14 W ith some reluc­ tance, therefore, they agreed on a bill to pay off as well as disband the army. This tim e, mollified som ew hat by the L ords’ recent acquiescence in the bill of attainder, they specified th a t the money should be paid into the Exchequer. The bill m ade its w ay through the Lords in due course and at last, on 9 M ay, the king had his money. But by this date the Com m ons were becom ing em broiled w ith the Lords once more. Since 16 April, w hen D anby was sent off to join the five Catholic peers in confinement, there had been six lords in the Tow er. AU had been im­ peached of high treason by the C om m ons, w ho n ow eagerly aw aited their

trials. In cases of impeachment, as Richard H am pden reminded the Com­ mons, “You are as a G rand Jury; and the Lords are in the nature of a Jury and Judges,” the articles of impeachment serving as the indictm ent and the Commons acting as prosecutors at the trial in place of the attorney general.15 In mid-April four of the Catholic peers were arraigned at the bar of the H ouse of Lords, the fifth, Lord Belasyse, being too ill to p u t in an appearance.16 O n 25 April Danby was brought to his arraignm ent and, at the king’s insistence, pleaded his pardon under the G reat Seal. D uring the m onth th a t remained to the session, the Commons were to spend the greatest p art of their time and energy debating the pardon, considering alternative ways of proceeding against Danby and the five Catholic peers, and expostulating with the Lords. They quickly agreed th at this abuse of the king’s prerogative m ust be checked at all costs, for if it were once allowed, the consequences would not be limited to saving Danby. As Serjeant M aynard declared, “The five Lords in the Tow er may have such Pardons, by the same reason, and w hat then becomes of all your Liberties?”17 The upshot was a series of messages from the C om ­ mons over the next few weeks demanding th at the H ouse of Lords, as court of last resort, hand dow n a decision th at this pardon in bar of an impeachment was illegal and void. Once this m atter was settled, the Lords were to proceed to immediate judgm ent on D anby, w ho by plead­ ing a pardon had confessed his guilt and'forfeited his right to trial, and to put the five Catholic peers on trial. Finally, the bishops, w ho by custom w ithdrew from capital cases, were to abstain from voting on D anby’s pardon. In the midst of all these legal maneuvers, the Com m ons a t last, some tw o m onths after the session had begun, gave some of their divided atten­ tion to the prospect of a Popish Successor. The subject was first seriously broached on 27 April w hen they debated and passed a resolution “T hat the Duke of Yorke7s being a Papist, and the H opes of his coming such to the Crow n, has given the greatest Countenance and Encouragement to the present Conspiracies and Designs of the Papists against the King, and the Protestant Religion.” 18 The king, sensing the direction in which they were moving, came dow n to W estminster on 30 April and offered Parlia­ ment assurances, which he was to repeat frequently over the next tw o years, that he would agree to any expedients for protecting the Protestant religion in the next reign, “so as the same extend not to alter the Descent of the Crown in the right Line, nor to defeat the Succession.” 19 The Com­ mons were not impressed. It was not until 11 M ay that they could divert their attention from the business of the pardon and the lords in the Tow er long enough to return to the problem of the Succession, but when they did so they debated and passed a m otion to bring in a bill “to disable the Duke of Yorke to inherit the Imperial Crow n of this R ealm .”20 O n 15

M ay, after spending m ost of the m orning in recrim inations against the H ouse of Lords over the bishops’ participation in the im peachm ent p ro ­ ceedings, the Com m ons found time to pass the first reading of the Exclu­ sion Bill w ithout a division. O n 21 M ay they broke off their quarrel w ith the Lords long enough to pass the bill on its second reading by a lopsided vote of 207 to 128. T he Com m ons then turned their attention once again to the lords in the Tow er. There has been considerable speculation as to w hy the Com m ons de­ layed taking up a third reading of the Exclusion Bill, and historians have attem pted to explain the delay as a tactic of the opposition leaders w ho may have been doubtful of its final passage. But the size of the m ajority on the second reading coupled w ith the fact th a t the opposition h ad been carrying everything before it in the Com m ons thro u g h o u t the session suggests a different conclusion: th a t the opposition was confident of its passage and wished to settle the business of the p ard o n and the im peach­ ments before sending up a new bill th a t w ould alm ost certainly precipi­ tate a fresh struggle w ith the Lords. U nm istakable evidence of w here the opposition’s priorities lay right up to the end of the session is provided by a debate in the C om m ons over a new request for supplies from the king. Encouraged by his success over the D isbandm ent Bill, the king on 14 M ay asked for supplies for the fleet so th a t the nation could h onor its alliances. In refusing to entertain any such request at this tim e, the m em ­ bers w ere swayed by the consideration th a t once the king obtained his supplies he w ould be free to prorogue Parliam ent before it had finished its m ost im portant business. In the next parliam ent this argum ent w as to be offered again and again in urging th a t no supplies be voted until an Exclu­ sion Bill w as passed. O n this occasion, however, it was n o t the Exclusion Bill, scheduled for its first reading the following day, th a t riveted the a t­ tention of the members w ho rose one by one to argue, in the w ords of W illiam Sacheverell, “ O nce give your M oney, and fairly p art, and the Lords in the Tow er will n o t be tryed, and nothing d o n e.” 21 W hile this parliam ent lasted, the six lords in the T ow er were to preem pt all other considerations. By this tim e the Lords and Com m ons were at loggerheads. T he Lords w ere not to be intim idated again over D anby as h ad happened w ith the bill o f attainder. Ignoring both his p ard o n and his im peachm ent, they prepared to p u t the five C atholic peers on trial. T he C om m ons responded by insisting th a t the p ard o n be settled before these trials could begin. Bearing out Serjeant M ay n ard ’s prophecy th a t while they hunted one hare they w ould lose five, m ost members agreed w ith W illiam G arrow ay w hen he declared, “ I had rath er the five Lords should escape, th an th a t D anby's Pardon should stand go o d .”22 O nce again, as a t the end of the previous parliam ent, m atters w ere at an impasse over D anby, and on 27

May, the day on which the trials of the five Catholic peers were scheduled to begin before the Lords, the king seized the excuse of a deadlock be­ tween the two houses to come down to Westminster and prorogue Parlia­ ment until the following August. But on 12 July, deciding he had had enough of this obstreperous Commons, he dissolved Parliament, and shortly afterwards ordered elections for a new parliament summoned to meet on 17 October.

It was this dissolution, coming just when the tide of the Popish Plot was starting to turn, that marks the real beginning of the Exclusion Crisis.23 The public was taken by surprise, the opposition furious, and the ground laid for a long and increasingly acrimonious struggle between the court and its antagonists along different lines. Within three months the king had dismissed the earl of Shaftesbury from the Privy Council and the rupture between the two was complete. In the hostilities that followed, Shaftesbury, now openly heading the opposition soon to be known as Whigs, was to find himself in direct confrontation not with Danby, who was in the Tower, nor with the duke of York, who was in exile most of this time in Brussels and later in Edinburgh, but with the king, who now assumed direction of the government forces that would come to be styled Tories. From the two recent sessions of Parliament both sides carried away valuable ammunition as well as lessons for the future. A tthe height of the Exclusion Crisis the Whigs would be able to draw freely on the events of 1678-79 to lengthen the train of abuses they would lay at the door of Whitehall: an illegal standing army in time of peace, a flagrant abuse of the prerogative to pardon a traitor in bar of an impeachment, attempts to hinder the prosecution of the Plot and its perpetrators, a prorogation and dissolution of Parliament in the midst of its essential business. The Tories would be able to cull from the same events a different arsenal to use against Shaftesbury and his allies: delays and refusals in granting the king the money he needed to pursue a vigorous foreign policy, repeated en­ croachments on the king’s just prerogative, an attempt to alienate the Succession. From their recent experience Shaftesbury and his supporters were to derive three valuable lessons that their future conduct would show they had taken to heart. First of all, Danby was a hare they had pursued far too long, diverting them from more important business. Once he surrendered the treasurer’s white staff and was committed by the Lords, his power had vanished. True, he continued to advise the king from the Tower, but nei­ ther this irritation nor the wish to see him punished was worth the price

his o p p o n e n ts h a d been paying to have the h e a d o f a fallen m inister. In the n ex t p a rlia m e n t they w o u ld w isely ignore him , seldom even m en tio n in g his nam e. Second, th e p e rp e tu al q u arrels th e C o m m o n s h a d raised w ith the L ords in the last tw o sessions h a d been a d isastro u s policy, h in d erin g their progress a n d offering the king a w elcom e excuse fo r p ro ro g u in g them on b o th occasions. In th e n e x t p a rlia m e n t they w o u ld sh o w u n a c ­ custom ed re stra in t in th e face o f m an y p ro v o ca tio n s fro m th e u p p e r house, heeding the advice o f C olonel T itus: “ C o n sid er the m a tte r, a n d if it be possible, avo id all difference w ith th e L o rd s .”24 L ast a n d m o st im ­ p o rta n t, th e o p p o sitio n h a d been p u rsu in g to o m an y sim u ltan eo u s aim s in the last tw o sessions, veering fro m one to a n o th e r a n d yet a n o th e r, insisting on all an d achieving none. In the n e x t p a rliam e n t they w o u ld be m ore single-m inded, follow ing a course on w h ich again C olonel T itus offered the best counsel: “ Pray observe one R ule fro m me: If y o u w ill do no th in g till you can do every th in g , w e shall do n o th in g .” 25 F o r by this tim e th e W higs w ere a p a rty w ith an overriding objective: E xclusion. By dissolving P arliam en t in th e sum m er of 1679 a n d p ro v id in g a long interval before the m eeting of the n e x t, th e king, w ith o u t in ten d in g them any such favor, allo w ed the o p p o sitio n to rid them selves o f th eir recent obsessions a n d to reexam ine th eir p rio rities. F o r to o long th eir a tte n tio n h ad been c a u g h t a n d held by the recen t past. In dividing so m u ch o f their tim e betw een D a n b y ’s m alfeasance a n d the P opish P lot, they h a d been riveted to tw o events belonging to th e spring a n d sum m er o f 1 6 78. T hey insisted, o f course, th a t the P lot still c o n tin u e d , b u t public excitem ent w as beginning to w an e. W ith P a rlia m e n t no longer in session, O ates and the o th er w itnesses h a d lo st th eir m o st im p o rta n t pu b lic p la tfo rm a t th e sam e tim e th a t L o rd C hief Ju stice Scroggs w as beginning to challenge their credibility in the c o u rtro o m . Freed fro m these d istrac tio n s, E xclusion could a t last acq u ire th e p rio rity th a t its in h e re n t im p o rta n c e h a d dictated all along. T o o p p o sitio n th in k in g , th e p ro sp ect o f a P opish Successor p ro m ised the sam e th re a ts o f su b verting the g o v ern m en t a n d destroying the P ro te sta n t religion as th e P opish P lot, b u t in a m ore dan g ero u s form : n o t in secret consults by a few c o n sp ira to rs d u rin g th e lifetim e o f the p resen t king, b u t openly a n d w ith all the p ow ers o f the executive d uring the reign o f his successor. By th e tim e o f the general elections in the late sum m er o f 1679, th e re ­ fore, the o p p o sitio n can d id ates w ere soliciting the electors as m em bers o f an exclusionist p a rty , a n d w ere w in n in g m o re seats th a n before in the new H o u se of C o m m o n s. O ver th e n ex t y ear a n d a h a lf th e issue w o u ld increase steadily in im p o rta n c e , catch in g the public im ag in atio n , p ro v id ­ ing the W h ig politicians w ith th e p o p u la r su p p o rt th ey desperately needed, a n d yet assum ing a different dim en sio n in the pu b lic m ind fro m th a t o f th eir leaders. T o th e W h ig m agnates, E xclusion w as all along

exactly the negative position th at its name implies. They were intent on keeping the present heir from succeeding to the throne, but they studi­ ously avoided any attem pt at nam ing a substitute heir, which could only lead to divisions in their ranks among rival candidacies. To the public, however, it was not simply Exclusion but the Succession th a t captured their attention. If the Popish Duke was to be contemned and then ex­ cluded, he m ust have a replacement, and w ho better than the Protestant Duke: Charles’s natural son, the popular duke of M onm outh? After so many revelations and so much disillusionment, the public needed an icon; for them, Exclusion was seen as a contest between tw o rivals, each of whom had his supporters attesting their loyalty at public dinners and mass meetings and in the press, w here toasts, bonfires and broadside poems pitted Old Jemmy against Young Jemmy. The king, attem pting to dispel the idea of a contest between the tw o, unwittingly encouraged it. In M arch 1679, shortly before the first Exclusion Parliament was to meet, he had packed his brother off to Brussels to divert attention from him. The duke had returned in early September when the king fell ill. Once Charles recovered, he decided th at m atters had reached a critical stage where both his brother and his son must be taken from the public eye. In late Septem­ ber, and within tw enty-four hours of each other, M onm outh set off for H olland and the duke of Y ork for Flanders, encouraging the view of them as tw o rival candidates for the throne sent off to aw ait the outcome of the contest. This was a heady experience for M onm outh, but for Shaftesbury and his allies it was an opportunity for keeping up excitement over Exclusion w ithout com mitting themselves to the duke’s support. Yet his absence from the country would make this m ore difficult. In October the duke of York was perm itted by the king to change his place of exile, and he stopped off in London for two weeks en route to Edinburgh. The o ppor­ tunity this gave his supporters to express their loyalty suggested to the Whigs that M onm outh m ust return. Shaftesbury urged him to do so, and in November he was back in London against his father’s orders. W hen the king stripped him of his offices, he defied him and stayed on, courting popularity from the public and encouraged by Shaftesbury and the other W hig leaders w ith infinite good will b u t no promises. Uneasy at his son’s advantage in having the stage to himself, the king ordered his brother to return to London, where he arrived in February 1680. But M onm outh continued to capture public attention. In April began the excitement over the mysterious black box supposed to contain proof of the king’s m ar­ riage to M onm outh’s m other, Lucy W alter, and the m ore gullible were convinced of his legitimacy, establishing his prior claim as heir to th at of his uncle. As a result, M onm outh captured even greater attention, which at last forced the king to issue a humiliating declaration in June 1680

denying th a t he h a d ever been m arrie d to M o n m o u th ’s m o th e r, o r indeed to an yone b u t Q u een C ath erin e. C harles also p o in te d o u t th a t he h ad already m ade tw o sim ilar d eclaratio n s in Ja n u a ry a n d M a rc h 1679; b u t the rem in d er itself im plied th a t these h a d been w idely disbelieved, since he w as forced to rep e a t his d isavow al yet again.26 In A ugust a n d Septem ber 1680 M o n m o u th m ad e his fam o u s p rogress th ro u g h the w est o f E ngland, acclaim ed by m ass m eetings a t every s to p .27 If E xclusion w as the ov errid in g objective o f the W higs in late 1679 an d th ro u g h o u t 1680, th e q u estio n o f h o w it w o u ld ever be achieved created a second issue of eq u al im p o rtan ce. T o th e king in th e sum m er o f 1679, the experience o f th e tw o recen t p a rliam e n ts h a d offered different lessons fro m th o se it held for th e o p p o sitio n . F irst o f all, th e H o u se of L ords, despite the presence o f Shaftesbury, M o n m o u th , Essex, a n d o th e r a n ta g o ­ nists, co u ld be a useful ally in w h ich th e k in g ’s su p p o rte rs c o n stitu te d a p e rm a n e n t m ajo rity unaffected by elections. B ut the L ords w ere n o t sim ­ ply a to o l th a t the king could m an ip u la te a t w ill. T h ey h a d certainly su p ­ p o rte d D an b y a n d it w as a safe a ssu m p tio n th a t they w o u ld o ppose a lte r­ ing the Succession as long as the king rem ain ed firm. T hey h ad jealously guard ed the k in g ’s prero g ativ e o n occasion, a n d tim e a n d ag a in they h a d served as a stu m b lin g block to the m ore p recip itate C o m m o n s. B ut they w ere n o t im m u n e to determ in ed pressure fro m th e lo w er h o u se, as h a d been sh o w n in the case o f D a n b y ’s bill o f a tta in d e r, a n d w h ere th ey felt, an d indeed sh ared , th e pu b lic’s em o tio n s over th e P opish P lo t, they h a d been w illing to pass such a m easure as th e Test A ct. T hey w ere a source o f p o ten tia l aid th a t w as n o t alw ays d ep endable. T he second lesson fo r the king w as th a t his p rerogatives w ere u n d e r fire, th a t som e o f these could prove m o re in cen d iary th a n o th ers, an d th a t his survival m ight d epend o n his ch o o sin g to m ake use o f som e in place of others. Several prero g ativ es— his direct co n tro l over th e m ilitia o r p a rlia ­ m entary revenues a n d his rig h t to su m m o n peers to th e H o u se of L o rd s— h ad recently been th re a te n e d o r lim ited by P a rlia m e n t, b u t in his exercise of c ertain o th e r p rerogatives the k ing h a d been finding him self increas­ ingly c o n stra in e d by the h e a te d em o tio n al state o f the n a tio n . It w as his u n q u estio n ed p rero g ativ e to veto bills, bu t, as his dilem m a over D a n b y ’s bill o f a tta in d e r h a d revealed, this w as n o t a privilege th a t he c o u ld safely invoke in tim es like these. H is firm ly reitera te d w a rn in g over the n e x t tw o years th a t he w o u ld never assent to a n E xclusion Bill gave public notice th a t if d riven to it he w o u ld veto such a bill, b ut the p ro b a b le c o st w o u ld be rio tin g if n o t a rm ed rebellion. B efore m atte rs w ere b ro u g h t to th a t pass, how ever, an E xclusion Bill w o u ld have to pass th e H o u se o f L ords, a n d before th a t unlikely event c o u ld tak e place P arliam en t w o u ld have to be once m ore in session. Sm all w o n d e r th a t in this em ergency he sh o u ld fall back u p o n his p rero g ativ e o f su m m o n in g p arliam en ts a t a tim e and

place o f his ow n choosing, subject only to the lim itations set by the T rien ­ nial Act o f 1664 th a t he should do so “ once in three years a t the least,” and to the practical requirem ents determ ined by his need for m oney. A nother royal prerogative increasingly lim ited by p o p u lar passions w as th a t of granting p ard o n s. T he k ing’s p a rd o n of D anby in bar o f an im peachm ent h ad created a storm , b u t this w as in fact an abuse o f his prerogative th a t w ould be outlaw ed after the R evolution by the A ct of Settlem ent. M o re im p o rta n t, his unquestioned prerogative o f p a rd o n in g tra ito rs after verdict in arre st o f judgm ent could n o t, in sim ple prudence, be extended to the five C atholic peers, in spite of his scruples a b o u t their innocence, in the face of public hysteria over the Popish Plot. O nce again, his prerogative of sum m oning, proro g u in g , a n d dissolving parliam ents offered a solution to his dilem m a. By im peaching D anby a n d the five C atholic peers, the C om m ons h ad unintentionally provided the king w ith a rem edy, since im peachm ents could be tried by the H ouse of L ords only while P arliam ent w as in session. T he trials o f D anby a n d the five C atholic peers, therefore, like the passage o f an E xclusion Bill, could be postponed and possibly prevented by delaying the sitting of P arliam ent, o r curtailing it once it had begun. For all these reasons, once the elections of the late sum m er of 1679 h ad retu rn ed a larger n u m b er o f opposition m em bers th an ever to the C om ­ m ons, the king determ ined to prevent their com ing to g eth er as long as possible. W hen 17 O cto b er arrived, the date o n w hich its opening session w as to begin, he im m ediately p rorogued P arliam ent until 26 Jan u ary 1680; w hen th a t date arrived he im m ediately prorogued it again; an d he continued to rep eat the process a to ta l o f seven tim es until the au tu m n of 1680. By th a t tim e, there had n o t been a session o f P arliam ent for seven­ teen m onths. This long a n interval w as n o t unprecedented, nor even u n u ­ sual. T here had been an earlier seventeen-m onth recess in 1668—69, and a m uch longer one of tw enty-tw o m o n th s d u ratio n betw een 1671 and 1673. In m ore recent years, the recesses of 1 6 7 4 -7 5 a n d of 1 6 7 5 -7 7 had fallen sh o rt of this latest interval by only tw o o r three m onths. But in the present em ergency the king’s co n tinued refusal to allow the new ly elected Parliam ent to m eet and “ redress the n a tio n ’s grievances,” in the p o p u lar phrase o f the tim e, created a fu ro r as great as, and closely related to, the em otions over Exclusion. W henever a barrier is erected in the w ay of an overw helm ing m andate fo r change, the m eans by w hich the natio n al will is being fru strated will cap tu re a t least as m uch a tten tio n as the original objective. In this w ay any issue can be transform ed into a co n stitutional crisis. T o the W higs’ w ay o f thinking, Exclusion w as an objective th a t enjoyed just such a p o p ­ ular m andate, as w as proved by the recent elections. Y et its achievem ent w as being fru strated by the king, w ho instead o f allow ing P arliam ent to

meet was em ploying his prerogative as an obstructive tactic to prevent the legislators from carrying o u t the n atio n ’s wishes. As long as he continued to use his lawful pow ers to defy the electorate, his behavior w as bound to form p art and parcel of the Succession issue, transform ing a parliam en­ tary and public debate over w h at was already a serious constitutional issue—Exclusion— into an even graver constitutional crisis in w hich the royal prerogative, severely threatened or seriously abused in the eyes of the respective parties, w ould eventually take precedence over every other issue. In the face of intransigence by the suprem e m agistrate, the Whigs were w ithout any legal redress. Short of some desperate remedy, they could only try to bring po p u lar pressure to bear on the king. From the Tory point of view, before the W higs w ere ready for treason, they w ould see w hat sedition could do.

Their earliest effort in this direction was the Petitioning M ovem ent in the w inter of 1679-80. The first petition calling on the king to allow Parlia­ ment to meet, bearing the signatures of Shaftesbury and sixteen of his fellow peers, w as presented to C harles on 7 Decem ber 1679.28 Five days later the governm ent attem pted to discourage others from following their exam ple by issuing a royal proclam ation forbidding tum ultuous peti­ tions, but w ith o u t success.29 By the first week in January the new spapers were reporting th a t “the chief discourse at present is ab o u t Petitions, some for them , some against them ; som e th a t m ean well refuse to sub­ scribe, being deterred by the late Proclam ation, but it is th o u g h t the num ­ ber o f the Subscribers exceed all the rest; and it is reported, th a t Tables, Pen, Ink, and Petitions have been placed upon the R oyal Exchange in Change time, and people invited to subscribe them: It is also reported, that some Petitions will be presented this w eek.”30 The first of these mass petitions, bearing fifty or sixty thousand signatures, was presented to the king on 13 January, and came from the residents of W estm inster and Southw ark. Before the end of the m onth the king received the first of the county petitions, bearing the signatures of thirty thousand residents of Wiltshire. Casting ab o u t for some means o f responding to the petitions they were unable to prevent, the Tories attem pted to launch a counterm ovem ent in which various small bodies of citizens loyal to the C row n, for the m ost part grand juries and justices of the peace assembled at the q u arter ses­ sions, w ould draw up “ abhorrences” : addresses to the king condem ning tum ultuous petitions. These abhorrences, like the unwelcom e petitions themselves, w ould be presented to the king, from w hom a m arkedly dif­ ferent reception could be expected, how ever, and the cerem ony w ould be

reported in the London G azette, which w ould also print the texts of the abhorrences themselves. Such, at any rate, m ust have been the wishful thinking of government officials w ho could have made no effort to test beforehand the extent to which their ill-conceived hopes offered any pros­ pect of success. As they could have learned from the small band of gov­ ernm ent supporters in the Comm ons who, during the first Exclusion Par­ liament, wisely refused on many occasions to challenge a division of the H ouse, weakness should be concealed, not publicized. In the event, the Abhorrence M ovement, if the straggling response can be called a move­ m ent at all, was the greatest public-relations disaster the government w ould suffer in a year filled w ith political setbacks. N o t only was the num ber of abhorrences printed in the L ondon Gazette pitifully small in absolute terms, but the long intervals between their infrequent appear­ ances emphasized their paucity even further. But it was not only the logistics of the A bhorrence M ovem ent th at was poorly conceived and badly implemented. The substance of the ab h o r­ rences was quite as w eak as their num bers, for they had nothing to say except th a t the signers, few in numbers like the abhorrences themselves, deplored the appearance of petitions th a t were expressing the wishes of a vast num ber of dissatisfied subjects. As the brevity of their texts made clear, the abhorrences were never m ore than a poll whose outcome a wiser governm ent w ould have suppressed. In spite of their overwhelming victory in this contest with their oppo­ nents, the Whigs did not rely on petitions alone to keep up popular pres­ sure on the government. They launched a massive propaganda campaign in the press that was favored by the fact th a t the Licensing Act, the princi­ pal means by which the government controlled the press, had expired on 10 June 1679, Parliam ent having refused to renew it before being p ro ­ rogued in May. “N ow were there Papers, Speeches, Libels, publiquely cried in the streetes against the D uke of York, &c Lauderdail &cc obnox­ ious to the Parliament, w ith too much, &c indeede too shamefull a lib­ erty,” Evelyn w rote in his diary under 6 July, “but the People & Parlia­ m ent had gotten head, by reason of the vices of the greate ones.”31 Faced with a flood of W hig pam phlets and broadsides, the government resorted to prosecutions under the Treason Act, or for libel. But the king’s “m ajor problem caused by the w ant of a Printing A ct,” Tim othy Crist has pointed out, “was regulation at the source, the printing house. Only after publications reached the streets could the government act to punish the offending stationers, both printers and booksellers. But by then the prop­ aganda value had probably been achieved through various means of dis­ tribution and the damage d o n e.”32 W ithin a m onth of the expiration of the Licensing Act, the Whigs had begun issuing newspapers on a regular basis. The first and m ost im por­ tant of these was Benjamin H arris’s D om estick Intelligence, as it was

called a t first, w hich began twice-weekly publication on 7 July 1679. In September H enry Care revived his popular weekly, Poor R o b in ’s Intelli­ gence, and in N ovem ber R obert H arfo rd began publishing his M ercurius Anglicus twice a week. Once the Petitioning M ovem ent got under w ay in January, H arris’s and H arfo rd ’s new spapers became an indispensable p art of the cam paign by reporting the petitions, printing them , and foster­ ing the im pression of w idespread po p u lar agitation for the m eeting of Parliament. The governm ent attem pted to suppress the W hig new spapers, but its efforts in this direction dragged on through the w inter and early spring w ithout visible success. In February 1680 H arris was convicted of p u b ­ lishing a pam phlet, A n A ppeal from the C ountry to the City, for w hich he was fined and im prisoned.33 After tw o m onths’ confinem ent in the K ing’s Bench, he was at last reduced to abandoning his new spaper in mid-April, but w ith the satisfaction of seeing it im m ediately replaced by the True Protestant D om estick Intelligence, started by an anonym ous W hig b o o k ­ seller hard on the heels of R obert Everingham ’s M ercurius Civicus, a n ­ other W hig new spaper th a t had begun appearing in M arch. It was n o t until 12 M ay 1680 th a t a royal proclam ation against unlicensed new spa­ pers succeeded in silencing all but one of the W hig periodicals: H enry C are’s serial book, the W eekly Pacquet o f Advice from R om e, w hich had been appearing since December 1678.34 W hen C are was convicted in July of continuing to publish in defiance of a co u rt order, he simply renam ed his weekly and proceeded w ith o u t interruption. In the face of all this vigorous W hig journalism continued for ten m onths, the Tories w ere forced to rely on a single new spaper, besides the official L ondon G azette (published since 1665), w ith which to oppose them . This w as N athaniel T hom pson’s D om estick Intelligence, as it was called a t first, w hose origin shows how far the Tories w ere reduced to a defensive position during 1679 and 1680, responding to events but sel­ dom initiating them. T hom pson’s paper began as a hoax. Its first issue, as the D om estick Intelligence, “N o. 16,” appeared on 29 A ugust 1679, the same date as H arris’s new spaper w ith the same title and num ber, and was designed to sow confusion am ong the Whigs. W hen the joke had w orn thin after three num bers, T hom pson changed the title of his paper, which now claimed to be the True D om estick Intelligence and continued to ap ­ pear twice weekly, while H arris w as eventually forced to change the title of his paper to the Protestant D om estick Intelligence to prevent confu­ sion. But for the first four or five m onths T hom pson refrained from a t­ tacking the W higs, devoting his efforts to defending the Tories. This was the period o f the M eal T ub Plot, the attem pt by Elizabeth Cellier to father on the W higs a Protestant plot th a t had recently been exposed as frau d u ­ lent, and T hom pso n ’s pap er was kept busy condem ning this sham plot as a trick of the Papists th at the governm ent abhorred as heartily as did the

opposition. It was only in early 1680 th at he at last began denouncing “ tum ultuous petitions” and attacking H arris’s paper. H is tardy offensive w ould be short-lived, for the True D om estick Intelligence fell victim, along w ith its m ore num erous opponents, to the royal proclam ation against unlicensed newspapers in May. If the government succeeded in imposing a tem porary silence on the newspapers, they could boast no such success with the tide of pam phlets and broadsides that continued to pour from the W hig presses. Typical of the vigorous offensive carried on so successfully by the Whig presses in 1680 was the popular series of Legorn Letters. These were based on the genuine letters from Leghorn which, like those from correspondents in other foreign cities, were frequently quoted in the newspapers as sources of foreign news. The Legorn Letters, ostensibly a correspondence ex­ changed between m erchants in Leghorn and London, were broadsides and pam phlets concerning affairs on board the “V an H erring” th at used the traditional m etaphor of the ship of state as a means of describing the perilous situation of the English nation from a W hig perspective. The first of these letters, published on 12 January 1680, announced the discovery of a plot am ong the M oham m edans aboard the ship to mutiny, kill the captain, and place the lieutenant, a coreligionist of theirs, in com m and. The captain, however, had stubbornly ignored these threats to the ship’s safety, dismissed the council of officers, and rejected petitions from the sailors to allow the council to meet and deal w ith the emergency.35 This letter proved so popular th at w ithin a week tw o more had appeared, and another the following w eek.36 These later installments related the cap­ tain’s unaccountable disregard for the crew’s safety, his leniency tow ard the purser and five M oham m edan rogues confined to the gun room by the council of officers, and his refusal to allow the lieutenant to be deprived of his right of succession to the ship’s com m and. The Tories responded w ith a hoax, as they had done in reaction to H arris’s newspaper, publish­ ing a sham Legorn Letter shortly after the first of them appeared, which discounted the fears it had raised about the ship’s safety.37 But they made no immediate attem pt to continue the hoax, and the Whigs were encour­ aged to launch a second and bolder series of Legorn Letters in the autum n of 1680 after an event occurred th a t was to ham per seriously the govern­ m ent’s strategy since June 1679 of prosecuting London booksellers in the courts.38 The responsibility for choosing jury panels for London and M iddlesex belonged to the two sheriffs, acting jointly as one officer, w ho were elected annually by the C orporation of the City of London on M idsum ­ mer Day (24 June) and entered office each year on the Vigil of M ichael­ mas (28 September). In the M idsummer Day election of 1680, the C om ­ m on Hall of the C orporation, the majority of whose members were Whigs, chose as sheriffs H enry Cornish and Slingsby Bethel (Dryden’s

“ Shimei” ), both avid Exclusionists. Their responsibility for selecting ju ­ ries w as supposed to be delegated to certain m inor officials: in the case of the M iddlesex Sessions, held, at H icks H all and at W estm inster H all, to the under sheriff; in th a t of the London Sessions, held at the Guildhall and at the O ld Bailey, to the secondaries of the tw o city prisons. But since Bethel and C ornish appointed as under sheriff R ichard G oodenough, an eager collaborator, M iddlesex juries w ould be regularly assured of a W hig com plexion. The tw o officials charged w ith the selection of the London juries, N orm andselI and T ro tm an , while politically independent, were personally tim orous, so th a t under duress they could be expected to surrender their responsibility to the tw o sheriffs.39 From the end of September 1680, w hen the new sheriffs entered office, the attorney general w ould be frustrated again and again by the fam ous Ignoram us juries: grand juries of accom m odating W higs, im paneled under the direction of Bethel and Cornish, w ho predictably rejected bills of indictm ent from the governm ent by returning them endorsed Ignora­ m us. These juries are best rem em bered for their actions in mid—1681 to ­ w ard the end of Bethel’s and C ornish’s term of office w hen, as we shall see, they w ould obstruct the king’s efforts to obtain justice in certain cases of treason. But they were no less effective in the autum n and w inter of 1680 in providing w hat the governm ent considered a cloak for sedition: protecting W hig booksellers from prosecution and ensuring th a t there w ould be no interruption of their presses.40 Hopelessly outnum bered by the W hig journalists and helpless to stem the flow of W hig pam phlets and broadsides after June 1679, the Tories w ere already tacitly adm itting their serious disadvantage in the p ro p a­ ganda w ar by their bitter com plaints against the freedom of the press long before the new sheriffs dem olished the rem aining barriers in the early autum n o f 1680. As one T ory poet protested in February 1680: W hat has our Law no limits for our words? And shall our Pens cut like tw o-edged Swords, And none regard them? shall our Libels swarm, And w ill no Judge take notice o f the harm? Seditious Libels surely have a Charm, There’s not one Judge that dare put forth his arm .41

The same m onth tw o other T ory poets offered advice to the king th a t shows how far they had been driven back to a defensive position from w hich they could only w arn against any further retreat. The first begs the king to “ Stand firm; the times now come to shew thy skill,” and portrays the ship of state tossed “ By W inds and Storm s” in w hich the king m ust “ Keep fast the H elm , o n either side to err, / Is alike dangerous, in the middle Stear.” T he second poet im plores the king: “ Lose n o t your Friends in hopes your Foes to g ain ,” b u t “ Cherish your Friends if Scepters you

will sw ay.” H is image o f a land assaulted by a tid al w ave expresses the desperate tone of m uch T ory p ro p ag an d a in this bleak season: “T he Bulks are yet intire, ’tis n o t to o late / T o stop a n o th e r Deluge o’re the S tate.”'*2

T his is n o t to say th a t the T ory presses w ere inactive during the long interval betw een parliam ents in late 1679 and m ost of 1680. T hey kept up a steady stream o f lam poons attacking the W hig opposition. But this sim ply confirm s the im pression of their essentially defensive position, re­ sponding to the W higs by ridiculing their leaders, disparaging their m o­ tives, and questioning their num bers. The sam e is tru e of the T ory pam ­ phlets and broadsides of 1 6 7 9 -8 0 defending the duke of Y ork, w arding off attacks on the Succession, justifying the k in g ’s delay in sum m oning Parliam ent, and appealing to som e of the leaders of the opposition to desist from their assaults on the governm ent. AU of them took their cue from the enemy. It is in this period o f W hig aggressiveness and T ory reaction th a t we find the earliest use o f biblical parallelism in p arty w arfare since the be­ ginning o f the political crisis. T here are only tw o instances of any im p o r­ tance in the period we are now considering: N a b o th ’s V inyard and A b sa ­ lo m ’s Conspiracy, the first occasioned by the Popish Plot, and the second by the Exclusion Crisis th a t succeeded it. N a b o th ’s V inyard is neither W hig n o r T ory, although som e Tories w ould have been sym pathetic to its view point. T his poem w as the w ork o f Jo h n Caryl], a m em ber o f the C atholic gentry w hom T itus O ates h ad im plicated in the Popish Plot as early as O ctober 1678 d u ring one of his first appearances before the H ouse o f C om m ons. It w as w ritten in 1679 during C aryll’s long im prisonm ent in the T ow er and, according to A n­ thony W ood, w as “published by stealth in the beginning of O c to b e r.”43 T he poem relates the fam iliar story o f N a b o th and A hab found in I Kings, chapter 21. A hab, king of Israel, covets N a b o th ’s vineyard and, w hen N a b o th refuses to sell it to him , becom es disconsolate. Jezebel, A h ab ’s wife, thereupon arranges an assem bly of the elders a t w hich tw o false witnesses accuse N a b o th o f having blasphem ed G od and the king. N a b o th , being condem ned, is stoned to death and A hab takes possession o f his victim ’s vineyard, b u t Elijah is sent by G od to curse A hab and Jezebel for their w ickedness. In relating the story o f N a b o th a n d A hab, C aryll amplifies the h istori­ cal account in I Kings by inventing scenes and speeches, b u t these are on the w hole faithful to his source. In fact he em phasizes his close adherence to the Bible by announcing on the title page th a t his poem is “copied from

the original of H oly Scripture in heroick verse,” and by providing cita­ tions of chapter and verse a t appropriate points in the margin. N ever­ theless, he modifies the biblical account in tw o respects. First, in his de­ scription of the tw o false witnesses m entioned in the Bible, to w hom he gives the invented nam es of M alchus and Python, Caryll alludes unm is­ takably to Titus O ates and Israel Tonge, the tw o originators of the Popish Plot hoax, while his in troduction of A rod, a corruptible judge w ho pre­ sides over a court of law, probably alludes to L ord C hiefJustice Scroggs, notorious for his harsh behavior tow ard the defendants in the early Pop­ ish Plot trials, although he had recently been treating them w ith greater leniency.44 Second, he replaces the biblical accusation th a t N ab o th had blasphem ed G od and the king w ith the particulars of the Popish Plot th at O ates claim ed to have learned from his espionage w o rk am ong the Jesuits. M alchus is show n before the court: Then he the Story o f his Plot at large Unfolds, and lays to guiltless N a b o th ’s charge, H o w w ith the A ram ites he did conspire, H is Country to invade, the City fire, The Temple to destroy, the King to kill, And the w h o le Realm w ith D esolation fill: H e told, h o w he him self the A g e n t w as, In close C onsults to bring these things to pass; N or did he fail w ith proper Circumstance Of Tim e, and Place, to garnish his R om ance.45

By introducing these allusions to the present, Caryll supplies the fam il­ iar biblical story w ith an im plicit context th a t transform s it into a m eta­ phor for P rotestant victim ization of English Catholics accused in the Popish Plot. Just as A hab, although possessed of a kingdom , is driven by covetousness of his neighbor’s pitiful inheritance to acquiesce in judi­ cial m urder in order to seize N a b o th ’s estate, so the Protestant m ajority, n ot content to leave in peace a small and oppressed Catholic m inority, had now resorted to the testim ony of false witnesses by w hich to deprive their neighbors of their lives and rem aining estates, b o th forfeited by their condem nation for treason. The story of N ab o th ’s vineyard thus be­ comes a parable in w hich the fam iliar biblical characters suggest groups am ong C aryll’s contem poraries, only his invented characters alluding to individuals. The tide of the Popish Plot h ad already turned w hen N a b o tb ’s Vinyard was published, an d Caryll w ould be released from the Tow er on bail in M ay 1680, a few weeks before the appearance of the second parallel, A b sa lo m ’s Conspiracy. By th a t time the Exclusion Crisis had been u surp­ ing public attention for nearly a year, and the duke of M onm outh, defy-

ing his father’s wishes, was seeking the public limelight by appearing at every opportunity in company w ith the W hig magnates, eager enough to exploit his popularity w ithout committing themselves to his designs on the Succession. It was in this atmosphere of M onm outh’s unofficial candidacy for a position that had not yet fallen vacant that an anonym ous Tory writer published Absalom 's Conspiracy; or, The Tragedy o f Treason on I July 1680. This prose broadside is cast as a lay serm on against the sin o f am bi­ tion, which begins by declaring th at “There is nothing so dangerous ei­ ther to Societies in General, o r to particular Persons, as Ambition; the Temptations of Sovereignty, and the glittering Lustre of a C row n, have been guilty of all the fearful Consequences that can be w ithin the compass of im agination.” After a paragraph developing this general theme, the w riter turns, in the tradition of such homilies, to a cautionary example from the Old Testament. Instances both Modern and Ancient of this, are innumerable; but this of Absa­ lom is a Tragedy w hose Antiquity and Truth, do equally recommend it as an Example to all Posterity, and a Caution to all M ankind, to take care how they imbarque in am bitious and unlawful Designs; and it is a particular Caveat to all young men, to beware o f such Counsellors, as the old A chitopbel, lest while they are tempted w ith the hopes o f a Crown, they hasten on their own Destiny, and come to an untimely End.46

The rem ainder of the broadside recounts the entire story of Absalom ’s rebellion, defeat, and death, closing in the u s u a l homiletic manner: “W hatsoever was w ritten aforetime, was w ritten for our instruction: For Holy M en of God, spake as they were moved by the H oly G host.” As was the case with N a b o tb 's Vinyard, however, A bsalom ’s Con­ spiracy introduces a minor discrepancy into the biblical account. In re­ lating how Absalom stole the hearts of the people, this w riter amplifies the young m an’s words to allude to the Petitioning M ovement of the previous winter: “He depraved [defamed] his Fathers Government; the King was careless, drow n’d in his Pleasures; the Counsellors were evil; no man regarded the Petitioners; Absalom said unto [those he met], See thy m atters are good and right, it is but reason th at you petition for; but there is no man that will hear thee from the King; there is no Justice to be found; your Petitions are rejected.” Like N a b o th ’s Vinyard, there­ fore, A bsalom ’s Conspiracy relies on its timeliness as well as a few de­ liberate discrepancies to alert the reader to the presence of an implicit parallel. These discrepancies are allusions to the present that in each case transform a story about the historical past into a m etaphor for current affairs.

A b sa lo m ’s Conspiracy in some respects recalls those thanksgiving ser­ mons in w hich th e preacher expounds the story of A bsalom ’s rebellion before accom m odating it to the R estoration. But this broadside invites an entirely different application, w hich is left to the readers to m ake for themselves, as in m ost political parallels.47 In both cases the latter p art of the biblical story is an im portant ingredient, but for completely different reasons. In the case of the thanksgiving sermons, it is the collapse o f an actual rebellion and D avid’s triu m p h an t return th a t provide the closest parallel to Charles’s restoration. In A b sa lo m ’s Conspiracy, on the other hand, the parallel w ith M o n m o u th ’s case is found only in the early p art of the story w here A bsalom “steals the hearts o f the people” before he takes up arm s against his father, w hile the shameful death of D avid’s son after openly rebelling offers M o nm outh a cautionary exam ple in hopes that he will desist before this becomes his ow n fate. It is A bsalom the seditionist, not A bsalom the traito r, w ho affords a parallel to M onm outh a t this stage in the developing political crisis, and it is he and his evil counselors, rather th an David, w ho now become the central figures of the story. In this earliest accom m odation of the A bsalom story to M o n m o u th ’s case, the anonym ous au th o r introduces tw o explicit exegeses of th e bibli­ cal text th a t are absent from previous applications of the story to C har­ les’s restoration, w here they w ould have been irrelevant. But once the fam iliar history was recycled as a parallel to the Exclusion Crisis, they became indispensable to this and every succeeding appearance of the story in T ory propaganda. M ost biblical com m entators on 2 Samuel believed th a t A bsalom ’s m other, M aachah, w as one of D avid’s wives, and th a t her son therefore enjoyed all the rights of inheritance denied to the offspring of D avid’s concubines.48 Hence they concluded th a t Absalom, as his father’s eldest surviving son after the death of Amnon, w as D avid’s heir both in law and in popular estim ation, and th a t his rebellion m ust be ascribed to im pa­ tience to enter into his lawful inheritance, n o t to any wish of supplanting the rightful heir.49 In th a t case, A bsalom ’s situation is n o t really analo­ gous to M o nm outh ’s at all. But the au th o r of A b sa lo m ’s Conspiracy of­ fers a diam etrically opposite conception of A bsalom ’s status and motives·. “A bsalom w as the th ird Son of D avid by M aacbah, the D aughter of Talmai, King of Geshur, w ho was one of D avid’s Concubines; he seeing his Title to the C row n upon the score of lawful Succession w ould n o t do, resolves to m ake good w h at w as defective in it, by open force, by dethron­ ing his F ath er.” The au th o r of a parallel of this kind is n o t free to alter a fam iliar historical episode a t will, w renching it to fit a m odern counter­ part, for this w ould be a tacit adm ission th at no genuine analogy can be

found in the original. But in the case of Absalom’s rebellion the biblical text does not contradict either of the tw o interpretations above. M aachah may be D avid’s wife or only his concubine, and Absalom may as easily be his heir as not, but the solution to these dilemmas cannot be found in 2 Samuel, where the events related are com patible w ith either interpreta­ tion, both of which are perfectly plausible.30 Yet since the reading of the text given in A bsalom ’s Conspiracy is the only one compatible with the Exclusion Crisis, this was to be the choice of ail subsequent Tory p ro p a­ gandists. In 2 Samuel, chapter 15, Absalom “stole the hearts of the men of Israel” and w ent to H ebron, taking w ith him tw o hundred men w ith the design of waging w ar against David. Only then did he send for Achitophel to come to him from Giloh. N o t surprisingly, therefore, most preachers, as we noticed in the last chapter, had assumed Absalom to be the instigator and head of the rebellion. But although in A bsalom ’s Conspiracy the re­ bellion is already under w ay before we meet “one Achitophel, an old M an of a Shrewd H ead, and discontented H eart,” the author argues that “ no doubt can be made, but he was of the Conspiracy before, by his ready joyning w ith Absalom so soon as the m atters were ripe for Execution,” and he ends by referring to “ Achitophel the Engineer of all this M ischief.” In the peroration, with its cautionary application of the scriptural exam ­ ple, Achitophel is frankly assumed to have been the instigator of the rebel­ lion. “Thus ended [Absalom’s] youthful and foolish Ambition, m aking him an Eternal M onum ent of Infamy, and an instance of the Justice of Divine Vengeance, and w hat will be the Conclusion of Ambition, T rea­ son and Conspiracy against Lawful Kings and Governours; A severe Ad­ m onition to all green Heads, to avoid the Temptations of grey Acbitopbels.” Once again the events related are com patible w ith either interpre­ tation, and at least one biblical com m entator favored the latter, declaring that Achitophel “ is thought to have been the A uthor, or, at least, the fomenter of this Rebellion.”51 In view of M onm outh’s marginal role in the Exclusion Crisis, the popularity of this latter interpretation among succeeding Tory propagandists was inevitable. Only a fortnight after A bsalom ’s Conspiracy appeared, A Letter to His Grace the D. o f M onm outh, published on 15 July, was applying to him once again the story of an am bitious young man seduced by “grey Achitophels” into joining them in the defam ation of his father. This pam phlet is a direct appeal to M onm outh to dissociate himself from the W hig mag­ nates w ho are encouraging his disobedience to his father. But in one of the last paragraphs the anonymous author resorts to biblical m etaphor to castigate the prom inent Whigs who had urged M onm outh to return from H olland and were now capitalizing on his popularity with the masses.

These are the M en, that w ould (with Joab) send for the W ise W om an, to perswade King D a v id to adm it o f a Return for A bsalom his Son; and . . . These are the M en, that w ould have advised A b sa lo m to make Chariots. . . . In short, these Principled M en were they that set on A b sa lo m to steal aw ay the Hearts of the People from the King; These are they that advised him to go to H ebron to pay his Vow; And These were the M en that led him into Actual Rebellion against his Father, and to be destroy’d by som e o f the very H ands that had assisted him in those pernicious C ouncels.52

As w ith A b s a lo m ’s C onspiracy, the earlier p a rt o f th e sto ry affords the parallel w ith M o n m o u th ’s p resent b ehavior, w hile th e ending offers him a w a rn in g to desist before this to o becom es his o w n case: A b salo m ’s later career show s h o w sedition leads insensibly to tre a so n , disobedience an d defiance precede op en rebellion, a n d d e stru c tio n inevitably follow s. I have n o t m en tio n ed the n am e o f S haftesbury in discussing these tw o applications o f the A bsalom story in th e sum m er o f 1 6 80, a n d fo r good reason. H e is never alluded to as an individual in either o f them , w here the rep eated use o f the p lu ra l— “ grey A ch ito p h els” or “these m e n ”— to de­ scribe A bsalom ’s seducers show s th a t the W hig m ag n ates as a g ro u p are intended. T his is co n sisten t w ith the p ractice o f all the a u th o rs o f T o ry pam p h lets an d bro ad sid es th ro u g h o u t the entire p e rio d o f th e E xclusion Crisis, fro m the spring o f 1679 to th a t of 1681. As early as 1679, M o n ­ m o u th w as being p o rtra y e d as a “ flexible P rin ce” w h o m all the W h ig leaders “ w o u ld w illingly h a v e ” to serve th e ir p u rp o se .53 A year later, in O c to b e r 1 6 8 0 , The Progress o f H o n e sty w o u ld ag ain describe h im as a gull ex p lo ited by th e entire W hig leadership. N o n e Favour’d m ore, nor none m ore Great than he, Till Hells curst Agents caus’d his Sense to stray, O ut o f his once lov’d Path, his Loyal W ay, And counsell’d him to disobey; Friendly to his Destruction him advise, That on his Ruine they m ight rise; And m ore the weakness of his Ύ outh to try, And swell his Illegitimate A m bition high, W ith hopes to gain a Crow n, W hich they (by right) knew ne’er could be his o w n .54

A nd a t the beginning o f 1681 a n o th e r T o ry p am p h leteer w o u ld describe M o n m o u th as “ d ra w n in by designing Politicians fo r ends o f th eir ow n , w ho never in tended him m ore th a n as an useful T o o l, a fte rw a rd s to be laid a sid e,” expressing the ho p e th a t he w o u ld so o n “q u it the C ounsels o f those m e n .” 55

As we would expect, Shaftesbury was a frequent target of Tory satirists throughout the Exclusion Crisis, but he was singled out from among the other Whig leaders chiefly in one respect. As early as 1679 he was being stigmatized as “a Politick Statesman, of body unsound,” who had con­ trived the Popish Plot hoax to further his own designs: Pretending a Plot, under which he doth Lurk, T o humble the Miter, while he squints at the Crown; Till fairly and squarely he pulls them both down.

For this purpose his tool was not M onmouth, of course, but Titus Oates: H e had found out an Instrument fit for the Devil; W hose mind had been train’d up to all that was evil: His Fortune sunk low , and detested by many; Kick’t out at St. O m ers, nor pitty’d by any.56

N ot until the early spring of 1681 brought new developments would Shaftesbury acquire a special relationship with Monmouth in the writings of Tory propagandists.

The king held out until the autumn of 1680, but at last he could delay the meeting of Parliament no longer. By now he was pressed for money with which to conduct his foreign affairs: an alliance with Spain concluded the previous summer, the refurbishing of the fleet, and the relief of Tangier, ceded to him under his marriage settlement with Portugal in 1661 but now besieged by the Moors. He sent his brother out of the way as he had done on the eve of the last session, and on 21 October, the day after the duke of York set off for Edinburgh, the king finally met his Parliament. His opening speech showed that he had decided to adopt new tactics to ward off Exclusion. Besides asking the members for supplies and repeat­ ing his promise to consider any expedients that would not alter the Suc­ cession, he urged them to pursue the further examination of the Plot and to that end expressed a wish “that the Lords in The Tower be brought to their speedy Trial, that Justice may be done.”57 This did not necessarily mean that he had decided to sacrifice the five Catholic peers to save his brother, since the death of William Bedloe the previous summer had re­ moved the necessary second witness against most of them, but it was certainly an attempt to divert Parliament from Exclusion into an impasse over the trials like that of May 1679. The Whigs, however, were not to be so easily distracted from what had now become their principal objective. O n 2 November, less than a fort­ night after the session had opened, the Commons debated and adopted a

m otion to bring in an Exclusion Bill, which passed its first reading tw o days later and its second in another tw o days. O n 9 N ovem ber the king m ade a last effort to divert them from their course, sending dow n a mes­ sage urging them again to expedite the prosecution of the Plot. By an unlucky accident, a new witness, Edw ard Turberville, appeared before the Com m ons the same day, im plicating one of the Catholic peers, Lord Stafford, against w hom Stephen D ugdale and the late Bedloe had testified long before. Irritated by the king’s attem pt to seize the center of the stage and his “im putatio n ,” in R ichard H am pden’s w ords, “th a t you are slack in prosecuting Popery and the P lot,” the members resolved to bring Staf­ ford to trial as soon as their present business was concluded, and voted an address to the king coolly rem inding him th a t if the trials had n o t yet taken place it was because o f his dissolution of the last parliam ent and his repeated prorogations of the present one.58 W ithout pausing further, the Com m ons on 11 N ovem ber passed the Exclusion Bill on its th ird reading w ithout a division and prom ptly sent it up to the H ouse of Lords. There on 15 N ovem ber, under the w atchful eye o f the king, it was debated and rejected on its first reading by a sizable m ajority of 63 to 30. W ith the defeat of the second Exclusion Bill three and a half weeks into the session, it was now in the W higs’ interest, for once, to see Parliam ent prorogued quickly so th a t a new bill could be introduced in the next session. Just as surely, it now seemed to be in the king’s interest to p ro ­ long the session, postponing as long as possible the inevitable renew al of their cam paign to exclude his brother from the throne. But the king figured w ithout the advantage a parliam entary session offered the Whigs as the best o f all public forums. As long as the session continued—and it was to drag on for nearly tw o m ore m onths— the Com m ons could “ expect n o t m uch good from Bills we are like to pass,” as R alph M ontagu rem inded them . Therefore, “ we have nothing left us but V otes.”59 And vote they did: resolutions, addresses to the king, im­ peachm ents, none of them requiring the concurrence o f the Lords and all o f them carrying an authority as official m otions by the Com m ons th a t no other propaganda could enjoy. W hen the king sent them a message the same day the Exclusion Bill was lost, requesting supplies for the relief of Tangier, they returned him an address on 27 N ovem ber rehearsing the long list of their com plaints in recent years, deploring the protection af­ forded the Catholics and “the D uke of Y orke, under whose C ountenance all the rest shelter them selves,” and inform ing him th a t they w ould have to find the nation “effectually secured from Popery” before they were prepared “to assist Y our M ajesty in Defence of Tangier.”60 They passed a resolution dem anding th a t Lord H alifax, w ho had led the debate against Exclusion in the Lords, be removed “ from his M ajesty’s Presence and Councils for ever,” w hich the king ignored.61 They voted impeach-

m erits of E dw ard Seym our, one of the leading opponents of Exclusion in the C om m ons, a n d of L ord Chief Justice Scroggs, the king’s chief su p ­ p o rte r in the courts, and the L ords, as expected, ignored them . A nd every vote w as preceded by angry speeches in w hich, as Sir N icholas C arew rem arked, “the burden of the Song is the Bill we lost in the Lords H o u se .” 62 But they avoided angering the L ords w ith fruitless recrim ina­ tions because they suspected, as W illiam Leveson G ow er observed, th a t “ if the Lords h ad been left to them selves, they w ould have passed this Bill as well as w e .”63 T he king w as their stum bling block. W hen he cam e d ow n to W estm inster on 15 D ecem ber and again asked for m oney for the relief of Tangier, repeating his prom ise “to concurr w ith you in any R em ­ edies w hich m ight consist w ith preserving the Succession o f the C row n in its due and legal C ourse o f D escent,” the C om m ons voted him an address on 20 D ecem ber th a t w as even m ore explicit.54 O nly the exclusion of the duke of Y ork w ould preserve the safety of the realm an d the security of the P ro testan t religion; first, then, let a bill “ be tendered to Y our M ajesty, in a parliam entary W ay, to disable the D uke of York from inheriting the C ro w n ” and let the king “ give Y our R oyal A ssent thereto. . . . These o u r hum ble Requests being obtained, we shall, on o u r Part, be ready to assist Y our M ajesty for the Preservation of T angier.”65 In the L ords the king’s latest speech w as the subject of an equally un­ w elcom e debate on 23 D ecem ber, for· the W higs w ere using the upper house as a forum for speeches as bold as those in the C om m ons, even if they were unable to carry votes against the duke of Y ork. Shaftesbury w as unusually outspoken on this occasion, a n d his speech w as published o n 31 D ecem ber as A Speech Lately M ade by a N o b le Peer o f the Realm . T he Lords ordered it b u rn t by the hangm an, but by this tim e the dam age w as done, an d Shaftesbury’s daring w ords w ere on public record: My Lords, 'Tis a very hard thing to say that we cannot trust the King; and that we have already been deceived so often, that we see plainly the apprehensions of Discontent in the People, is no Argument at C o u rt.. . . How the King hath behaved himself ever since the breaking out of [the Plot], the World knows; we have expected every hour that the Court should joyn with the Duke against us. . . . The Prorogations, the Dissolutions, the Cutting short of Parliaments, not suffering them to have time or opportunity to look into any thing, hath shew’d what reason we have to have confidence in this Court. . . . In the mean while where’s this Duke, that the King and both Houses have declared unanimously thus dangerous? Why he is in Scotland raising o f Forces upon the Terra firma, that can enter dry-foot upon us, without hazard of Winds or Seas, the very place he should be in to raise a party there, to be ready when from hence he shall have notice: So that this being the case, where is the trustl

"We all think the business is so ripe, that they have the G arrisons, the A rm s, the A m m un ition, the Seas and Souldiery all in their hands·, they w ant but one good Sum m e o f M on ey to set up, and C row n the W ork, and then they shall have no m ore need o f the People; and I believe w hether they are pleased or n o w ill be no great trouble to them. M y L ords, I hear o f a Bargain in the H ouse o f C om m on s, and an A ddress made to the King; but this I know , and m ust b o ld ly say it and plain ly, that the N ation is B etra y’d if upon any Terms w e part w ith our M on ey till w e are sure the K ing is ours; have w hat L a w s you w ill, and w hat C onditions you w ill, they will be of no use but w a st Paper before Easter, if the Court have M on ey to set up fo r P opery and A rb itra ry D esigns in the mean w hile.66

A m o n th earlier, resp o n d in g to the d e m a n d o f th e C o m m o n s, the L ords h ad b ro u g h t S tafford to W estm in ster H all o n 30 N o v em b er to u ndergo the first of the lo n g-aw aited trials o f the C atholic peers. It w as to last seven days, d u rin g w hich the bishops a b sen ted them selves according to custom . O n ce they tu rn e d th eir a tte n tio n fro m E xclusion to th e Popish Plot, alw ays th eir w e a k side, th e L ords grew as u n d ep en d ab le as th e C o m ­ m ons. W ith the king looking o n helplessly, they v o ted S taffo rd ’s c o n ­ dem n atio n by a m ajo rity o f 55 to 3 1 , alm o st the reverse o f th eir vote against E xclusion only three w eeks earlier. In the face of p o p u la r p a s­ sions, the king d a re d n o t intervene beyond the usual co m m u ta tio n o f a peer’s sentence fro m han g in g to beheading, a n d S tafford w e n t to his death on T o w e r H ill on 29 D ecem ber, vainly p ro te stin g his innocence to the last.67 By th is tim e th e L ords w ere deeply em broiled in a w hole new c h a p te r of th e P opish P lo t obligingly p ro v id e d th e m by Shaftesbury. R ealizing th a t endlessly rep eated stories o f th e E nglish Plot w ere beginning to pall and th a t O ates a n d the o th e r E nglish w itnesses co u ld n o t em b ro id er their accounts indefinitely, S haftesbury h a d sent his ag en t W illiam H eth erin g to n to Ireland in the spring o f 1680 to find w itnesses to an Irish P lot, the existence o f w hich he h a d dram atically revealed to the Privy C ouncil in M arch . In M a y the first o f these d isrep u tab le w itnesses h a d been b ro u g h t over to testify before the C ouncil, b u t the effect w as n o t as g rea t as S haftesbury h a d h o p e d for, a n d they h a d been sent back to Irelan d to aw ait the m eeting of P arliam en t.68 In S eptem ber, fo u rte en Irish w itnesses h ad a p p e are d in L o n d o n in e x p ectatio n o f th e a p p ro a c h in g session, an d S haftesbury w as n o w b ringing one after a n o th e r before th e L ords to tell their stories of a conspiracy to m assacre the Irish P ro testan ts. T he L ords listened w ith m o u n tin g ala rm an d o n 4 Ja n u a ry they passed a n d sent the C om m ons a reso lu tio n , in w hich they requested th eir concurrence, “ T h a t they do declare, T hey are fully satisfied, th a t there n o w is, an d fo r divers Y ears last p a s t th ere h a th been, a h o rrid a n d tre a so n ab le P lot an d C on-

spiracy, contrived and carried on by those o f the Popish Religion in Ire­ land, for m assacring the E nglish, a n d subverting the P ro testan t R eligion, a n d the ancient established G overnm ent o f th a t K ingdom .” 69 T he C om ­ m ons w ere happy to concur and to follow their vote w ith an o th er resolv­ ing to im peach the earl of T yrone, w ho had been im plicated by the Irish w itnesses. T here w as an om inous echo to this d ay ’s proceedings. T w o years e ar­ lier, on 31 O cto b er 1678, the tw o houses h a d concurred in a sim ilar reso­ lution attesting their belief in the English Plot, and the C om m ons, w ho h ad initiated the resolution on th a t occasion, h ad accom panied it w ith a vote the next day to im peach the first of the five C atholic peers, L ord A rundell o f W ardour. T he w hole cycle w as beginning again, b u t w ith a m enacing difference. T his tim e the C om m ons am ended the L ords’ resolu­ tio n w ith the ad d itio n o f alm ost the sam e w ords they had used in their ow n resolution on the eve of the first Exclusion Bill in A pril 1679: “A nd th a t the D uke o f Y o r k ’s being a Papist, a n d the E xpectation o f his com ing to the C row n, h a th given the greatest C ountenance and E ncouragem ent thereto, as well as to the h o rrid Popish Plot in this K in g d o m .” 70 T his tim e there w ould be no six-m onth delay in exploiting the new p lo t to hasten Exclusion. O nce the predictable w ave of hysteria h a d convulsed the n a ­ tion a t the new s o f this fresh conspiracy, the L ords m ight prove vulner­ able on w h a t had alw ays been their w eakest side. As Sir Francis W inningto n to ld the C om m ons during their debate on the resolution they h ad received from the upper house, “ If the L ords h ad sooner been of this opinion, it m ay be, w e h ad n o t lost o u r Bill.” 71 N e x t day, 7 Jan u ary , the C om m ons to o k up a m essage they h ad re­ ceived from the king three days earlier in w hich he had replied to their address o f 20 D ecem ber by reiterating his refusal to consider an Exclu­ sion Bill and again asking for supplies. T his occasioned the bitterest and m ost o u tspoken debate o f the entire session. “A rb itrary P ow er has been setting up ever since King Jam es’s tim e,” H en ry B ooth to ld the H ouse, “ and A rb itrary P ow er will be set up w ith Popery; and there is no m eans but this Bill of Exclusion, w ith o u t w hich, Popery a n d A rb itrary Pow er will be set up; and it is the m ore dangerous, because carried on so in the C o u rt, th a t one w ould th in k the King had a h a n d in it.” 72 In speeches such as this, and Shaftesbury’s to the L ords tw o weeks earlier, the long-stand­ ing circum locution o f attacking the k in g ’s evil counselors ra th e r th an his person w as gradually being ab an d o n ed , an d C harles him self sto o d ac­ cused as a w illing co llab o rato r w ith his b ro th e r in a design to establish absolute m onarchy on the French m odel in England. U nder the protection of parliam en tary privilege, the slogan “Popery a n d A rb itrary P o w er,” long associated w ith the prospect of a Popish Successor, w as being a p ­ plied to the present reign.

A t the conclusion o f this im p o rta n t debate, the C om m ons voted a se­ ries o f angry resolutions d en ouncing a n u m b er o f the k in g ’s su p p o rte rs by nam e; affirm ing “T h a t there is n o Security o r Safety for the P ro te sta n t R eligion, the K ing’s Life, o r th e w ell c o n stitu ted an d established G o v ern ­ m ent of th is K ingdom , w ith o u t passing a Bill fo r disabling Jam es D uke of Y ork to in h erit the Im perial C ro w n of E n gland a n d Ire la n d ” ; a n d firmly declaring “T h a t, until a Bill be Likewise passed for excluding the D uke o f Y o rk, this H o u se c a n n o t give a n y Supply to his M ajesty, w ith o u t D anger to his M a je sty ’s Person, extrem e H a z a rd o f the P ro te sta n t R eligion, and U nfaithfulness to th o se by w h o m th is H o u se is in tru s te d .” Finally, lest the king try to b o rro w m oney to relieve his financial straits, they resolved “T h a t w hosoever shall h ereafter lend, o r cause to be lent, by w a y o f A d ­ vance, any M o n ey , u p o n the B ranches o f the K in g ’s R evenue arisin g by C ustom s, Excise, or H e a rth -M o n ey , shall be judged to h in d er the Sitting of Parliam ents; a n d shall be responsible fo r the sam e in P a rlia m e n t.” 73 T he situ a tio n , w h ich h a d been w o rsen in g since 15 N o v em b er, w as now getting com pletely o u t o f h a n d . O n 10 J a n u a ry 1681 th e king cam e dow n to W estm in ster an d , using his n o w fam iliar tactic, p ro ro g u e d P a r­ liam ent to 20 Ja n u a ry , dissolving it a few days late r and o rd erin g elec­ tions fo r a new p a rliam e n t to m eet a t O x fo rd o n 21 M a rc h . O ne im p o rta n t co n sid eratio n in the king’s decision to dissolve the sec­ o n d E xclusion P arliam en t m ay have been recen t im provem ents in the m a ­ chinery of W h ig p ro p a g a n d a w hereby, u n d e r th e clo ak of p a rliam e n ta ry privilege, the d eliberations o f th e H o u se o f C om m ons w ere m o re easily carried bey o n d th e confines o f W estm in ster to th e n a tio n a t large. Early in 1680, an en terp risin g W hig bookseller h a d pu b lish ed the J o u r ­ nal of the H o u se of C o m m o n s fo r the first o f the p a rliam e n ta ry m eetings related here, th a t of 21 O c to b e r to 30 D ecem ber 1 6 7 8 .74 T his p ro v ed to be so p o p u la r th a t he soon follow ed it w ith the sam e jo u rn a l fo r th e first E xclusion P arliam en t of 6 M a rc h to 27 M a y 1 6 79.75 As a m eans o f p u b li­ cizing the activities carried o n inside St. S tephen’s C hapel, the Jo u rn a l of the H o u se of C o m m o n s h a d its lim itations, how ever. T h e reso lu tio n s, orders, a n d votes of the C om m ons w ere o f course included, as w ell as the m ore copious addresses o f th e H o u se to th e king, b u t n o t th e speeches an d debates o f th e m em bers, u n til th en the p rin cip al source o f p a rliam e n ta ry accusations a n d co m p lain ts against th e C ro w n . F u rth erm o re, the im m e­ diacy o f the daily sittings w as entirely lo st in publishing th eir rec o rd as a single retrospective volum e, a n d th en only a fte r an in terv al o f a year o r m ore. By the tim e th e second E xclusion P arliam en t m et in the a u tu m n of 1680, th e new m em bers of the low er house h a d obviously given som e co n sid eratio n to the second o f these d raw b ack s, a n d to the im p o rta n c e of ensuring the accuracy o f their rep o rted proceedings as well as th eir im m u-

nity from interruption by publishing them under their own authority. On 30 O ctober, only ten days after the opening of Parliament, the members of the Commons passed a resolution “T hat the Votes of this H ouse be printed, being first perused and signed by M r. Speaker: And that M r. Speaker nom inate and appoint the Persons to print the sam e.”76 From then until the dissolution of Parliam ent the following January, the votes, orders, and resolutions of the Commons, as well as their addresses of expostulation to the king and the articles o f impeachment against such royal supporters as Seymour and Scroggs, continued to appear daily as half-sheets that could be read by the public all over the kingdom w ithin a very short time of the events they related.77 It is probably a safe hypothesis th a t the excited rhetoric and m ounting frequency of votes, resolutions, and addresses to the king passed by the House of Commons after 15 Novem ber can be explained not simply by the anger of the members over the defeat of the Exclusion Bill in the Lords, but by their awareness that every maneuver was now being re­ ported to a national audience on a scale unprecedented since the begin­ ning of the Exclusion Crisis. It only remained to bring before the public the speeches of the members preceding these votes, n o t as single orations, as in the case of Shaftesbury’s speech of 23 December before the Lords, but in the context of the heated debates in which they had been offered. Early in 1681, after the dissolution of this parliam ent, the W hig book­ seller Richard Baldwin collected the speeches in all the most im portant debates in the Commons and published them in a single volume, indicat­ ing the speakers by their initials and including at the end a list of the members o f the House o f Commons that simplified the task of identifica­ tion.78 In several im portant respects, therefore, the second Exclusion Par­ liament had developed into a public forum for the Whigs on a far greater scale than either of its tw o predecessors, m aking its dissolution even more imperative to the court than the earlier ones had been. The Whigs, who had eagerly awaited a prorogation, were angered to find the prospect of a new session snatched from them by a dissolution, but they were not discouraged. Emboldened by their recent onslaught, they saw the king caught between the tw in prongs of popular clamor and financial need, unable to escape. Each new election would authorize them to carry their appeal to the country, each new parliam ent recall them to the public forum , each new dissolution drive the king deeper into an inde­ fensible position tow ard his subjects. M eanwhile, his financial plight would reinforce the pressure of public opinion. Unable to live w ithout Parliament and denied any relief when it met, he must ultimately give way and sacrifice his brother. In spite of W hig propaganda, therefore, portraying this as a time of national m ourning in which, if we are to believe England’s M ournful

Elegy for the Dissolving the Parliament, published on 21 January, the nation was overcome with grief, “Tears of Sorrow trickling from our Eyes, / Follow’d with Tempests of Heart-breaking sighs,” the Whig politi­ cians entered the new elections buoyed by hopes of increasing their mo­ mentum.79 The outcome itself was never in doubt, most of the same Whigs being elected as before, but their return to the hustings in February and M arch 1681 offered them an even better opportunity than the Peti­ tioning Movement the year before to create a mass movement that they could exploit as valuable propaganda. Each Whig victory at the polls was now accompanied by a public ceremony in which the electors presented the successful candidate with an address specifying the “particulars” he was expected to support in the new parliament and pledging “to stand by You with our Lives and Fortunes.” In return, the member made a speech in which he thanked the electors for their support and promised to carry out their mandate. This new mass movement, like the Petitioning Movement the previous winter, depended for its success on the existence of Whig newspapers to give national prominence to these local events. In December, through the connivance of the Whigs, Benjamin Harris had been released from the King’s Bench prison, and five days later the Protestant Domestick Intelli­ gence was again being offered for sale. The same day, 28 December, w it­ nessed the first appearance of Langley Curtis’s True Protestant Mercury, which would prove to be one of the most effective Whig newspapers and would continue to be published twice weekly for nearly two years. In another month, on I February 1681, Sm ith’s Protestant Intelligence, from the hands of the notorious antigovernment printer Francis “Ele­ phant” Smith, would join the growing ranks of Whig newspapers. These journalists made sure that the ceremonies at the polling places would not remain local events. From mid-February to mid-March, issue after issue of H arris’s Protestant Domestick Intelligence carried the news of these elections and printed the addresses, most of which included among their particulars the passing of an Exclusion Bill, while some car­ ried an instruction like that of the Essex electors to their knights of the shire “that You will not consent to the disposal of any of our Monies, till we are effectually secured against Popery and Arbitrary Power.”80 The lone exception reported by Harris, emphasizing its deviation from the norm, was a Tory victory at Cricklade, in Wiltshire, where the address omitted the usual particulars, substituting an instruction to the burgesses that they “endeavor the preservation of His Sacred Majesties Royal Pre­ rogative.”81 The third dissolution of a parliament in two years had hastened the process by which the issue of the king’s prerogative came to share equal attention with Exclusion in the mind of the public. The two Whig pam-

phlets that created the greatest stir in the weeks preceding the Oxford Parliament, significantly enough, were The Character o f a Popish Succes­ sor and Vox Populi; or, The Peoples Claim to Their Parliaments Sitting, to Redress Grievances, and Provide for the Common Safety, which di­ vided between them the two topics of most pressing importance in the late winter of 1681. The former repeated with greater urgency the now famil­ iar theme that Exclusion was the only practical means “to disable a Ty­ rant from wearing a Crown” in the next reign.82 The latter, addressing itself to the present reign, dismissed the claim that proroguing or dissolv­ ing parliaments “before Grievances were Redressed, and Publick Bills of Common Safety Passed” was “ a Priviledge, belonging to the Royal Pre­ rogative” by declaring that “Prerogative [cannot] be pleaded to Justify such Practices, because the King has no Prerogative, but what the Law gives him; and it can give none to destroy its self, and those it protects, but the contrary.” Indeed, “not to suffer Parliaments to sit to answer the great ends for which they were Instituted, is expressly contrary to the Common Law, and so consequently of the Law of God as well as the Law of N a­ ture, and thereby Violence is offered to the Government it self, and In­ fringement of the Peoples fundamental Rights and Liberties.”83 The king had overtaken the duke of York as a second target whom the T ories must cast about to defend in an unequal contest before the public. Small wonder that, in the face of this flood of Whig propaganda, sedi­ tion became a favorite topic of the anniversary preachers, mindful of their duty to discourage disobedience among the faithful. Thus, for his thanks­ giving sermon on 29 May 1680, Thomas Long had chosen to preach A Sermon against Murmuring, citing the dreadful fates of Corah, Absalom and Achitophel, and Shimei, and lamenting in the “Epistle Dedicatory” to his bishop how men were now grown so presumptuous that “they are not afraid to insinuate as if the King favoured the Plot, which hath been declared to be against His Majesties person, and the Established Religion. They quarrel the Succession, and would put by the true and undoubted Heir. They insinuate that His Majesty is no friend to Parliaments, and would Rule us by an Arbitrary power.”84 The following January, Samuel Crossman preached his martyrdom sermon for 1681 on the same topic, using as his examples Absalom, who “had perfectly learned this knack of popular wheedling,” and “Corah a very busie seditious Stickler,” and sending his congregation away with the assurance that “the Mercies we enjoy under our Government, they are many, even to the envy of other Nations. And oh that we did but understand our own Happiness! it might fairly silence our M urmurings.”85 On the same day, Francis Turner, preaching a martyrdom sermon before the king, used the occasion to de­ nounce “so many Absoloms and Shimeis and Shebas that have rebell’d and rail’d and blown the Trumpet of Sedition against their Kings.”86

This was the low tide of the Tories’ fortunes. In the face of a m ounting outcry against Popery and A rbitrary Power, their propaganda w as re­ duced to a feeble defense in w hich they were forced to evade Whig charges instead of answ ering them and to ad o p t a kind o f secular quietism. A typical expression of T ory low spirits in January appears in A Letter from a Citizen o f O xfo rd to a Citizen o f L ondon, concerning the D issolution o f the Parliament, whose au th o r weakly suggests, “I think it w ould be­ come us Citizens m uch better to m ind our Trades, and our Shops, then to meddle w ith State-affairs: For no doubt those a t the H elm know better w hat to do, then we can tell th em ”; expresses pained surprise th a t “You daily acquaint me w ith the Fears you are in of A rbitrary G overnm ent, and yet I cannot see w h at Reasons and G rounds you have for th em ”; and counsels “ a perfect Resignation and Subm ission.” 87 The same attitude appears in another T ory pam phlet of this period, A Letter from Scotland, Written Occasionally upon the Speech M ade by a N o b le Peer o f This Realm , w hich can find no better response to Shaftesbury’s aggressive speech in the Lords the previous m onth than to lam ent “such Reflections made w ith im punity upon the Kings Person and G overnm ent,” and to express the pious sentim ent th a t “the Calling, the Proroguing, and the Dissolving of Parliam ents, are so absolutely in the King, th a t they ought to be Riddles to a Subject.”88 Yet argum ents such as these unw ittingly reinforced W hig propaganda. A king w ho possesses “absolutely” the prerogative of acting from caprice as easily as from reasons o f state, and w hose actions are riddles to his subjects, is exercising arbitrary pow er in fact if n o t in nam e. The crucial issue th a t T ory propagandists needed to address if they were to exonerate the king from charges of despotism was n o t w hether he had a right to dissolve parliam ents but w hether his motive in exercising th a t prerogative so frequently w as to destroy the laws or to protect them . And until the king chose to reveal th a t motive in unam biguous term s, T ory p ro p ag an ­ dists were at a serious disadvantage in trying to defend him.

It is time to tu rn to D ryden’s activities during all this excitem ent and to consider w hat role, if any, he w as taking in the party propaganda I have discussed. T hroughout the period of the Popish Plot hysteria and the Ex­ clusion Crisis, from the autum n of 1678 to the beginning of 1681, Dryden was pursuing his career as a playw right, as he had been doing, alm ost exclusively, since 1667: producing plays for the stage, w riting dedications and prefaces to them w hen they were published, and com posing p ro ­ logues and epilogues both to his own plays and to those of his fellow dram atists. Between the outbreak of the Popish Plot hysteria and the end

of the Exclusion Crisis, he w rote tw o plays: Troilus and Cressida, p ro ­ duced in M arch or April 1679, during the early weeks of the first Exclu­ sion Parliament, and The Spanish Fryar, first perform ed in N ovem ber 1680, several weeks after the second Exclusion Parliam ent had com ­ menced.89 There have been various attem pts in recent years to find political con­ tent in these plays. O ne m ethod has been to single o u t the political issues discussed by the characters in the course of the play.90 These are n o t diffi­ cult to find, since, like m ost of D ryden’s serious plays w ritten at any pe­ riod of his career, Troilus and Cressida and The Spanish Fryar represent public events that inevitably involve political issues. But as Irvin Ehrenpreis has observed, In trying to decide whether the doctrines expressed in a play are those of Dryden or of his characters, one meets tantalizing difficulties. First, Dryden pro­ duces his allusions or doctrines spasmodically. Every now and then he breaks into a passage o f political implication, then returns simply to the action o f his play. W hat is worse, he sometimes gives his own doctrines to evil characters. For one cannot be sure, sim ply because a character is reprehensible, that he always quarrels with the playwright. Besides, Dryden simply enjoyed arguing on both sides of a question. He prided him self on his ability to defend a point of view which in fact he disagreed with. As a result, one hears characters speak­ ing very persuasively indeed for doctrines which the play invites us to resist.91

An alternative m ethod is to search for political meaning in the dram atic action of the plays rather than the speeches of the characters. Critics have been especially prone to look for overt political partisanship in The Span­ ish Fryar, encouraged by the fact th at its first perform ance took place during the turbulent fortnight in which the second Exclusion Bill passed through the House of Com m ons, only to be defeated in the upper house. The comic plot from which the play takes its title uses the figure of Father Dominick to ridicule Catholicism mercilessly. The serious plot of this tragicomedy set in Spain presents a kingdom in which the rightful ruler has been deposed and im prisoned, while a usurper, the daughter of the rebel w ho had ousted him, occupies the legitimate king’s throne. Believ­ ing she has succeeded in arranging the royal prisoner’s m urder, the queen marries Torrism ond, one of her generals, who subsequently learns to his horror that his wife’s supposed victim is his ow n father, and finds himself torn between the claims of justice and his love for the queen. Eventually, however, the king is discovered to be alive. H e is restored to his throne by universal acclam ation and the play ends in general forgiveness. The comic plot, deriding Catholicism at a time when the outcry over the Popish Plot was serving W hig interests, excited com m ent even in D ry­ den’s lifetime. In The Laureat, an attack on the poet published in 1687,

R obert G ould ch arg ed th a t he h ad w ritte n T he Spanish Fryar w hen the governm ent stopped p ay m en t on his pension, w hich led him to join the opposition for a w hile in disgust. That lost, the Visor chang’d, you turn about, And strait a True Blue Protestant crept out; The Fryar now w as writ: and som e w ill say They smell a M ale-content through all the Play. The Papist to o w as damn’d, unfit for Trust, C all’d Treacherous, Shameless, Profligate, Unjust, And Kingly Power thought Arbitrary Lust.92

T he ab su rd ity of this charge has been d e m o n stra ted repeatedly by D ryden’s biographers fro m M alone a n d Scott in th e n in eteen th century to Louis I. B redvold in o u r o w n .93 T he latest, a n d m o st interesting, a tte m p t to discover political signifi­ cance in th e d ram atic actio n of T h e Spanish Fryar, since it takes into account b o th the com ic and the serious plots, is th a t o f J u d ith M ilh o u s and R o b e rt D. H um e, w h o argue th a t the serious p lo t is “ a b lu n t and tim ely w arn in g against rebellion and u s u rp a tio n ,” w hile the com ic p lo t “ uses b la ta n t satire o n D om inic to dissociate th e T ories fro m C a th o li­ cism .” T hus “D ryden loudly reaffirm s legitim acy, w hile firm ly u n d erlin ­ ing his ‘P ro te sta n t’ loyalty.” T hey conclude, th erefo re, th a t “T he Spanish Fryar is a first-rate piece of T o ry p ro p a g a n d a , an d one cleverly calculated to resist W hig objections o r re in te rp re ta tio n .” 94 T his recognition th a t there is n o political inconsistency betw een D ryden’s tw o p lo ts is certainly a w elcom e one. B ut to call such a p lay “T o ry p ro p ag a n d a ” is to use b o th these term s so loosely th a t they becom e m ea n ­ ingless. W e have seen w h a t the ta sk o f T o ry p ro p ag an d ists w as in N o ­ vem ber 1 6 80, a n d h o w , in a beleaguered situ atio n , they a tte m p te d to carry it o u t by o p p osing the E xclusion Bill, a ttack in g its su p p o rters, an d defending th e royal policy. T h e topics M ilhous a n d H u m e identify in the tw o p lo ts o f T he Spanish Fryar, on the o th er h an d , are n o t issues th a t divided the tw o parties or w ere seriously q uestioned by either side. N o respectable W hig w rite r a t this tim e can be found espousing “ rebellion and u su rp a tio n ,” to say n o th in g o f a tte m p te d regicide, a n d w hen such ideas a p p e are d the follow ing year in Stephen C ollege’s Ra-ree S h o w a n d E dw ard F itz h a rris’s True E ng lish m a n , they w ere quickly den o u n ced as treaso n ab le by b o th p arties. Sim ilarly, an ti-C ath o lic sentim ents w ere af­ firm ed as w idely by T ories as by W higs, n o t only because they w ere eager to dissociate them selves fro m charges of com plicity w ith th e C atholics, b u t because they w ere genuinely susceptible to inherited religious p reju ­ dice. Some T o ry w riters, as we have seen, believed th e Popish Plot a h o a x contrived by Shaftesbury, a lth o u g h the official p o sitio n represented by

the king’s ow n speeches accepted it as a genuine conspiracy. But all T o ­ ries, practically w ith o u t exception, w h eth er o r n o t they believed in the Plot, shared w ith W higs the national hostility to w a rd the C atholic reli­ gion a n d its priesthood. Susan Staves has cau tioned th a t “it c a n n o t be stressed too often h o w frequently practical W higs an d p ractical T ories agreed on im p o rta n t issues, h o w ideology shifted w ith the new illum inations o f new c ir­ cum stances, a n d how fluid political alliances w ere th ro u g h o u t the R esto­ ra tio n .” As she observes, M ost W higs and m ost Tories protested their devotion to monarchy and to protestantism, abhorred the thought o f another civil war, considered the law a relevant curb on policy, and claimed that a study o f British history showed their position to rest on tradition and their opponents’ position to be an inno­ vation. Both sides tended to idealize a harmonious m ixed monarchy in which parliament respected the king’s prerogative and the king valued parliamentary counsel and respected parliamentary privilege. D ivision occurred when it was necessary to determine precisely w hat these prerogatives and privileges were.9’

W hen W hig w riters label the Tories the “ Popish P a rty ” a n d T ory w rit­ ers respond, as w e have seen, by equating W higs w ith biblical rebels, both g roups are using the hyperbole o f p a rty p ro p a g a n d a to stigm atize their op p o n en ts w ith those very images th a t b o th ab h o r. N o reasonable p a rti­ san for either side could be expected to equate deposing, im prisoning, and conspiring to m urder a king w ith the atte m p t in N o vem ber 1680 to pass into law , by p arliam en tary m eans, a change in th e Succession. O n the co n tra ry , D ryden gives every sign here of deliberately avoiding co n tro v e r­ sial topics th a t could have alienated any p a rt o f his audience, and of choosing to represent in his play those very aspects of b o th politics and religion th a t w ere least likely to give offense to the spectators. T here could have been few m em bers o f his audience w h o w o u ld have questioned those com m onplaces on the stage w hich they w ere accustom ed to h earing w ith ­ o u t p ro te st from the pulpit: th a t rebellion, u su rp atio n , and regicide were heinous crim es in the sight o f G od, a n d th a t the hypocrisy, lust, an d ve­ nality w idely credited to the C atholic clergy w ere a scourge from w hich the R efo rm atio n had m ercifully delivered them . But T h e Spanish Fryar is n o t a serm on, n o r even a thesis play, m uch less “a topical p a rtisa n d o c u ­ m e n t.” It takes for granted a system o f values th a t all m em bers o f the audience can be expected to share in despising D om inick, sym pathizing w ith T o rrism o n d ’s m oral dilem m a, and w elcom ing the rightful king’s res­ to ra tio n .96 As a professional m an of the theater, D ry d en ’s prim ary interest a t this tim e w as in ensuring the success o f his plays by appealing to all m em bers o f his prospective audience a n d by avoiding overt political p artisan sh ip

that w ould have alienated any considerable segment. Obviously, such neutrality implies nothing about D ryden’s private loyalty to the court in its struggle w ith Parliam ent, for it is based on pragm atic rath er than p o lit­ ical considerations. Indeed, the prologues and epilogues he was w riting at this same time for his ow n plays and for those of other dram atists confirm the impression th a t his political stance in the theater was tailored to those prejudices held in com m on by m ost of the audience. It is com m on practice in R estoration prologues and epilogues to allude to contem porary events of interest to the audience, and those w hich Dryden w rote during the excitem ent over the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis are no exception. M any, though not all of them , m ention the public events taking place during these m onths. By paying exclusive attention to a few of them and extracting certain lines from their context, it is possible to piece together ostensible evidence th at D ryden was openly expressing his own political sentiments in the theater at this time. But D ryden w rote some twenty-seven prologues and epilogues to his ow n plays and those of his fellow dram atists between the supposed discovery o f the Popish Plot and the end of 1682. In using them, it is essential to pay close attention to their chronology and to consider as well the audience for w hom each of them was w ritten. A pproxim ately half of these prologues and epilogues, those w ritten before early 1681 w ith w hich we are concerned here, are markedly different from the rem ainder, com posed after th a t tim e, w hich I shall consider in the next chapter. A nd th roughout these four years Dryden was w riting his contributions to the theater for tw o very different audiences. The m ajority were designed for regular perform ances o f plays during the season at one or the other of the tw o London theaters. But during the sum m er w hen the London theaters were closed, D ryden also wrote prologues and epilogues for special perform ances a t O xford before the members of the university. The prologues and epilogues th a t Dryden w rote before early 1681 dis­ play the usual characteristics of th a t m inor genre. R ather th a n being ei­ ther personal testam ents or political propaganda, they are addresses by one of the players to the audience, attem pting to w in their good will. They create in advance a favorable fram e of m ind am ong the spectators about to w atch the play, o r send them hom e afterw ard in a contented m ood, prepared to recom m end the play to their friends. D ryden employs a d ra­ matic voice in each of these prologues and epilogues th a t is adapted to its particular audience. For an academ ic audience at O xford, he adopts a hum orous tone tem pered by a subtle deference th a t is always gratifying to an assembly of scholars. A t D rury Lane or D orset G arden, he adopts a bantering tone tow ard his audience of Londoners, producing the kind of comic raillery th a t in the epilogue to his ow n Troilus and Cressida was appropriately spoken by Cave Underhill, w ho played Thersites. This

good-hum ored abuse h ad long been p a rt of the recognized c o n tra ct be­ tw een the players and the L ondon audience, am used w ith o u t being of­ fended by the expected b an ter, a n d w o n over by ro u g h cam araderie. The m ost com pendious method is to rail: W hich you so like, you think your selves ill us’d When in smart Prologues you are not abus’d. A civil Prologue is approv’d by no man; You hate it as you do a Civil w om an.97

AU D ry d en ’s prologues a n d epilogues before early 1681, how ever dif­ ferent the tone in w hich he solicits the audience a t O x fo rd or L o n d o n , aim a t the sam e objective: to create a b o n d o f m u tu al interest betw een players a n d spectators by exploiting a shared co n tem p t o r hostility to w a rd som e alien group. Before the university audience a t O x fo rd , th a t bedrock of allegiance to the religious a n d political establishm ent, D ryden’s p r o ­ logues in the sum m ers o f 1679 a n d 1680 express a m u tu al antagonism to w a rd dissenters from the E stablished C hurch, dissidents from the co u rt, an d p ro m o ters o f the Popish Plot hysteria th a t im plies a firm alliance betw een scholars an d players. But ’tis the Talent of our English N ation, Still to be Plotting som e N ew Reformation: And few years hence, if Anarchy goes on, Jack P resbyter shall here Erect his Throne. Then all you H eathen W its shall go to Pot, For disbelieving o f a Popish Plot.

This is a prospect as dreadful fo r the players as it is for their academ ic audience. “N o r sh o u ’d we scape the Sentence, to D e p a rt, / Ev’n in o u r first O riginal, A C a r t.” A ctors an d scholars w o u ld be com m on sufferers in a fate w here “ Religion, Learning, W it, w o u ’d be su p p re st.” T herefore they are n a tu ra l allies in opposing any change in church o r state: This is our com fort, none e’re cry’d us dow n, But w h o dislik’d both B ishop and a C ro w n .98

Back in L o n d o n , how ever, D ryden caters to very different sym pathies in his prologues a n d epilogues for the spectators a t D o rset G arden in these sam e years, 1679 and 1680. H ere the shared attitu d es th a t create a strong b o n d betw een the players and the L o n d o n audience are chiefly x en o p h o b ia and an ti-C atholic prejudice. When M urther’s out, w hat Vice can w e advance? Unless the new found Pois’ning Trick o f France:

And when their A rt of Rats-bane we have got,

By way of thanks, we’ll send ’em o’er our Plot." Poisoning is, in fact, endemic to foreigners, especially those w h o live in Catholic lands: They have a civil way in Italy By smelling a perfum e to m ake you dye, A Trick w ould m ake you lay your Snuff-box by. M u rd er’s a T rade— so know n and practis’d there, T hat ’tis Infallible as is the Chair— But m ark their Feasts, you shall behold such Pranks, The Pope says Grace, but ’tis the Devil gives T hanks.100

It w ould be a mistake to assume that these appeals to religious and national prejudice were attem pts to appease the W higs in particular. U n­ like the academic audiences at O xford— stable, fairly hom ogeneous, and widely recognized as Tory sympathizers— the audiences in London were a heterogeneous lot w h o w ould have included m any supporters o f both parties. In choosing to m ake com ic butts o f Catholics and foreigners and to appeal to the widespread agreement between both parties on the exis­ tence (though not necessarily the extent) o f the Popish Plot, Dryden iden­ tifies an alien group that is best calculated to prom ote a spurious feeling of cohesiveness am ong a diverse audience w h o, whatever their political differences am ong each other, can m omentarily join forces as Protestant Englishmen sharing a com m on prejudice. The dedications Dryden provided to his tw o plays o f this period show the same refusal to identify him self as a captive o f the Tories as long as he continued his career as a professional m an o f the theater. Earlier, in March 1678, in dedicating A ll fo r L o v e to Danby, he had show n no com ­ punction in parading his ow n political sympathies. A t a time when the king’s chief minister w as beset w ith difficulties created by the war w ith France and facing enemies at hom e w ho were determined to bring him down, Dryden warm ly defended him, supported his adm inistration, and assailed his opponents. Once the Popish Plot hysteria had broken out the follow ing autumn, however, Dryden appears to have been less willing to alienate a faction that, w ith far different issues at stake, n ow included a considerable part o f the nation, and consequently o f the audience in the theater. Troilus a n d Cressida, published in the autum n o f 1679 during the long interval between the first and second Exclusion Parliaments, w as dedi­ cated to the earl o f Sunderland, one of the principal secretaries o f state. A nephew by marriage o f Shaftesbury, with w hom he was on good terms, Sunderland also enjoyed the favor o f the king. At this tim e, in fact, he was

w idely regarded as a w ell-intentioned m ediator betw een the tw o parties, and this is the role in w hich D ryden presents him in his dedication, w here he declares “ th a t his principles w ere full of m o d eratio n , and all his C o u n ­ cils such as tended to heal and n o t to w iden the breaches of the N a tio n ,” th a t he w as “ chosen o u t in th e necessity and pressure of affairs, to rem edy o u r confusions by the seasonableness o f his advice, and to p u t a stop to o u r ruine, w hen w e w ere just row ling d o w n w a rd to the precipice.” Dryd e n ’s studied n eutrality here is suggested n o t only by his choice of this preem inent m oderate as the recipient of his dedication but by his reticence in assigning blam e for “ o u r co n fusions.” As a concerned bystander, he is satisfied to deplore “ the breaches of the N a tio n ” and to hope for an end to them : “the quiet o f the N a tio n m u st be secur’d; and a m utuall tru st, betw ixt Prince and people, be ren ew ’d: a n d th en this great and good m an [Sunderland] will have leisure for the o rnam ents of peace.” 101 In his dedication to T h e Spanish Fryar, D ryden carries his pose as an indifferent bystander exhibiting goodw ill to w a rd all parties to a p o in t w here he runs the danger of being m isunderstood. Published in the sec­ o n d w eek of M arch 1681, during the excitem ent created by the elections for the O x fo rd P arliam ent, T he Spanish Fryar is ostensibly dedicated to Jo h n H olies, L ord H au g h to n . This you th , w h o had only recently cele­ b rate d his nineteenth birthday, w as as yet an insignificant figure, h o w ­ ever, and in his final p a ra g ra p h D ryden reveals th a t he has chosen the young m an as the occasion for praising his family. ’Tis difficult to write justly on any thing, but almost impossible in Praise. I shall therefore wave so nice a subject; and onely tell you, that in recommending a Protestant Play to a Protestant Patron, as I doe my self an H onour, so I do your N oble Family a right, w ho have been alwaies eminent in the support and favour o f our Religion and Liberties. And if the promises o f your Youth, your Educa­ tion at hom e, and your Experience abroad, deceive me not, the Principles you have embrac’d are such as will no way degenerate from your Ancestors, but refresh their memory in the minds of all true Enghsh-men, and renew their lustre in your Person; which, M y Lord, is not more the wish than it is the constant expectation o f your Lordship’s M o st obedient, faithfull Servant, John Dryden.102

W ho w ere the m em bers of this noble fam ily of H olies w ho h a d been “ alw aies em inent in the su p p o rt and favour of o u r R eligion and L iber­ ties?” T he p a triarc h of the fam ily w as Denzil H olies, still rem em bered today as one o f the five m em bers w hom C harles I tried to arrest on the floor of the H ouse o f C om m ons in Ja n u ary 1642 on the eve o f the first Civil W ar. R aised to the peerage after the R estoration, L ord H olies w as instrum ental in helping to organize an o p p osition am ong the m em bers of the u p p er cham ber, an d it w as at his house in early 1674 th a t Shaftesbury and his fellow peers held the m eetings a t w hich they began to form ulate

a concerted policy against the a d m in istra tio n .103 L ord H olies died in Feb­ ruary 1680, b u t as his last public action he w as one of seventeen W hig peers, including S haftesbury, w h o led off the great Petitioning M o v em en t in D ecem ber 1679 by calling on the king to allow P arliam en t to m eet to redress the n a tio n ’s grievances, ju st as, som e fo rty years earlier, he h a d sup p o rted the G ra n d R em o n stran ce to the k in g ’s fa th e r.104 This p a rtin g shot earned H olies a final resting place in a T o ry broadside p u blished the day after his d eath , w here he ro u n d s o u t a satiric gallery o f Shaftesbury and the o th er W hig leaders: A nd last, b eh old in T rium ph to their F ollies, In N o /’s o w n C oach o f State, com es L oyal H ollis, W h o sold the Father by an old C om m ission , A nd purchases the Son w ith a P etitio n . 105

T he second m em ber of the fam ily, D enzil’s son a n d heir, Sir Francis H olies, w as elected to his fa th e r’s old seat in the H o u se o f C om m ons in the spring o f 1679 and w as p ro m p tly m ark ed d o w n by Shaftesbury on his fam ous list o f “ w o rth y ” a n d “h o n e st” m en on w h o m he could depend in the a p p ro ach in g session.100 H is hopes w ere n o t m isplaced. In M ay 1 6 79, Sir Francis H olies voted fo r the first Exclusion Bill.107 But for dedicated service to the W hig cause carried o u t in the lim elight, no o th er m em ber of this noble fam ily co u ld equal L o rd H a u g h to n ’s fa­ ther, G ilbert H olies, earl o f C lare. H e to o h a d been one o f the signers, along w ith his uncle D enzil, o f the p e titio n to the king in D ecem ber 1679, and, as a W hig p a m p h le t im m ediately m ade public, w as one o f a sm aller num ber o f peers w h o presented it in p erso n to C harles II.108 O n 30 Ju n e 1680, L ord C lare w as one of nineteen W hig leaders, including Shaftes­ bury, w ho ap p eared before the g ran d jury o f M id d lesex a n d sou g h t to have the duke o f Y ork indicted as a Popish recusant. T he a tte m p t failed, b u t it w as w ell publicized in a W hig broadside giving the nam es o f those w ho h ad tak e n p a r t.10? L ord C lare w as n o t a m an to m ake a secret o f his political sym pathies. In the g rea t debate in th e H o u se o f L ords on 15 N ovem ber 1680, he n o t only v o ted for E xclusion b u t w as one of a sm aller num ber of W hig peers, S haftesbury am ong them , w ho signed a p ro te st against the rejection o f the bill, th u s ensuring th a t th eir su p p o rt o f the second E xclusion Bill w o u ld be m ade a m a tte r o f p ublic re c o rd .110 M o st recently, L ord C lare h a d been one o f sixteen W hig peers, again including Shaftesbury, w h o on 25 Ja n u a ry 1681 signed a p etitio n calling on the king to allow th e a p p ro ach in g p a rliam e n t to m eet a t W estm in ster rath e r th an a t O x fo rd , “w here neith er L ords n o r C om m ons can be in safety, but will be daily exposed to the Sw ords of th e Papists a n d th eir ad h eren ts, o f w h o m to m any have c re p t in to Y our M ajesties G u a rd s .” T he king ignored this p ro v o catio n , b u t again a W hig broadside im m ediately a p ­ p eared, listing the nam es o f the signers.111

That parliament, where the Whigs were expected to make their third attempt to pass an Exclusion Bill, was about to meet at Oxford on the twenty-first of the month when Dryden’s play and its dedication went on sale in the second week of M arch 1681. We can easily believe that Dryden esteemed the Holies family on personal grounds and that he may have been obliged to them for favors he wished to repay. But in deciding at this moment to single out for public praise their “support and favour of our Religion and Liberties” and to express the hope that the young Lord Haughton would embrace their principles, he carried his public stance as a playwright indifferent to party divisions to a point where it must have raised doubts in some minds about the image of neutrality he was appar­ ently cultivating. These doubts would have been compounded by the manner in which his new play was publicized. At the time of the Exclusion Crisis, books reflecting support for either party were normally offered for sale in a newspaper sharing the same political sympathies. Jacob Tonson chose to advertise The Spanish Fryar not in the London Gazette, which was carry­ ing book advertisements regularly at this time, but in Langley Curtis’s stridently Whig newspaper, the True Protestant Mercury, where in the following year would be advertised such angry Whig rejoinders to Dryden as Azaria and Hushai, The Medal Revers’d, and Absalom Senior. The issue of the True Protestant Mercury for 12 M arch 1681 carried adver­ tisements for only two books: Dryden’s Protestant play and the second edition of Henry Care’s History o f the Damnable Popish Plot, the popu­ lar Whig answer to Roger L’Estrange’s Tory History o f the Plot. This is a curious incident that has not previously attracted comment, and it would be a mistake to make too much of it, or to consider it in isolation from Dryden’s other dedications. In the span of exactly three years, he had dedicated plays to three individuals who either alone or in company with their families covered the entire political spectrum: Danby in March 1678, before the beginning of the crisis, Sunderland in the au­ tumn of 1679, and the scion of the Holies family in March 1681.112 This is simply further evidence of Dryden’s public stance throughout the hys­ teria over the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis as a playwright who solicited the approbation of the public for his theatrical productions by expressing good will to all parties while deploring the confusions in the nation created by their differences. His temporary withdrawal from the theater after The Spanish Fryar appeared, just at the time the political tide was about to turn, marked a critical change in his career, and when he returned to the stage at the end of November 1682 with The D uke o f Guise, it would be as a Tory propagandist who had been actively engaged on the side of the court for over a year, but in the different medium of poetry.

This w as n o com fort to the T ories, how ever, in the bleak w inter o f 1680-81. A t the low tide o f their fortunes, w hen they w ould have w el­ comed su p p o rt, and indeed from the very beginning o f the political crisis two and a h alf years earlier, D ryden had n o t been at th eir side to en co u r­ age them . But W hig hopes and T ory discouragem ent a t the tim e of elec­ tions for the O x fo rd Parliam ent w ere b o th m isplaced. Events w ere a b o u t to take a tu rn th a t the pro p ag an d ists o n neither side could foresee in January a n d F ebruary 1681. T he app ro ach in g p arliam en t a n d its a b ru p t demise w o u ld m ark a final stage in the history of the E xclusion Crisis as crucial as the beginning of the crisis produced by the dissolution of P arlia­ m ent in the sum m er of 1679. T his tim e, how ever, the initiative w ould come from the king ra th e r th an his antagonists.

Chapter 3 THE NATION’S SAVIOR

H E SAM E C O N SID E R A T IO N S from w hich the W higs drew fresh hope in early 1681 could only convince the king a n d his advisers th a t he m ust bring a h alt to the cycle o f sum m oning, p ro ­ roguing, and dissolving parliam ents in w hich, as recent experience proved, his positio n w as rapidly deteriorating. H e m ust find the m eans of dispensing w ith parliam ents, ab an d o n his delaying tactics, and overcom e his inertia. M a tte rs h ad reached a critical stage in w hich his only hope for escape lay in finding w ays of relieving both kinds o f pressure— financial a n d p o p u lar— responsible fo r his present plight.

T

T he easier o f these tw o tasks w as to find relief from his financial straits. T he C om m ons h ad alw ays been ham pered in applying to C harles their tra d itio n al m eans o f influencing the executive th ro u g h their right to orig­ inate m oney bills. In the era of good feeling follow ing the R estoration, Parliam ent h ad ensured th a t the k ing’s o rd in ary revenue w ould be largely independent of its control. T he C onvention P arliam en t in 1660 h ad aw ard ed him the yield from the custom s and excise fo r life, and tw o years later the C avalier P arliam ent h ad voted him the revenue from the h e a rth ta x in perpetuity. T h an k s to th e financial reform s in tro d u ced by D an b y as lord treasu rer, the king’s incom e from these principal sources of his reve­ nue h a d been doubled since the m id-lfiyO s.1 H is expenses had usually been g reat an d he h a d been forced again a n d again to tu rn to P arliam ent for ad d itio n al revenues nom inally intended fo r his foreign policy b u t som etim es, as had happened a t the tim e of the first D isb an d m en t Act, diverted to o ther purposes. Recently, how ever, he had been practicing econom ies, and £ 1 0 0 ,0 0 0 a year to supplem ent his ordinary revenues w o u ld spell the difference betw een financial independence a n d reliance on P arliam ent w ith w h o m his credit w as exhausted. T he solution w as a French subsidy of the kind D anby had been caught trying to negotiate in 1678. This h ad its dangers, as his disgraced m inister could testify, b ut C harles could n o t afford to be squeam ish a t this juncture, and the re­ source he w as n o w again considering had already proved successful in the past. A subsidy of £ 1 0 0 ,0 0 0 from the king o f France h ad provided him w ith a fifteen-m onth respite from P arliam ent betw een N ovem ber 1675

and F ebruary 1677. N o w , in J a n u a ry an d F ebruary 1681, he n eg otiated w ith B arrillon, the F rench am b a ssa d o r, fo r a n o th e r a n d larger subsidy from Louis X IV th a t w o u ld give him a n indefinite term o f freedom from Parliam ent. Louis w elcom ed the p ro sp ect o f being able to carry on his foreign policy w ith o u t fear o f English interference, a n d th e only differ­ ences needing to be w o rk e d o u t concerned th e size o f C h a rle s’s a n n u a l allow ance. "Well before P arliam en t m et in M a rc h , the k ing w as assured o f a French subsidy a lth o u g h its term s w ere n o t yet settled, a n d the day a fter it opened he con clu d ed the secret verbal agreem ent w ith B arrillon w hereby he w o u ld receive a generous allow ance over the n e x t th re e years in re tu rn for n o t allow ing P arliam en t to m eet. Seldom c a n a beneficiary have been m o re eager to carry o u t th e d o n o r’s conditions. R ecent histo rian s have been practically u n an im o u s in reg ard in g this arran g em en t as the decisive event freeing C harles fro m any fu rth e r need to call parliam en ts. In this view , the O x fo rd P arliam en t, sum m oned be­ fore the conclusion o f the F rench tre a ty , h a d becom e a n a n a ch ro n ism by the tim e it m et, forcing th e king to p ro d u ce the sem blance of a session before dissolving it at th e earliest op p o rtu n ity . But depriving th e W higs o f the public fo ru m offered them by p a rliam e n ta ry sessions w as no longer an adeq u ate so lu tio n to th e k in g ’s difficulties. W hig p ro p a g a n d a h a d by now achieved sufficient m o m en tu m , a n d p o p u la r excitem ent a critical stage, in w h ich th e king could n o t ag a in ignore public o p in io n w hile he stubbornly lived w ith o u t P arliam en t as he h a d fo u n d it possible to d o betw een M ay 1 6 7 9 a n d O c to b e r 1680. It w o u ld be fruitless fo r C harles to relieve his financial pressure if he did n o t find the m eans of reducing p o p u lar pressure as w ell. H e could n o w m anage to live w ith o u t P arlia­ m ent only if he found it possible to live w ith his people. T h e C ro w n ’s course, once it h a d solved its financial difficulties, m u st be to tu rn a t once to the ta sk o f reducing p o p u la r fears an d resto rin g public calm . T h e French subsidy w as a necessary b u t n o t a sufficient c o n d itio n for the king’s dispensing w ith P arliam ent. In sum m oning a new p a rliam e n t in m id -Jan u ary before he could be sure o f th e subsidy fro m Louis X IV , C harles m ay have been acting from recent h a b it w ith o u t having perfected his plans. But he h a d no reaso n to d o u b t th a t th e rep eated prom ises m ade by th e late C om m ons to vote him no m oney w ith o u t E xclusion w ere every b it as firm as his o w n prom ises to them never to assent to the sam e. H e also h a d n o rea so n to expect the new elections to change the co m p o sitio n o f the C om m ons, n o r to be su r­ prised w h en they re tu rn ed a n o th e r m assive W hig m ajority. F rom the very outset, th erefo re, he could have been sw ayed by neither o f his tw o m o ­ tives fo r su m m oning the earlier p arliam ents: th e ho p e of o b tain in g su p ­ plies an d the slim p ro sp e c t of a m ore am enable H o u se o f C om m ons. In any case, once the French subsidy a n d the W hig m ajo rity in the n ew C om -

m ons became practical certainties by early M arch, his obvious course, if he now regretted having summoned Parliam ent and could have ignored public opinion w ith impunity, w ould have been to prorogue it in advance of its opening, and to continue to prorogue it thereafter as he had done in 1679 and 1680. Instead, he allowed Parliam ent to meet at the earliest opportunity: 21 M arch, the date originally set for its opening. This strongly suggests that at some time over the preceding weeks the king had settled on a goal more am bitious than a financial bargain, and had de­ cided on adopting a new policy in which the O xford Parliam ent could be used to his advantage. Charles’s policy since 1678 had been one of dissim ulation in w hich he had adopted a posture of good will tow ard Parliam ent th a t a t times was alm ost fawning, while yielding as little as possible. This had served him well enough as a delaying tactic, and while he expressed eagerness to prosecute the Plot, protect the Protestant religion, and consider any expe­ dients short of surrendering his prerogative and altering the Succession, he had made sure th a t Parliam ent accomplished little. But it was a tactic th a t no longer deceived his antagonists and had begun to dishearten his supporters. The Whigs saw through his professions of good will, and Shaftesbury spoke for many of them w hen he told the Lords th a t “we cannot trust the King. ” M eanwhile 'his posture was perceived as w eak­ ness by his supporters throughout the country, badly disorganized, in­ creasingly discouraged, and driven back to a defensive position that seemed about to crumble. They desperately needed effective leadership from the court and something more than a defensive policy if they were to avoid im m inent defeat. The au th o r of a Tory poem , The Country-mans Complaint, and Advice to the King, published on 9 February while the Whigs were sweeping to victory at the polls, spoke for m any adherents of the court w hen he bitterly com plained o f the state of the nation in these unhappy times: “Poor Land! whose Folly to swift Ruine tends, / Despis’d by Foes, unaided by its Friends.” The poem ends w ith an appeal “To the King” that is openly critical of C harles’s failure to bestir himself and p ro ­ vide his supporters w ith the leadership they had a right to expect from him: Arise, O thou once M ighty Charles, arise, Dispel those mists that cloud thy piercing Eyes; Read o ’re thy M artyr’d Father’s Tragick Story, Learn by his Murder, different w ays to glory. H ow fatal ’tis, by him is understood, To yield to Subjects, when they thirst for Blood, And cloak their black designs with Publick G ood. As thou art God-like by thy Pity, show

T hat th o u art God-like by thy Justice too: Lest we should count thy greatest Vertue, Vice, And call thy M ercy, servile Cowardise. O f old, when daring Giants skal’d the Skie, The King of Gods ne’re laid his T hunder by, T o hear Addresses for their Property. But quell’d H is Rebels by a stroke Divine, And left exam ple how to deal w ith Thine.1 C o m p la in ts o f th is k in d d o n o t su g g est t h a t th e k in g ’s s u p p o rte rs w e re w a v erin g , b u t th a t th e y w e re im p a tie n tly a w a itin g a sig n a l to ta k e th e offensive. P ro p a g a n d is ts c a n o n ly be effectively e m p lo y e d as s u p p o rtin g fo rces, n o t as a d v a n c e b a tta lio n s ; it is n o t th e ir b u sin ess to m a k e p o licy b u t to ju stify it. C le a rly th e k in g m u s t e x e rt h im se lf a n d ta k e th e in itia tiv e if he w a s to ra lly his s u p p o rte rs a n d la u n c h th e p ro p a g a n d a e ffo rt n ec es­ sary fo r d isp e n sin g w ith P a rlia m e n t. F o r th is p u rp o s e , th e O x fo r d P a rlia ­ m e n t w o u ld serv e as a b rie f d ra m a tic p e rfo rm a n c e in w h ic h th e k in g co u ld a p p e a r in a n e w ro le w h ile th e W h ig s u n w ittin g ly c o o p e ra te d by p lay in g th e ir c u s to m a ry p a rts .

T h e p e rfo rm a n c e o p e n e d in th e G e o m e try S ch o o l o n M o n d a y , 2 1 M a rc h , w ith a sp ee ch by th e k in g . In its su b s ta n c e , th is sp eech c o u ld n o t be e x ­ p ec te d to d iffe r m u c h fro m h is e a rlie r o n es. O n c e a g a in h e a s k e d fo r s u p ­ plies w ith w h ic h to c e m e n t h is fo re ig n a llian ce s, re c o m m e n d e d “ th e fu r­ th e r P ro s e c u tio n o f th e P lo t, th e T ry a ll o f th e L o rd s in th e T o w e r ,” a n d w a rn e d th e m t h a t “ w h a t I h a v e fo rm e rly , a n d so o fte n D e c la re d , to u c h in g th e S u ccessio n , I c a n n o t D e p a rt fr o m ,” b u t p ro fe sse d h im se lf “ re a d y to h e a rk e n to a n y su c h E x p e d ie n t, by w h ic h th e R e lig io n m ig h t be p re se rv ’d, a n d th e M o n a r c h y n o t D e s tro y ’d . ” N e v e rth e le ss, its aggressive to n e m a rk e d a s h a rp d e p a rtu re fro m th e c o n c ilia to ry , a lm o st o b se q u io u s sp eech w ith w h ic h h e h a d o p e n e d P a rlia m e n t th e p re v io u s O c to b e r. F ro m th e o u ts e t h e a d o p te d a n a c c u s a to ry m a n n e r in w h ic h h e tu rn e d his o p p o ­ n e n ts ’ ch a rg e s b a c k u p o n them selves: The unw arrantable Proceedings o f the last H ouse of C om m ons, were the occa­ sion of M y parting w ith the last Parliam ent; for I, w ho will never use A rbitrary Governm ent M y Self, am resolv’d no t to suffer it in O thers: I am unwilling to m ention Particulars, because I am desirous to forget faults; but whosoever shall calmly Consider, w hat Offers I have formerly made, and w hat Assurances I renew ’d to the last Parliam ent . . . and shall then reflect upon the strange u n ­ suitable R eturns m ade to such Propositions, by M en th at were call’d together

to Consult; perhaps may w onder more, that I had patience so long, then that at last I grew weary o f Their Proceedings. I have thought it necessary to say thus much to You, That I may not have any new O ccasion given M e to remember more o f the late Miscarriages.

H aving issued this clear w arning in the tone o f one w hose patience is nearly exhausted, the king m ade a p o in t of m entioning three “ late m iscar­ riages” th a t the new C om m ons w o u ld be well advised to avoid repeating; I w ould have you likewise be Convinc’d, that neither Your Liberties nor Properties can subsist long, when the just Rights and Prerogatives of the Crown are invaded, or the H onour o f the Government brought low and into D is­ reputation. . . . . . . And that the just Care, You ought to have o f Religion, be not so m anag’d and improv’d into unnecessary Fears, as to be made a pretence for changing the foundations o f the Government. . . . . . . I m ust needs desire you, not to lay so much weight upon any One Expe­ dient against Popery, as to determine that all Other are ineffectual.

Finally, having given notice th a t he w o u ld tolerate n o fu rth er encroach­ m ents on his prerogative, seditious encouragem ent o f public fears, o r bills of E xclusion, the king w ent on to “conclude w ith this O ne Advice to you, T h a t the Rules a n d M easures o f all your V otes, m ay be the K now n and E stablish’d Laws of the Land, w hich neither can, n o r o u g h t to be de­ p arted from , n o r chang’d, b u t by A ct of Parliam ent; A nd I m ay the m ore reasonably R equire, T h a t you m ake the Laws of the L and y our Rule, because I am resolv’d they shall be M in e . ”3 H e w as alluding o f course to the behavior o f the late H ouse o f C om m ons in substituting “ v o tes”— resolutions and addresses— for the bills they despaired o f seeing approved by th e L ords a n d th e king. T his opening speech w as im m ediately p rinted at the Sheldonian T heatre n e x t d o o r an d given to the public. T he scene no w shifted to C onvocation H ouse, w here, after several days spent in choosing a speaker and atten d in g to o ther prelim inary business, the C om m ons proceeded im m ediately to ignore the k in g ’s w arnings and to behave in their usual m anner. O n T h u rsd ay they passed a resolution “ T h a t the Votes a n d Proceedings of this H ouse be printed; A nd th a t the C are of the P rinting thereof, and the A p p o intm ent o f the Printers, be com ­ m itted to M r. Speaker.”4 As h ad proved so successful a tactic d uring the m eeting o f the previous parliam ent, the votes, orders, an d resolutions o f the C om m ons im m ediately began to ap p e ar daily as half-sheets p ublished under p arliam entary privilege by Langley C urtis in L ondon and dissem ­ inated th ro u g h o u t the k in g d o m .5 O n Friday the C om m ons turned its a tte n tio n to “ F itzharris’s P lo t,” a new ch ap ter to the Popish Plot teem ing w ith possibilities o f reviving “ un-

necessary fe a rs” a n d fu rth e r im plicating the duke o f Y ork. E d w ard Fitzharris, a n Irish a d v e n tu rer w ho h a d tried his luck w ith b o th p arties, had recently been arre ste d as the a u th o r o f a treaso n o u s libel against the king. In hopes o f saving his life, he offered to reveal n ew an d sp ectacu lar details of the Plot. Up to no w , th e king h a d been sufficiently in tim id ated by p u b ­ lic reaction to th e Plot to g ra n t im m unity to th e w itnesses, ro utinely offer­ ing them p a rd o n s a t the req u est of P arliam ent. T his tim e, how ever, strengthened by his m ore aggressive m ood, he refused a p a rd o n to Fitzharris and o rd ered him com m itted to the T o w er to a w a it in d ictm en t fo r his libel. A m id outcries th a t the Plot w as being stifled, th e C om m ons p ro ­ ceeded to im peach F itzharris so th a t his case co u ld be tra n sfe rre d fro m the king’s co u rts to P arliam ent, w here he m ight be given am ple o p p o rtu n ity to provide the public w ith new details of the Popish conspiracy. O n S aturday, the C om m ons w ere ready to d ebate E xclusion a n d to listen to the expedients they h a d been prom ised as a n alternative. In the event, the T ories h a d n o th in g to suggest b u t a regency d u rin g th e n ex t reign in w hich Jam es’s d a u g h te r M a ry w o u ld rule in his nam e. T his sug­ gestion w as quickly dism issed a n d th e C om m ons agreed w ith o u t a divi­ sion to bring in a th ird E xclusion Bill. In th e a fte rn o o n they learn ed th a t the L ords h ad refused to p ro ceed u p o n th eir im peachm ent of F itzharris, deciding to leave him to the k in g ’s co u rts. In fu riated by this m essage, the C om m ons plunged h eadlong into a new c o n fro n ta tio n w ith th e u p p er house, v o ting a series o f resolutions charging the H o u se of L ords w ith “ a D enial o f Justice, a n d a V io latio n o f th e C o n stitu tio n o f P a rlia m e n ts.” 6 T he king n o w h a d the cue he h a d been aw aiting from the C om m ons to bring the perfo rm an ce to a sp ectacu lar close. T he w ell-know n d issim ula­ tions by w hich he staged his surprise— setting w o rk m en to p rep a re larger q u arters for th e C o m m o n s in th e Sheldonian T h e a tre , com ing d o w n to the L ords o n M o n d a y m o rn in g in his street clothes w hile his ro b es o f state were sm uggled in behind him — all testify to his in te n tio n o f p ro d u cin g a coup de th ea tre to highlight his n ew role. T he C o m m o n s barely h a d tim e to pass the first reading o f th e E xclusion Bill before they w ere sum m oned to the G eom etry School to hear the king ord er: “ T h a t all the W o rld m ay see to w h a t a P o in t w e are com e, th a t we are n o t like to have a good End, w hen th e D ivisions a t th e B eginning are such: T herefore, m y L o rd C h a n ­ cellor, do as I have c o m m an d ed y o u .” W h e re u p o n H eneage Finch stepped fo rw a rd a n d declared: “ T h a t it is H is M a je sty ’s R oyal Pleasure and W ill, th a t this P arliam en t be dissolved: A nd this P arliam en t is d is­ solved.” 7 T he sh o w h a d been closed after a w eek’s ru n , b u t n o t before it had achieved its purpose: “ T h a t all th e W o rld m ay see to w h a t a P o in t w e are com e. ”8 N o th in g rem ain ed b u t to follow this c u rta in scene w ith a n epilogue soliciting the audience’s a p p ro b a tio n . T he king h u rried back to L o n d o n

and set about choosing am ong several versions of an appeal to the nation prepared for his use. The longest o f these had been w ritten by D anby, w ho had more time on his hands than other courtiers, but the king se­ lected a shorter version from the pen of Francis N o rth , chief justice of the C om m on Pleas, w hich he issued on 8 April, less than a fortnight after he had dissolved Parliam ent, as His Majesties Declaration to AU His Loving Subjects, Touching the Causes and Reasons T hat M oved H im to Dissolve the T w o Last Parliaments. It was “published by His M ajesties C om ­ m and” and ordered to be read “in all Churches and Chappels throughout this K ingdom ,” an unusual measure testifying to the great im portance attached to it by the king, and ensuring th at the m axim um num ber of his subjects should read or listen to it. His Majesties Declaration is a brief, cogent pam phlet, which in the space of ten pages presents the king as a m an whose patience has been exhausted by the unjust, arbitrary actions of a H ouse of Com m ons to w hom blame m ust be solely im puted for the breakdow n of the process by which the government o f the country norm ally operates: It was with exceeding great trouble, that "We were brought to the D issolving of the T w o Last Parliaments, w ithout m ore benefit to Our People by the Calling o f them: But having done Our part, in giving so many opportunities o f provid­ ing for their G ood, it cannot be justly imputed to Us, that the Success hath not answered Our Expectation. We cannot at this time but take notice of the particular Causes o f Our D is­ satisfaction, which at the beginning of the last Parliament, W e did recommend to their care to avoid, and expected We should have had no new Cause to remember them.

In reciting now a bill of particulars enum erating the “m ost unsuitable Returns from the H ouse of C om m ons” during the second Exclusion Par­ liament, the pam phlet skillfully concentrates on the angry votes they had been reduced to passing after the Exclusion Bill was rejected by the Lords: “Addresses, in the nature of Rem onstrances, rather than of Answers; Ar­ bitrary O rders for taking O ur Subjects into Custody, for M atters th a t had no relation to Priviledges of Parliament; Strange illegal Votes, declaring divers eminent Persons to be enemies to the King and Kingdom, w ithout any O rder or Process of Law, any hearing of their Defence, or any Proof so much as offer’d against them .” The pam phlet singles out, and quotes in full, those resolutions in which the Commons had behaved m ost intemperately: the tw o aimed at preventing the king from borrow ing against his ordinary revenue, “not onely exposing Us to all Dangers th a t might hap­ pen either at home, or abroad; but endeavouring to deprive Us of the Possibility of Supporting the Governm ent it self, and to reduce Us to a more helpless Condition then the meanest of O ur Subjects” ; and another,

passed in the closing m om ents of the session, w hich denounced the prose­ cution of Protestant Dissenters under the Elizabethan Penal Laws, “ by which Vote, w ithout any regard to the Laws establish’d, they assumed to themselves a Power of Suspending Acts of P arliam ent.” “These,” the pam phlet declares, “w ere some of the unw arrantable Proceedings of th a t H ouse of Com m ons, w hich were the occasion of O ur parting w ith th at Parliam ent. W hich We had no sooner D issolv’d, but We caus’d another to be forthw ith Assembled at Oxford·, at the O pening of which, W e thought it necessary to give Them w arning of the E rrors of the former, in hopes to have prevented the like M iscarriages.” In showing that the new H ouse of C om m ons had immediately plunged into the same errors against w hich he had cautioned them , the king naturally turns to the Exclusion Bill. But he carefully avoids being draw n into argum ents over the legality o f altering the Succession. Instead he merely rem inds his subjects of his repeated declarations th a t Exclusion “w as a Point, th a t in O ur O w n Royal Judgm ent, so nearly concern’d Us both in H onour, Ju s­ tice, and Conscience, th a t We could never consent to it”; w arns of the catastrophe he foresees from such an act, in light of which “We cannot, after the sad Experience W e have had of the late Civil W ars, th a t M u r­ der’d O ur Father of Blessed M em ory, and ru in ’d the M onarchy, consent to a Law, th a t shall establish another m ost U nnatural W a r” ; and suggests that Exclusion was not, in any case, the ultim ate objective of the Com ­ mons, but only the first step in altering the constitution: “A nd We have reason to believe, by w h at pass’d in the last Parliam ent a t W estm inster, that if We could have been brought to give O u r C onsent to a Bill of Exclu­ sion, the Intent was, n o t to rest there, b u t to pass further, and to attem pt some other G reat and Im portant Changes even in Present.” The pam phlet then quotes in full the resolutions the Com m ons had voted against the Lords for refusing to act on Fitzharris’s im peachm ent, and w idens the division between the tw o houses by declaring th a t “certainly the H ouse of Peers did themselves Right in refusing to give countenance to such a P ro­ ceeding.” This action of the C om m ons, the king concludes, had p u t “the tw o Houses o u t o f capacity of transacting business together,” so th at, w ith “every day’s continuance being like to produce new Instances of further H eat and Anger between the tw o H ouses . . . We found it neces­ sary to p u t an end to this Parliam ent likew ise.” After this recital of the reasons justifying the recent dissolution, the pam phlet now alludes to the charges th a t the king intends to rule w ith o u t Parliament, characterizing them as seditious rum ors spread by those w ho are m otivated by a hatred of m onarchy or by self-interest. But notw ithstanding all this, let n ot the restless M alice of ill M en, w ho are labouring to poyson Our People, som e out o f fondness o f their Old Beloved Com m onwealth-Principles, and som e out o f anger at their being disappointed

in the particular Designs they had for the accomplishment of their ow n Ambi­ tion and Greatness, perswade any o f Our Good Subjects, that W e intend to lay aside the use o f Parliaments. . . . . . . We are Resolved, by the Blessing o f God, to have frequent Parliaments; and both in and out o f Parliament, to use Our utmost Endeavours to extirpate Popery, and to Redress all the Grievances of Our good Subjects, and in all things to Govern according to the Laws o f the Kingdom.

T he king’s p e ro ratio n skillfully picks up the strands scattered earlier in the pam phlet— the C om m ons’ cham pioning of the D issenters in defiance o f the law , the rem inder of the Civil W ars and the m artyrdom of his father, the “ O ld Beloved C om m onw ealth-Principies” o f his op p o n en ts— to present him self as the cham pion of church and state w ho has rescued his subjects from the brink of an o th er n ational catastro p h e like the one m any of them still rem em bered w ith dismay. And We hope that a little time will so far open the Eyes of all Our good Sub­ jects, that Our next m eeting in Parliament, shall perfect all that Settlement and Peace which shall be found wanting either in Church or State. To which, as W e shall Contribute Our utmost Endeavours, so W e assure Our Self, That We shall be Assisted therein by the Loyalty and good Affections of all those w ho consider the Rise and Progress o f the late Troubles and Confu­ sions, and desire to preserve their Countrey from a Relapse. And w ho cannot but remember, That Religion, Liberty and Property were all lost and gone, when the M onarchy was shaken off, and could never be reviv’d till that was restored.’

This appeal to the tw enty tu rb u len t years preceding the R estoration, artfully dissem inated th ro u g h o u t the king’s D eclaration and reiterated at its close, w as an effective tactic. It struck a responsive chord in the hearts of m any Englishm en w ho still retained an instinctive loyalty to their king, w hile appealing to those very fears for “religion, liberty an d p ro p e rty ” on w hich the W higs h ad been capitalizing recently, b u t w hich found their deepest roots in the m em ory o f the Civil W ars and C om m onw ealth. T he R estoration Settlem ent w as ab o u t to come undone, a n d the same king w ho had m ade th a t settlem ent possible w as now appealing to his subjects to help repair it. T o Englishm en w ho h ad reached m iddle age, the king’s rem inder of “the Rise an d Progress of the late T roubles and C onfusions,” follow ing hard on his recital o f such “ u n w arran tab le Proceedings” o f the H ouse o f C om m ons a t W estm inster as “Addresses, in the natu re of R em on­ strances,” “ A rbitrary O rders for taking O u r Subjects into C u sto d y ,” and “Strange illegal V otes,” w ould have recalled above all 1641, the year w hen the Long Parliam ent im peached the king’s advisers and passed the

G rand R em onstrance; w h en they in tim id ated C harles I in to assenting on the sam e day to the bill o f a tta in d e r ag ain st Strafford a n d the bill against the dissolution o f P arliam ent depriving him o f his ancient prerogative; and w hen they began passing ordinances into law w ith o u t the k in g ’s c o n ­ currence. In suggesting th a t history w as repeating itself, the k ing’s D eclaration was no t, o f course, tak in g a new line. T he a n n u a l recurrence all over the kingdom o f serm ons co m m em orating the m arty rd o m o f C harles I an d the resto ratio n o f his son h ad long ensured th a t, sh o u ld the occasion arise, these rem inders o f “ th e late tro u b les an d confusions” could be applied to a c u rren t emergency. T he tim e w as n o w a t h a n d , a n d fo r several years the preachers o f anniversary serm ons h ad exploited th e o p p o rtu n ity , w hile propagandists h ad follow ed th eir lead in draw ing m ore explicit parallels betw een past an d present, arguing th a t to d a y ’s W higs w ere y esterday’s com m onw ealth m en, a n d noting, in the w o rd s o f a poem o f F eb ru ary 1680, “h o w far those D ism al Tim es a n d o u rs ag re e .” 10 By the end o f 1680, a W hig pam p h leteer w as com plaining bitterly th a t “it h a th been all the C lam o u r o f late, Forty o n e , Forty one, is n o w com ing to be acted over again. . . . These are th e daily an d w eekly Cries of several P am phleteers, to am use the Loyal Subjects o f H is M ajesty.” 11 T h e real in n o v atio n o f H is M ajesties D eclaration lies n o t in its skillful use o f th is already fam iliar them e b u t in its in tro d u c tio n of tw o fresh tactics. The first w as its p o rtray al o f the H o u se of C om m ons as the real culprit. M ost earlier governm ent p ro p a g a n d a , published in 1679 an d 1680 d u r­ ing the long interval w ith o u t a p arliam en t, h a d laid stress o n the private schem ing o f dissidents in te n t on reviving “th eir o ld beloved C o m m o n ­ w ealth ,” an d h ad placed the scene of th eir activities in “ C lubs, a n d C of­ fee-houses,” as one p am p h let declared, “T averns, a n d o th e r publick H o u ses.” 12 By laying exclusive em phasis on the o b strep ero u s behavior of the C om m ons over th e p a st few m o n th s, the k ing’s D eclaration tra n s ­ form ed the principal scene o f sedition to St. S tephen’s C hapel and, m ore recently, C onvocation H ouse. T he guilty p a rty in this a tte m p t to “shake off the m o n a rc h y ” w as the H ouse of C om m ons, regarded as a co rp o ra te body w hose c h a ra c te r a n d behavior w ere those o f its m ajority, ignoring such faithful su p p o rte rs o f the king as Jenkins, Seym our, a n d H yde, w hose n um bers h ad been to o sm all to challenge a division on m ost m o ­ tions. In c o n tra st, the H ouse of L ords em erged in the king’s D eclaration as a loyal body in w hich the presence o f Shaftesbury, M o n m o u th , Essex, and o th er p ro m in e n t W higs w a s ignored in considering only th e c h arac­ teristic m o tio n s passed by its m ajo rity o f bishops a n d courtiers. T o ry propagandists w o u ld so o n follow the k in g ’s lead, casting the H ouse o f C om m ons as a defen d an t th a t m u st stand trial in the public press, having concealed its guilt for to o long by deflecting a tte n tio n to the king a n d

charging him w ith its ow n crim es of a rb itra ry governm ent. W ithin six w eeks the M iddlesex grand jury, th a t body o f sta lw a rt W higs chosen by Sheriffs Bethel an d C ornish, w as bitterly com plaining of “endeavours to m ake breaches betw een H is M ajesty and th e C om m ons o f E ngland in P arliam ent by Printed Papers and otherw ise, to bring the C om m ons in P arliam ent in to the h atred and co n tem p t o f the N a tio n .” 13 Second, in citing th e behavior of the C om m ons over the p ast few m o n th s as “ p ro o f” th a t the revival of p a st m isfortunes h ad been im m i­ nen t, His M ajesties D eclaration buttressed these conclusions w ith the king’s ow n authority. For too long a tim e, it had been possible for the W higs to argue th a t the king w as being m isled by his m inisters, th a t he failed to perceive the dangerous designs of the c o u rt p arty , and th a t he m u st eventually cast them aside and agree to E xclusion. But the king had no w spoken, identifying his ow n policy w ith th a t of his m inisters, and disclosing th a t it w as his subjects w h o h ad been m isled by their com m on enemy. M o re perceptive th an m any o f his subjects, the king, in this view , had d raw n back o n the brink to w hich his rebellious C om m ons h ad pushed him . H e h a d exercised his prerogative o f p ro ro g u in g a n d dissolving p a r ­ liam ents n o t arbitrarily an d despotically b u t for deliberate reasons of state in ord er to pro tect the law s from those w ho w ould have used P arlia­ m ent to destroy them . H is D eclaration gave fair w arn in g th a t w hile he ho p ed to have frequent parliam ents in the future, he w o u ld never again to lerate such a H ouse of C om m ons as he h ad endured in recent sessions. H is subjects h ad no w ay of know ing th a t his reign w o u ld end fo u r years later w ith o u t his ever m eeting a n o th e r parliam ent, but it could h ardly have escaped their notice th a t w hereas he h ad follow ed each of the previ­ ous dissolutions by sum m oning a new parliam en t w ith in a few days a n d ordering elections for it, this tim e he h a d o m itted doing so. Instead, he h ad expressed a “hope th a t a little tim e will so far open th e Eyes of all O u r good Subjects” as to send him a H ouse o f C om m ons w ith w hich he could w ork in h arm ony to redress the n a tio n ’s real, rath e r th a n its pretended, grievances. H e, n o t his opponents, w o u ld set the term s on w hich any future parliam ents w ould m eet, and the tim e th a t m u st elapse before their m eeting w o u ld be determ ined by the interval necessary fo r his subjects to open th eir eyes to the real dangers co n fro n tin g them .

T he W hig propagandists failed to perceive th a t H is M ajesties D eclaration h ad altered the situation by carrying an appeal directly from the king to the nation, an d by casting the H ouse o f C om m ons as the culprit w hich h a d previously escaped detection by accusing C harles of its ow n crim es.

Assuming th a t they still held the offensive, the W higs responded to the Declaration by rehearsing the old charges of arbitrary pow er, now grow n stale by repetition. A L etter from a Person o f Q uality to H is Friend con­ cerning His M ajesties Late Declaration com plained th at it hath long been the advice of som e o f the W isest and Ablest o f the Popish and Arbitrary Party, that the King should call frequent, short and useless Parlia­ ments, until the Gentry, weary o f the great expence, o f so many fruitless Jour­ neys and Elections, should sit at hom e, and trouble them selves no more, and leave the People expos’d to the practices of them and their Party; w h o if they carry one H ouse o f Com m ons for their turn, will in few M onths do the N ations business for ever; and make us slaves and Papists by a Law.14

A Just and M odest Vindication o f the Proceedings o f the T w o L ast Parlia­ ments., on the other hand, openly doubted the king’s prom ise to call fre­ quent parliam ents in the future, pointing o u t th a t “he h ath nevertheless been prevailed upon to Dissolve four in the space of 26 M onths w ithout making provision by their advice suitable to our dangers and w ants. ” 1S Both pam phlets assum ed—rightly, in fact— th a t the king’s Declaration had been w ritten for him by one of his advisers, b u t drew the specious inference from this th a t he w as n o t to be identified w ith the sentiments in it th a t they were attacking. “ ’Tis rath er some base FavVites Vile Pretence, /T o Tyrannize at the w rong’d King’s Expence,” as a W hig versifier sug­ gested ten days after th e Declaration appeared.16 To some degree this w as a circum locution com m on am ong W hig p am ­ phleteers, w ho did n o t enjoy the protection of parliam entary privilege; but it was also, as we have noticed, a W hig propaganda tactic th a t in the past had allow ed them to attract support by holding out the hope th at under popular pressure the king w ould eventually come round. The fic­ tion, expressed both in the press and in votes by the Com m ons, th a t in his speeches and messages to Parliam ent the king w as a figurehead echoing the w ords of his advisers had already w orn thin and been underm ined by some of the franker speeches of the Whigs in both houses of Parliam ent. But after H is M ajesties Declaration appeared, attem pts to question the king’s ow n position were no longer credible. A nother sign th a t the W higs failed to perceive the change in the situa­ tion was their ill-fated attem p t to launch a second Petitioning M ovem ent calling on the king to sum m on a new parliam ent fo r w hich, according to a W hig broadside published on 30 M arch, “all England weeps, and doth in Sack-cloath G ro an .” 17 T o publicize this fresh cam paign they w ould again require the assistance of W hig new spapers, but it was unluckily at just this juncture in m id-April th a t both H arris’s Protestant D om estick Intelligence and S m ith ’s Protestant Intelligence succum bed to govern­ ment pressure. H arris had been returned to prison on orders of the Privy

Council in February, and once again, after tw o m onths in the King’s Bench, he found it impossible to continue publishing his newspaper. Francis Smith was im prisoned by the Privy Council in April, but immedi­ ately released on the condition, reluctantly accepted, of discontinuing his new spaper at once. Nevertheless, Langley C urtis’s True Protestant M er­ cury continued to appear and was joined, tow ard the end of April, by Richard Janew ay’s Im partial Protestant M ercury, both w ould m anage to survive until 1682. They would be needed to publicize another mass movem ent like that of the electors’ addresses to their members during the elections in February and M arch. These were now collected and p u b ­ lished on 13 April, less than a week after the king’s Declaration, as Vox Patriae; or, The Resentm ents and Indignation o f the Free-born Subjects o f England against Popery, Arbitrary G overnm ent, the D uke o f York, or A n y Popish Successor.18 The book came as a forceful rem inder of the popular m andate behind the “miscarriages” of the Comm ons during the O xford Parliament, and was probably tim ed as a counterblast to His Majesties Declaration th a t could signal the opening of another mass movement. Tw o weeks later, on 28 April, Richard Baldwin, as he had done when the previous parliam ent at W estm inster was dissolved, col­ lected and published the debates in the House of Com m ons a t O xford, again indicating the speakers by their initials, and supplying the evidence for a Whig defence of the proceedings of the late parliam ent against the king’s recent charges.19 But the Whigs had failed to reckon w ith the king’s new policy of firm­ ness. He was no longer prepared, in the words of The Country-m ans Complaint, “to hear Addresses for their Property” while he “laid his Thunder by.”20 W hen, in the middle of M ay, they succeeded in getting from the London Com m on Council a petition calling for a new p arlia­ ment, w ith w hich they hoped to lead off their new cam paign, th a t longreliable source of support passed the petition by a slim m ajority of four­ teen votes. And w hen the lord m ayor, sheriffs, and alderm en presented it to the king at H am pton C ourt, he ordered the lord chancellor to deliver them his answer in a scathing speech reproving them for “medling w ith Matters o f State and G overnm ent, Things which do in no sort appertain to you, but are quite out of your Sphere,” telling them th at “you are n o t the Comm on-councel of the N ation, and yet you behave your selves so, as if you thought you w ere,” and ordering them roughly to “ Study to be quiet and to do your ow n Business.”21 This rude rebuff was quickly p u b ­ lished by the king’s printers on 24 M ay to give public notice of the kind of reception any further petitioners could expect from him. It was scarcely surprising th a t after such a reception very few wished to risk the king’s displeasure further, and the new petitioning movem ent foundered a few

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days after launching. The tide of W hig p ropaganda was already running out while the Tories had been at w ork for the past m onth exploiting the advantage given them by H is M ajesties Declaration.

The basis of th a t advantage was the attitude of strengthened resolution the king had show n in dissolving the O xford Parliam ent and announcing w hat am ounted to a new policy in his Declaration. But an episode th a t took place during the session a t O xford a few days before the dissolution heralded the king’s new stance th a t w as destined to play so im portant a p art in Tory propaganda for the rem ainder o f the year. It is best to read it in the version given to the public shortly afterw ard by a Tory pam phlet ironically called The E. o f Shaftsburyys E xpedient fo r Setling the Elation. The 24th of M arch, the great Patriot, and next under G od and Dr. O ates, the supreme Saviour and D efender o f the N ation , the Earl o f Shaftsbury receiv’d, or pretended that he receiv’d a Letter written in an unknow n H and, containing an Expedient for the setling and com posing the Differences between the King and Parliam ent. W ith this he m ade a great noise, . . . bustling about as fast as his leggs, and m an, and stick, could carry him. . . . The little Lord very busy, and desirous to speak w ith the King, w as told by the Earl of Feversham , t h a t . . . he w ould conduct him to H is Majesty. . . . W ell, he is brought to the K ing, and there broach’d. The Letter o f Expedients is produc’d; and w hat do you think w as this grand Secret of securing our Peace and Religion, but a Proposal for the settling the C rown on the Duke o f M o n ­ m o u th ? The K. surpriz’d, told the Earl, that he w onder’d that after so many Declarations to the contrary, he should press him upon that Subject, . . . That his M ajesty w as none o f those that grew m ore tim orous w ith age, but that rather he grew the more resolute the nearer he w as to his grave. At that w ord the Loyal Earl was m ightily concern’d, and cry’d out that it chill’d his blood to hear o f such an expression; Telling the K ing h ow earnest the w hole N ation w as for H is Preservation.

The king’s rejoinder to this was a stern speech in w hich he brushed aside Shaftesbury’s expressions of concern for his safety and declared th a t “ I intend to take a greater care o f my O w n Preservation, and in th a t of my Peoples, than any of You all th a t pretend to so m uch concern for the Security of my Person. And yet as careful as I am of my O w n Preserva­ tion: Yet I w ould m uch sooner lose this Life, of w hich you pretend to be so w atchful Preservers, than ever p art w ith any of my Prerogative, or betray this Place, the Laws, or the Religion, or alter the true Succession of the Crow n, it being repugnant both to Conscience and Law .” The pam -

p h let concludes by observing th a t the king spoke on this occasion “ w ith so m uch R esolution and C ourage, as gave the greatest assurance and en­ couragem ent to all the Loyal L ords in the H o u se, a n d all honest Subjects th a t could be; b u t to th e Factious, the g reatest C onfusion im ag in ab le.”22 It is easy to und erstan d w hy this episode, of no great im portance in itself, should have been eagerly tak en up by the T o ry pro p ag an d ists. M ade public im m ediately after the king’s dissolution o f the O xford P arliam ent, his private speech to Shaftesbury in the G eom etry School epitom ized the new im age o f the king th a t w o u ld be the keystone o f the approaching T o ry offensive: a m o n arch w h o “ grew the m ore resolute the nearer he w as to his g rav e,” w ho prom ised to take a greater care o f his ow n preservation and th a t o f his people, an d w ho w as p rep ared to sacrifice his life, if necessary, to safeguard his prerogative and the true Succession. If it w as the king’s response th a t m ade this episode im m ediately useful to the T ory publicists, S haftesbury’s p ro p o sal for settling the crow n on M o n m o u th w as to have an equally im p o rta n t effect on their pro p ag a n d a . F or the first tim e since the beginning o f the Exclusion Crisis, the chief W hig m agnate h ad personally associated him self w ith the d u k e’s asp ira­ tio n s to th e cro w n and h ad publicly com e fo rw ard as his p a tro n . For Shaftesbury this m ay have been no m ore th a n a tem p o rary expedient, a m eans of p robing and testing th e king’s resolution tw o days before the th ird E xclusion Bill w as in troduced. But his action created in the m ind of the public an indelible association betw een the king’s form er counselor an d his disobedient son th a t the T ory pro p ag an d ists w ould n o t hesitate to exploit. T he first satire casting Shaftesbury in his new role as M o n m o u th ’s evil genius w as a poem , T he D e liq u iu m , published on 8 A pril, the day on w hich H is M ajesties D eclaration w as issued. T his is a d ream vision, a p o p u la r vehicle fo r T o ry satire a t the tim e, w hich is set in H ell, w here a devil reports to Lucifer h o w he and C apricio (Shaftesbury) conspired to destroy the English state. W ith this half Fiend I many Consults had, And w e at last this Resolution made: A lm a n z o f s due Succession to oppose, Among his many unprovoked Foes: We chose young M arcion, not for any love, But to undo the Youth, as time will prove: Poor easie Prince, he little thinks that we Prostitute this his weak Credulity T o our ow n use, to Anarchize the State, And hasten his too soon intended Fate.23

In another dream vision published on 30 April, Poor Robins Dream, or The Visions o f Hell, Shaftesbury’s long-standing role in T ory propaganda as the contriver of the Popish Plot hoax is joined to his new role as M o n ­ m outh’s evil genius. The ghost of Israel Tonge, w ho had died the previous December, tells the ghost o f W illiam Bedloe: T on y w as the cause o f my D am nation, It w as his malice that enflam’d the N ation. T w a s H e, under pretence o f doing good , That squeez’d poor Innocents, and broacht their bloud. ’Twas H e that made H is G race a stalking H orse, And hid him self behind his pocky Arse.24

April also saw the appearance of T he W aking Vision, a p o p u lar poetic broadside in w hich the names of A chitophel and Absalom were applied to Shaftesbury and M o nm outh in order to suggest, for the first tim e, their relationship as m aster and disciple. The poem is yet another dream vision, this tim e of the W higs sowing disaffection am ong the rabble. “Their Leader w as an O ld m an, know n to o well I By th a t false T rayterous nam e A chitophel ” w ho appears in com pany w ith his crony, “Lieutenant A b sa ­ l o m ” while the la tter’s royal father is referred to as “D a vid .”25 As in the Tory propaganda of the previous year discussed in the last chapter, M o n ­ m outh is still being paralleled w ith Absalom the seditionist w ho “ stole the hearts of the people” before m aking any attem pt on his father’s throne, but Achitophel now serves as a m etaphor not for the W hig m agnates as a group but for Shaftesbury alone. This is the only suggestion of 2 Samuel in the poem , how ever. The setting for the vision is the streets of London in 1681, and the rem aining English persons and institutions in the poem are given their proper names. By the end o f April, therefore, M o nm outh had assum ed a new role in Tory propaganda as Shaftesbury’s zany. Grimalkin; or, The Rebel-Cat, a beast fable in prose th a t appeared on 4 M ay, exploited this relationship between the tw o in a comic satire portraying Shaftesbury as the rebel cat of the title, scheming against the royal lion, and accom panied everywhere by a “ Bastard Leopard,” of w hom w e are told th a t “ this Base Son of the Lyon is esteemed a pure Property of the C at’s, insom uch as, even in com ­ mon D iscourse, he ordinarily passes under the N am e of the C ats-F oot.”26 Late in the following m onth another Tory pam phlet appeared th a t epitomizes the special relationship now assum ed between M onm outh and Shaftesbury. A Seasonable Invitation for M o n m o u th to Return to Court, published on 23 June, is a prose appeal addressed directly to M o n ­ m outh. Like the similar appeal th a t had appeared the previous summer, A Letter to His Grace the D. o f M o n m o u th , it alludes to A bsalom ’s fate

as a warning to his modern successor. But on this occasion Achitophel becomes a metaphor not for the Whig grandees as a whole but for Shaftesbury alone, “a little Crooked, Hucked-back Devil,” who “ useth you for no other end, than to compleat his own Hellish Designes.” The Tory author ends by urging M onmouth to free himself from Shaftes­ bury’s tutelage and to seek his father’s forgiveness: “And when Absolom dispiseth the Counsels of Achitopbel, and returns to David, the Wicked Counsellor shall despair, be his own Executioner, and Hang himself.”27

If the momentum recently created by the king was to be maintained, it was essential that the Tories have newspapers and other periodicals with which to present the king’s case on a regular and continuing basis. After May 1680, when Nathaniel Thompson’s True Domestick Intelligence had ceased publication, the government had been reduced during the slack period of Tory propaganda to relying on the dull, official London Gazette. Now this situation was quickly remedied. Heraclitus Ridens had started to appear on I February, and in the same week Benjamin Tooke began publishing the Weekly Discovery o f the Mystery o f Iniquity, a se­ rial book to counterbalance the Whigs’ Weekly Pacquet o f Advice from Rome. Early March witnessed the beginning of Thompson’s new venture, the Loyal Protestant and True Domestick Intelligence, which, unlike his previous paper, was aggressively Tory from the outset. Now Roger L’Estrange’s Observator and John Smith’s Currant Intelligence both began publication in April, and Thomas Benskin’s Domestick Intelligence in May. These last two newspapers can be taken as weather vanes indicating the shift in the political winds. John Smith (not to be confused with his Whig namesake, Francis Smith) had published the Currant Intelligence the previous year, between February and May 1680, when it had been silenced along with its competitors by the proclamation against news­ papers. In its earlier incarnation it had been the most important of the nonpartisan newspapers that managed to maintain neutrality between the two parties. Now, in reviving his newspaper in April, Smith immedi­ ately joined the ranks of the Tory journalists. Another new recruit was Thomas Benskin. As recently as January and February 1681, his imprint had appeared on several Whig pamphlets and broadsides. In March and early April, he published two short-lived newspapers, the Protestant O x­ ford Intelligence (at the time of the Oxford Parliament) and the Impartial London Intelligence, which cautiously avoided political partisanship. He now moved to the other side, and from its first number, on 13 May, his Domestick Intelligence adopted a strongly Tory stance.

Heraclitus Ridens and the O bservator were n o t really new spapers but lively com m entaries for w hich the W higs had no counterpart. The first of these, as its nam e implied, w as a hum orous periodical, a running “D ia­ logue between Jest and E arnest.” The O bservator used a bantering m an­ ner for exam ining serious political issues, also through dialogue, a t first in the form of questions and answers, but, after the beginning of July, in a lively interchange between a w itty T ory and a W hig w ho showed alarm ­ ing signs of m ental confusion and lost every argum ent. The first issue of the O bservator appeared less than a w eek after H is Majesties Declara­ tion, and quickly became the m ainstay of T ory propaganda. Its purpose from the outset was to assist the king to “ open the Eyes of all O u r good Subjects,” as he had said in his D eclaration, to the deceptions into w hich they had been misled by his enemies. L’Estrange began his new paper by announcing: ’Tis the Press th a t has made ’urn M ad, and the Press m ust set ’um Right again. The D istem per is Epidemical·, and there’s no w ay in the w orld, but by Printing, to convey the R em edy to the Disease. Q. B u t w hat is it that you call a Remedy? A. The R em oving of the Cause. T h at is to say, the Undeceiving of the People·. for they are well enough Disposed, of themselves, to be Orderly, and Obedient; if they were not misled by III Principles, and H a ir’d and Juggled out of their Senses w ith so m any Frightful Stories and Im postures. Q. Well! to be Plain and Short; You call your se lf the O bservator: W hat is it now th a t you intend for the Subject o f your O bservations? A. T ake it in few w ords then. M y business is, to encounter the Faction, and to Vindicate the Government·, to detect their Forgeries·, to lay open the Rankness of their Calumnies, and Malice·, to Refute their Seditious Doctrines; to expose their H ypocrisy, and the bloudy Design th at is carry’d on, under the Nam e, and Semblance, of Religion.28

L’Estrange kept his prom ise, and thereafter w as to be found several times a week “ detecting forgeries” in W hig new spapers and pam phlets, arguing that “it is the m ain scope o f their Papers to possess the People w ith Fears of Arbitrary Power, and Popery, and to reflect scandals upon the very Frame of the G overnm ent, and all th a t serve it,” and carrying on the new offensive launched by H is Majesties D eclarationP The first num ber o f T hom pson’s L oyal Protestant and True D om estick Intelligence also announced th a t “ it is Publisht for no other end, but to undeceive His M ajesties Loyal Subjects, and to discover to the w orld the notorious Forgeries Sc Im postures both of Papists and Fanaticks daily invented to amuse the unthinking m ultitude, thereby to facilitate the car­ rying on their ow n hellish D esigns.”30 His periodical and Benskin’s,

w hich also appeared twice a w eek, w ere genuine new spapers th a t could com pete w ith the W hig p apers of C urtis and Janew ay for a readership eager to learn a b o u t the latest events. Like th eir W hig com petition, these T ory new spapers gave m ore space to dom estic occurrences th a n to fo r­ eign affairs, selected the item s fo r inclusion according to their political bias, an d accom panied them w ith a generous am o u n t of com m entary. They w ere to prove indispensable as a m eans o f publicizing the m ass m ovem ent the c o u rt w as n o w p rep arin g to launch.

T he Loyal A ddress M ovem ent has received little a tte n tio n from h isto ri­ ans, properly cautious a b o u t using it as evidence of a genuine change in n atio n al feeling. C onsidered as a successful p ro p ag a n d a effort, how ever, it w as enorm ously im p o rta n t, fo r it w as the g reatest m ass offensive th a t h ad yet been conducted by either side u n til now , lasted far longer th a n any o f th e oth ers h a d d one, an d provided a stable basis for th e picture of altered conditions p o rtray ed by T ory w riters during the rest of 1681. The loyal addresses to the king w ere supposedly sp o ntaneous expres­ sions o f gratitu d e fo r H is M ajesties D eclaration, pledging him su pport. T hey cam e from the com m on councils, co rp o ratio n s, g ran d juries, jus­ tices of th e peace, and lieutenancies of the counties a n d boroughs of E n ­ gland a n d W ales: bodies o f responsible citizens in m ark ed c o n tra st to the “ra b b le ” w ho h ad signed the W hig petitions early in 1680. They w ere m odeled after the W hig addresses fro m electors to their m em bers of P a r­ liam ent in the recent elections th a t had been collected a n d published in V o x Patriae on 13 A pril, an d w ere designed as a direct rejoinder to them . T hose addresses h a d been m ade to individual candidates for the C o m ­ m ons, instructing them to su p p o rt a policy o f Exclusion, a n d prom ising in retu rn “to stan d by You w ith o u r Lives and F o rtu n e s.” T he loyal a d ­ dresses w ere directed to th e h ead of the n a tio n , su p p o rted his a n n o u n ced policy of governing according to the law s of the kingdom a n d p rotecting their religion, liberty, an d pro p erty , a n d closed w ith a sim ilar form ula offering “ Y our M ajesty, the C om m and o f o u r Lives a n d F o rtu n e s.” T he first loyal address cam e fro m the justices of th e peace o f M iddlesex and w as presented to the king on 18 A pril, ten days after H is M ajesties D eclaration w as issued. It m ay have been spontaneous, fo r the co u rt a p ­ parently did n o t a t first realize the possibilities this held for a m ass m ove­ m ent, and several w eeks w ere to elapse before any sequels appeared. Sir Jo h n R eresby recorded a conversation the follow ing year in w hich the king to ld him “th a t w hen the late addresses did first begin he w as n o t m uch satisfyed w ith th e m ,” m indful no d o u b t of the em barrassingly few abhorrences o f the Petitioning M ovem ent in 1680, “ b u t w hen they began

to encrease he w as glad to find them soe n u m ero u s.”31 Their increase was no accident, for once the court aw akened to their potential value, they were not only encouraged b u t actively solicited. A sure sign of the supe­ rior organization behind the m ovem ent was the fact th a t the loyal ad ­ dresses did n o t come in to the king in a flood th a t w ould have spent its force in a m onth or tw o, but arrived in a carefully regulated flow that m aintained a steady, though eventually dim inishing, volum e for nine months. In the case of each loyal address, there w as a short ceremony, rem inis­ cent of those carried o u t by the W higs during the recent elections, in which the presentation o f the address w as accom panied by a short speech, w hich was answ ered w ith a gracious reply from the king. The London G azette regularly printed the loyal addresses, w hich were soon filling its colum ns to the exclusion of m ost other news, and by July it w as necessary to print double issues of the G azette from time to time to ac­ com m odate the backlog. T hom pson and Benskin also printed m any of the addresses o r sum m arized them in their new spapers, reporting the cer­ emonies accom panying them and offering appropriate com m ents. By the middle o f July Benskin was announcing th a t “it is verily supposed there remains not ten places of Im portance or any note in this Kingdom e of England and D om inion of Wales, b u t w hat have presented their dutiful and Loyal Addresses, expressing their great satisfaction in the enjoym ent of so good a K ing”; b u t the supposition w as wide of the m ark, an d the following m onth he was reporting th a t the addresses “continue to Flow (as it w ere daily) from all p a rts.”32 They w ould go on appearing for an­ other four m onths, finally com ing to an end w ith the year itself. The loyal addresses, num bering over tw o hundred in all, were then collected and published as V ox Angliae; or, The Voice o f the K ingdom , an impressive counterw eight to the W higs’ V ox Patriae. The Loyal Address M ovem ent to o k its cue from both the great mass movements engineered by the Whigs in the tw o previous w inters. The Whig instructions to the newly elected m em bers of Parliam ent in early 1681 find their closest parallel in the final p aragraphs of m ost loyal ad­ dresses, w here the signers prom ise th a t w hen the king sees fit to call his next parliam ent they will elect members w ho are com m itted to preserving the Succession in its rightful line and to voting the king supplies. But the Petitioning M ovem ent o f early 1680, w ith its bulky rolls containing th o u ­ sands of signatures, also had its m irro r image in the new T ory mass m ove­ ment. The loyal addresses themselves were of course form al resolutions voted by com paratively small official bodies. Early in the course of the movement, how ever, the co u rt seems to have aw akened to the advantage of using it as evidence o f w idespread popular support for the king’s pol­ icy. By the end of M ay, therefore, the practice had begun of collecting

additional subscriptions to the loyal addresses, and as the custom spread the list of signatures became ever longer until they soon came to resemble the m onster petitions of 1680. The loyal address from the Assizes for the County of D urham was presented to the king in a roll containing over twelve thousand signatures, and the various tow ns and counties were soon com peting to see which could collect the greatest num ber. The total for each loyal address was duly reported in the T ory newspapers. The im portance of the Loyal Address M ovem ent was th a t it offered the king expressions of popular support of a kind th at heads of state even in our ow n day welcome in times of crisis, n o t so much because such tokens afford them personal encouragement, as because they can be used as evi­ dence of a public m andate for their actions. In the words of one Tory pam phleteer, the loyal addresses were a “sort of Petitioning, and do ex­ press to his Sacred M ajesty the desires of many Thousands of his Loyal Subjects, w ho take this M ethod to let their Sovereign know . . . how ear­ nestly they desire the M onarchy, and Protestant Religion by Law estab­ lished, may be defended.”33 In expressing gratitude for H is Majesties Declaration, in which the king had inform ed his people th at they had been deceived by his ene­ mies and expressed the hope th a t a little time w ould “open the Eyes of all O ur good Subjects,” the loyal addresses offered welcome testimony that they were now becoming enlightened. As early as M ay, Thom pson was announcing in the Loyal Protestant: “It doth now appear th a t those Petitions and Addresses published in the Nam es of several Counties and Corporations were M is-Representatives, and not V ox Populi; For we now abound w ith Addresses, Letters and Congratulations of a different nature . . . which we hope will occasion the like from all parts of England, and by that means convince the H ot-spurs th at the Body of the People are not so disaffected as some w ould make the w orld believe they are.”34 The nation’s growing enlightenm ent was a frequent theme w ith Benskin. In the first issue of the D om estick Intelligence he followed his sum m ary of several of the loyal addresses by commenting “th a t by this we may see the faction is grow n odious and M ens eyes at last are open.” Tw o m onths later his report of ten m ore addresses led him to rem ark “ that by this we may see th a t G od has bowed the H earts of all the People, unless it be of such as love to fish in Troubled W aters.”35 By the middle of August a Tory pam phleteer was gloating, “th at His M ajesty should condescend to undeceive his people, but much more th a t a great part of the people should be undeceived, and give His M ajesty thanks for th a t gracious condescention . . . makes [the Whigs] stand as uneasie, change feet as often as an Elephant learning to dance upon hot Stones.”36 Besides their cumulative value as a mass movem ent in the king’s sup­ port, the loyal addresses served as individual pieces of Tory propaganda.

Their general ten o r is repetitive, a n d it w o u ld have tak e n a brave E nglish­ m an to read V o x A ngliae fro m cover to cover. B ut m an y o f them sh o w a determ ined effort to sh arpen the polem ics in the k in g ’s D eclaration and m ake them m ore explicit. T his p ro b ab ly accounts fo r the fact th a t a great many of them w ere published as sep arate bro ad sid es before ap p earin g once again in the new spapers an d a th ird tim e in V o x A ngliae. A c o n sta n t b u rd en in the loyal addresses is the charge o f sedition in the king’s D eclaration, a n d its conversion of W hig com plaints a g ain st a rb i­ trary pow er in to a ttem p ts to subvert th e governm ent. T h u s th e address from the city o f H erefo rd declares th a t “ how ever som e ill M en, to accom ­ plish their black designs, by a tte m p tin g to su b v ert the G overnm ent, slily insinuate to the C redulous People, causless Fears, an d false Jealousies o f A rbitrary P ow er g row ing u p o n u s,” the people o f H erefo rd are “ as safe from such m ean apprehensions, as w e are secure from the dism al Effects of such a w ay o f G overnm ent, w hich w e have no cause to suspect, unless it be from those th a t suggest it, n o r fro m th em n eith er, till they have subverted a well tem per’d M o n a rc h y , and in tro d u c ’d th eir belov’d T y ra n ­ nical R ep u b lick .” T he address from the to w n o f W igan deplores “ those causeless fears and jealousies w h erew ith designing and ill-m eaning M en, have endeavoured to possess the m inds o f y o u r P e o p le,” w hile th a t o f the borough of N e w R a d n o r declares th a t “ several foul Fogs and d a rk M ists, have been ra is ’d o f causeless jealousies, a n d needless fears; the A uthors insinuating to us their g rea t apprehensions, th a t A rb itra ry P ow er an d Popery w ere grow ing upon us (and indeed fro m som e o f o u r fellow -Subjects w e h ad just cause to fear th e first) b u t y our Sacred M ajesty in pitty to our deluded Ignorance . . . h a th enlightened o u r M in d s, a n d enliven’d our H e a rts .” 37 A nother tactic o f H is M ajesties D eclaration a d o p te d by som e of the loyal addresses is the p o rtra y a l o f the H ouse o f C om m ons as the guilty party responsible fo r the perils fro m w hich th e king has n o w rescued them by a tim ely dissolution. T hus the C o rp o ra tio n o f R ip o n declares th at “the delivering us from the u n w a rra n ta b le Proceedings of the H ouse of C om m ons, is m atte r of th e highest joy a n d satisfaction to u s ,” w hile the to w n a n d b o ro u g h o f C hesterfield boldly retu rn s “ ou r L oyal T h a n k s to your m o st Sacred M ajesty fo r your m o st G racious D eclaratio n , a n d principally for asserting a n d su p p o rtin g y our R oyal Prerogative, in C all­ ing, and D issolving P arliam ents a t y our Princely Pleasure, and thereby preserving us fro m th e late g row ing U su rp atio n , o f A rb itra ry G overn­ ment, by im prisoning y o u r M ajesties Subjects, a n d o th e r irregularities, com m itted by the late H ouse o f C o m m o n s.” 38 Finally, the address from the city of G loucester sounds a n o te th a t w as to be heard m any tim es th ro u g h o u t 1681: “ A nd we have reason to be­ lieve, th e sam e deadly Poison [as led to th e Civil W ars] w as again prepar-

ing, a n d had certainly been given, h ad n o t G od p u t it into y our M ajesties H e a rt tim ely, an d m ost p ru dently, to prevent it. . . . So w e m ake o u r m ost hum ble an d grateful A cknow ledgm ent to your M ajesty, for y o u r m o st in ten t Vigilence to save Us from so p o rte n to u s a S to rm .” 59

This n o tio n th a t the king had saved th e n a tio n by dissolving the O x fo rd P arliam ent and by issuing H is M ajesties D eclaration w as to becom e one of the m ost frequent them es of T o ry poem s, pam phlets, a n d broadsides for the rem ainder o f the year. It is a heroic them e co n structed, like those of m any historical rom ances, from fairly slender strands. A speech, a dis­ solution, and a declaration are n o t quite the ingredients of epic, b u t they could be m ade the stuff of heroic legend by a g roup of determ ined p ro p a ­ gandists. Such legends require a heroic scene: a specific place an d a lim ­ ited tim e in w hich g reat danger th reaten s a n d the hero suddenly averts it. O x fo rd during the last w eek in M a rc h w as to becom e, in retrospect, the scene of C harles’s heroic actio n w ith w hich his issuing a d eclaration a t W hitehall som e ten days later w o u ld com e to be fused. Som e o f the loyal addresses, in fact, express p ro fo u n d gratitu d e n o t only fo r H is M ajesties D eclaration b u t for the king’s aggressive opening speech to the O x fo rd P arliam en t.40 As early as A pril, H eraclitus R idens w as proclaim ing “ an E p itaph u p o n A rbitrary G o vern m en t, ” slain by the king. Here lies Old N ab, The Com m on-wealth Drab, That w ith her old Cause enslav’d us. Great Charles with a Speech, H as dam n’d the Old W itch, And from her dutches has sav’d u s.41

T his m ay be the speech w ith w hich the king opened the O x fo rd P arlia­ m ent (since he m ade none in closing it), b u t it is m ote likely his D eclara­ tion on 8 A pril. In any case, heroes do n o t issue pam phlets, th o u g h they often m ake speeches haran g u in g their follow ers an d berating their foes. A legend w as being born th a t w o u ld so o n ap p ear in every variety o f g overn­ m ent p ro p ag a n d a from the new spapers to the pulpit. T he o rd er in council requiring th a t H is M ajesties D eclaration be read in every church and chapel in the kingdom provided a tim ely o p p o rtu n ity for serm ons to reinforce its m essage. E d w ard Sclater’s choice of a scrip­ tu ra l te x t for his serm on on this day is p ro b ab ly fairly typical. H e chose to preach on C o ra h ’s rebellion, the ou tstan d in g exam ple in the O ld T esta­ m ent of an insurrection averted by tim ely action, since the resolute behav­ ior of M oses (w ith a generous am o u n t of divine assistance) p u t a sto p to

the rebellion while it still am ounted only to sedition. The purpose of his sermon, Sclater told his congregation, w as “ to encourage you to O bedi­ ence” by denouncing those “w ho undertake to persw ade a People there are Distempers in their G overnm ent. ” As exam ples of such seditionists in the O ld Testam ent he discussed n o t only C orah in his text but “A b so lo m the fair spoken H ypocrite” w ho stole the hearts of the people from his father D avid.42 The next occasion for an anniversary serm on, the com m em oration of the king’s birthday and restoration on 29 M ay, afforded further o p p o rtu ­ nities for celebrating C harles’s decisive behavior in saving the nation. Henry A nderson chose to preach his serm on this day on the blessings of “C ontentm ent,” implying an O ld Testam ent parallel in exhorting his congregation: O then pray for the Peace o f Jerusalem that love her; and consequently, for the Life and Prosperity o f the M onarch o f Great B ritain, King Charles the Second, our dread Soveraign, the light o f our Eyes and the breath of our Nostrils; w ho causes m alignant vapours to vanish, and dispels those clouds of m ischief by his Princely pow er that w ould turn Religion into R ebellion, and Faith into Fac­ tion, cry up priviledge to invade Regal Prerogative, and under the notion o f the Preservers o f our Peace, and Defenders o f our Liberties, reach out their hand to turn the stream o f R oyalty, and subvert an excellent M onarchy into a Tyranni­ cal R epublick.43

A king w ho causes m alignant vapors to vanish and dispels clouds of mis­ chief by his princely pow er has already become the stuff o f heroic legend. The king’s “heroic” actions a t O xford and W estm inster in M arch and April by w hich, in Benskin’s w ords, he had “plucked us as it were o u t of the Jaw s of a Tyrannical C om m on-w ealth,” were of course only the vis­ ible em bodim ents of his inauguration o f a m ore resolute policy th a t T ory propagandists credited w ith the return of public tranquillity.44 In m id­ summer one of them boldly revived the Legorn Letters, issuing a sham sequel to th a t p o pu lar W hig series of the previous year th a t joyfully a n ­ nounced to the “L ondon m erchant” th a t “ since my last to you, it is al­ m ost impossible to believe w hat an A lteration there is in the state of our Ship; for since the dissolution of o u r Council of Officers, all things seem to contrive the welfare of the C ap tain ,” w ho has issued “ o u t his Royal D eclaration,” w hich has “m et w ith general Applause and acceptation from all the Sailers: Every C abbin in the Ship have m ost hum bly A d­ dressed the C aptain to accept of their m ost unfeigned T h an k s.”45 This time it w as the W higs w ho were in no m ood to publish a rejoinder. As the m onths passed, it became increasingly clear th a t the political situation had radically altered, how ever little the Whigs w ere disposed to accept it in silence. The king’s dissolution o f the O xford Parliam ent on 28

M arch m arks the end of the E xclusion Crisis in a strict sense, the tw o-year effort to pass o r prevent an act o f P arliam ent excluding the heir from the throne: tw o years of debates, dissolutions, cam paigns, an d elections in w hich th e W higs h ad held the initiative. But in the w ider aren a of public debate carried on in the press, the Exclusion Crisis also began rapidly to fade in the spring of 1681 as th e num erous pam phlets of the previous tw o years arguing over the m erits an d legality o f altering the Succession gave place to others w hose consum ing interest lay in deciding w h eth er the king or his H ouse o f C om m ons w as to blam e for the recent turbulence th a t cam e to be increasingly accepted as a p eriod already concluded. F or the rem ainder of 1681, W higs and Tories alike w ould find them selves in­ volved in a historical debate th a t looked to the p a st and endlessly re­ view ed the events since 1678. It w as a sign o f h o w com pletely the initiative h ad now passed to the Tories th a t they w ere able to dictate the term s o f th a t debate. By p o rtra y ­ ing E xclusion as the first step in a concerted effort by m em bers of the H ouse of C om m ons to subvert the governm ent in the interest of their “old beloved C o m m onw ealth p rin cip les,” the T ories forced the W higs into a defensive position w here they m ust devote their g reatest efforts to justifying the m otives from w hich they had been acting. In the first stage of this debate, before th e m idsum m er of 1681, the absence o f any evi­ dence o f overtly treasonable activities on their p a rt w as assum ed to prove the insidious n atu re of the W higs’ th re a t to the co n stitu tio n , a n d invited rem inders o f 1641. By m aking P arliam ent the scene o f th eir op eratio n s, the W hig leaders, according to this version of events, h a d hoped to ac­ com plish th eir treasonable aim s under th e cloak of legality, c o n te n t to rely on sedition to create p o p u lar pressure o n the king fo r consenting to their pernicious m easures. By dissolving P arliam ent instead of bow ing to it, the king, according to T o ry p ro p ag a n d a , h a d fru stra ted their evil plans, and his subjects, a t last aw akened to their danger, w ere daily ex­ pressing their g ratitude to him in the form o f loyal addresses.

If the O x fo rd P arliam ent a n d its im m ediate afterm ath m arked the op en ­ ing phase o f the T o ry p ro p ag a n d a cam paign of 1681, the allegation in the course o f the sum m er th a t a treasonable conspiracy against th e king had been hatching a t O x fo rd a t th e tim e he dissolved P arliam ent there in­ spired a second phase of th a t cam paign w hich supplem ented the earlier one w ith o u t in any w ay supplanting it. U nder the cloak of sedition, it n o w appeared, the W hig leaders in P arliam ent h a d been engaging in treason, laying a p lo t th a t, if successful, w o u ld have m ade unnecessary any fu rth er pretense o f legality.

It is a c u rio u s iro n y th a t the sam e d isrep u tab le figure, E d w ard Fitzharris, sh o u ld have played so im p o rta n t a role in b o th phases o f the cam ­ paign. It w as, as w e have seen, the q u a rre l betw een the tw o houses over his im peachm ent th a t gave th e king th e excuse he needed to dissolve the O xford P arliam ent. N o n e o f the p a rticip a n ts in th a t d ram a , how ever, could have foreseen th a t F itzharris w o u ld be responsible, th re e m o n th s later, for tran sferrin g the struggle betw een th e g o v ern m en t an d the o p p o ­ sition fro m P arliam en t to th e k in g ’s courts. The evidence against F itzh arris w as so stro n g th a t n o t even a panel of Whig ju ro rs could fail to indict him a t a g ran d inquest, o r to convict him if he w ere b ro u g h t to trial. A m o n th before the O x fo rd P a rlia m e n t m et, he had a p p ro a c h e d a c e rtain E d m u n d E verard, offering him m oney to w rite a libel a g ain st the king; E v erard h ad p lan te d w itnesses in the n e x t ro o m to w atch a n d o v erh ear F itz h a rris’s su b seq u en t interview s w ith him ; w h en Fitzharris w as arrested o n 2 7 F eb ru ary he w as carrying th e libel an d a d ­ m itted th a t p a rts o f it w ere in his o w n h an d w ritin g ; finally, the libel itself, which a d v o cated arm e d rebellion ag ain st th e king, w as u n q u e stio n a b ly treasonable.46 F itz h a rris’s only hope o f escape lay in m ak in g him self in­ dispensable to the W higs by agreeing to offer sen sational discoveries about the Popish Plot. T h e k in g ’s refusal to g ra n t him im m unity as a P lot witness w as a setback, b u t his im peachm ent by th e late H o u se of C o m ­ mons seem ed to prom ise him a respite, since this could p ro ceed n o fu rth e r until the m eeting of a n ew p arliam en t. But the go v ern m en t m oved sw iftly to bring him to justice in the k in g ’s courts. O n 2 7 A pril his in d ictm en t w as presented to a M id d lesex g ran d jury. W h en th e fo rem an , M ichael G odfrey, b ro th e r o f th e W hig “ m a r­ ty r,” expressed scruples a b o u t p ro ceeding a g ain st a d e fe n d a n t lying under im p each m en t by th e H o u se of C o m m o n s, th e lo rd chief justice dis­ missed his o b jection, a n d the g ra n d ju ro rs relu c ta n tly indicted F itzharris. On 30 A pril he w as arra ig n e d before the C o u rt o f K ing’s Bench, w here fo r nearly a fo rtn ig h t arg u m en ts w ere presented fo r a n d a g ain st F itz h a rris’s plea on the qu estio n “W h e th e r an Im peachm ent fo r T re aso n , by the H ouse of C o m m o n s a n d still depending, be a sufficient m a tte r to ou st th e C ourt fro m p ro ceeding u p o n a n In d ictm en t fo r the sam e O ffen se.”47 T his was a test o f stren g th betw een the p o w ers o f king a n d P arliam en t th a t generated intense public excitem ent. By early M a y T h o m p so n w as re p o rt­ ing in his n ew sp ap er th a t “F itz-H arris’s Case is n o w the only Subject o f all Peoples D iscourse, b o th in C ity a n d C o u n try , a n d all are big w ith expectation to see the issue o f this C a u se .”48 M u c h m o re th a n F itz h a rris’s life depended on its outcom e. If the W higs w ere u n ab le to save this new witness to the Popish P lot, S haftesbury’s Irish w itnesses, k e p t in L o n d o n on a slim allow ance p aid th em by J o h n R ouse, servant to the W hig m ag­ nate Sir T h o m a s Player, m ight so o n conclude th a t b o th th e ir safety a n d

their advantage lay in testifying against their form er masters. O n 11 M ay the justices ruled against Fitzharris’s plea and ordered him to stand trial; on 9 June, confronted w ith the overwhelming evidence against him, a W hig jury found him guilty of treason.49 Frantically casting about for some means of saving his life, Fitzharris seems to have decided at this juncture to tu rn against his W hig supporters and to try m aking himself indispensable to the governm ent as he had hoped earlier to serve the opposition. It was a futile attem pt, born of desperation, for his testimony m ight implicate others, b u t it could do nothing to save himself. Flis first impulse, apparently, was no m ore than to accuse one of the Whigs of the crime for w hich he stood condemned. O n 14 June Janew ay reported th at Fitzharris’s wife, “discoursing with M r. W hitaker, her H usband’s Solicitor,” told him “th at the Lord H o w ­ ard of Escrick did give her H usband the H eads of the Libel”; w hen this evidence was conveyed to one of the principal secretaries of state, Lord H ow ard had been arrested and com m itted to the T ow er for treason.50 But Fitzharris seems to have been meditating more sensational revelations by the time he was brought to the C ourt of King’s Bench for sentencing on 15 June and pleaded th a t “he thought it was more for the King’s Service, to respite his Judgm ent, till he had perfected his Evidence against the Lord H ow ard.”51 The court brushed his plea aside, however, and pronounced sentence of death. Returned to the Tow er to aw ait execution, Fitzharris quickly “per­ fected” his evidence in consultation with his wife, w ho was allowed to visit him freely. O n 21 June Lord H o w ard ’s indictm ent was presented to a M iddlesex grand jury, the m ajority of w hom were Whigs. After listen­ ing to the testimony in secret, they were preparing to bring in a finding of Ignoramus when the attorney general, learning of their intentions, w ith­ drew the bill and returned H ow ard to the Tow er to aw ait a more favor­ able opportunity. The forem an, Sir Charles Lee, and three other members of the grand jury were Tories, however, and these four gave the evidence they had taken dow n at the inquest to a bookseller, Samuel C arr, who immediately published it as N otes o f the Evidence Given against the L ord H ow ard o f Escrick. R eprinted verbatim in the Im partial Protestant M er­ cury on 24 June by Janeway (who questioned its accuracy) this broadside is a crucial docum ent for understanding the Tory propaganda of the next five m onths th a t reaches its climax in A bsalom and Achitophel, for it first revealed to a startled public the treasonable conspiracy in which n o t only H ow ard but the rest of the W hig leadership, including Shaftesbury, w ould soon be implicated. The tw o principal witnesses at the inquest were Anne Fitzharris and her maid, Theresa Peacock. Besides supporting the charge on which H ow ard had been arrested, testifying that they had been present when he

gave Fitzharris the “h eads” o f the libel, they now added a sensational revelation he had supposedly made on the same occasion. In nearly iden­ tical w ords they testified th a t H o w ard had told Fitzharris in their hearing: “If this were once Published about, the People w ould rise, and then we will seize upon the King, and keep him , until such time as he passes the Bill, concerning the Exclusion of the D u ke o f York; and settle the C row n upon the D uke o f M o n m o u th T s2 This single sentence w as the seed from w hich w ould rapidly grow the “Protestant P lo t” of 1681. Like the earliest revelation of the Popish Plot by Oates and Tonge three years earlier, it w ould inspire additional in­ formers to embellish the tale and to im plicate others. Ironically, it w ould be taken up and used against their W hig m asters by some of the Irish informers, w ho had been casting ab o u t for em ploym ent ever since the Oxford Parliam ent w as dissolved and w ere now finding themselves in legal jeopardy. The first of them to be arrested, a few days after H o w a rd ’s inquest, was Bryan H aines, w ho im m ediately gave evidence against their paymaster, John Rouse, and another m inor W hig, Stephen College, the “Protestant Jo in er.” These tw o were arrested on 29 June, and H aines was given im m unity as a witness. H e had saved himself, it w ould soon emerge, by implicating them in th e same p lo t th a t M rs. Fitzharris and her m aid had just m ade public.53 It w ould n o t save Fitzharris, how ever, w ho had w aited to o long to produce his latest p lot testimony. O n the m orning of I July he w as draw n to Tyburn where, a few m om ents before he w as hanged, he called atten ­ tion to a paper he had given Francis H aw kins, the chaplain in the Tow er, informing the spectators th a t it contained his last declaration.54 The n ex t day the Privy Council to o k tw o actions th a t were closely connected, al­ though this did no t immediately appear. The first was to order Shaftes­ bury’s arrest on charges of treason, the exact nature of which w ould not be made public until his grand inquest some five m onths later, b u t w hich was widely assum ed— and rightly as it proved— to be connected w ith the plot about which M rs. Fitzharris and her m aid had testified at H o w a rd ’s inquest. The council’s second action w as to o rder the official publication of The Confession o f E dw ard Fitz-harys, the paper he had given H aw kins before his execution, and of A Narrative: Being a True Relation o f W hat Discourse Passed betw een Dr. H aw kins and E dw ard Fitz-Harys, H aw ­ kins’s ow n account of his conversations w ith Fitzharris in the T ow er at the time he w as w riting his confession. By arranging to have both w orks published by order in council, the governm ent conferred an official sanc­ tion on these publications sim ilar to th a t w hich H is Majesties Declaration had been given three m onths earlier. This w as altogether appropriate, for these tw o publications launched the second phase of the governm ent’s propaganda cam paign in 1681, just as the king’s Declaration h ad inaugu-

rated the first of them. The Privy C ouncil’s tw o actions on 2 July were actually tw o prongs of the same w eapon they w ould employ against the Whigs over the next five months: propaganda capitalizing on the conspir­ acy first divulged by Fitzharris, and attem pts to prosecute Shaftesbury and several other Whigs for their p art in the same plot. Fitzharris’s Confession and H aw kins’s Narrative confirmed the testi­ m ony of Anne Fitzharris and her maid at H o w ard ’s inquest, added a few details, and affirmed th a t the conversation the tw o wom en claimed to have overheard was but one of several in which H ow ard had revealed his p a rt in an existing conspiracy involving others besides himself. In the first of these documents Fitzharris repeated his charge th at H ow ard had been responsible for the libel, and revealed th a t it was Sheriffs Bethel and C or­ nish, visiting him in the Tow er after his arrest, w ho had persuaded him th a t if he w ould “make so much as a plausible Story to confirm the [Pop­ ish] Plot” and incriminate the queen and the duke of York, Parliam ent w ould save him and restore his estate. But w hat followed was of far greater im portance: “I do further confess and declare, T h at the Lord H ow ard told me of a Design to seize upon the King’s Person, and to carry him into the City, and there detain him till he had condescended to their Desires. H eyns and my self were privy to this Design, and had several Meetings w ith the Lord H ow ard.”55 H aw kins was still more explicit. H e declared th at Fitzharris had told him of the design to seize the King; of this he spoke often, and said, when they (the party he always called them) had seized the King, they w ould have obliged him to call a Parliament, which should sit until the Bill o f Exclusion against the Duke w as passed; all evil Counsellers removed; and men o f their chusing put into places o f trust; the M ilitia setled, and the N avy put into good hands; all Grievances redressed, and all things ordered to their ow n liking: And had this Design succeeded, (he said) the Bishops and others o f the Clergy w ould have suffered severely. The Party that were engaged in this Design (he said) were men o f Interest, and had 6 0 0 0 0 M en at com m and, at very short warning. . . . he told me, that him self w as to have had a Company o f Foot, H eyns a C om ­ pany, and . . . a person w hose name he purposely concealed, was to have had the command o f a M an o f W ar.36

By m aking Bryan Haines, who had already accused Rouse and College, a fellow witness to the “design,” these tw o docum ents established his cre­ dentials as a second inform er w ho would survive Fitzharris, adding de­ tails to the latter’s story and incrim inating others besides Lord H ow ard. These tw o publications aroused an immediate furor, and the same Whigs who had formerly cham pioned Fitzharris as a dependable witness to the Popish Plot now denounced him as a liar whose greatest libel was

not the paper for w hich he had been executed b u t the confession he left behind him .57 By 7 July a W hig verse broadside w as representing Fitzharris’s ghost as already rem orseful for having invented a sham Protes­ tant Plot.58 Unwilling to lose the m om entum created by public excitem ent over Fitzharris’s confession, the governm ent w aited only a week to bring Stephen College’s indictm ent before a London grand jury at the O ld Bailey on 8 July. It soon appeared th a t Bethel and C ornish had chosen its members w ith their usual care, and a finding of Ignoram us was speedily returned. Once again, however, as w ith H o w a rd ’s inquest a fortnight ear­ lier, a pam phlet immediately appeared disclosing the secret testim ony, which the new spapers publicized further, and the public now learned for the first time th a t College was being charged w ith com plicity in the same plot th a t Fitzharris and his wife had recently revealed: “H e was one th a t was to seise the King a t Oxford·, and . . . unlese he w ould com ply w ith his Parliament, there w ould be ready thousands to secure him .” 55*This was also the first intim ation the public received of a specific time and place at which the king was to have been seized: O xford during the meeting of Parliament there in late M arch. Since College’s accusers alleged th a t O xford had been the scene of some of his treasonable activities, he w as now taken to th at city, where a grand jury of a very different com plexion proceeded to indict him on 14 July. For the second time in six m onths, O xford became the center of the nation’s attention, and Londoners w ould soon be pouring into the city for College’s trial, due to take place on 17 August. But T ory p ro p ag an ­ dists did n o t aw ait the transfer of the case to O xford. As soon as the testimony at the London inquest linking College to the plot to seize the king became public, they began capitalizing on it. O n 13 July, five days after the London inquest, L’Estrange, w ho until now had been filling the O bservator w ith defenses of H is M ajesties Declaration and com m ents on the loyal addresses, first alluded to the “ Design to Seize the Person o f the King,” w hich w ould consume his attention for the next few m onths. W ithin a fortnight other T ory propagandists followed in L’Estrange’s wake, issuing verse broadsides th at rejoiced, in the w ords of one of the earliest, at “the happy discovery o f the hellish fanatick p lo t.”60 At this point occurred the first of those defections am ong the witnesses to the new plot th a t w ould em barrass the governm ent several times over the next few m onths. As early as 24 July, L’Estrange was privately in­ forming Sir Leoline Jenkins, one of the principal secretaries of state, th a t “the w idow Fitzharris is certainly tam pered w ith and shuffles in her tale.”61 O n 13 A ugust T hom pson’s new spaper announced: “It’s certain Mrs. Fitz-Harys has w ithdraw n her self from the M essenger th a t had her in Custody, and th at she has retracted her Evidence before a great M agis-

trate in the City, and (as is given out) is gone for Holland·, And the Com­ m onw ealths men at Richard’s [coffee house] boast much of their having outbidden for her Evidence,” adding, however, th at “ it’s certain she is still in Tow n, and W arrants are issued o u t to apprehend her.” The king was sufficiently concerned at this defection to instruct Jenkins th a t it was “ his pleasure that you order Dr. H aw kins to go to O xford to be at Col­ lege’s trial that, in case M rs. Fitzharris be set up to destroy her husband’s last confession, he may be there to support it.”62 But his fears were groundless. Anne Fitzharris and her maid faded into obscurity once more, and though the governm ent had lost its first tw o witnesses and executed the third, there seemed to be no shortage of new inform ants to take their place. College’s trial at O xford began on 17 August and lasted tw o days. Bryan Haines, his original accuser, appeared as a witness in com pany w ith three form er witnesses to the Popish Plot, John Smith, Stephen Dugdale, and Edw ard Turberville, all three of w hom had testified at Staf­ ford’s trial the previous December. They now swore that College had boasted to them that, in the w ords of the indictm ent, “it was purposed and designed to seize the Person of . . . the King at O xfo rd ” and th a t he w ould “be one of them w ho should seize” him. Dugdale testified th at College had told him: “If the King did not yield to the Parliam ent, he should be forced to it,” while Smith asserted th a t “he told me, the Parlia­ m ent were agreed to secure the King, and th at in order to it, all Parliam ent-men came very well Armed, and accompanied w ith Arms and Men; and he told me of a great M an [Shaftesbury] th a t had notice from all the Gentlemen of England how well they came arm ed.” Turberville quoted College as telling him th a t “there are several Brave Fellows ab o u t this T ow n that will secure him till we have those Terms th at we expect from him ,” and Haines explained th a t once this was done, according to Col­ lege, “the Parliam ent shall sit at Guildhall, and adjust the Grievances of the Subject, and of the N atio n .” O n the basis of this testimony and of Lord Chief Justice N o rth ’s instruction to the jury th a t “a Seizing of the King, and an endeavor to do that, is a constructive Intention of the D eath of the King; for Kings are never Prisoners, but in order to their D eath,” College was convicted of treason and sentenced to hang.63 O n 31 August he was executed before the castle gate at O xford, protesting his innocence to the last and declaring to the spectators: “I cannot charge any m an in the w orld w ith any design against the G overnm ent. . . or against his M aj­ esty,” for “I know of no Plot in the w orld but the Popish P lot.” 64 This was a disappointing anticlim ax to the governm ent’s victory in the courtroom , but a Tory pam phleteer did w hat he could to repair the damage by p u b ­ lishing a bogus speech in which College supposedly died confessing the crimes of which he had been convicted.65

As “perfected” by the witnesses at College’s trial, this became the final version of the new Protestant Plot, w hich w ould preem pt public attention for the next three m onths until Shaftesbury’s grand inquest in late N o ­ vember. The individual agents in the story I have been piecing together here—Fitzharris, H ow ard, College, and Shaftesbury— have all figured separately in m odern historical accounts of 1681, but the stran d connect­ ing them — the alleged conspiracy to seize the king a t O xford— has been ignored. Fitzharris and H o w ard are usually linked in these accounts only by the treasonable libel for w hich bo th of them were arrested b u t w hich was quickly forgotten in the excitem ent over m ore im p o rtan t revelations. College too has been chiefly rem em bered as the alleged contriver of a libel that was only a m inor count am ong the charges upon w hich he w as con­ victed. 66 Shaftesbury’s arrest for treason has been tied so exclusively to the governm ent’s unsuccessful efforts to indict him th a t the specific charges against him have been largely ignored. But this is n o t the light in which contem poraries saw these m en. To the public in the latter p a rt of 1681 they w ere all alleged agents in the unfolding dram a of a conspiracy to seize the king th a t now appeared to have been taking place behind the scenes at O xford in late M arch and w hich could be seen as fu rther justify­ ing the m onarch’s actions at th a t tim e.67 The im portance of the Protestant Plot first disclosed by Fitzharris, his wife, and her m aid and finally “perfected” at College’s trial by other w it­ nesses was that it appeared to confirm the suspicions and innuendos the government had been propagating ever since His Majesties Declaration appeared in April. Thus the second phase of the T ory cam paign of 1681 did not supplant the first but reinforced it, com plem enting the loyal ad ­ dresses, w hich w ould continue to appear until the end of 1681. As early as the second week in July, indeed, some loyal addresses began referring with shocked dismay to “Plots and Conspiracies against your Royal Crown and Dignity, w hich under colour of securing us in our Religion and Liberties, are m anifestly tending to the destruction o f b o th .” 68 The disclosure of the P rotestant Plot offered “p ro o f” of the king’s hints in his Declaration th a t m ore lay behind the Exclusion m ovem ent than the alter­ ation o f the Succession. It revealed th a t the perilous situation from which the king had rescued the nation w as far m ore serious than had previously been realized, enhanced the king’s role as the n atio n ’s savior, and gave even greater im portance to O xford in M arch as the specific place and time of his heroic action. In the first place, it encouraged th e idea th a t the king, far m ore astute than his subjects, was already aw are at the time he dissolved Parliam ent of a plot th a t w ould only become public some m onths later. This w as an inference L’Estrange w as draw ing in the O bservator as early as 16 July, on the strength of the testim ony a t College’s O xford inquest:

W h [ig ]. T hey talk of Seizing the K ing at Oxford·, H a d he n o t his Guards a b o u t

him? T o [ ry ]. Yes, and so he had at Windsor, w h en the Papists should have Exe­

cuted their Plot too. W h . W hy did n o t th e W itnesses acq u ain t th e K ing w ith it sooner? T o . W hy did the King m ake so m uch h a st from O xford, but u p o n th a t Infor­ m ation ?

L ater in the sum m er tw o T ory versifiers to o k up this them e o f the k in g ’s prescience at O x fo rd and its heroic afterm ath . T he first related ho w , at the m om ent w hen the conspirators a t O x fo rd w ere p reparing to tak e him Prisoner be Sure, U nto Guildhall·, W here he shall E ndure, Till he yield to the P arliam ents

all ,

C harles suddenly foiled their plans: T he P arliam ent so o n H e D issolved, P reventing o u r being Involved, In the Old Snare, As ’tw as Resolved; Y ou see w h a t such T ra y to rs will dare.

In the second a u th o r’s account o f events a t the end of M arch , R ow ley now w ith W isdom an d grave R eason, T o p revent the sw ift ap p ro ach in g T reason, In season P u t a p eriod to th e ir strife; In O xfo rd all their Stratagem s co n fo u n d ed , T he R oguish Joyner to o .69

By dissolving P arliam ent a n d hurriedly retu rn in g to L ondon, it now em erged, the king h ad m anaged to escape im prisonm ent an d p erhaps the fatal sequel to his fath e r’s confinem ent. T he contingency co n tained in D ugdale’s testim ony th a t “ if the King did n o t yield to the P arliam ent, he should be forced to it” im plied an in ten tio n to seize him as so o n as the th ird E xclusion Bill had passed th ro u g h the C om m ons and, predictably, had been defeated by the Lords, responding once again to the k in g ’s w ishes. In th a t case, th e king h a d acted n o t a m om ent to o soon in dissolv­ ing P arliam ent w hen he did. Thus w ith the p u b lic ’s ta rd y discovery of w h a t the king w as assum ed to have k n o w n , o r a t least suspected, as early as M arch , his subjects could at last appreciate the m agnitude of the d a n ­ ger from w hich he h ad delivered them a n d the full extent to w hich he w as

entitled to be regarded as the n atio n ’s savior. Their grow ing enlighten­ ment, initiated by H is M ajesties D eclaration, had been further enlarged by Fitzharris’s confession and College’s trial. Secondly, the emergence of the P rotestant Plot o f 1681 reinforced the effort to m ake the late H ouse of Com m ons the culprit behind the recent crisis: a tactic th a t the king had adopted in his Declaration and which Tory propaganda and some o f the loyal addresses had been prom oting throughout the spring. At College’s trial, we have noticed, Jo h n Smith had testified th a t “the Parliam ent were agreed to secure the K ing,” and “in order to it, all Parliam ent-m en cam e very well Arm ed, and accom pa­ nied w ith Arms and M en .” A w riter for the Whigs had already perceived the direction in which such revelations were leading in a pam phlet p u b ­ lished on 12 July, as soon as the testim ony at College’s London inquest pointed to O xford during the meeting of Parliam ent as the scene of the alleged conspiracy: For according to the Evidence w hich Sm ith and others gave in Court, it is no less than a Plot, w herein n ot only C ity and C ountry, but the very Parliam ent are all em bark’t and engaged. But as the nam ing and interesting the Parliament in a Conspiracy, is enough to satisfie any reasonable man that there is none at all; so it enlightens us upon w hat M otive and Inducement all this is invented and contrived. For the Papists . . . have therefore no other course to steer, but to render Parliam ents suspected to his M ajesty, that he m ay call no more. A c­ cordingly after they had hired a com pany o f rascally scriblers to defame Parlia­ m ents, especially the H ou se o f Commons·, they n o w assum e the im pudence openly to arraign them o f a Treasonable D esign o f D eposing the King and altering the G overnm ent.70

The au th o r o f T ruth Vindicated, the m ost im portant of the W hig p am ­ phlets denouncing Fitzharris’s confession, also recognized th a t the con­ spiracy to seize the king w ould, if true, im plicate no less than Parliam ent itself, and on these grounds dismissed it as a fabrication: “Surely the In­ venter of this, never considered th a t such a design w as of a thing im possi­ ble, unless the Parliam ent did concurr and Act in such a Treason, and prepare and frame their desires into Bills for th a t purpose; and unless the G overnm ent, and also the force of the City did joyn w ith the Parliam ent to detain the King in C ustody for the same ends.”71 But if one were dis­ posed to credit Fitzharris’s confession and the testim ony at College’s trial, the same reasoning suggested th a t the W hig-dom inated H ouse of C om ­ mons w as fully prepared to concur in such a treason, and was prevented from doing so only because the king to o k its members by surprise, dis­ solving Parliam ent before their plans could be perfected. In th a t case, his “arb itrary ” actions could be justified as emergency measures essential to the survival of the legal governm ent. Even a W hig propagandist conceded

th a t if the king and his m inisters “w ere inform ed o f such a Plot so long a g o ” as M arch (which he d o u bted), “ this one thing h ad been a m ore justifiable reason of the speedy dism issing th a t P arliam ent, th a n all th a t are in the D eclaration w h ich w as published u p o n th a t o ccasio n .” 72 M eanw hile, T ory p ro p ag an d ists w ere already a t w o rk linking Fitz­ h a rris’s confession to S haftesbury’s a rrest the follow ing day. A lthough H o w a rd ’s h a d been the only "Whig nam e to ap p e ar in th a t docum ent, a T ory p am p h let quickly added another: “ Sure at his D eath, under the aw e of a terrifi’d C onscience, in the last Agonies of C o n tritio n a n d R epen­ tance, he m ay be allo w ’d to speak T ru th o f a L[ord] H [ow ard] a n d E[arl] o f S fhaftesbury].” R eferring to Shaftesbury’s arrest, this w rite r asks in­ dignantly, “ C a n it d o less th a n strike astonishm ent in to the h e a rt a n d m ind of every h o n est m an, to find him accused of no less Crim es th an H igh-Treason a t last? T he C onspiring to seize upon a n d secure the K ing’s Person by violence; the subverting the G overnm ent, a n d raising M en and Arm s to th a t p u rp o se ?” 73 T o ry broadsides drew the sam e connection be­ tw een F itzharris’s confession and S haftesbury’s arrest. O ne of them p re­ sents the latter in the T ow er, lam enting th a t “ Fitz-H arris like an Irish Sot, / H as m e b e tra y ’d, and H [ow ar]d to o , / And now w e k n o w n o t w h a t to d o .” 74 A nother, addressing Shaftesbury, declares: “ H a d n o t H arris spoke tru th a t’s last H o u r; / T h o u ne’re h ad st been sent to the T o w e r.”75 F itzh arris’s confession follow ed by College’s conviction h ad , for the purposes of T ory p ro p ag a n d a , already proved conclusively the existence o f a p lo t involving the W hig m em bers of the O x fo rd P arliam ent. Since Shaftesbury w as th eir acknow ledged leader, his guilt as the head o f the conspiracy w as assum ed from the outset, even though he h a d n o t yet been indicted for the crim e. In the endless flood of v itu p eratio n th a t appeared against Shaftesbury follow ing his arrest, he figures repeatedly as “the F o rem an ” n o w “caught in his o w n S nare,” the “ P lotting h e a d ,” the show m an w ho “ behind the C urtain sa te ” m an ip u latin g College as his “ active P u p p e t,” “ the H ead o f the C re w ,” or the “ C hief W o rk -m a n ” for w hom “the Joyner w o rk ’t .” 76 M o n m o u th ’s possible involvem ent in th e new plo t, o n th e other h an d , w as generally ignored, fo r none o f the testim ony th a t h ad com e to light h ad im plicated him as an active conspirator. A t L ord H o w a rd ’s inquest, as w e noticed, A nne Fitzharris and Theresa Peacock had qu o ted the W hig peer as revealing th a t the ultim ate objective o f seizing the king w as to “settle the C row n upon the D u k e o f M o n m o u t h b u t no evidence had been offered of the la tte r’s consenting to his fath e r’s confinem ent. Ever since M arch , w hen Shaftesbury h ad broached M o n m o u th ’s succession as an “ expedient to save the n a tio n ,” T o ry propagandists h ad m ade capital of his hopes o f m aking the young m an a p u p p e t king. It n o w appeared th a t Shaftesbury h ad been w illing to accom plish by force w h a t he failed to achieve by parliam en tary m eans. C onfiding his designs to one of the

Popish lords, now his fellow prisoner in the T ow er, Shaftesbury declares in a Tory broadside published on 13 July: The Duke o f York I w ould Exclude in Season, And set up M [onm outh] w ithout Sense or Reason. I with the G odly ones w ill once m ore jo y n , T o darken and destroy the R oyal Line.77

But M onm outh was n o t openly accused of being aw are of the p lo t to seize his father. Bryan H aines’s testim ony a t College’s trial, on the other hand, denied that the conspirators seriously intended to make M o n m o u th king. He related a conversation he h ad initiated w ith College: “You pretend, you say, to the D uke of M o n m o u th , th a t he is a fine Prince, and stands up for the Protestant Interest: Alas, said [College], we make an Idol of him to adum brate our Actions, for fear we should be discovered. D o you think the wise People of England shall ever make a Bastard upon Record King of England·, N o, said he, for th o ’ we praise his Actions, yet we cannot endure him, because he is against his ow n F ath er.” 78 This of course sup­ ported the portrayal of M o n m o u th as a tem porary tool th a t Tory p ro p a­ gandists had been repeating since the beginning of the Exclusion Crisis, and they continued, therefore, to exploit this image after the disclosure of the conspiracy to seize the king. As a verse broadside described him on 9 September: Perkin makes fine Legs to th’ shouting Rabble, W ho to make him King he thinks are able; But the Bauble Is only sh ew ’d for use: The silly Idiot serves but for a T ool still, For Knaves to w ork their Feats, And w ill remain a dull m istaken F ool still, For all their dam n’d Cabals and W apping Treats.79

W hether or n o t the W higs had seriously intended to m ake him king, then, the p art assigned to M o nm outh by T ory propagandists exploiting the P rotestant Plot was th a t of a fool am ong knaves, still assuming th a t sedition alone w ould be enough to create popular pressure on Lords and king to pass his succession into law, and oblivious to the treasonable conspiracy in w hich he w as serving as a gullible paw n. 80

The T ory offensive against Shaftesbury in the press was a w eathercock responding to the governm ent’s fluctuating hopes of indicting him. The summer had begun w ith tw o events th a t discouraged the king and his

party even before they had ordered his arrest. O n 21 June, as we have seen, the attorney general had failed to obtain an indictm ent against Lord H ow ard when this was offered to a M iddlesex grand jury selected by Richard Goodenough, the under sheriff to Bethel and Cornish, whose terms of office were due to expire the following 28 September. At the shrieval elections for the next year held on 24 June, three days after its defeat at H ow ard’s inquest, the government p u t up its ow n candidates, Ralph Box and H um phrey Nicholson, in hopes of bringing the era of Ignoramus juries to an end. But to its m ortification, the W hig candidates, Thom as Pilkington and Samuel Shute, were elected by an overwhelming majority. A fortnight later, w ith Shaftesbury now lodged in the Tow er, the government suffered another setback when, as we have noticed, a London grand jury returned an Ignoramus at College’s inquest. Before another week had passed, however, the governm ent’s mood changed abruptly. Its success in obtaining College’s indictm ent from an O xford grand jury after the earlier failure in London suggested a similar maneuver against Shaftesbury if his ow n activities a t the time of the O x­ ford Parliam ent in M arch could yield charges of treason. Rum ors th a t he w ould be presented before an O xford grand jury began to circulate am ong the members of the king’s party and even to appear in the news­ papers.81 In any event, witnesses were prepared to testify to his treason­ able activities in T hanet House, his home in the City, and it m ight yet prove possible to reform the sheriffs’ jury panels there. An attem pt of this kind at Hicks Hall on 26 August proved futile in the face of Goodenough’s obstinacy, but the new sheriffs, who were to take office in an­ other m onth, might prove less resolute. Reflecting this hopeful m ood, Tory broadsides began confidently prophesying th at before long the p u b ­ lic w ould see Shaftesbury’s “H ead fixed fast on a G ate.” 82 T hroughout September and the early p art of O ctober, Tory optimism continued while the Whigs showed signs of fear a t the outcome. O n 8 O ctober Shaftesbury petitioned the king to allow him to retire into exile on his plantations in Carolina. But the king, sharing his advisers’ exagger­ ated confidence, replied th a t the law m ust be allowed to take its course.83 His hopes were misplaced, for the next fortnight was to witness an u nbro­ ken series of defeats for the king and his friends. Events would soon prove th a t the new sheriffs were as firmly com m it­ ted to the cause of Whig justice as Bethel and Cornish had been. Once installed, they proceeded to appoint as under sheriff G oodenough’s brother Francis, who proved in every respect as obdurate as Richard had been. For nearly tw o weeks the justices of the M iddlesex sessions w ran ­ gled w ith him first at W estm inster H all and then at Hicks H all over the panel of forty Whigs he had chosen for jury duty. At last, on 17 O ctober, they had to adm it defeat. N o good could be expected of a M iddlesex

grand jury this term . The following day the governm ent tried its fortunes with a London grand jury by attem pting to indict Jo h n Rouse a t the Old Bailey. “It was resolved,” the earl o f Longford explained to the duke of O rm ond, “to taste the tem per of this Jury by preferring an indictm ent against Rouse, in w hich if there were success, it w as believed the bill against my Lord Shaftesbury was to follow.” 84 T he witnesses against Rouse included H aines, Smith, and Turberville, b u t the new sheriffs had packed the grand jury w ith reliable W higs w ho quickly returned the bill endorsed Ignoram us.85 M atters w ould quickly grow w orse for the governm ent. O n 24 O cto ­ ber, the justices at W estm inster H all, w orn dow n by repeated appeals from Shaftesbury and H o w ard for a w rit of habeas corpus, at last ruled that they m ust be indicted before 28 N ovem ber, the last day of M ichael­ mas term , or be set at liberty. The same day the attorney general gave his opinion that, since it had been impossible to discover any treasonable actions com m itted by Shaftesbury outside London, all hopes of indicting him at O xford m ust be ab an d o n ed .86 Shaftesbury’s victory in the king’s courts w as now a foregone conclu­ sion. The unwelcom e prospect was confirm ed for the governm ent a few days later w hen its inform ers reported the new sheriffs’ private assurance to Shaftesbury’s agents th a t their m aster had nothing to fear.87 H alifax declared despondently th a t it w as now pointless to proceed w ith plans for a grand inquest, suggesting th a t “ he had as good be set at liberty upon terms as by a jury, w hich w ould be sure to acquitt him .” 88 But m ost of the king’s advisers, while no less disappointed th a n H al­ ifax by the recent tu rn of events, still hoped to w rest an im portant advan­ tage from their approaching defeat in the courts. In spite of their reluctant conclusion th a t Shaftesbury could n o t be indicted, they decided, as Longford declared, “to let the w orld see th a t the King had reason for his lordship’s com m itm ent” ; therefore, “ it is resolved th a t the evidence against his lordship shall be exposed” at a grand inquest.89 Like the set­ ting for the O xford Parliam ent the previous M arch, the O ld Bailey in N ovem ber could be tu rn ed into a theater w here the W higs’ w rongdoing would be bared to public view. If the king w as unable to obtain justice in his ow n courts, as he was fond of com plaining to his adherents at this time, he could a t least hope to use the inquest as a public forum at w hich Shaftesbury’s treason m ight be proved to the satisfaction of his subjects if not to th a t o f the grand jurors. For a m onth preceding the inquest on 24 N ovem ber, therefore, the propaganda w arfare between W higs and Tories grew m ore heated than ever over an approaching event in w hich Shaftesbury’s escape from legal prosecution w as already taken for granted by both sides. But since it w as agreed by all parties th a t the verdict they were seeking w ould ultim ately

be decided by the public, they conducted an inquest o f their ow n in the press, w here Tories an d W higs so ught to indict, respectively, the grand jurors o r the w itnesses against Shaftesbury. In su p p o rt o f this new objective, T o ry p ro p ag an d ists quickly changed their tactics in order to ensure th a t the governm ent w ould n o t ap p e ar to be tak en by surprise by the outcom e of the inquest. T hey n o w prophesied Shaftesbury’s acq u ittal as confidently as they h ad earlier predicted his conviction. A T o ry broadside published on 4 N ovem ber, fo r instance, ends w ith a p e ro ratio n addressed to his fellow W higs by th e p ersona of the poem : Our Com m on-Councel lets Summon together, T o Pannel pack’t Jury’s, Let’s mak’t our endeavour, For an H abeus Corpus, insist on our Power; To fetch our Great Patriots out o f the Tower; And then w e’le Dispute the Case, for Reform ation, And make the proud T orys Resign us the N a tio n .90

A nd a few days later H eraclitus R idens published an o th er poem , “T he W higs Save-A ll,” in w hich a second W hig persona declares: If w e’re sworn o f a Jury, To Try a rank Tory, Though no proof, w e’l find him ne’r fear it, But if by the By, A W hig w e must Try W e’l clear him though th’ Apostles themselves did swear it. If T apsky comes t o ’t Fle warrant ye w e’l d o ’t For the Sheriffs have by their M andam us Pick’d up such a Crew O f Protestants True That ne’r doubt it the Bill will be found Ignoram us.91

O n th e o th er side, during th e w eeks preceding Shaftesbury’s inquest, W hig pro p ag an d ists w ere in ten t on underm ining the credibility o f the expected testim ony against the leader of their party. R o b e rt F erguson’s N o P rotestant-P lot, published in m id-O ctober, a ttack ed th e veracity of the eight w itnesses already slated to ap p ear a t S haftesbury’s inquest, de­ nouncing m ost o f them as “m en Infam ous and U nw o rth y to be be­ lieved.”92 W hen, shortly afterw ards, it w as learned th a t a n o th e r w itness, Jo h n B ooth, h ad com e fo rw ard , the W higs lost no tim e in publishing T he In fo rm a tio n o f Capt. H enry W ilkinson, in w hich a d e b to r im prisoned in the K ing’s Bench claim ed th a t he had recently been a p p ro ach ed by B ooth, his fellow prisoner, w ith a prom ise th a t “I m ight have five H u n d re d

Pounds per A n n u m setled upon me and my H eirs, or Ten T housand Pounds in money, w hich I pleased,” on condition th a t he join Booth in testifying against Shaftesbury a t his approaching inquest.93 Ferguson quickly followed this pam phlet w ith The Second Part o f N o Protestant Plot in w hich he denounced Booth as “one w ho h ad ere this been H anged for Coyning and M urder, if His M ajesty had n o t vouchsafed him his gra­ cious P ardon. ”94 The one point o f agreem ent between W higs and Tories was th at, since there was no longer any d o u b t of Shaftesbury’s acquittal by the grand jury, the objective of both parties at the approaching inquest m ust be to obtain a true bill or an Ignoram us from the public a t large, n o t simply on the W hig noblem an’s involvem ent in the p lot to seize the king at O x ­ ford but on the very existence of th a t plot. This of course, as its title proclaimed, w as the subject of Ferguson’s N o Protestant-Plot, in w hich he systematically challenged every allegation of its existence since the earliest of these at Lord H o w a rd ’s inquest in June by publicizing Anne Fitzharris’s later retraction of her testim ony on th a t occasion. H e also claimed to have seen a pap er w ritten the night before his execution in which Fitzharris allegedly repudiated his fam ous confession, and he dis­ paraged the testim ony a t College’s trial before proceeding to attack the witnesses expected to appear against Shaftesbury.95 The m ost im p o rtan t rebuttal to Ferguson, L’Estrange’s N o tes upon Stephen College, p u b ­ lished the first week in N ovem ber, also stressed the essential coherence of these allegations while insisting on their veracity. In show ing the close correspondence between Fitzharris’s confession and the testim ony at College’s trial, L’Estrange insisted th a t all this evidence (and, by im plica­ tion, th a t w hich could be expected to follow at Shaftesbury’s inquest) proved conclusively th a t “there was a Design upon the King at O xfo rd , ” as m ust be granted “ by any m an th a t has b u t eyes in’s head, and looks that way.” 9e Ultimately, the im portance to b o th sides of convincing the public th a t there had, or had n o t, been a plot to seize the king tu rn ed n o t only on implicating or exonerating Shaftesbury as its principal instigator b u t on justifying or discrediting C harles’s action in dissolving the O xford Parlia­ ment and failing to sum m on another, the central issue of political debate since M arch, Ferguson in m id-N ovem ber echoed the earlier W hig p ro p a­ gandists of July by rem inding his readers of the essential link between the king’s actions at O xford and the details o f the supposed P rotestant Plot about to be rehearsed once again at the O ld Bailey: In the first place, they w h o advised the D issolution o f the last Parliament, do by obtruding upon the w orld the belief o f a P ro testa n t P lot, hope to justifie their W isdom and Loyalty in giving His M ajesty so unseasonable and pernicious Counsel. For as they cannot but observe, that that effort o f Royal Power, which

they put the King upon, hath ’tis feared, diminished the confidence which the people put in his Prudence and Conduct, and not only embroiled his affairs at home, but lessened his Interest and Reputation abroad; so they could think of no other means to vindicate themselves from the many imputations which they lye under, for influencing His M ajesty to so hasty and prejudicial an act of Prerogative and Royal Authority, but by ascribing it unto an indispensable N ecessity, occasioned by a Conspiracy o f seising H is Person.97

For the Tories, if all w ent as expected, the great governm ent propaganda cam paign of 1681 w ould close as it had opened with a public perfor­ mance staged for the benefit of the public and designed to show once again that the king’s recent actions, far from being arbitrary, were neces­ sary to the continued existence of the lawful government. A week before th at spectacle was due to take place, Absalom and Acbitopbel appeared.

Before turning to Absalom and Achitopbel, however, we m ust first con­ sider the role Dryden had been playing between early M arch and late N ovem ber 1681, the m onths we have been reviewing in this chapter. At O xford on 19 M arch 1681, the Saturday before Parliam ent was to open there the following M onday, the king and members of both houses m et on neutral ground to witness a perform ance of Charles Saunders’s Tamerlane the Great, and to hear an epilogue th at Dryden had w ritten specially for this occasion. Before such a mixed audience neutrality was more than ever necessary, and the epilogue he produced for it w ould again be designed, like those discussed in the last chapter, to please all his spectators w ithout exception. For this epilogue, coming tw o days before Charles was to address the tw o houses, D ryden understandably to o k his cue from the conciliatory speech w ith which the king had opened the preceding parliam ent on 21 O ctober 1680. O n th a t occasion, Charles had reminded the members that “ all Europe have their Eyes upon this Assembly, and think their ow n Happiness or M isery, as well as O urs, will depend upon it.” D ryden in turn employs a theatrical image to tell the members, O x fo rd is now the publick Theater·, And you both Audience are, and Actors here. The gazing W orld on the N ew Scene attend, Admire the turns, and wish a prosp’rous end.

The king had assured the members th at w hat “I value above all the T rea­ sure in the W orld . . . is a perfect Union am ongst O ur Selves. . . . Let Us therefore take care th at We do n o t gratifie O ur Enemies, and Discourage

Our Friends by any unseasonable Disputes. . . . But from so great Pru­ dence and so good Affections as yours, I can fear nothing of this kind; but do relie upon you all, th a t you will use your best Endeavours to bring this Parliam ent to a good and happy C onclusion.” D ryden expresses a similar hope for the new Parliam ent, assembled in a setting so conducive to h ar­ mony: This Place the seat o f Peace, the quiet Cell Where Arts rem ov’d from noisy buisness [sic] dwell, Shou’d calm your W ills, unite the jarring parts, And w ith a kind C ontagion seize your hearts: Oh! may its Genius, like soft M usick m ove, And tune you all to Concord and to Love.

Charles had declared th a t “nothing but this [perfect union] can Restore the Kingdom to th a t Strength and V igour w hich it seems to have lost, and Raise Us again to th a t C onsideration w hich England h ath usually h a d .” 98 Dryden, adopting the A rk in the Flood as a secondary image for th a t of the ship of state tossed in a storm , represents concord and love as a safe harbor beckoning the members: Our Ark that has in Tempests long been tost, C ou’d never land on so secure a Coast. From hence you m ay look back on Civil Rage, And view the ruines of the former Age. Here a N ew W orld its glories m ay unfold, And here be sav’d the remnants o f the O ld ."

Like m ost of his audience, D ryden could scarcely be expected to foresee that the king’s stern speech opening the new Parliam ent tw o days later w ould replace faw ning condescension w ith harsh adm onishm ent and sig­ nal the beginning of a new policy. It w as only after th a t new policy had been in operation for a few weeks that D ryden began to abandon the nonpartisan stance he had cultivated until now as a professional m an o f the theater. By this tim e he w as no longer w riting plays himself, but he continued to w rite prologues and epilogues for the plays of other dram atists, and it is in these th a t we can detect the first signs of a change. The epilogue to John Banks’s T he U n­ happy Favourite, produced a t D rury Lane in April or M ay, is another piece of banter in the usual vein, but the targets o f D ryden’s ridicule on this occasion are the W hig booksellers: T is not our w ant o f W it that keeps us Poor, For then the Printers Press w ould suffer more: Their Pamphleteers each day their V enom spit, They thrive by Treason and w e starve by'W it.

Confess the truth, which of you has not laid Four Farthings out to buy the H atfield M aid} Or which is duller yet, and more w o u ’d spight us, D em ocritus his Wars with H eraclitus?100

The implied relationship between players and audience here has subtly shifted. The tone is still playful, but in place of a spurious cohesiveness between the tw o, achieved by laughing at a com m on target, the players now jibe a t a group that includes n o t only the W hig booksellers but that portion of the audience w hich buys and reads their productions so avidly. In relation to the latter, this is good-hum ored abuse in the tradition of comic raillery expected in London prologues, but for the first time politi­ cal differences am ong the audience supply the basis for this raillery and ally the players w ith one segment against another. Again, in the prologue he w rote for the perform ance of a play a t O x ­ ford in the summer of 1681, Dryden praises the university for its loyalty to the Crow n, a frequent topic in addressing this academic audience, but the tone has grow n m ore serious: W hat e’re the Story be, the M oral’s true, The W it w e lost in T ow n , w e find in you. Our Poets their fled Parts may draw from hence, And fill their windy Heads w ith sober Sense. W hen L ondon V otes with Southwark's disagree, Here they may find their long lost Loyalty. H e, w hose undaunted M use, with Loyal Rage, Has never spar’d the Vices o f the Age, Here finding nothing that his Spleen can raise, Is forc’d to turn his Satire into Praise.101

The first unequivocal sign of a decisive change, however, appears in D ryden’s prologue for a com m and perform ance of The U nhappy Fa­ vourite before the king and queen at D rury Lane, given either tow ard the end of the season in the spring of 1681, or, just as probably, the following autum n.102 This prologue, like the one he had produced for the O xford performance before the king in M arch, ignores the play it ostensibly in­ troduces to pursue a serious subject. D ryden also returns here to the com ­ plex image o f the Ark for the ship of state he had used so skillfully in M arch. But the use to which he now puts it is radically different. W hen first the Ark w as Landed on the Shore, And H eaven had v o w ’d to curse the Ground no more, W hen Tops of H ills the Longing Patriark saw, And the new Scene o f Earth began to draw;

The D ove w as sent to V iew the W aves Decrease, And first brought back to M an the Pledge of Peace: ’Tis needless to apply when those appear W ho bring the O live, and w ho Plant it here. W e have before our eyes the R oyal D ove, Still Innocence is Harbinger to Love, The Ark is op en’d to dism iss the Train, And People w ith a better Race the Plain.103

In using the A rk on M o u n t A rarat as a parallel th a t he proceeds to “apply” to the political situation of England in the late spring or autum n of 1681, D ryden presents it as already “ landed on the sh o re” and “opened to dismiss the tra in ” w ho in M arch w ere still afloat in the m idst of tempests, and still clinging to a hope th a t the approaching Parliam ent would unite in concord to bring them to safe harbor. N o w , the tempests ended, it is Charles, the “Royal D ove,” w ho has brought the “Pledge of Peace” to his relieved subjects, prepared at last to “people w ith a better race the p lain.” It is an image of the land already restored to tranquillity through the good offices of the king th a t accords exactly w ith the line taken since April by T ory propagandists and by the num erous loyal ad ­ dresses. The following O ctober, D ryden w rote both the prologue and epilogue for a revival o f N athaniel Lee’s M ithridates at D rury Lane. These return to the bantering m anner of all his London theater pieces up to this time (with the exception of the prologue to T he U nhappy Favourite), b u t now , instead of Popish plotters a t hom e and other C atholics abroad, it is the witnesses to the Popish Plot, particularly O ates, on w hom the players pour scathing ridicule, and in choosing a target th a t a p art of their au d i­ ence w ould have found offensive, they abandon all pretense to a com m on bond w ith the spectators as a whole. The Plot’s rem ov’d, a W itness o f R enow n [Oates] Has lod g’d it safe, at t’ other End o ’ th’ T ow n, And that it ne’re m ay fail, som e pious W hore H as cast her M ite, and fairly at his D ore Laid tw o small squalling Evidences more; Which well instructed, if w e take their w ords, In tim e may com e to hang tw o Popish Lords. 104

We have the testim ony o f R ichard Janew ay, the W hig bookseller, th a t these pieces had the divisive effect on the audience th a t D ryden m ust have foreseen and deliberately fostered. In his Im partial Protestant M ercury Janew ay w rote: “There is a R eport th a t a Revived Play was some days since Acted on an Em inent Publick T heatre, and the Prologue is ex-

tream ly talked of, some Verses of which are these th a t follow.” He then quotes, w ithout of course nam ing the still unknow n author, the last half o f the prologue w ith its sharp jibes at O ates and the other witnesses, and comments: “M any are pleased to A pplaud these Lines for the W it, but m any m ore extreamly adm ire at them for diverse other reasons.” 105 The following day N athaniel Thom pson responded to Janew ay in his own newspaper: “W hereas M r. Janeway in his Partial Protestant of yesterday, is pleased to make use of p art of a Prologue to a reviv’d Play lately acted at the Theatre Royal, w ith his grave A uthors Animadversions upon the same. By his good leave, I’ll incert a p art of the Epilogue to the same Play, and leave it to the chewing of the B rotherhood.” 106 And he proceeds to quote some more of D ryden’s lines ridiculing Oates. Clearly, Thom pson had found an unknow n ally in the author of the prologue and epilogue. These theater pieces th a t follow the O xford epilogue at the time of the Parliam ent there show D ryden abandoning, a t last, the pose of a neutral bystander to cultivate the sympathies of one p art of the audience at the expense of the other. But we m ust rem em ber that, while these more p arti­ san prologues and epilogues were being heard at D rury Lane from April or M ay 1681, the audience in the theater was of course unaw are of their authorship, and no t a single one was published under D ryden’s nam e or publicly attributed to him before the appearance of Absalom and Achitophel in N ovem ber.107 Lfntil the publication of th at poem , therefore, and the rapid spread of rum ors th a t he was its author, D ryden’s emergence at the eleventh hour as a Tory spokesman remained unknow n to the public at large. The anonym ous prologues and epilogues for theater productions be­ ginning in April or M ay 1681 represent D ryden’s only dem onstrable pub­ lications between th at date and m id-N ovem ber.108 By late summer he was almost certainly, in view of its length, at w ork on Absalom and Achitophel. W ith this w ork, because of events he could not foresee, the Tory propaganda cam paign of 1681 w ould reach not only its climax but also its conclusion.109

Coming late in the cam paign of 1681, A bsalom and Achitophel, pub­ lished on 17 N ovem ber, pursues the same goal as practically all Tory propaganda since M arch. Like these earlier newspapers, pam phlets, broadsides, and loyal addresses taking their cue from H is Majesties Dec­ laration over the past eight m onths, D ryden’s poem is designed to show th a t the king’s recent actions, far from being arbitrary and tyrannical, were emergency measures adopted in the face of a grave crisis th a t had imperiled the continued existence of the lawful governm ent.110 Its origi-

nality lies not in its purpose, but in the m eans D ryden chose to ad o p t for accomplishing this com m on design. Any estimate of D ryden’s originality m ust take into account his being the first to w rite a narrative poem ab o u t the recent dangers confronting the nation from w hich the king had finally rescued his subjects after m atters had been allowed to drift to the very brink of disaster, and his making the fam iliar history of A bsalom ’s rebellion instrum ental to this new design. The story from 2 Samuel, already em ployed as a parallel for Charles’s restoration in so m any thanksgiving serm ons, for M o n m o u th ’s disobedience to his father in the T ory propaganda of 1680, and for the duke’s unequal alliance w ith Shaftesbury in other T ory broadsides in the spring of 1681, w as now enlisted for a m ore com plex function. In the story’s latest incarnation, Absalom and A chitophel w ould continue to serve as analogues for M onm outh and Shaftesbury, b u t D avid w ould acquire greater im portance than either in keeping w ith the central place accorded to Charles in T ory propaganda ever since he dissolved the O xford Parliam ent in M arch 1681. In Absalom and A chitophel D ryden employs a m ethod the exact o p p o ­ site of th a t found in earlier biblical parallels. W hereas a poem such as N a b o th ’s Vinyard relates an O ld Testament story in w hich the presence of a few discrepancies directs the read er’s attention to an analogous con­ tem porary situation, A bsalom and A chitophel does just the reverse. It recounts the T ory version of the Exclusion Crisis and its resolution, but by setting the narrative in biblical times and employing biblical nam es, Dryden com pels the reader to recognize unfolding analogies w ith the past. The m odern allusions in N a b o th ’s Vinyard implicitly invoke a con­ tem porary parallel to this ancient story; the biblical allusions in A bsalom and A chitophel explicitly recall a historical parallel to this account of English rebelliousness late in the reign o f Charles II. Instead of accom m o­ dating a biblical narrative to a contem porary situation in the homiletic m anner borrow ed from the pulpit by earlier T ory propagandists, D ryden has accom m odated his contem porary narrative to the biblical past in a m anner all his own. D ryden’s preface “T o the R eader” gives no indication of the changed direction the fam iliar O ld Testam ent parallel will take in his poem , n o r of David’s increased im portance there. In w h at is designed as an ethical ap­ peal to unim passioned readers on behalf of his anonym ous poem , D ryden presents him self as a m oderate T ory w ho bears no personal anim us to ­ w ard the W higs, least of all the duke of M onm outh. He therefore focuses exclusively on the satirical aspects of his poem in an attem pt to justify his attacks on the king’s opponents, while referring to Charles only in the course of expressing a w ish th a t M o nm outh may yet be reconciled w ith his father: “W ere I the Inventour, w ho am only the H istorian, I shoud

certainly conclude the Piece, with the Reconcilem ent o f A bsalom to D avid. And, w ho know s but this may com e to pass? Things were not brought to an Extremity where I left the Story: There seems, yet, to be room left for a Composure; hereafter, there may only be for pity.”111 As a result he sounds here much like the Tory authors o f those cautionary appeals in biblical guise like A b sa lo m ’s Conspiracy and A Seasonable Invitation fo r M onm outh to Return to C ourt that had been written for a very different purpose. But the impression created by this som ew hat dis­ ingenuous apologia from one w ho had formerly enjoyed M onm outh’s patronage is an inadequate image o f A bsalom and A chitophel, which, as Narcissus Luttrell noted on his copy of the poem , is not just “agt ye Duke of M onm outh, Earl o f Shaftsbury &C that party,” but “in vindication of the King &C his freinds.”112 W hat is com m only overlooked in discussions of A bsalom and A ch it­ ophel is that Dryden’s parallel between Charles and David, like all the other historical parallels he w ould draw as a Tory propagandist over the next few years, employs Plutarch’s m ethod o f singling out disparities as well as similarities in the course o f comparing the tw o figures. In the “Life o f Plutarch” he was to write for the translation of Plutarchs Lives pub­ lished tw o years later in 1683, Dryden w ould freely paraphrase the words o f M ontaigne to emphasize this very method as one o f Plutarch’s greatest and m ost characteristic achievements. But an equitable Judge w ho takes things by the same handle which Plutarch did, w ill find there is no injury offer’d to either party, tho there be some dispar­ ity betw ixt the persons: For he weighs every circumstance by it self, and judges separately of it: N o t comparing M en at a lump, nor endeavouring to prove they were alike in all things, but allow ing for disproportion o f quality or fortune, shewing wherein they agreed or disagreed, and wherein one was to be preferr’d before the other.113

At a time when the preachers of thanksgiving sermons had become adept at using Plutarch’s m ethod to show how Charles II “was to be preferr’d before” David on such scores as birth and personal courage, w e should not be surprised to find Dryden implying more important differences be­ tween the tw o besides drawing significant likenesses. The very com plexity of the biblical D avid’s character and behavior encouraged this kind o f treatment. The fascination with David as a type o f Christ and a m odel for Chris­ tian kings in some studies of Dryden’s political poetry has created a one­ sided picture at odds with the rounded image o f him portrayed in 2 Samuel and conveyed to seventeenth-century readers through not only the Bible but also numerous scriptural commentaries and serm ons.114 As

these readers could h a rd ly avoid noticing, the qualities a n d achievem ents responsible fo r D av id ’s heroic sta tu re in the O ld T estam ent are m atched by m o ra l transgressions of alm o st equal m agnitude. In one of the sta n ­ dard scrip tu ral com m entaries p o p u la r in the R e sto ra tio n p e rio d , fo r ex­ am ple, the c h a p te r on 2 Sam uel begins w ith a list o f D a v id ’s fam iliar virtues th a t is im m ediately follow ed by a rem in d er o f his equally n o to ri­ ous vices: Y et as he w a s en d o w ed w ith all th ese ex cellen cies, he had a lso his fa ilin g s, yea, strong corru p tion s, as exo rb ita n t lu sts, u n clean n esse, cruelty, w h ich d isco v ­ ered them selves in the m atter o f Uriahs p rid e in num bring o f the p eop le; partial injustice, in p assin g an u nrighteou s senten ce again st in n o cen t M ep h ib o sk eth ·, lying, d issem b lin g, w h ich the H o ly G h ost hath a lso recorded, n o t to en cou rage any to do the like; but as S ea-m arks, th at they m ay av o id th ese R o ck s, again st w h ich so ch o ice a V essel dashed, and had surely sp litted and p erished, had n o t G od s G race and h o ly Spirit, as a tim ely gale o f w in d e , b lo w n h im o ff, and reduced h im in to his right cou rse by u nfeign ed rep en tan ce. 115

Thus D a v id ’s role fo r m o d ern tim es is in som e respects th a t o f an exem ­ plary figure w hose virtues invite im itatio n , b u t in oth ers th a t o f a c a u tio n ­ ary exam ple w hose vices, m istakes, a n d w eaknesses o u g h t to be sh u n n ed .116 It is the fallible D avid o f 2 Sam uel, ch ap ters 1 3 -1 9 , w h o m D ryden invokes as a parallel fo r C harles in A b sa lo m a n d A c b ito p h e l. These seven chapters include A b salo m ’s rebellion, o f course, b u t they begin som e years before th a t event, w h en the yo u n g m an m akes his first ap p earan ce in the opening verse o f c h a p te r 13, a n d they end w ith D avid m o u rn in g the death o f his son in c h a p te r 19. T a k e n to g eth er they fo rm a long ch ain of connected events th a t acq u ire th eir coherence fro m a co m m o n them e: the relations betw een th e k ing an d his capricious son, a n d the e x te n t to w hich D avid’s ow n public behavior is affected by th a t priv ate relatio n sh ip . It is a story in w hich D av id ’s foolish indulgence to w a rd his favorite son leads him to c o n d o n e o r ignore A bsalom ’s tran sg ressio n s, allow ing them to co n tinue an d increase u n til D a v id ’s ow n life a n d th o se of his subjects are endangered, a n d converting w h a t w o u ld have been sham eful w e a k ­ ness in a p riv ate perso n in to culpable negligence on the p a rt o f a king. A bsalom slays his elder b ro th e r A m n o n to avenge th eir sister T a m a r and flees a b ro a d . “ A nd th e soul o f K ing D av id longed to go fo rth u n to A b sa­ lom ” (2 Sam. 13:39). A tth e so licitation o f Jo a b , w h o “perceived th a t the king’s h e a rt w as to w a rd A b salo m ,” D avid p a rd o n s his son a n d perm its him to re tu rn to Jeru salem b u t n o t to en ter his presence. Y et w hen Jo a b pleads fo r him a second tim e, D avid sends fo r his son, “ an d th e king kissed A b salo m ” (2 Sam . 14:33). E m boldened by his fa th e r’s lenity,

Absalom sets about publicly defaming the king and gradually w inning aw ay his subjects’ allegiance, but David never lifts a finger to stop him. At last Absalom collects his rebel forces in H ebron, David flees Jerusalem w ith those w ho remain loyal to him , and both sides prepare for battle, David ordering his captains: “Deal gently for my sake w ith the young m an, even w ith A bsalom ” (2 Sam. 18:5). There follows “ a great slaughter that day of tw enty thousand m en” in a battle th a t need never have oc­ curred if David had taken timely action during the course of several years in which Absalom was openly stealing the hearts of his people. D avid’s forces are victorious over the rebels and Absalom is slain by Joab, but the king’s only response to the messengers bringing news of their success is to inquire anxiously, “Is the young m an Absalom safe?” (2 Sam. 18: 2 8 32). Informed of his son’s death, David is inconsolable. “And the victory that day was turned into m ourning unto all the people: for the people heard say th a t day how the king was grieved for his son” (2 Sam. 19:2). Joab bitterly reproaches David: “Thou hast shamed this day the faces of all thy servants, which this day have saved thy life . . . in th a t thou lovest thine enemies, and hatest thy friends. For thou hast declared this day, th at thou regardest neither princes nor servants: for this day I perceive, th a t if Absalom had lived, and all we had died this day, then it had pleased thee well” (2 Sam. 19:5-6). Stung by this jiist rebuke and w arned by Joab th at his followers, angry at his indifference, are about to abandon him, David at last leaves off his selfish grieving and resumes his responsibilities to ­ w ard his neglected subjects. Biblical com m entators on 2 Samuel, chapters 13-19, all found the same com m on theme running through the various episodes: iiD avid was ever too indulgent a father, and sm arted for it,” in the words of one of them; “he was so indulgent a father,” in the w ords of another, “th at his excesse of love would make him dispence w ith the greatest fault, in one that was so dear unto him .” 117 They condem ned D avid’s partiality as supreme magistrate when after A m non’s slaying he “reconciled himself to his wicked son, and again received him into grace and favour, neglecting to execute justice, by inflicting upon him th a t punishm ent which Gods law required, and his bloody sin deserved.” 118 Instead of kissing Absa­ lom, “he should have kicked him rather; and not have hardened him to further villany.” 119 They reproved the king’s negligence in ignoring his son’s seditious behavior and failing to act before it led to insurrection, noting that iiD avid was so blinded w ith fond affection, th at he could see nothing amiss in A b so lo m .”120 And they were particularly severe on David’s behavior after the battle, blaming “his excessive love and un­ bounded affection tow ards his dear Absalom, which doth so wholly en­ gross and take him up, th at he doth n o t so much as m ention other and far

greater causes o f grief, as the slaughter o f tw en ty th o u sa n d o f his su b ­ jects.” 121 In every instance D avid h a d p laced priv ate feelings before public responsibilities, leniency before justice, a n d th e consequence w as “the indangering o f all his p e o p le .” 122

A bsalom a n d A c h ito p h e l opens w ith D avid, ju st as it closes w ith him , fo r it relates the rise an d progress o f a crisis in the English D av id ’s k in gdom , and the m eans by w hich these perils to his o w n safety a n d th a t o f his subjects w ere finally overcom e. D ryden begins by giving his c o n te m p o ­ rary n arrativ e the biblical setting it w ill b ear th ro u g h o u t its course: In pious times, e’r Priest-craft did begin, Before P olygam y w as made a sin; When man, on m any, m utiply’d his kind, E’r one to one w as, cursedly, confind:

(1-4) By invoking a tim e “W h en N a tu re p ro m p te d , a n d no law den y ’d / P ro ­ m iscuous use o f C oncubine a n d B ride,” D ryden is n o t seeking to excuse C harles’s p rom iscuity, as is som etim es said, m uch less to co n v ert it in to a heroic virtue. B ut he does deflect the force o f an a w k w ard adm ission by focusing a tte n tio n on th e com ic in co n g ru ity o f a m o d e rn h isto ry set in biblical tim es. T h e effect is m uch th e sam e as th a t o f his later w itticism about the Popish P lo tters, “ Som e th o u g h t they G o d ’s A n o in ted m ean t to Slay / By G uns, invented since full m an y a d a y ” (1 3 0 -3 1 ). C harles c a n n o t be ex o n erated by the m ore to le ra n t sta n d a rd s o f a n earlier age, b u t he benefits all the sam e fro m D ry d e n ’s rem inder th a t it is only the accident o f having been b o rn a t the w ro n g tim e th a t m akes him culpable fo r th e sam e behavior th a t carried no stigm a fo r the biblical D avid: Then, Israel’s M onarch, after H eaven’s ow n heart, H is vigorous warm th did, variously, impart To W ives and Slaves: And, w ide as his Com m and, Scatter’d his M aker’s Image through the Land.

(7-10) W ith these lines D ryden begins to divert a tte n tio n fro m th e illicitness o f C harles’s relatio n sh ip s to the sheer q u a n tity of their results, w hich, w hile scarcely rivaling th e biblical D av id ’s reco rd , nevertheless affords a genu­ ine (though essentially frivolous) likeness betw een these tw o fath ers o f widely different eras, a n d earns th em the first o f th ree epithets D ryden uses to m ark their closest sim ilarities:

several M others bore To Godlike D avid, several Sons before. But since like slaves his bed they did ascend, N o True Succession could their seed attend. O f all this Num erous Progeny w as none So Beautifull, so brave as A bsolon.

(13-18) T his first epithet for the English D avid, “g o d lik e,” will also be his last, in the penultim ate line of the poem . But the term carries an entirely different and less serious c o n n o ta tio n here from th a t w hich it will com e to bear later. O n this earlier occasion b o th D avids are called godlike in the face­ tious sense th a t they p a ro d y the divine plenitude by scattering their “ M a k er’s Im age th ro u g h the L a n d .” 123 So to o their offspring, follow ing the sta n d a rd T o ry in te rp re ta tio n of 2 Sam uel we noticed in the last chapter, are alike in being ineligible by birth for “T rue Succession” to their fath ers’ thrones: the one fact essential to the succeeding n arrative th a t has m ade it necessary to m en tio n C harles’s prom iscuous behavior a t all. T he g ro u n d w o rk is n o w com plete fo r an even closer and far m ore significant likeness betw een the English D avid and his biblical predecessor, in tro d u ced by D ry d en ’s second epithet for the tw o kings: With secret Joy, indulgent D a v td view ’d H is Youthfull Image in his Son renew ’d: T o all his w ishes N othing he deny’d, And made the Charming Annabel his Bride. W hat faults he had (for w ho from faults is free?) His Father coud not, or he w oud not see. Some warm excesses, which the Law forebore, Were constru’d Youth that purg’d by boyling o ’r: And A m n o n 1s Murther, by a specious Nam e, Was call’d a Just Revenge for injur’d Fame.

(31-40) N o th in g as serious as this charge of p artiality in adm inistering justice w here his son is concerned is ever laid to C harles’s acco u n t th ro u g h o u t the rest o f the poem . H e is show n a t his m ost culpable w hen he is m ost sim ilar to the biblical D avid w ho looked th e o th er w ay a t A bsalom ’s crim es: a low p o in t in D ry d en ’s ch aracterizatio n o f C harles from w hich any change thereafter can only raise him in the rea d e r’s estim ation. It seems less likely th a t D ryden is alluding to a single unp u n ish ed crim e of M o n m o u th ’s w hose identity has never been agreed u p on, th a n th a t he is assum ing the co n tem p o rary re a d e r’s fam iliarity w ith any n u m b er o f ru-

mors, true or false, of the young m an ’s escaping the rigors of the law through his royal fath er’s notorious com plaisance. The opening verse paragraph of D ryden’s poem turns last of all from the w ayw ard sons shared by the tw o m onarchs to the turbulent subjects both are called upon to rule: The Jew s, a H eadstrong, M ood y, M urmuring race, As ever try’d th’ extent and stretch o f grace; God’s pam per’d people w hom , debauch’d w ith ease, N o King could govern, nor no God could please.

(45-48) Dryden’s language evokes those num erous reproofs to the children of Israel as “a stiffnecked people” in Exodus and D euteronom y, or “ a rebel­ lious people” in the jeremiads of Isaiah and Ezekiel, th a t preachers were fond of repeating. In proceeding to trace the rem arkable sim ilarity be­ tween the m onarchs in the w ay they came to their thrones, however, Dryden attaches a third and final epithet to the tw o Davids w hich suggests that the language used to describe the children of Israel applies w ith equal force to the English people. They w ho w hen Saul w as dead, w ithout a blow , M ade foolish Isbbosbeth the Crown forgo; W ho banisht D a v id did from H ebron bring, And, with a Generali Shout, proclaim ’d him King: Those very Jew es, w h o, at their very best, Their H um our more than Loyalty exprest, N o w , wondred w hy, so long, they had ob ey’d An Idoll M onarch which their hands had made.

(57-64) The youthful Charles invited to retu rn from abroad by the C onvention Parliament is like the young D avid brought back from H ebron by the Israelites (2 Sam. 5:1-5): n o t only were both of them joyfully acclaimed as kings, but each of them was also a “ banisht D a vid ”w ho had earlier been rejected by the same volatile and capricious people w ho now re­ versed direction, and w ould later do so again. Once D ryden takes up the relations between Charles and his subjects, however, the close similarities he has been draw ing between the tw o Davids until now com e to an end, to be replaced by the first of several implicit disparities. His poem has begun w ith the English D avid’s com ­ plaisance tow ard Absalom, it now emerges, n o t because, as in 2 Samuel, it is to be the principal cause o f the troubles th a t follow (an eventuality precluded by M o n m o u th ’s m arginal role in the Exclusion Crisis), but because it epitomizes C harles’s behavior to w ard those he governs. His

indulgence of his coddled son is an exact reflection o f the father-king’s forbearance to w a rd the “p a m p e r’d p eo p le” w ho are his subjects, “ too fortunately free” beneath his m ild yoke. Each significant elem ent in the earlier account o f the spoiled A bsalom n o w finds its exact c o u n te rp a rt in the description o f a people “d e b a u ch ’d w ith ease” and “ less circum ­ scrib’d and b o u n d ” by law s th an any p o p u latio n on earth, yet petulantly dream ing th a t “they w an ted libertie.” W e recall how C harles Instinctively excuses or overlooks his so n ’s transgressions: Some warm excesses, which the Law forbore, Were constru’d Youth that purg’d by boyling o ’r: And A m n on's Murther, by a specious Nam e, Was call’d a Just Revenge for injur’d Fame. ( 37 - 4 0 )

But in the sam e fashion he disregards the youthful careers of his form er enemies in show ering them n o w w ith favors: Some, by their M onarch’s fatall mercy grown, From Pardon’d Rebels, Kinsmen to the Throne; Were rais’d in Power and publick Office high: Strong Bands, if Bands ungratefull men could tye. ( 146 - 4 9 )

Ju st as the English D av id ’s indulgence o f his favorite son could long con­ tinue w ith o u t any w arning signs of danger, Thus Prais’d, and Lov’d, the N oble Youth remain’d, W hile D avid, undisturb’d, in Sion raign’d. (41 - 4 2 )

so his coddled subjects continue peaceable as long as “no fo rm ’d D esign, / N o r Interest m ade the Factious C ro u d to jo y n ” (67 -6 8 ): And D a v id ’s mildness manag’d it so well, The Bad found no occasion to Rebell. ( 77 - 7 8 )

But in each case the effect of the com placent couplet is a t once inverted by the add itio n of a proverbial tru th rem inding us th a t all such peaceful appearances are m isleading, since n o tranquillity can be perm anent. W here the English D avid’s negligent relationship w ith his son is c o n ­ cerned, we are quickly rem inded: But Life can never be sincerely blest: Heaven punishes the bad, and proves the best. (43 - 4 4 )

So in the case of C harles’s pam pered subjects, we are told: But, when to Sin our byast N ature leans, The carefull D evil is still at hand with means.

(79-80) As anyone fam iliar w ith the biblical David could n o t fail to recall, his own conduct tow ard his subjects w as quite the reverse of his indulgence of his favorite son. Q uick to punish and slow to forgive, the D avid o f 2 Samuel is norm ally a severe ruler w ho exacts strict obedience from his people and makes examples of those w ho fail him in their duties. As one biblical com m entator rem arked, D avid was “blinded w ith fond affec­ tion” for Absalom, “though otherw ise he were sagacious enough, yea suspicious w ithout cause, as of good M ephibosheth.” 124 In 1685, in Threnodia Augustalis: A Funeral-Pindarique Poem Sacred to the H appy M em ory o f King Charles I I , D ryden w ould once m ore con­ trast David w ith Charles to the latter’s advantage, this time explicitly, and again on the score of severity vs. mildness. Relating the deathbed scene in which Charles, “kind, good and gracious to the last,” anxiously recom ­ mends “ all th a t on earth he held m ost d ear” to the care of his brother James, D ryden juxtaposes this image w ith another deathbed scene, th a t of David (I Kings 2:5 -9 ), whose dying charge to his ow n successor Solomon was to pay off his fath er’s old scores by putting Jo ab to the sw ord (“let not his hoar head go dow n to the grave in peace” ) as well as Shimei, “which cursed me w ith a grievous curse” (“his hoar head bring th o u down to the grave w ith b lo o d ” ): That King w h o liv’d to G ods o w n heart, Yet less serenely died than he: Charles left behind no harsh decree For Schoolm en w ith laborious art T o salve from cruelty: Those, for w h om love cou ’d no excuses frame, H e graciously forgot to nam e.125

“M ildness” and “m ercy,” the tw o term s D ryden introduces early in Absalom and A chitophel to describe C harles’s characteristic behavior to ­ ward his people, will be repeated m any times and amplified later in the poem, always in respect to this same subject. The attitude D ryden adopts tow ard these tw o related qualities in A bsalom and A chitophel is deliber­ ately am bivalent. As a m irror image of C harles’s paternal indulgence to ­ ward his son, the father-king’s permissive treatm ent of his subjects, tacitly encouraging their insubordination, is as shortsighted a policy as the other. It is a m ore generous w eakness than the first, since it escapes the taint of self-love inseparable from indulgence of one’s offspring (“W ith

secret Joy, indulgent D a vid view ’d / H is Y outhfull Im age in his Son ren ew ’d ” [31—32]), b u t it is capable of far greater harm , to the degree th a t a m o n arc h ’s responsibilities for th e w elfare of an entire n a tio n exceed those of a p a re n t for his children. Even the first appearance of these term s in the poem , referring to the earlier p a rt of C harles’s reign before the beginning of the E xclusion C ri­ sis, carries this am bivalent note. T h a t “ the Bad found no occasion to R ebell” in the previous era is credited to the fact th a t iiD a v id 7S m ildness m an ag ’d it so w ell” ; a n d th a t quality in a ruler is alw ays adm ired in the abstract. O n the other h an d , the policy by w hich som e fom enters of the Exclusion Crisis h ad earlier been “rais’d in Pow er and publick Office h ig h ” thanks to “ their M o n a rc h ’s fatall m ercy” is tacitly condem ned as unw ise. D avid’s “ fatal m ercy” is n o t, how ever, as has been argued in recent years, an allusion to C harles’s prom ise of an A ct of O blivion in the D eclaration of Breda on the eve of his resto ra tio n , w hich all parties had accepted a t the tim e as an essential concession sh o rt of w hich C harles could never have recovered his th ro n e w ith o u t a bloody struggle, w hose outcom e w ould have been u n c e rta in .126 O n the contrary, as the lines m ake clear, “ fatal m ercy” is th e k in g ’s unw ise b u t w ell-m eant policy d u r­ ing the years follow ing the R esto ratio n o f elevating these form er enemies “from P a rd o n ’d R ebels,” the status .they enjoyed unchallenged under the A ct of O blivion, to “ K insm en to the T h ro n e ,” th a t is to say, peers of the realm , by a g ratu ito u s series of p ro m o tio n s th ro u g h the ran k s o f the n o ­ bility; ap p o in tin g them to positions o f tru st; and taking them in to his counsels, by w hich m eans they w ere “ rais’d in Pow er an d publick Office h ig h .” 127 But the phrase “fatal m ercy” also carried a very specific c o n n o ta tio n to Englishm en o f m iddle age w ho rem em bered the tro u b led tim es from w hich the R esto ratio n h ad seem ingly delivered the natio n . It referred to the policies of the king’s father, w hich his supporters blam ed in n o small p a rt for his eventual death, and w hich h a d consisted n o t in his issuing p ard o n s, either general or individual, b u t in his m aking concessions to his opponents during the years im m ediately preceding the first Civil W ar th a t had strengthened them to the p o in t w here they w ere a t last able to c h a l­ lenge his auth o rity successfully. W e can better und erstan d D ry d en ’s am bivalent attitu d e to w a rd “fatal m ercy” by considering the w ay he treats this conception in his earliest poem s follow ing the R estoration. In Astraea R e d u x (1660), he addresses the new ly resto red king, praising him for possessing the sam e tem p era­ m ent th a t had proved fatal to his father, yet encouraging him to exercise it freely: But you, w hose goodness your discent doth show , Your H eav’nly Parentage and earthly too;

By that same m ildness which your Fathers Crown Before did ravish, shall secure your ow n. N ot ty’d to rules o f Policy, you find Revenge less sw eet then a forgiving m ind.128

The explanation of this p arad o x m ust be sought in the change of con­ ditions between 1640 and 1660. The same mildness th a t ravished his father’s crow n will secure his son’s because the tem porary aberration of English loyalty th a t cost Charles I his throne and eventually his life has now faded into history. W h at was a fatal w eakness in the father will be a saving grace in the son. Returning to this subject less than tw o years later in To M y L o rd Chan­ cellor (1662), D ryden tells C larendon th a t H eav’n w ould your Royal M aster should exceed M ost in that Vertue which w e m ost did need, And his mild Father (w ho too late did find AU mercy vain but w hat w ith p o w ’r was joyn’d,) His fatal goodnesse left to fitter times, N o t to increase but to absolve our Crimes.125

Again it is the return o f fitter times and an altered m ood am ong the people that promises opposite effects from the same family traits. U nder different circumstances, the “fatal goodness” of the m artyred m onarch becomes a life-giving quality to be em ulated by his m ore fortunate successor. But mercy m ust be joined w ith pow er if it is to be exercised wisely, as Charles I learned to his regret. Since the emergence of such a com bination has been dem onstrated by the universal acclaim recently accom panying his son’s restoration, the conditions under w hich mercy becomes a blessing now exist. As all these considerations o f the subject m ake clear, D ryden uses such terms as “m ildness” and “m ercy” in two quite different, though related, senses: to refer either to tem peram ent or to policy. As tem peram ent, m ild­ ness and mercy carry no suggestion of blame w hatever. They are virtues derived from heaven, conspicuous tokens of the m artyred m o n arch ’s saintly nature, w hich, as congenital dispositions, have been inherited by his son. As policy, they figure as an instinctive exercise o f these same inclinations th a t will prove wise o r misguided, beneficial or dangerous to the com m onw ealth, depending on their appropriateness to the circum ­ stances obtaining at any particular time. In Absalom and A chitophel D ryden shows the ab ru p t demise o f those favorable conditions th a t justified his recom m ending a policy of mildness and mercy to the newly restored king some tw enty years earlier.130 The English, a people w ho, like the children of Israel, “ at their very best, / Their H um our m ore than Loyalty exprest” (61—62), have now succum bed to

an opposite m ood, in which “every hostile H um our, which before / Slept quiet in its Channels, bubbles o’r ” (138-39). But this is no m ore than can be expected of a “People easie to Rebell” who, “govern’d by the M o o n ,” Tread the same track when she the Prime renews: And once in tw enty Years, their Scribes Record, By natural Instinct they change their Lord.

(217-19) This sudden shift in the political climate is brought about by the discov­ ery of the Popish Plot and the subsequent atm osphere of public hysteria to which it leads. The G ood old Cause reviv’d, a Plot requires. Plots, true or false, are necessary things, T o raise up Com m on-wealths, and ruin Kings.

(82-84) In describing the Popish Plot, Dryden does not dismiss it as a complete fabrication: Some Truth there was, but dash’d and brew’d with Lyes; To please the Fools, and puzzle all the Wise. Succeeding times did equal folly call, Believing nothing, or believing all.

(114-17) Since the king had recom mended “the further Prosecution of the P lo t” to his last tw o parliam ents in a vain attem pt to divert their attention from an Exclusion Bill, Dryden declines to follow m ost Tory propagandists who, since as early as 1679, as we noticed in the last chapter, but increasingly since the arrest of Shaftesbury the previous summer, had been ridiculing the Popish Plot as a W hig invention.131 He presents it as having just enough truth to save the king’s honesty, while m aking clear th a t Shaftes­ bury had exaggerated and skillfully exploited it in order to create public unrest: The w ish’d occasion o f the Plot he takes, Some Circumstances finds, but more he makes; By buzzing Emissaries, fills the ears O f listning Crowds, w ith Jealosies and Fears O f Arbitrary Counsels brought to light, And proves the King him self a Jebusite.

(208-13) The English A chitophel’s use of these “ buzzing emissaries” to convert public excitement over the Popish Plot into “jealousies and fears” di-

rected against the king him self is simply the earliest instance in the poem of the unique skills th a t make him first in im portance of all those “P ar­ don’d Rebels” w hom the indulgent D avid has raised to a position from which they can now challenge his authority. As we noticed earlier, m ost Tory propagandists, while w orking w ithin the tradition of derision and invective th a t passed for satire am ong the pam phleteers and versifiers of both parties, had acknow ledged Shaftesbury’s intellectual leadership of the Whigs under such appellations as “the F orem an” or the “Plotting head.” D ryden, intent on magnifying the danger Shaftesbury had posed to the com m onw ealth at the height of the Exclusion Crisis, greatly en­ hances his m anagerial skills, depicting him as a m aster politician w orking behind the scenes, devising com plex strategies, and choosing as his lieu­ tenants those individuals best suited in each case to their particular as­ signments. It is on these term s th a t D ryden represents Shaftesbury as M o n m o u th ’s evil genius, a role we have seen the W hig leader playing in T ory p ro p a­ ganda since the previous April, w hen his “ expedient” of “settling the Crown upon the D uke οi M o n m o u th ” had first attracted wide publicity. A c h ito p h e l still w a n ts a C hief, and n on e W as foun d so fit as W arlik e A b s o lo n : N o t, th at he w ish ’d his G reatness to create, (For P olititian s n either lo v e n or hate:) But, for he k n ew , his T itle n o t a llo w ’d, W ou ld k eep him still d ep en d in g on the C row d: T h at K ingly p o w er, thus eb b in g o u t, m ight be D raw n to the dregs o f a D em ocracy. (220 - 2 7 )

Here D ryden opens the pivotal scene between A chitophel and A bsa­ lom. O ften referred to in recent years as the “tem ptation scene,” this dialogue of some 250 lines— roughly a q uarter of the entire poem — owes its im portance, however, n o t only to its dram atizing the seduction of Absalom but to its disclosing A chitophel’s designs th a t “ threat the G ov­ ernm ent” until they are averted, and dem onstrating the extent to w hich these are tacitly encouraged by D avid’s mildness and mercy. The M iltonic echoes o f A chitophel’s opening speech to Absalom (2 3 0 302) have attracted a disproportionate am ount of attention to this p art of their dialogue to the exclusion of the rest. The m isdirected tracing of these M iltonic allusions to Paradise Lost, furtherm ore, has fostered the p o p u ­ lar notion th a t A bsalom ’s seduction by the satanic Achitophel is the cen­ tral dram atic episode of the entire poem , analogous in this respect to M il­ ton’s depiction of the Fall of M an in book 9 o f his epic. But this idea ignores the m arginal im portance of A bsalom in D ryden’s poem , w here

his role in the developing crisis in D avid’s kingdom is no greater than that of M onm outh himself in the Exclusion Crisis. While Absalom serves an im portant rhetorical function in D ryden’s poem , he does so not as a char­ acter about whom we are made to feel concern w hether he resists or suc­ cumbs to tem ptation or about the m oral consequences of his choice, but as an interlocutor in a dialogue w ith Achitophel th a t is unerringly focused on David from its opening lines until its close. The misconception th at A chitophel’s opening speech to Absalom al­ ludes to the tem ptation scene in Paradise L ost originates in a passage in D ryden’s preface “T o the R eader,” where, already referring to M o n ­ m outh under the name of “A bsalom ,” he argues th a t “since the most excellent N atures are always the m ost easy; and, as being such, are the soonest perverted by ill Counsels, especially when baited w ith Fame and Glory; ’tis no more a w onder th a t he w ithstood not the tem ptations of Acbitopbel, than it was for Adam , not to have resisted the tw o Devils; the Serpent, and the W om an” (italics reversed). But this analogical argum ent (alluding to Genesis as easily as to Paradise L o st) is introduced to support D ryden’s questionable claim th a t he wishes “to Extenuate, Palliate and Indulge” M onm outh’s guilt, n o t to provide the reader w ith a key to the allusions in the succeeding poem. The M iltonic allusions in Achitophel’s opening speech to Absalom, associating Shaftesbury with the Prince of Tempters as well as w ith the evil counselor of 2 Samuel, are in every case to Paradise Regained, not Paradise Lost. The former poem is far more appropriate to D ryden’s im­ mediate subject than would be anything found in Genesis or in M ilton’s longer epic, neither of which concerns a tem ptation th a t appeals to the listener’s am bition by holding o u t the prospect of a th ro n e.132 Since the imagined scene of M onm outh’s seduction by Shaftesbury, like everything else in D ryden’s narrative, takes place in a biblical setting, that scene too is adapted to the earlier era, and opens w ith a speech in which a satanic Achitophel flatters Absalom into believing himself the object o f universal adulation, eagerly acclaimed by the children of Israel as their promised Messiah. T h y lon gin g C ountries D arling and D esire; Their clou d y Pillar, and their guardian Fire: Their second M o se s, w h ose extend ed W and D ivid es the Seas, and sh ew s the p rom is’d Land: W h ose daw ning D ay, in every distant age, H a s exercis’d the Sacred Prophets rage: The Peoples Prayer, the glad D eviners Theam , T h e Y oun g-m ens V ision , and the O ld m ens D ream !

(232-39)

It is on these specious g ro u n d s th a t A chitophel urges A bsalom to accede to p o p u lar d em an d a n d resolve u p o n ascending his fa th e r D a v id ’s th ro n e . For such a speech th ere is a w itty a p p ro p riate n ess in D ry d e n ’s alluding repeatedly to th e second a n d longest o f S a tan ’s tem p ta tio n s in Paradise Regained, im itatin g “ th e persw asive R h eto ric / T h a t sleekd his to n g u e ” (4.4-5) as M ilto n ’s T em pter tries w ith o u t success to a w ak en w o rld ly a m ­ bition in the true M essiah by rem in d in g him th a t “ to a K ingdom th o u a rt born, o rd a in d I T o sit u p o n thy F a th er D avids T h ro n e ” (3 .1 5 2 -5 3 ), a course o f a ctio n by w hich he can “ best fulfill, best verifie I T h e P rophets old, w ho sung thy endless ra ig n ” (3 .1 7 7 -7 8 ). T h u s, w hen A chitophel asks A bsalom , H ow long w ilt thou the general Joy detain; Starve, and defraud the People o f thy Reign? Content ingloriously to pass thy days, (244 - 4 6 )

we are invited to recall S atan ’s inquiry to th e Son, These God-like Vertues wherefore dost thou hide? Affecting privat life, or more obscure In savage W ilderness, wherefore deprive AU Earth her w onder at thy acts, thy self The fam e and glory. ( 3 .21 - 2 5 )

O r w hen A chitophel w a rn s A bsalom , Had thus Old D a vid , from w hose Loyns you spring, N o t dar’d, w hen Fortune call’d him, to be King, At Gath an Exile he m ight still remain, ( 262 - 6 4 )

he echoes M ilto n ’s T em pter cau tio n in g the Son, thy Kingdom though foretold By Prophet or by Angel, unless thou Endeavour, as thy Father D a v id did, Thou never shalt obtain. ( 3 . 351 - 54)133

A ch itophel’s opening speech has a w ak en ed A b salo m ’s am b itio n s fo r his fath er D av id ’s th ro n e by stressing ad v an tag e (“N o t b a rre n Praise alone, th a t G audy Flow er, / Fair only to the sight, b u t solid P o w er” [2 9 7 98]) a n d o p p o rtu n ity (“ AU sorts of m en by m y successful A rts, / A b h o r­ ring Kings, estrange th eir a lte r’d Flearts / F ro m D a v id 's R u le ” [2 8 9 -9 1 ]). W hat he has n o t to u ch ed u p o n is a plausible excuse fo r ad o p tin g the

unlaw ful course of action he recom m ends. A bsalom therefore begins his reply to A chitophel by asking “w h a t Pretence have I / T o tak e up Arms for Publick L iberty?” (3 15-16). Posed as a rhetorical question dism issing A chitophel’s suggestion, his w ords are equally a disguised request to be given ju st such an excuse, as he hesitates in a state o f indecision, “H alf lo ath , an d half consenting to the 111” (313). M y Father Governs w ith unquestion’d Right; The Faiths Defender, and Mankinds Delight: Good, Gracious, Just, observant o f the Laws; And H eav’n by W onders has Espous’d his Cause. (3 1 7 -2 0 )

A cknow ledging his fath er’s undisputed right to his th ro n e, divinely sanc­ tioned in the m iraculous resto ra tio n by w hich he began his reign and since confirm ed by the exem plary m anner in w hich he has carried o u t his kingly responsibilities, A bsalom proceeds to particu lars by posing a series o f genuine rhetorical questions. W hom has he W rong’d in all his Peaceful Reign? W ho sues for Justice to his Throne in Vain? W hat M illions has he Pardon’d o f his Foes, W hom Just Revenge did to his Wrath expose! M ild, Easy, Hum ble, Studious o f our Good; Enclin’d to Mercy, and averse from Blood. If M ildness 111 w ith Stubborn Israel Suite, His Crime is G od’s beloved Attribute. W hat could he gain, his People to Betray, Or change his Right, for Arbitrary Sway? (3 2 1 -3 0 )

C ast in th e form o f an adm ission privately offered by one o f C harles’s public critics, these lines co nstitute one of the crucial passages o f the poem , for they directly address the charges o f arb itra ry p o w er th a t the W higs had repeatedly leveled against the king, an d concede th a t they are w ith o u t fo u ndation. In retu rn in g to this, one o f the central debates be­ tw een the tw o parties for as long as the Exclusion Crisis h a d lasted, D ryden show s the English A bsalom covertly agreeing w ith th e T o ry positio n on the question, an d even ad o p tin g here the rhetoric of som e o f the k ing’s supporters. T hus, in early 1681, shortly before P arliam ent w as to m eet at O x fo rd , a spokesm an for the governm ent h ad defended the king from the charge th a t he intended to introduce a rb itra ry governm ent by asking just such a series of rhetorical questions ab o u t C harles’s co n d u ct as his son returns to here:

What one Illegal Arbitrary Act has he done in his twenty years Reign? W hom has he defrauded of an O x or an Ass, o f life or possession? Where has he in any one instance invaded magna charta, our Rights, Properties or Liberties? W hat Bill tender’d by Parliament, for the security o f our Lives or Fortunes, has he rejected? . . . As he has freely pass’d all Laws, has he not as chearfully offer’d to enact any thing that w as agreable to Justice and Reason for our further security in Religion, Liberty and Property? From these considerations, nothing w ill appear more vain and idle than our Fears and Jealousies, our Factious and Seditious reflections on the G overn­ ment.134

A bsalom ’s testim ony to his fa th e r’s m ildness a n d m ercy tak es in to c o n ­ sideration b o th the k in g ’s tem p e ra m en t (“ H is C rim e is G o d ’s beloved A ttrib u te” ) and his policy. T he first is a fam ily tra it, obviously inherited from the R oyal M a rty r, an d sh ared by C h arles’s b ro th e r, w hose “ M ercy even th ’ O ffending C ro w d will find, / F or sure he com es o f a Forgiving K ind” (359—60). T he second is a reco rd of public service th a t, like the one sketched by the gov ern m en t spokesm an above, em phasizes th e to ta l a b ­ sence o f any actions on the k in g ’s p a rt to justify the “Jealosies an d Fears / O f A rb itrary C ounsels” (211—12) spread a b ro a d by A ch ito p h el’s em is­ saries. A chitophel’s reply is the longest speech in the p o em , a n d is exceeded in im portance only by D av id ’s a t th e close. H e begins by responding to A bsalom ’s trib u te to his father. N o t that your Father’s M ildness I condem n; But M anly Force becomes the Diadem . ’Tis true, he grants the People all they crave; And more perhaps than Subjects ought to have: For Lavish grants suppose a M onarch tame, And m ore his G oodness than his W it proclaim. But when shoud People strive their Bonds to break, If not when Kings are N egligent or Weak? (3 8 1 - 8 8 )

In accepting A bsalom ’s descrip tio n of D av id ’s reign, A chitophel m u st also im plictly concede th a t the p eo p le’s jealousies an d fears o f a rb itra ry governm ent, en couraged by his o w n efforts, are groundless. But he uses this as fu rth e r evidence o f D av id ’s p resen t vulnerability by show ing ho w , under the tu rb u le n t co n d itio n s th a t have o b tain e d since the beginning of the E xclusion C risis, th e k in g ’s enem ies are benefiting fro m his fo rb e a r­ ance. In the p resent circum stances, C harles’s m ildness is perceived as w eakness, an absence o f the “M a n ly F o rc e ” expected o f a m o n arch ; his

concessions under public pressure, by w hich he “grants the People all they crave,” as pusillanimity. Consequently his indulgence tow ard a pub­ lic already in turm oil encourages them to th ro w off their last restraints, for “when shoud People strive their Bonds to break, / If n o t when Kings are Negligent or 'Weak?” In pursuing this line of argum ent, Achitophel, like Absalom earlier, is adopting the rhetoric of some o f C harles’s own supporters at the height of the Exclusion Crisis, w hen the governm ent’s fortunes were at their low tide, and confirming its accuracy. The author of The Country-m ans Com plaint, offering his “Advice to the King” on 9 February 1681 during the elections for the O xford Parlia­ ment, had cautioned his sovereign against m aking further concessions to his opponents, “Lest we should count thy greatest Vertue, Vice, / And call thy Mercy, servile C ow ardise.”135 Later the same m onth the W hig per­ sona of a Tory broadside had boasted th at “the m ost tem pting things, /Are too much W ealth, and too Indulgent Kings,” while a few weeks later the Tory author of The D eliquium was still com plaining th at “the more indulgent” Charles showed himself to be, “th ’ m ore he is opprest” by his enemies.136 And every well-meaning Tory versifier advising the king in 1680 and early 1681 had included a rem inder of the Royal M arty r’s fatal mercy in the face of circumstances bearing a melancholy resemblance to those of his son. O ne of them, in imploring Charles to “ stand firm ” and “slight the M urm urs of a giddy C rew ,” had w arned, “Thus had thy Fa­ ther done, we nere had know n / A Tyrant sitting on the Royal T h ro n e.” 137 The author of The Country-m ans Com plaint had exhorted him: Read o ’re thy M artyr’d Father’s Tragick Story, Learn by his Murder, different ways to glory. H o w fatal ’tis, by him is understood, To yield to Subjects, when they thirst for B lood.138

O thers had im plored him to “ Learn by your Father, not to tru st to those / T hat in the end will prove confiding Foes,” or had cautioned th at “The Royal M artyr Charles, the Wise, the Just, / Com m ands you to forgive, but never tru st.” 139 A m onth before Absalom and Achitophel appeared, a Tory pam phle­ teer, defending the loyal addresses th a t had recently been acclaiming Charles’s adoption of a m ore resolute royal policy, com mented on the king’s indulgent behavior at the height of the Exclusion Crisis. I shall only observe the late King, and our now Gracious Soveraign; (being ever desirous to Reign in the Hearts o f their people,) have too often by condescentions endeavoured a complyance with many too Stiff and Rigid Articles, which Condescentions these Stubborn Creatures have ever argued a weakness of Judgment: And can there be a greater wickedness under Heaven, then to argue

a Kings A ffection, a w ant o f understanding? . . . neither o f these Kings have err’d in Politicks, except o f a to o great Tenderness to a Stubborn people, that instead o f quelling their Hearts by these soft m ethods, have the more hardned themselves against Governm ent. 140 E n co u ra g ed b y D a v id ’s re c e n t c o n c e s s io n s to e x p e c t m o r e in th e fu tu re, A ch ito p h el o u tlin e s th e p o lic y b y w h ic h h e a n d h is c o n fe d e r a te s are d e te r­ m ined to c o n tin u e p r e ssin g th e k in g ev er fu rth er u n til h e en d s b y g ra n tin g them all th e y d esire. Let him give on till he can give no more, The Thrifty Sanhedrin shall keep him poor: And every Sheckle which he can receive, Shall cost a Limb o f his Prerogative. To ply him w ith new Plots, shall be my care, Or plunge him deep in som e Expensive War; Which w hen his Treasure can no m ore Supply, He must, with the Remains o f Kingship, buy. The next Successor, w hom I fear and hate, My Arts have made O bnoxious to the State; His Right, for Sums o f necessary G old, Shall first be Paw n’d, and afterwards be Sold: Till time shall Ever-wanting D a v id draw, To pass your doubtfull Title into Law.

(389-408) This is o f course, in every respect, a p a rlia m e n ta ry p la n o f actio n th a t depends u p o n a p lia n t king w h o , as often as he p o stp o n es the inevitable by dissolving recalcitran t p arliam en ts, can be expected to su m m o n a n ­ other in w hich his o p p o n e n ts w ill renew the sam e relentless pressure. T he financial fo rm th a t pressure takes, a refusal by the H o u se o f C o m m o n s to g rant the king the m oney he needs to co n d u c t his foreign policy unless he continues su rren d erin g his prerogatives a n d consents a t last to a Bill of Exclusion, w as p a rticu larly associated, as w e noticed in th e last ch ap ter, with the angry addresses to the k in g voted by th e C o m m o n s d u rin g the closing w eeks of th e second E xclusion P arliam en t, as w ell as w ith Shaftes­ bury’s n o to rio u s speech in the L ords on 23 D ecem ber 1680. It im plies a date fo r this im agined dialogue som etim e betw een the d issolution o f th a t parliam en t in J a n u a ry 1681 a n d the m eeting o f the O x fo rd P a rlia m e n t in M arch. If these p a rliam e n ta ry m aneuvers prove successful, eventually forcing David to pass A b salo m ’s “ do u b tfu ll T itle into L a w ,” his son will have no

need “to take up Arm s for Publick L iberty.” But w ith his n ex t w ords (“If not . . A chitophel prepares to disclose to A bsalom a contingency plan, u n k n o w n to T ory propagandists u n til after th e Exclusion Crisis had come to an end, th a t can be used in the event it proves im possible to alter the Succession in a p arliam entary way. Since this alternative plan m ust inevitably involve the use of arm s by A bsalom an d his confederates, A chitophel begins by offering a general justification of arm ed rebellion: If not; the People have a Right Supreme To make their Kings; for Kings are made for them. All Empire is no more than Pow ’r in Trust, Which when resum’d, can be no longer Just. (409 - 12 )

H e then proceeds to furnish A bsalom w ith the p rete x t he is seeking to rebel against his ow n father. A rguing th at “ the next H eir, a Prince, Severe and W ise, / A lready looks on you w ith Jealous Eyes” and “m editates R evenge,” he appeals to the law of self-preservation. Your Case no tame Expedients will afford; Resolve on Death, or Conquest by the Sword, Which for no less a Stake than Life, you Draw; And Self-defence is Natures Eldest Law. (455 - 5 8 )

A chitophel is n o w prepared to take A bsalom into his confidence and disclose the alternative p lan , should the king’s opponents fail to achieve their goals in a parliam entary way: Leave the warm People no Considering time; For then Rebellion may be thought a Crime. Prevail your self o f w hat Occasion gives, But try your Title while your Father lives: And w ho can sound the depth of D a vid ’s Soul? Perhaps his fear, his kindness may Controul. H e fears his Brother, though he loves his Son, For plighted V ow s too late to be undone. If so, by Force he wishes to be gain’d, Like womens Leachery, to seem Constrain’d; Doubt not, but when he most affects the Frown, Commit a pleasing Rape upon the Crown. Secure his Person to secure your Cause; They w ho possess the Prince, possess the Laws. (459 - 7 6 )

This is an unm istakable sketch of the plot to seize the king at O xford in the event the Whigs once again failed to pass an Exclusion Bill into law. More specifically, it adopts the version in w hich th a t plot, supposedly hatched during the weeks preceding the opening of the O xford Parlia­ ment, had first become public at Lord H o w a rd ’s inquest, w here witnesses testified that the ultim ate objective of seizing the king and holding him prisoner was to “settle the C row n upon the D u ke o f M o n m o u th .” But whereas earlier governm ent propagandists, as we noticed previ­ ously, had absolved the duke of any knowledge of the plot, D ryden shows Absalom both learning of the plan and consenting to it, should p arlia­ mentary m ethods fail: “And this Advice [to “secure his Person” w ithout harming David] above the rest, / W ith A bsalom ’s M ild nature suited best” (477-78). T h at family trait restrains him from even greater crimes, it is true, but not from treason. In a break w ith T ory precedent, D ryden chooses to im plicate M o n m o u th in the P rotestant Plot by portraying him as an accessory before the fact. Viewed in th a t light, the following lines, which ostensibly “E xtenuate, Palliate and Indulge” A bsalom ’s character, as prom ised in the preface “T o the R eader,” even pleading th a t “ ’Tis Juster to Lam ent him, than Accuse” (486), carry little conviction, for in spite of these professions of good will the n arrato r has already accused him of a capital crime. Absalom ’s final appearance in the poem , some tw o hundred lines later, is in the role of a shameless liar and sanctim onious hypocrite w hose speech to the populace (6 9 8 -7 22), portraying him self in w ords “co lo u r’d with a sm ooth pretence / O f specious love” (745—46) as “ a prey to A rbi­ trary law s” (701), contradicts in every detail his earlier p ortrayal of his father to Achitophel as “G ood, G racious, Just, observant o f the L aw s” (319). But even in this im agined scene, typifying all those public appear­ ances in which the king’s son had courted po p u lar favor, A bsalom is of secondary im portance to the evil genius w hose presence lurks behind the young m an’s “moving C ourt, th a t caught the peoples Eyes” (739). For we are told th a t A ch itopbel had form ’d it, w ith intent To sound the depths, and fathom where it w ent, The Peoples hearts; distinguish Friends from Foes; And try their strength, before they came to blows.

(741-44) It is on this om inous note o f im pending violence between the king’s enemies and his defenders th a t D ryden leaves the “M alecontents of all the Israelites” to intervene in his ow n person w ith the fam ous lines (7 5 3 810) against altering the Succession.141 He begins by raising prudential considerations to w hich he will return later:

O h foolish Isra eli never w arn ’d by ill, Still the sam e baite, and circum vented still! D id ever m en forsake their present ease, In m idst o f health Im agine a desease; T ak e pains C ontin gen t m isch iefs to foresee, M ak e H eirs for M on ark s, and for G od decree? ( 753 - 5 8 )

T he question w h ether the people have a right to “M ake H eirs for M o n ­ a rk s ” h a d earlier been answ ered in the affirm ative by A chitophel (4 0 9 18). R esorting to a rhetorical tactic fam iliar in m any of his im agined de­ bates betw een tw o speakers, D ryden here expresses in his ow n voice the tw o positions on the question; b u t in his usual m anner he gives the side he favors him self an overw helm ing advantage by reserving it for last, and presenting it in far greater detail. T hus he first epitom izes in a m ere six lines (75 9 -6 4 ) the case for allow ing a people to revoke the covenant legit­ im izing a hereditary m onarchy, before devoting th irty lines (765—94) to canvassing the argum ents against a “ resum ing C ov’n a n t.” But m ore im p o rta n t th a n the question of w hether in th eo ry it is ever legitim ate to alter the Succession, D ryden em phasizes, is th a t of w hether, in practical term s, it is expedient. H e therefore dismisses the argum ent over the legality of altering the Succession w ith a rhetorical concession perm itting him to retu rn to the pru d en tial considerations th a t ought to be p a ra m o u n t in any case, w hatever o n e ’s answ er to the previous question. Y et, grant our Lords the P eople Kings can m ake, W h at Prudent m en a setled T h ron e w o u d shake? For w h a tso e’r their Sufferings w ere before, T hat C hange they C ovet m akes them suffer m ore. AU other Errors but disturb a State; But In novation is the B low o f Fate. The Tam pering W orld is subject to this Curse, T o P hysick their D isease in to a w orse. ( 795 - 8 1 0 )

M o st critical observations on the so-called “ discourse on g o v ern m en t” in A b sa lo m a n d A c h ito p h e l s ta rt from the assum ption th a t D ry d en ’s pragm atic an d p ru d en tial perspective on the question o f Exclusion is id io ­ syncratic.142 Y et this had long been the perspective a d o p ted by su p porters of the governm ent in arguing against any a lteratio n o f the Succession. T w o years earlier, L’E strange h a d dism issed E xclusion as an im practical rem edy by asking in one of his pam phlets: “ A nd shall we n o w expose a n d a b a n d o n o u r present quiet and security only for fu tu re possibilities, and

make our selves certainly miserable before-band for fear of being miser­ able herafter?” 143 The author o f Λ Seasonable Address to Both H ouses o f Barliament concerning the Succession, directed the previous w inter to the members of the approaching O xford Parliam ent, had opened his own discussion of the Exclusion question by observing th a t “it seems hard to believe th a t sober men sh o u ’d ever attem p t innovations, seldom o r never advantageous, always hurtful, because necessarily attended w ith the sad effects of Civil W a r fi and h ad closed by declaring “T h at our fears [of a Popish Successor] in this p oint are groundless, and at best founded upon accidents, th a t m ay never happen: T h at ’tis the highest Im prudence to run into real, present, to avoid possible, future evils.” 144 And less than a week before the O xford Parliam ent was opened by the king, the T ory au th o r of An Answ er to a Late Bamphlet, Entituled, A Character o f a Popish Suc­ cessor had declared, in reference to the W hig supporters o f Exclusion, that “surely those men are highly culpable, nay, the greatest Enemies of the publick good th a t can be imagined; w ho thus for an uncertainty ruine a Kingdom s Peace and Prosperity, and m ake us run into those ills w hich we are sure to suffer, in avoiding those which we neither know , or are certain we shall be ever so much as in danger of.” 145 The tactic by which these pam pleteers, along w ith D ryden in his poem , assess the practical advantages and disadvantages of an Act of Exclu­ sion by weighing the odds between “possible future evils” it may pre­ vent, associated w ith a Popish Successor, and “ real present evils” it is certain to bring in its w ake, involving civil w ar, requires some explana­ tion, since it does n o t figure in critical com m ents on Absalom and Achitophel. The “ possible future evils” an Act of Exclusion w as designed to forestall were of course the encroachm ents on civil and religious liberty the Whigs prom ised as the inevitable prospect for English Protestants once a Popish Successor had come to the throne on the death of his brother, but w hich the Tories discounted as im probable, though remotely possible. The “ ills which we are sure to suffer” if an Act of Exclusion is passed into law pertain to the civil w ar w hich, according to the Tories, would inevitably follow from disinheriting the duke of York. “Prudence will tell us, T h a t this [is] an evil, that m u st be attended w ith greater,” the author of A Seasonable Address cautioned his readers. “For the m inute that [an Act of Exclusion] passes, the Duke is at liberty to recover his Right by secret or open Violence, Foreign or D om estick,” and no p re­ cautions can prevent his doing so. “The Duke will still find a party, at least if he out-lives the King, in the Three Kingdoms to fight his Q uarrel; and if he comes in by Force, he may well use us like a conquer'd N a ­ tion, break our old, and give us w h at Laws and Religion he pleases; W hereas if we attem pt no such thing, we shall n o t ru n the hazard of a Civil W a r T 146

“N ow if such an Act [of Exclusion] should be obtain’d ,” another sup­ porter of the government had w arned the year before, the Consequence, if the D. survive the King, (whose Life G o d long continue) must needs be War and Misery, Folly and Repentance. Our Histories are full of Tragical Events upon such Occasions. . . . T he Duke cannot be supposed to w ant Sticklers both at hom e, and from abroad; few will believe the Act lawful in its ow n nature, nor the King’s Consent free, or themselves not bound by Oath to his Assistance: Scotland and Ireland will rejoyce at another Civil War in England, in hopes to free themselves from the Inconveniences o f being Prov­ inces. . . . . . . So that upon the w hole, if the Duke out-live the King, I see nothing but M isery and D esolation like to ensue upon his Disinherison.147

Small w onder that, faced w ith such horrifying “ills which we are sure to suffer,” the author of A n A nsw er to a Late Pam phlet above im plored the members of the approaching O xford Parliament: “I conjure you as you expect to answer it to God and a whole N ation, to take care above all things that we have not a Civil W ar entailed upon u s” by their passing an Act of Exclusion.148 These are scare tactics, of course, developed to offset, and outdo, the ghastly “prospect of a Popish Successor” th a t the Whigs had been using to frighten a nervous public since early 1679. The Tory tactics were, in fact, alm ost as old as their W hig counterpart, for they had been employed by the governm ent’s supporters in the H ouse of Commons in the debate over bringing in an Exclusion Bill during the first Exclusion Parliam ent on 11 M ay 1679, when four of the speakers opposed the bill by warning th at an outraged duke of Y ork w ould descend upon them w ith an army to recover his rights should they be so foolish as to deprive him of them .149 Eighteen m onths later, in the second Exclusion Parliament, five of the governm ent’s supporters in the Commons revived these same fears in the debate over bringing in an Exclusion Bill on 2 Novem ber 1680.150 Last of all, the same argum ent w as heard again in the O xford Parliam ent during the debate in the Commons over bringing in an Exclusion Bill on 26 M arch 1681.151 By the time His Majesties Declaration appeared in early April, therefore, the public was so familiar w ith the threatened prospect of a Popish non-Successor th a t the king had no need to explain his m ean­ ing when he declared: “In short, We cannot, after the sad Experience We have had of the late Civil W ars, th at M urder’d O ur Father of Blessed M em ory, and ruin’d the M onarchy, consent to a Law, th a t shall establish another m ost U nnatural W ar, or at least make it necessary to m aintain a Standing Force for the Preserving the Government and the Peace of the K ingdom .” 152

Like the king, D ry d en discretely avoids any direct allu sio n to the duke of Y ork as a fu tu re B olingbroke o r R ich m o n d invading E ngland to re ­ cover the rights of w hich he h as been unjustly deprived. But a fter tw o a n d a half years in w hich the th re a t h a d been rep eated ly publicized by b o th Parliam ent a n d the press, D ry d en could d epend u p o n his rea d e rs’ recog­ nizing his d a rk allusions to th e fatal consequence of sh aking “ a setled T h ro n e” a n d in cu rrin g evils far w orse th a n “ th eir Sufferings w ere be­ fore.” A nd w hile w e have no ticed A bsalom , in referring to his fa th e r’s brother, concede “ H is M ercy even t h ’ O ffending C ro w d will find” (359), he w as describing his uncle as his subjects w o u ld experience h im in the future as th eir u n o p p o se d king. A chitophel, how ever, p a in ts a very differ­ ent picture o f the k in g ’s b ro th e r as excluded heir: Though now his m ighty Soul its Grief contains; H e m editates Revenge w h o least C om plains, Till at the last, his time for Fury found, He shoots w ith suddain V engeance from the Ground.

(445-52) A chitophel’s ch aracterizatio n s of the royal b ro th ers are d isto rtio n s of the truth, o f course. H e c o n stru e s D a v id ’s m ildness as w eakness, his b ro th e r’s severity as vindictiveness. But the basis for these exaggerations rem ains sound, a n d the im pression D ry d en leaves o f the d u k e o f Y o rk , tactfully ascribed to an unfriendly w itness, is o f “a Prince, Severe a n d W ise” w h o , if driven to such a course, will recover his just rights a t a terrible cost to those w h o sta n d in his w ay, a n d to a n a tio n th a t once again m u st ex p eri­ ence the m iseries of civil w ar. W ith this veiled p ro sp e c t o f w h a t m u st ensue if the k in g ’s o p p o n e n ts succeed by any m eans w h atev er in altering th e Succession, w e rea c h the clim ax o f a series o f increasingly serious th re a ts to th e go v ern m en t an d the public o rd er. T his is the strategic m o m e n t for D ry d en to in tro d u ce C harles’s friends a n d counselors, “ a sm all b u t faithful B and / O f W o r­ thies, in th e B reach w h o d a r ’d to s ta n d ,” a n d to sum u p the gravest o f those dangers th a t w o u ld have been a p p a re n t to th em on the eve of the O xford P arliam ent: W ith grief they view ’d such pow erful Engines bent, To batter dow n the law ful Government: A num erous Faction w ith pretended frights, In Sanhedrins to plum e the Regal Rights: The true Successour from the Court rem ov’d: The Plot, by hireling W itnesses im prov’d.

(917-22)

Lastly, he records the advice they press upon their beleaguered m onarch: These Ills they saw, and as their D uty bound, They shew ’d the King the danger o f the W ound: That no Concessions from the Throne w oud please, But Lenitives fomented the Disease: That A bsa lo m , ambitious o f the Crown, Was made the Lure to draw the People down: That false A ch ito p h ers pernitious H ate, Had turn’d the Plot to Ruine Church and State. ( 92 3 - 3 0 )

T he king’s speech from the th ro n e th a t concludes the poem show s him accepting his counselors’ advice and inform ing his subjects o f the new policy he has decided to a d o p t after “ long revolving, in his carefull Breast, / T h ’ event o f th in g s” (9 3 4 -3 5 ). T he speech is fram ed, a t b o th its begin­ ning an d its end, w ith the sam e phrase, “ G odlike D a v id ,” as h a d been used to introduce the m o n arch in the p o em ’s opening lines. H ere the epi­ thet carries a m ore serious c o n n o ta tio n th a n earlier, as m o st com m enta­ tors have recognized. But it w o u ld be a m istake to give it the exaggerated m ystical significance it has acquired in m uch recent criticism .153 A n au th o rita tiv e ex p la n a tio n o f the respects in w hich kings are godlike can be found in the second of the tw o Books of H om ilies, in the first p a rt of the “ H om ily against D isobedience and W illful R ebellion.” And as God himself, being o f an infinite M ajesty, power, and w isdom , ruleth and governed) all things in H eaven and Earth, as the universal M onarch and only King and Emperour over all, as being only able to take and bear the charge o f all: so hath he constituted, ordained, and set earthly Princes over particular Kingdoms and D om inions in Earth . . . that the Princes themselves in authority, power, w isdom , providence, and righteousness in government of People and Countries committed to their charge, should resemble his heavenly governance, as the majesty of heavenly things may by the baseness o f earthly things be shadowed and resembled.154

W hile all kings, as rulers of their m icrocosm s, b ear som e analogy to the King o f Kings w ho rules the m acrocosm , therefore, it is th eir m an n er of governing their subjects an d realm s th a t “ should resem ble his heavenly governance” if they are truly to be considered “g o d like.” D ry d en ’s D avid recognizes this distinction in his speech w hen he specifies th a t “ G ods, and G odlike Kings their Care express, / Still to D efend their Servants in dis­ tress” (9 9 7 -9 8 ). T he “H om ily against D isobedience,” referring to “ th a t sim ilitude o f G overnm ent w hich [kings] have or should have, n o t unlike unto G od th eir K ing,” goes on to explain: “U nto the w hich sim ilitude of heavenly G overnm ent, the nearer and nearer th a t an earthly Prince d oth

co m e in his regim ent, the greater blessing o f G ods m ercy is he u nto that

Country and P eople over w h o m he reig n eth .” D ryden reserves a seriou s use o f the ep ith et “ g o d lik e ” for th e E nglish David until his sp eech from the th ron e, therefore, and even em phasizes it by repetition at the end, becau se, in an n ou n cin g his resolu tion to pursue a new p o licy , the m on arch finally exh ib its a b alanced co m b in a tio n o f those essential attributes that characterize “ G od s, and G od lik e K in gs” as rulers. Thus lo n g have I, by native m ercy sw a y ’d, M y w ro n g s dissem bl’d, m y revenge d elay ’d: So w illing to forgive th ’ O ffending Age, So m uch th e F ath er did the K ing assw age. But n o w so fa r m y C lem ency they slight, T h ’ O ffenders q u estio n m y F orgiving R ight. T h a t one w as m ade for m an y , they contend: But ’tis to R ule, fo r th a t’s a M o n a rc h ’s End. They call m y tenderness o f B lood, m y Fear: T hough M a n ly tem p ers can the longest bear. Yet, since they w ill d iv ert my N a tiv e course, ’Tis tim e to shew I am n o t G o o d by Force. T hose h e a p ’d A ffronts th a t h au g h ty Subjects bring, Are b u rth en s fo r a C am el, n o t a K ing. (9 3 9 -5 2 )

W hat the E nglish D avid p rom ises here is to correct an im b alan ce by w hich he has been im m oderately exercisin g on e g od lik e attribute, m ercy (“If M ild ness 111 w ith Stubborn Israel Suite, / H is Crim e is G o d ’s b eloved A ttribute” [ 3 2 7 - 2 8 ]), at th e exp en se o f oth er attributes required o f a g o d ­ like king, justice am on g them . T hu s an excessive con cern to forgive their enem ies m ay lead m onarchs to n eglect the care th ey ou gh t to take “ still to D efend their Servants in D istr ess,” thereby sinning against justice. But these attributes need n o t be exclu sive alternatives, and the proper exercise of one sh ould n o t displace the other. It is certainly n o part o f D ryd en ’s intention to leave his readers w ith the im p ression that a on ce m erciful ruler has g ro w n cruel and tyrannical in the cou rse o f savin g the n ation from anarchy. T h e author o f T h e C o u n try-m a n s C o m p la in t the p reviou s winter had advised the king, “A s th o u art G od -lik e by th y P ity , sh o w / That th o u art G od-lik e by thy Ju stice t o o .” 155 T his is exactly w h a t D ryden show s him d oin g at last: n o t su bstitutin g justice for m ercy, but in ­ voking b o th necessary qualities. D a v id ’s references in h is speech to his “native m ercy ” and to the “N a tiv e co u rse” he has been p ursuin g until n ow are m eant to rem ind us that his tem p eram ent rem ains ineradicably m erciful, offerin g assurance th at it w ill restrain the severity o f his altered

policy lest it to o should grow excessive. T his tem pering o f justice w ith m ercy is particularly noticeable w hen D avid prom ises th a t his new policy will apply to his son quite as rigorously as to his o th er subjects, “ If my Y oung Sam son will preten d a C all / T o shake the C olum n, let him share th e F all,” but adds (beginning w ith the th ird edition o f the poem ), “ But oh th a t yet he w oud repent and live! / H o w easie ’tis for P arents to fo r­ give!” (9 5 5 -5 8 ). T hus we are show n the English D avid recognizing a t last the dangers to w hich his indulgence to w a rd b oth his w ay w ard son an d his erring subjects has exposed the n atio n by his allow ing m ercy to tak e precedence over his responsibility fo r the safety o f all his people ( “So m uch the F ather did the King assw age” ). But, unlike the biblical D avid, w ho carelessly allow ed m atters to drift until tw enty th o u sa n d of his subjects m ust perish along w ith his son A bsalom before o rd er could be restored, the English D avid has heeded his counselors in good tim e and rescued his people on the brink o f arm ed rebellion an d civil strife th a t threaten ed to engulf them . The rem ainder o f D avid’s im agined speech from the th ro n e outlines the specific m easures by w hich he intends to im plem ent his new policy and reverse the n a tio n ’s d rift to w a rd anarchy. These m easures are o f tw o kinds a n d are m ean t as rem edies for tw o separate abuses. A failure to recognize this im p o rta n t distinction h as led one recent c o m m en tato r to characterize the king’s speech as a series o f “n o t so thinly veiled th reats of judicial m u rd e r” encom passing the W hig leaders, w hich, if tru e, w ould certainly expose C harles as ju st such a ty ra n t an d a rb itra ry ru le r as Dryden and the other T ory propagandists w ere tak in g pains to show th a t he w as n o t.156 D avid begins this last section o f his speech by asking, W hat then is left but w ith a Jealous Eye To guard the Small remains of Royalty? The Law shall still direct my peacefull Sway, And the same Law teach Rebels to Obey: Votes shall no more Establish’d P ow ’r controul, Such Votes as make a Part exceed the Whole: N o groundless Clamours shall my Friends remove, N or Crowds have power to Punish e’re they Prove: For Gods, and Godlike Kings their Care express, Still to Defend their Servants in distress.

(989-98) These resolutions, as G odfrey Davies pointed o u t long ago, closely echo som e o f those expressed by the king in H is M ajesties D eclaration the previous A pril.157 They include b o th his prom ise there “ in all things to

Govern according to the Law s o f th e K in g d o m ,” an d his refusal to b ro o k any rep etitio n in the fu tu re of those “causes a n d reasons th a t m oved him to dissolve the tw o last p a rlia m e n ts.” A m ong these are “th e m o st u n su it­ able R eturns from the H ouse o f C o m m o n s” d u rin g the closing w eeks o f the second E xclusion P arliam en t, com prising “V otes . . . e n d eav o u rin g to deprive Us of the Possibility of S u p porting the G o v ern m en t it self, an d to reduce Us to a m o re helpless C o n d itio n th en the m eanest o f O u r S ub­ jects,” as well as “ Strange illegal V otes, declaring divers em inent Persons to be enem ies to the K ing an d K ingdom , w ith o u t any O rd e r o r Process of Law, any hearing of their D efence, o r any P ro o f so m u ch as offer’d against th e m .” 158 All these m easures resolved u p o n by the k in g a re p re ­ ventive ra th e r th a n punitive, since they are designed to h a lt the progress of p arliam en tary en croachm ents on his o w n prerogatives an d on the rights o f his subjects, w hich, fo r all th a t they a re denials o f justice, rem a in w ithin the lim its o f the law. The n e x t lines o f the k in g ’s im agined speech sh o w h im explicitly p a ss­ ing from preventive to punitive m easures as he addresses him self to a n ­ other a n d very different abuse. Oh that my Power to Saving w ere confin’d: W hy am I forc’d, like H eaven, against my mind, T o make Examples o f another Kind? M ust I at length the Sword o f Justice draw? Oh curst Effects o f necessary Law! H ow ill my Fear they by my M ercy scan, Beware the Fury o f a Patient M an. By their ow n arts ’tis R ighteously decreed, Those dire Artificers o f Death shall bleed. Against them selves their W itnesses w ill Swear, Till Viper-like their M other Plot they tear.

(999-1013) T he king is speaking here, u n m istak ab ly , o f those tra ito rs involved in the p lo t to seize his p erso n a t O x fo rd , w h ich he w as credited w ith su sp ect­ ing as early as M a rc h . T his is confirm ed by his allusion to th e Irish w it­ nesses to the Popish P lo t (“ their M o th e r P lo t” ) w h o w o u ld so o n tu rn against their form er m asters in exposing this new conspiracy (“A gainst them selves th eir W itnesses will S w ear” ). T h e m easures he pro p o ses to take against these intriguers are c ertain ly pu n itiv e (“ T hose d ire A rtificers of D eath shall b lee d ” [1011]), since they are designed to bring to justice m alefactors w hose crim e is no less th a n high treaso n . B ut n o th in g in the king’s language justifies th e inference th a t he is th re a te n in g to com m it “judicial m u rd e r.” H is w o rd s a b o u t being forced against his m ind to

draw the “Sword of Justice” and to sanction the “curst Effects of neces­ sary Law ” suggest a determ ination, however reluctantly reached (since severity is foreign to his tem peram ent), to ensure th at the accused are prosecuted in his courts and, if found guilty, left to their sentences. Since m ost readers of the poem w ould have been aware th at from the time the plot was first disclosed in June only four persons had been implicated and arrested (three of them still awaiting indictment), the king’s w ords, how ­ ever severe, would hardly have raised a fear of wholesale proscriptions. The sudden resolution of the nation’s crisis upon the conclusion of D avid’s speech (“H enceforth a Series of new time began, / The mighty Years in long Procession ra n ” [1028-29]) has been both criticized and defended on aesthetic grounds for tw o hundred years. But it is entirely in keeping w ith the way Tory propagandists had all along been picturing the prom pt effect of the king’s new policy in general, and His Majesties Dec­ laration in particular, on a recently enlightened populace. As the author of The True Englishman, writing a m onth before the appearance of Absa­ lom and Achitophel, described the abrupt transform ation of his country­ men, Seeing w e cou ld n ot see, and hearing w e cou ld n o t understand; yet h o w in an instant hath a single D eclaration (such is-the P ow er o f a Princes C ourage jo y n ’d w ith W isd om ) given sight to our Blindness? A nd sense to our U nderstanding? For w h a t is w ond erfu l observable, the R able or M u ltitud e th a t co u ld o n ly h ope by our C on fu sion s, instead o f m oun ting the H orse w h ich they were ready for, are n o w in all A llegiance holding the Stirrop to their law ful Soveraign . 159

O r in the w ords of the poem, “Once m ore the Godlike D avid was R estor’d, / And willing N ations knew their Lawfull L ord” (1030—31). But this is no biblical David restored by special Providence to a throne he had lost through indulgence and procrastination. The English David, speak­ ing from a throne he has never lost, recovers his authority through his ow n courage and wisdom, and “ th ’ Almighty, nodding, gave C onsent” (1026) to the new policy he has announced to his people. The imagined speech from the throne th a t produces this sudden resolu­ tion in Absalom and Achitophel represents no single action on Charles’s part. It embodies his dissolution of the O xford Parliam ent w ithout sum ­ moning another to take its place, the issuing o f His Majesties Declaration to all His Loving Subjects by which he had opened the eyes of his people, his insistence on prosecuting Fitzharris in his own courts by which the Protestant Plot had come to light when it was in danger of being stifled by a parliam entary im peachment, and, most im portant, the “Power of a Princes Courage joyn’d w ith W isdom ” exhibited in all these actions. “W hat a H eroe w ould he have been esteemed in our Chronicle,” the au­ thor o f The True Englishman exclaimed, “th a t should have Dissolved the

Fourty O ne P arliam ent, afore they h ad finisht w h a t the King h a d given them leave to do, the cu ttin g his o w n T h ro a t.” 160 Ju st such a hero, in fact, as his son n o w proved to be in the legend T ory pro p ag an d ists h ad been cultivating fo r eight m o n th s before D ry d en ’s D avid m ade his appearance.

Chapter 4 THE ASSOCIATION

HAFTESBURY’S GRAND INQUEST on 24 N ovem ber 1681, a week after the appearance of Absalom and Acbitophel, is a turning point in Tory propaganda, m arking an end to the campaign of 1681, and serving as the starting point for a new campaign, along notice­ ably different lines, which w ould capture public attention until the middle of 1683.

S

W ithin a few m inutes of the opening of the inquest at the O ld Bailey, the grand jurors found themselves overruled when they demanded th at testi­ mony should be heard in secret in accordance w ith “the ancient usage and custom of E n g l a n d instead, Lord ChiefJustice Pemberton ordered that there be “an open and plain Exam ination of the Witnesses, that all the W orld may see w hat they say,” in keeping w ith the strategy the govern­ ment had decided to adopt in appealing to the public over the heads of the Whig jurors.1 Yet in spite of having delayed the inquest until four days before the end of Michaelmas term, when Shaftesbury must be either in­ dicted or released, the government had not succeeded in finding new wit­ nesses who could add any substantial details to the account of the Protes­ tant Plot that had been public knowledge since College was convicted in August. John Booth, the subject of so much Whig denunciation for the past m onth, was the only one of these late arrivals to pretend to any knowledge concerning plans to “bring the King to London,” and his in­ form ation was disappointing. He could only testify to having been en­ listed as one of Shaftesbury’s personal bodyguard, a small force of fifty men under the com m and of H enry W ilkinson, w ho were still in London awaiting orders when Parliament was dissolved at O xford.2 There was no one to corroborate his testimony, and W ilkinson, of course, had already contradicted it a m onth earlier, as we have seen. The other newcomers were some of Shaftesbury’s Irish witnesses w ho only mentioned various treasonable remarks they had heard him make about the king. The best source of inform ation about the Protestant Plot to seize the king and bring him to London remained, therefore, the four witnesses at College’s trial whose testimony on th a t occasion had already tied the con­ spiracy to Shaftesbury as well as to the H ouse of Comm ons.3 These four

nien—Bryan H aines, Jo h n Smith, Stephen Dugdale, and Edw ard Turberville—were slated to appear again a t the inquest, w here they could be expected to amplify their accounts of the p lot and to im plicate Shaftes­ bury even further. As witnesses they were n o t only better inform ed but more credible th an the newcomers. H aines, it is true, was also one of Shaftesbury’s despised Irish inform ers, but he enjoyed the unique advan­ tage of having been certified as a privileged witness to the Protestant Plot by Fitzharris both in his confession and in H aw kins’s Narrative. The other three, however, could boast far better credentials, earned in their previous careers as witnesses to the Popish Plot. Even R o b ert Ferguson, intent on discrediting the witnesses against Shaftesbury in his N o Protesta n t-P lo t, had to concede th a t Smith and Dugdale were the “tw o, w ho among all those w ho have appeared to sw ear a P rotestant Plot are re­ puted the best.” In fact Ferguson rem arked, n o t w ithout irony, th a t Smith was “a G entlem an of so celebrated a rep[u]tation, th a t people do com ­ monly believe it is his Testimony upon w hich this P rotestant Plot doth chiefly b ear.”4 Smith had borne the nicknam e of “N arrativ e” Smith since the autum n of 1679, w hen he published a “further discovery” of the Popish Plot, which attracted considerable attention.5 N o t surprisingly, therefore, he had been produced along w ith Titus O ates as a prelim inary witness at Stafford’s trial in Decem ber 1680 to “give a general account of the Design of the Papists.” W hen, a few m onths later, Edm und Everard needed tw o men of good reputation w hom he could conceal, on separate occasions, to overhear Fitzharris’s treasonable plans, he chose Smith as a m atter of course along w ith the zealous W hig inform er Sir W illiam W aller. Conse­ quently Smith had been one of the three m aterial witnesses, along w ith Everard and W aller, on whose testim ony Fitzharris had been convicted at his trial in June 1681. By the time he repeated his success a t College’s trial two m onths later, therefore, Smith w as a seasoned veteran o f successful prosecutions. Even m ore reputable than Smith, how ever, was Stephen D ugdale, w ho had been one of the earliest and m ost sought-after witnesses to the Popish Plot, following close on the heels of O ates, Tonge, Bedloe, and Prance when he m ade his first appearance before a parliam entary com m ittee in January 1679. As Jo h n Kenyon has pointed out, D ugdale’s “ speech and bearing were those of a gentlem an,” and so convincing w as the im pres­ sion he gave of “ blameless respectability” th a t he continued to enjoy the confidence of the public long after m any of his com panions had lost their credibility.6 He had first been involved in a successful prosecution as early as June 1679, w hen he appeared as a m aterial witness in one of the m ost famous of all the Popish Plot trials, th a t of the five Jesuits, w ho were convicted and executed on his testim ony along w ith th a t of O ates and

Prance. His greatest fame, however, had been w on in December 1680, when he appeared as a material witness against Stafford at his trial before the H ouse of Lords in W estm inster Hall. Com pared to Dugdale and Smith, Edw ard Turberville was a late­ comer, since he did not emerge as a witness to the Popish Plot until N o­ vember 1680, when he testified before a parliam entary committee. By implicating Stafford in th a t testimony, however, he w on immediate noto­ riety by m aking it possible for the Lords to proceed at last w ith the noble­ m an’s trial, for as Stafford ruefully observed on th a t occasion, “ I was as far from being proceeded against now, as any of the rest of the Lords in the Tow er, till Turbervile came in w ith his Discovery.”7 In Stafford’s case, of course, it was not a jury of twelve citizens but a large m ajority of the H ouse of Lords w hom Turberville and Dugdale had persuaded of the truth of their testimony, and hence of their reliability as witnesses. The solicitor general laid particular stress on this at College’s trial nine m onths later, when the tw o men appeared together once again as material witnesses in another treason trial, but this time testifying to a very differ­ ent plot: Gentlemen, these are the men the w hole N ation have given credit to, the Parlia­ ment having impeached my Lord Stafford upon the credit o f them (for it was upon the credit o f Dugdale and Turbervile that they impeached him, for there was not two W itnesses till Turbervile came in and made a Second, and upon their credit) after so solemn a Tryal where all the Objections that could possibly be made were made, the H ouse of Lords thought fit to find my Lord Stafford Guilty, and my Lord Stafford suffered for it, and dyed upon the credit o f these m en.8

Sir George Jeffreys w ent further, reminding College’s jury of the crucial p art Dugdale had played in the trial of the five Jesuits, and coupling Smith w ith Dugdale and Turberville as “three men upon whose Testimony the Lives of so many as have suffered, have been taken away, and as we Protestants do believe justly.” Indeed, “if these men have n o t sw orn true I am sure M r. O ates m ust stand alone in the greatest point, in which all the Evidence agree, th a t is the Popish P lot.” T o doubt their credibility now would raise disturbing questions about th at plot and ab o u t English justice. “And I hope we do n o t live to th a t Age, th at any Protestant w h at­ soever should come to trip up the Heels of the Popish Plot, by saying, that any of them w ho suffered for it, did die contrary to Law, or w ithout sufficient proof.”9 Perhaps m ost im portant, the allegations these three witnesses had already made concerning a Protestant Plot to seize the king a t O xford w ith the active participation of the Whig members of Parliam ent were internally consistent and had supplied Tory propagandists throughout

the autum n of 1681 w ith a plausible, coherent account of recent events that could be used to justify the king’s behavior. If Dugdale, Smith, and Turberville, w ith their successful record of convictions in some of the great Popish Plot trials and, m ore recently, those of Fitzharris and C ol­ lege, were to do no m ore than repeat at Shaftesbury’s inquest the same story they had told a t College’s trial, as they were expected to do at the very least, T ory hopes, not of an indictm ent from such a grand jury, of course, but of another propaganda victory, w ould be justified. But this was not to be. It is quite possible th a t the resolution of these three men had been g rad ­ ually weakening during the weeks leading up to Shaftesbury’s inquest, but it was the threatening behavior of the London m ob on the day itself that seems to have been responsible for the sudden collapse of the sensa­ tional story th a t had been m aking its rounds, in some form a t least, since June. In an account he gave Sir Leoline Jenkins the following April, Smith related how their confederacy began to crum ble before the three star w it­ nesses had even entered the courtroom : The day the Earl was tried, Turberville, Dugdale and m yself went together to the O ld Bailey but going thence to the Fountain tavern, the place appointed for all the witnesses to meet, the rabble follow ed us, crying out, There go the rogues, the perjured rogues, that swear against the Earl, w hich caused Dugdale to say, I w ish I were at hom e, for w e shall have our brains knocked out before we can give our evidence. . . . As soon as w e entered w ith m uch ado into a room , the rabble came to the courtfyard] after us, often saying, hang them rogues, perjured rogues and villains. . . . On this outcry o f the rabble, I per­ ceived Mr. Dugdale to be much afraid. I used all endeavours to persuade him there w as no danger and that the rabble w ere but like little curs that barked but dared not approach to bite. Dugdale replied, every one o f us w ill be knocked in the head for this day’s w ork at one time or other, yet I am resolved, happen what w ill, to give my evidence, but at last, he, seeing the rabble in that rage and fury and their number increasing, declared he had nothing to say against the Earl. 10

Smith claimed to have quarreled w ith D ugdale for his cow ardice, but to no purpose; w hen the witnesses w ere finally sum m oned to the O ld Bailey to give their testim ony, “D ugdale w ent another w ay ” and was seen no more in any courtroom , bringing his three-year career as a star witness to an inglorious close. In spite of Smith’s bravado, he and Turberville were obviously shaken by D ugdale’s flight and by the m ob scene th a t had led to it. W hen Smith was called as a witness, he to o k the court by surprise, announcing th a t he wished to m ake a prelim inary statem ent before testifying, and although the lord chief justice tried to prevent him , telling him “you m ay take

an o th er tim e for th a t” and ordering him to “go to your Evidence,” he insisted on being heard: “M y L ord, it h a th been reported a b o u t in Coffee­ houses a n d Taverns, th a t I should Sw ear there w as a general Design against his M ajesty; and th a t I Sw ore it before the King and Secretary of State; a n d th a t I also Swore it a t the T ryal o f M r. College an d M r. Rowse·. I tak e it u p o n my O a th I never Sw ore any such thing, neither can I Swear there w as a G eneral Design by the City, o r the P arliam en t against the K ing.” 11 A fter this unexpected disclaim er rep u d iatin g his m o st significant testi­ m ony a t C ollege’s trial, Sm ith confined his allegations against Shaftes­ bury to som e intem perate rem arks he had heard him m ake a b o u t the king. T urberville and H aines a d o p ted the sam e policy, carefully avoiding any m ention o f the p lo t to seize the king they h ad testified to in A ugust and m erely quoting Shaftesbury as m aking ran d o m th reats against the governm ent th at, like those rep o rted by the other w itnesses, w ere cer­ tainly treasonable, but com pletely co n trad icto ry , and im possible to m ake consist w ith any “ G eneral D esign by the City, or the P arliam ent against the K ing.” T he W hig a u th o r o f a verse broadside, published ten days after the inquest, nicely sum m arized the w ildly conflicting allegations m ade there: o n e Swears this e a r l aim ’d to D epose the King, And Inthrone Buckingham , a likely Thing! Another Swears, This Earl w ould Crown Himself, Yet a l l D e p o s’d , H e’s for a c o m m o n - w e a l t h : Lo, th’ Inconsistency o f th’ Evidence, Both with it Self, with Truth and Com m on Sense,

If H e design’d to set up Buckingham , Then to Inthrone him self must be a Sham; For a Republick if he did pursue, Then neither of the former can hold True.12

This proved to be the end of the P ro testan t Plot in the version th at h ad served T ory pro p ag an d ists so well in 1681: a conspiracy by Shaftes­ bury an d the W hig m em bers of the H ouse of C om m ons to seize the king a t O x fo rd during the last w eek in M arch , to carry him to L ondon, and to keep him prisoner there u ntil he agreed to a Bill o f E xclusion. Its dem ise a t Shaftesbury’s inquest follow ed by alm ost exactly five m onths its first appearance a t an o th e r inquest, the equally unsuccessful attem pt to indict L ord H o w a rd o f Escrick on 21 June. It h ad depended entirely on the testim ony o f w itnesses an d , w ith the exception o f Fitzharris, w ho w as dead, every one o f those witnesses, beginning w ith his wife, had eventually rep u d iated th a t testim ony either directly or implicitly. It is

small w onder that the governm ent decided to place its reliance for the future on a new version of the Protestant Plot th a t w ould be based this time on docum entary evidence rath er than the shifting sands o f oral tes­ timony.

The Association, w hich was soon to m onopolize public attention, w as first divulged in the early m om ents of the inquest a t the Old Bailey. As soon as the indictm ent was read, b u t before the evidence to support it w as heard, a paper in an unknow n hand was produced, and testim ony given to authenticate it as one of the docum ents seized in Shaftesbury’s house at the time of his arrest. This paper, which was read in open court, consisted of a pream ble proposing “to all true Protestants an U nion am ongst them ­ selves by solemn and sacred prom ise of m utual Defence and A ssistance,” and an oath to be taken by all those agreeing to join the Association. While the pream ble merely repeated m any of the com m onplaces of W hig propaganda about the dangerous prospect of a Popish Successor, it was the oath th a t was to create the greatest stir, for it included a vow th a t “I will never consent th a t the said J. D. of Y. . . . be adm itted to the Succes­ sion of the Crow n of England; But by all lawful means and by force of Arms, if need so require, according to my Abilities, will oppose him, and endeavour to Subdue, Expel and D estroy him . . . and all such as shall Adhere unto him ” ; and a solem n prom ise to “follow such O rders as we shall from time to tim e receive from this present Parliam ent, w hilst it shall be sitting, or the M ajor p art of the M em bers of both H ouses subscribing this Association, w hen it shall be Prorogued or D issolved.” 13 It was widely assumed th a t “this present Parliam ent” referred to the O xford Parliament, although possibly to the last W estm inster Parliam ent, and that the draft had been prepared, therefore, sometime between December 1680 and late M arch 1681. The governm ent’s purpose in first producing the A ssociation at Shaftesbury’s inquest was presum ably to make it a m atter of public rec­ ord and to ensure th a t it w ould receive m axim um publicity by com ing to light at the spectacle on w hich the n atio n ’s attention was now riveted. It was now here m entioned in the bill o f indictm ent, w hich related strictly to the oral testim ony against Shaftesbury, and the grand jury’s proper course, if it had been so disposed, w ould have been to m ake the Associa­ tion the subject of a separate presentm ent. In the event, to no one’s sur­ prise, the jurors ignored the A ssociation and returned the bill of indict­ ment against Shaftesbury m arked Ignoram us. It was now the tu rn of the government to recover the initiative and to try to convert this day’s w ork to its ow n advantage.

Following w hat was by now the established procedure for launching a new campaign, the governm ent’s first step was to issue a publication under its particular authority. Like His Majesties Declaration the previ­ ous April, The Proceedings at the Sessions H ouse in the Old-Baily, L on­ don . . . upon the Bill o f Indictm ent for High-Treason against A nthony Earl o f Shaftsbury, which w ent on sale the day after the inquest, was “ published by His Majesties Special C om m and.” In keeping w ith the plans the government had laid some weeks before the inquest, at a time when at least four of the witnesses were expected to make a consistent and plausible case against Shaftesbury, the Proceedings were to have allowed “ all the W orld” to recognize his guilt and the p arti­ ality of the London grand jury th a t had refused in the face of such evi­ dence to indict him. Except for the authors of a few verse broadsides, however, Tory propagandists following in the w ake of the Proceedings wisely avoided the disappointing allegations against Shaftesbury, who had been released from the Tow er on 28 N ovem ber along w ith Lord H ow ard and would soon be bringing actions of scandalum magnatum against his accusers.14 The safer course was to argue, as L’Estrange and other Tories would do over the next few months, that an inquest was not the place to assess the credibility of testimony against the accused, and to condem n the grand jurors for dereliction of duty in not “Finding the Bill, even in the Case of a False O ath,” leaving it to a court of law to weigh the evidence and decide the “Issue upon a Fair and Legall Tryall.” 15 Another favorite tactic that ignored the specific allegations at Shaftesbury’s in­ quest was to defend the general truthfulness of the witnesses by arguing, as had been done earlier at College’s trial, that their testim ony at the Popish Plot trials had been readily accepted. Hence the grand jurors had no right, in L’Estrange’s w ords, “to Disparage the Kings Evidence in One Case more then in A nother.” 16 Fortunately, the Proceedings offered T ory propagandists a second re­ source that w ould prove far m ore useful than the contradictory oral testi­ mony against Shaftesbury. In making public the text of the Association, the official record of the inquest seemed to provide docum entary evidence of a general design against the Crow n that, while not the same as that which Smith and the other witnesses had failed to corroborate, provided a satisfactory substitute in the form of a new and perhaps better version of the Protestant Plot. In less than a fortnight the Tory newspapers were busy helping the government publicize this latest evidence of Whig cul­ pability. Thom pson printed the tex t o f the oath to the Association in the Loyal Protestant on 6 December, and the next day L’Estrange opened his attack on the Association in the O bservator. In mid-December Re­ marques upon the N ew Project o f Association appeared, providing an authoritative com mentary, paragraph by paragraph, on the now familiar

text and com pleting the groundw ork for a new Tory cam paign th a t differ in m any im p o rtan t respects from the earlier one. Coming in the w ake of His M ajesties Declaration and the Loyal A d­ dress M ovem ent, the earlier discovery of a p lot to seize the king at O xford had seemed to offer additional evidence th a t in dissolving the parliam ent there Charles had wisely averted a th reat th a t could have succeeded only if the session had been allow ed to continue. A parliam entary design of holding the king prisoner in London until he had assented to an Exclu­ sion Bill, while obviously treasonable, suggested a bizarre attem pt to break the tw o-year stalem ate between a W hig H ouse o f Com m ons deter­ mined to achieve Exclusion by parliam entary means and a king equally resolved to prevent this eventuality by a series of prorogations and disso­ lutions. It bolstered, how ever inexactly, the already fam iliar parallel be­ tween 1681 and 1641 w hen Charles I, although n o t a prisoner, was co­ erced under pressure from the London m obs into m aking concessions to the Long Parliam ent th a t sapped his rem aining prerogatives. N o w onder that L’Estrange, three weeks before Shaftesbury’s inquest, had gleefully called th a t version of the Protestant Plot “ the H istory of Forty-O ne over again, to a single Circum stance, and Syllable. . . . the Stile of O ne and Forty, to a h a ir.” 17 The Association, on the other hand, was viewed by T ory p ro p ag an ­ dists as an act of desperation contrived by men w ho, foreseeing another legislative defeat at O xford, had been at last prepared to dispense w ith even the semblance of parliam entary form s requiring the king’s assent and to take the direct route to Exclusion by open w arfare. As the au th o r of Remarques upon the N e w Project o f Association glossed its oath, “[We] do Declare, and Swear, th a t w h at we cannot Com pass in a P arlia­ mentary-way, W e will endeavour to bring ab o u t by force of A rm s.” The draft found am ong Shaftesbury’s papers represented no m ore than the design for an Association, of course, w hich had n o t m aterialized, presum ­ ably because the sudden dissolution of the O xford P arliam ent had dis­ persed the W hig members before they could subscribe their nam es to the paper. But once it was in place, those w ho had joined the Association would have been prepared to bear arm s against the king as well as his brother, the au th o r o f the Rem arques insisted, since the offending pap er included a “ Sacred Promise to D estroy [the duke], and his A dherents, without exception to His M ajesty himself, w ho for Refusing to Exclude his Royal Brother, is declared to be one of the Party.” If the earlier de­ sign had seemed to recall the uneasy state of affairs th a t preceded the first Civil W ar, this latest plan had offered a prospect m ore rem iniscent of 1643, the year of the Solemn League and C ovenant to wage to a finish the w ar already begun against the king’s forces. As the au th o r of the Remarques declared, “this Form o f A ssociation is only the C ovenant w o u ld

Reviv’d, with the same Licence, Limitations, Reserves, and Equivoca­ tions; and to the very same End and Purpose. . . . and there needs no more then Dipping any where in the Records of the Late Times to F[urn]ish the Parallel.” 18 But the Tories had no intention of leaving it to students of history to seek out the parallel for themselves. The T w o Associations, published on 19 December, explicitly furnished the parallel w ith 1643 in matching columns, the new Association appearing alongside the oath and cove­ nant am ong themselves signed by 156 members of the H ouse of Com­ mons on 6 June 1643, some three m onths before the more famous Solemn League and Covenant.19 A far more am bitious use of historical analogy to discredit the Association followed on 6 February 1682. This was The Parallel; or, The N ew Specious Association an O ld Rebellious Covenant, by D ryden’s friend John N orthleigh, for w hom three years later he would write his verse epistle “To M y Friend M r. J. N orthleigh, A uthor of The Parallel.” This substantial book drew a double parallel between the Asso­ ciation and both the oath and covenant of the House of Commons printed in The Tw o Associations and the Solemn League and Covenant concluded w ith the Scots on 25 September 1643, juxtaposing the relevant paragraphs of all three covenants and on each occasion following this w ith an elaborate com mentary explaining the rem arkable similarity be­ tween past and present. Indeed, the prospect envisioned by the draft of an Association m irrored 1643 so closely, according to N orthleigh, that “there remains nothing to do but to drive the King out of his Palace, Proclaim all his followers Delinquents; all his adherents Enemies to King and Countrey; send post to Scotland, Messengers to the Field-Conventicles, get another Army from the N orth, swallow a second Solemn League; and then we shall have exactly a second 43, the perfect Revolu­ tion of a sad Platonick Y ear.”20 One significant difference between 1643 and the prospect offered by the intended Association, as even the Tories must adm it, was that Charles II w ould never have found himself in the exact situation of his father, at w ar w ith a parliam ent that could n o t be dissolved w ithout its own consent. “The obeying of the Parliament in Forty two, and Forty three w ithout a King, was pretended som ewhat w arrantable,” N o rth ­ leigh conceded, “ because his M ajesty had unhappily passed an Act for Triennial Parliaments, and then another afterwards for their perpetual sitting.” 21 But the present king’s readiness to exercise his restored prerog­ ative of dissolving parliaments had been proved too often to allow any­ one to suppose that in this respect history w ould have repeated itself. The antagonists of Charles II in a new civil w ar w ould not have been another Long Parliament but “the M ajor p art of the M embers of both Houses subscribing this Association, when [Parliament] shall be Prorogued or Dissolved,” as specified in the offending paper. These “D isbanded Mem-

bers of our ow n Fellow Subjects,” deprived of any legal standing once the parliam ent w as dissolved, w ould act, declared the au th o r of the R e­ marques, “ as a Standing C om m ittee, and to Exercise an A rbitrary Power over their Fellow-Subjects, to the Subversion o f the C om m on Rights, and in Defiance of the Fundam ental Privileges of King, Parliam ents, and People.”22 N orthleigh agreed, describing these new m asters as “D is­ banded M em bers th a t have no m ore share in the G overnm ent then a petu­ lant Officer in the C om pany from w hich he is cashiered.” 23 From the very outset, the W higs countered this latest version of a P rot­ estant Plot as vigorously as they had challenged its predecessor, but w ith greater ingenuity than before, w hen their only defence h ad been to deny the truth of Fitzharris’s confession and the credibility of the witnesses. Many W hig rejoinders did, it is true, include a similar denial th a t the Association was genuine, usually coupled w ith a suggestion th a t it had been w ritten by agents for the governm ent w ho h ad th ru st it in am ong Shaftesbury’s papers after they were seized. A m ore resourceful tactic, however, was to accept the intended Association as genuine and to defend it as a perfectly legal, and indeed loyal, design openly broached nearly a year before it was produced at Shaftesbury’s inquest. The first time L’Estrange m entioned the A ssociation in the O bservator, on 7 December, his doughty W hig interlocutor declared: “There is a Paper abroad, I am told, that bears the Title of such an Association·. But th at, they say, w as only a D raught of a Bill for the H ouse o f C o m m ons.” H e was parroting a suggestion made at Shaftesbury’s inquest by the forem an of the grand jury, Sir Samuel B arnardiston, w ho, in questioning the officials w ho had seized the paper, tried to associate it w ith “ a D ebate in Parliam ent of an Association.”24 O n 15 Decem ber 1680, a m onth after the defeat of the second Exclu­ sion Bill in the Lords, an angry H ouse of Com m ons had passed a reso­ lution "th a t a Bill be brought-in, for an Association o f all his M ajesty’s Protestant Subjects, for the Safety of his M ajesty’s Person, the Defence of the Protestant Religion, and the Preservation of his M ajesty’s Protestant Subjects, against all Invasions and O ppositions w hatsoever; and for the preventing the D uke of Yorke, o r any Papist, from succeeding to the Crow n.”25 N o such bill was introduced during the few rem aining weeks of the session, but on 20 December the H ouse, voting a reply to the king’s speech of five days earlier, requested th a t the next time an Exclusion Bill was offered, the king should assent both to it, “and, as necessary to fortify and defend the sam e,” a Bill of A ssociation “for the Defence of Y our Majesty’s Person, the P rotestant Religion, and the Security of Y our King­ doms.”26 The w ording of this request, as well as the debate over the ear­ lier resolution, shows th a t such an act could only have followed an Act of Exclusion and was m eant to enforce it, should the duke of Y ork try to recover his inheritance by force of arm s.27

In the w eeks follow ing S haftesbury’s inquest, how ever, the W higs cam e to lay p articu lar stress o n the projected bill’s concern “ for the Safety of his M ajesty’s P erson” in the face of the designs against the king’s life uncovered by the revelations of the Popish Plot. T he m odel for such an A ssociation, they insisted, w as the act o f 2 7 E lizabeth, passed in 1585, by w hich P arliam ent had ratified the B ond of A ssociation form ed the previ­ ous year to p ro tect the queen’s life against the attem pts on it feared from the partisans o f M ary Q ueen of Scots. In trying, therefore, to pass off the A ssociation found am o n g S haftesbury’s p apers as no m ore th a n a draft of the Bill of A ssociation called for by the H ouse of C om m ons in D ecem ber 1680, the W higs were p ursuing a double advantage. Its legality could be sanctioned by the vote of the C om m ons ordering the p rep a ra tio n of such a bill, its loyalty by the m odel of the A ssociation passed in to law by an earlier parliam ent to protect Q ueen Elizabeth. In fact the E lizabethan as­ sociation of 1585 offered the W higs a rival historical parallel w hich they could oppose to the tw o rebellious associations o f 1643 exploited by the Tories. The u p shot o f this m aneuver was th a t historical parallelism cam e to acquire a greater im portance th a n a t any tim e since the beginning of the E xclusion Crisis, each p a rty as eager to disprove its o p p o n e n t’s p a r­ allel as to establish its ow n. “T here rem ains yet an o th er A buse to be C lear’d, w herein they Im pose u p o n the people, th a t this A ssociation is founded upon the sam e G rounds and C onsiderations w ith th a t of the 2 7 th of the Q u een ,” declared the a u th o r o f the R em arques u p o n the N ew Project o f A ssociation. In the usual fashion, he provided his readers w ith the texts of b oth associations so th a t they could “ better judge w hether it be so o r n o ,” b u t in this case in ord er to reveal their d isparity before draw ing a series of antitheses betw een the tw o: the one “ a Solem n Ac­ know ledgem ent of Soveraign Pow er in the Q ueen, and Indispensible O bedience in the Subject,” the o th er “ a V ow of C onspiracy to O ppose [the king] by Force; and set up an Inconsiderable p a rt o f the people, M asters of the G overnm ent.” 28 The T ories’ determ ination to distance the W hig A ssociation from p a r­ liam entary legality in 1680 as well as E lizabethan loyalty in 1585 created an im p o rtan t difference betw een the new cam paign an d th a t of the previ­ ous year. In th eir earlier offensive initiated by H is M ajesties D eclaration and pro m o ted by the loyal addresses, the principal culprit responsible for the political crisis, as we saw in the last ch apter, h ad been the H ouse of C om m ons, encouraging p o p u lar fears of a rb itra ry pow er, reducing the king’s prerogatives, and w ithholding treasury g ran ts until he w o u ld as­ sent to an Exclusion Bill “ in a p a rliam en tary w ay.” T he revelation a few m onths later th a t “the P arliam ent w ere agreed to secure the K ing” at O xford in ord er to coerce his assent to such a bill h ad served to cast fu rth er odium on the C om m ons in particu lar.

But in the face of W hig attem pts to identify the paper found in Shaftes­ bury’s closet w ith the Bill of Association proposed by the H ouse of Com ­ mons in Decem ber 1680, T ory propagandists now found themselves de­ nying th a t the C om m ons could possibly have harbored such treasonable designs as were disclosed by the notorious paper. “ But to im agine, th a t the H onorable H ouse of Com m ons w ould ever have endur’d the Starting of a Project to overturn the very Foundations of G overnm ent,” the au th o r of the Rem arques declared, “w ere to do them the greatest Indignity in the world. The late Usurpers themselves were half w ay through the Rebel­ lion, before they arriv ’d at th a t degree of Boldness.”29 “I confess we had a Parliam ent th a t did all this, raised an Army, m ade their Generals, fought their K ing,” N orthleigh declared, “ but sure this Associator can ’t be such a Villain to think the late Representatives of the N ation, w ould all have com menced T raitors; and after a m ost inconsistant rate, im itated that Parliam ent in 4 1 .”30 “ I k n o w ,” he added later, “th a t w hich makes them so Im pudent to slur this Association on th a t honourable Assembly are those Votes that were passed” in December 1680 to bring in a Bill of Association. But these resolutions, like the act of 2 7 Elizabeth passed by an earlier parliam ent, were designed “ to associate themselves for the Pres­ ervation of the D efender of their F aith ,” quite the reverse of “Subverting the State, and ruining the C hurch, (the clear intent of this discovered A s­ sociation)C’31 If we recall th a t the votes w hose loyalty N orthleigh was now defending were some of the “unsuitable Returns from the H ouse of Com m ons” a t W estm inster deplored in H is M ajesties Declaration, we can appreciate the distance th a t T ory propaganda had traveled in the course of a few m onths.

By m id-January 1682 it was becom ing clear th a t the governm ent’s new campaign was in danger o f dwindling into an inconclusive debate be­ tween W hig and T ory propagandists over their respective interpretations of the A ssociation and its m ost appropriate historical parallel. It was time, therefore, to bring into action a far more pow erful resource th an newspapers and pam phlets, one already developed in its previous cam ­ paign against the Whigs. The second A bhorrence M ovem ent was a deliberate sequel to the Loyal Address M ovem ent th a t had proved so successful the previous year. The latter h ad finally exhausted itself at a time w hen every corporate body in England and W ales appeared to have addressed the king by the end of Decem ber, thanking him for H is Majesties Declaration. The ap­ pearance of the Proceedings against Shaftesbury could scarcely have been more timely, providing m any of the same corporate bodies w ith a fresh topic on which they could express their su p p o rt to the king under the

appearance o f responding to an o th er official publication. As the au th o r o f a W hig pam phlet observed once the new m ovem ent w as under way, “the O p e ra tio n a n d Efficacy o f the D eclaration against the tw o last Par­ liam ents being w holly spent, I am n o t surprised to find a n advantage tak e n from a pretended Paper, im p o rtin g an U nlaw ful A ssociation a gainst the G overnm ent.”32 It w as in its logistics ra th e r th a n its im m ediate purpose th a t the A b h o r­ rence M ovem ent w as p a ttern ed m ost closely after the Loyal Address M ovem ent, profiting from som e of the lessons learned in th a t cam paign. T he first tw o abhorrences w ere presented to the king on 13 Ja n u a ry 1682 a n d cam e from the g ran d jury fo r the county o f D orset a n d the general sessions of the peace for the county o f Som erset. T his tim e there w ould be no such aw k w ard delay as h ad follow ed the appearance of the first loyal address the preceding April. In a m em o ran d u m by S irJo h n R eresby dated 17 Ja n u ary w e catch a glim pse o f the lessons governm ent officials were now p u ttin g to use in orchestrating “ sp o n tan eo u s” m ovem ents: T he sam e day I m oved the justices o f the peace for M id d lesex , at the adjourn­ m ent o f the session s at n o o n , to this purpas, that the first address o f thankes to the K ing for h is gracious declaration had been offered by th e m , and since fo llo w ed from all parts o f England; but that the justices o f the peace for the cou n tys o f D orset and Som m ersit had n o w been before them in another address to his M ajesty, w herby they did express their detestation o f an association lately produced u pon the tryall o f m y Lord Shaftsbury, and said to be fo u n d in his closit, con tean in g ab solute rebellion and subversion o f the governm ent; but that I h oped they w ou ld fo llo w at least the ex em p le o f the said countys by the like ap plication to his M ajesty, w h ich they u n an im ou sly con sen ted to, and ordered Sir W illiam Sm ith, the then chairm an, to draw up an address accordingly.33

T h a t evening the king to ld R eresby he “should be pleased th a t this intended ab h orrancie of the association m ight proove as general! as the form er addresses,” and th an k s to such energetic courtiers as this he w ould n o t be disappointed. But by this tim e the identity of th o se respon­ sible for the efficient o p e ra tio n of these m ovem ents w as an open secret, and their “ sp o n tan eity ” w as grow ing less credible. The W hig p am phle­ teer quoted above accounted fo r the success o f b o th m ass m ovem ents by exposing L’Estrange as “the very person th a t is n o t only principally em ­ ploy’d in fram ing the d raughts w hich are rem itted in to the C ountrey, w here L ieutennants, Justices a n d C urates, are com m issioned to procure subscriptions to them , b u t w hose Province it is to publish their usefulness to the G overnm ent, an d to m ake th e w orld believe w h a t security the State receiveth from them in o rd er to its su p p o rt in the p ursuance o f present C ouncels.”34

As h a d been th e case w ith the loyal addresses, the tex ts o f all the English an d W elsh abh o rren ces w ere p rin te d in th e L o n d o n G a zette, and the cerem onies in w hich they w ere p resented to the king w ere duly p u b li­ cized in the L o y a l P rotestant a n d B enskin’s D o m e stic k Intelligence, al­ though n o t as regularly as h a d been the case w ith the earlier m ovem ent. In ad d itio n , n u m ero u s abhorrences fro m Irelan d w ere listed in the L o n ­ don G azette w ith o u t being p rin ted . M o st im p o rta n t, the flow o f these new addresses w as regulated ju st as carefully as in 1681 to ensure th a t they w ould n o t spend th eir force a t once. By 23 F eb ru ary T h o m p so n w as reporting in his n ew sp ap er th a t “ th ere are Addresses daily p resen ted fro m several p a rts o f E ngland, in ab h o rren ce o f th e late D am nable A sso cia tio n found in the E arl o f Sbaftsbury^s C lo se t,” a n d in M a rc h the L o n d o n G a­ zette began ap p earin g in double issues, as in 1681, to acco m m o d ate the backlog o f abhorrences. By the tim e they dw indled to a n end in Sep­ tem ber th e ab horrences, som e tw o h u n d re d in all, h a d been ap p earin g in the L o n d o n G azette for nine m o n th s, the sam e space o f tim e allo tted the year before to the loyal addresses. This is n o t to say th a t the A b h o rren ce M o v em en t w as sim ply a rep eti­ tion of the Loyal A ddress M o v em en t, fo r each of these tw o cam paigns served a d istinct p u rp o se related to different circum stances. T he loyal a d ­ dresses, th a n k in g the king fo r H is M ajesties D eclaration a n d pledging him su p p o rt, ratified C h a rle s’s justification of his o w n actions in dissolv­ ing the last tw o p arliam en ts by testifying th a t his subjects’ eyes h a d a t last been opened to th e perils fro m w h ich he h ad saved th em . H ence the im ­ portance o f th e a d d itio n a l su b scrip tio n s th a t h a d figured so p ro m in en tly in the earlier m ovem ent. T he abhorrences, on th e o th e r h a n d , cam e m ostly fro m g ra n d juries, justices of th e peace, inns o f c o u rt, general ses­ sions of th e peace, a n d assizes, a n d w ere cast as official reactions to the record o f th e inquest, expressing outrag e a t th e A ssociation a n d p r o ­ nouncing it tre a so n ab le . T hey did n o t p rete n d to be expressions of a broad p o p u la r m ovem ent as in 1681 and, except for an abh o rren ce signed by tw elve th o u sa n d freem en a n d apprentices o f L o n d o n , th ere w as seldom any a tte m p t to collect ad d itio n al signatures. In som e cases the abhorrences served as su b stitu te presen tm en ts o f the A ssociation testify­ ing to the actio n th a t could have been expected fro m a g ra n d ju ry im p a n ­ eled any p lace in the kin g d o m b u t L ondon. T he a b h o rren ce fro m the grand jury of W iltshire is typical in this respect: Having perused a Book set forth by His Majesties special Command, Entituled, The Proceedings at the Sessions-House in the Old Bailey, London . . . we find therein mentioned a certain Paper which was positively sworn to be found in the Earl of Shaftsbury's House, which . . . towards the end . . . is High T reason, and may be parallei’d with a like Paper, called A n Association, Subscribed by 156 Members of the House o f Commons, in the year 1643 which . . . by sad

experience produced a Rebellious, Inhumane, and Bloody War in this King­ dom; and also that m ost execrable and horrid Murther of our late Sovereign and Blessed Martyr King Charles the First, and to the grief o f our Hearts, we fear the like Events may follow such an unwarrantable A ssociation as is men­ tioned in the Paper found in the said Earl’s H ouse, and do Present it as a Trea­ sonable and M alicious Design against the Kings M ajesties m ost Sacred Person and G overnm ent.55

W here they originated w ith justices of the peace or inns of court, on the other hand, the abhorrences served as legal opinions enjoying a quasi­ official status. Thus the abhorrence from the M iddle Temple declared th at its members, conceiving our Selves, by reason of our profession more obliged then others of Your Majesties Subjects, to offer to Your Sacred M ajesty our Sense o f that execrable Paper, purporting the frame and form o f a Traiterous A ssociation, produced at the late Proceedings against the Earl of Shaftesbury at the Old Baily; D o therefore Declare it our O pinion, that the same contains m ost gross and apparent Treasons, more manifestly tending to the ruine of Your Majesties D om inions, then the old Hypocritical Solemn League and C ovenant.36

Besides their cumulative value as a unanim ous expression of legal opin­ ion on the treasonable nature of the Association possessing far greater authority than the views of pam phleteers, the abhorrences also served as reminders, week after week, of the principal debating points in the new Tory campaign. M ost of them, like the examples quoted above, drew a parallel between this association and those of 1643, especially “th a t per­ nicious Solemn League and Covenant, which th at Paper does n o t only Coppy, but Exceed,” if we are to believe the abhorrence from the Lieuten­ ancy of the City of London. M any emphasized th a t the principal target of the Association w ould have been the king, the abhorrence from the City of H ereford w arning him th at “if Y ou oppose the Exclusion, You are to expect the same M easure as [the duke of Y ork’s] Adherents, to be Subdu’d, Expel’d, and D estroy’d .” A nother subject stressed by the same abhorrence was th a t “Allegiance is to be Sworn to a pack of our Fellow Subjects, substituted and im pow er’d to Direct and Govern the People, not only in time of Parliam ents.” The abhorrence from the City of Norwich emphasized both points w ith greater economy, declaring th a t the aim of the Association was “to Destroy both Y our M ajesty and M onarchy it self, by Levying W ar upon no other A uthority, but the A rbitrary Orders of a Disaffect, though Dissolv’d p art of Parliam ent.” A nother favorite topic of debate w ith the Whigs was introduced by the abhorrence from the Society of G ray’s Inn, which condem ned those defenders of the Asso­ ciation w ho were “falsly recom mending it to the N ation, as a design of

the late H ouse o f C om m ons, as if they intended T reason should have been Enacted by a Law.” 37 W hat may have been the m ost im portant contribution of the A bhor­ rence M ovem ent to the new T ory cam paign, how ever, was n o t the sub­ stance of its fam iliar charges b u t the rhetoric of outrage it adopted as its peculiar keynote. As the very term “abhorrence” suggests, these new ad ­ dresses to the king assumed a posture of acute indignation th a t deliber­ ately raised the tem perature of political debate and created an atm os­ phere distinctively different from th a t of the previous cam paign. Such phrases as “H o rro r and A m azem ent” or “D etestation and A bhorrence” recur constantly in the abhorrences; as pained expressions of loathing and disgust by corporate bodies enjoying a privileged legal and social standing in the nation, they show th a t ethical and pathetic appeals were being deliberately substituted for argum ent. These m odes of persuasion were obviously adopted as m ost appropriate to a debate th a t turned not so much on m atters of fact as on opposing and equally subjective inter­ pretations of a project for an A ssociation w hose existence was accepted by most of those engaged on both sides. As a bid for w inning acceptance of the governm ent’s interpretation of the Association, the rhetoric of out­ rage em ployed by the abhorrences was an effective tactic, and ir is n o t surprising th a t it w as widely im itated by Tory propagandists in their newspapers and pam phlets as well. N orthleigh revealed a special talent for this kind of rhetoric. The open­ ing sentence of The Parallel epitomizes the new tactic, for besides offering a particularly good exam ple of the rhetoric of outrage, it seeks to justify its use by the circum stances th a t occasioned it: Never did a piece o f Villany deserve sharper Anim adversion, or the Contriver of it m ore severity; and both I fancy m ight have had their deserts already, did not the grossness of the Treason, alm ost supersede reflection, and the greatness of the Traytor exem pt him from Punishment; so that there is even a sort o f necessity severely to reflect on such a horrid Contrivance; as onely by the bold­ ness o f its being undertaken, seems to dare and provoke it; and presume upon an Im pu nity, from the very greatness o f its guilt·, and this enormity o f the Sub­ ject may serve to m ake this Paper a palatable sort of scribble, though the super­ fluity o f so m any Pamphlets is enough to m ake it nauseous: But the Author of it desires as little to be know n, as that o f the Association·, and therefore com es into the W orld, as som e late Criminals out o f Prison, with an Ignoram us.38

As N orthleigh’s oblique allusions to Shaftesbury suggest, the W hig leader had n o t lost his im portance to T ory propaganda once the p lot to seize

the king passed into oblivion and the Association came to monopolize attention. True, he had never been officially accused of any responsibility for the Association, the earlier charges on which the governm ent had sought to indict him had been finally dismissed on 13 February, and he was still bringing actions of scandalum m agnatum against his form er ac­ cusers th a t w ould not be decided against him until May. M eanwhile, in the absence of a parliam entary forum he remained in seclusion, avoiding occasions for fresh notoriety. But, like N orthleigh, m ost Tory writers were convinced that Shaftesbury was the author o r contriver o f the Asso­ ciation found am ong his papers at the time of his arrest, and that, as the acknowledged leader o f the Whigs, he w ould have been the chief of those disbanded members of both houses of Parliam ent from w hom the Associators would have taken their m arching orders. And of course every ab­ horrence carried a sly rem inder th at Shaftesbury was the person in whose closet the paper of Association had been found, and at whose inquest it had been produced. O n similar grounds now th at the Association had come to eclipse the earlier plot to seize the king, Shaftesbury’s grand jurors rem ained as noto­ rious as ever, Tory propagandists denouncing them for having shielded the Association and prevented an inquiry th a t m ight have discovered its suspected author. “To reflect here a little on the proceedings of our late J u r i e s N orthleigh declared w ithout specifying his particular target, “is so far pertinent to this discourse, as they themselves seem a band of cove­ nanting Associators, such as w ould have acquitted the Factious Inditer of this Association, had they found him musing on it at his Desk, with an imperfect draught of the bloody Scheme in his hand, and blowing up the Government w ith his dangerous A m m unition of Pen, Ink, and Paper. ”39 Two weeks later the abhorrence from the M iddle Temple m ade a similar accusation against the grand jurors, charging th a t they had countenanced the “Rebellious Association” by preventing “the A uthors and Promoters thereof” from “ being brought to a fair T ryal,” which drew an angry re­ buttal from the W higs.40 But if Shaftesbury and his grand jury provided a bridge between the older and the newer versions of the Protestant Plot, both versions having figured in the notorious inquest, the more lenient treatm ent of the late House of Comm ons in recent Tory propaganda created a vacancy in the role of chief culprit th at w ould n o t long rem ain empty. In the new Tory campaign against the Association this role w ould now be shared by the City of London and the Dissenters. This shift of priorities in Tory propaganda reflected the changing polit­ ical realities of 1682. As the first anniversary of the king’s dissolution of the last parliam ent approached, the prospect of his having to summon

another in the foreseeable future receded, and w ith it the likelihood of any more Exclusion bills. Unable to launch another Petitioning M ovem ent, and reduced to a posture of habitual defense as one version of the Protes­ tant Plot gave place to another, the W higs could no longer hope to re­ cover their parliam entary forum , m uch less to achieve their principal leg­ islative goal. M eanw hile, the governm ent’s cam paign to justify the king’s behavior in dissolving his last tw o parliam ents had apparently succeeded. It was time to abandon an obsessive attention to the recent past and to turn to m ore current concerns. This did n o t represent a change in governm ent policy, only in the means of im plem enting it. T h at policy was consistently to suppress or at least to control dissidents from the R estoration Settlem ent in church and state. W hen the m ost active of those dissidents controlled the Com m ons and used the H ouse o f Lords as a political forum , suppression had taken the form o f dissolving parliam ents and o f conducting a propaganda cam ­ paign to justify those dissolutions as a necessary means of preventing anarchy. N ow the governm ent w as a t leisure to devote greater attention to other long-standing sources of disaffection w ith the civil and ecclesias­ tical establishment. The m ost pressing objective was to exert greater control over the City of London, th a t perm anent source of political and religious dissent. A month after Shaftesbury’s inquest, the governm ent began its quo w ar­ ranto proceedings by w hich it hoped to w ithdraw the C ity’s charter, and the newspapers were already reporting the early stages o f the m aneuver. The connection between the tw o events was obvious. T o the Tories, Shaftesbury’s acquittal by a W hig grand jury was simply the latest proof that the king could n o t obtain justice in his ow n courts as long as the choice of officials, especially th a t of the tw o sheriffs, w as left to a C om ­ mon H all that w as sure to be dom inated by Whigs. Every assault in the Tory press on Shaftesbury’s grand jurors was intended as a rem inder of “Ignoramus justice” and of the London charter under w hich it flourished. A ppropriately enough, The T w o Associations printed n o t only their names but those of the W hig grand juries o f London th at had throw n out the bills on College and Rouse, further testim ony to the C ity’s perpetual interference w ith the adm inistration of justice in the king’s courts.41 It made a plausible sorites, N orthleigh suggested, th at “if we find a Factious City, then a Factious Sheriff; If a Factious Sheriff, then a Factious Jury; If a Factious Jury, then all the Factious Fellows are acquitted.”42 The action of Shaftesbury’s grand jury in refusing to indict him or to present the A ssociation gave N orthleigh just such a pretext for question­ ing the privileges London enjoyed under its charter. “W hat w onder is it,” he asked,

if the detection o f their Conspiracies, and the Punishment o f the Delinquents be so difficult to be com pass’d, w hen both m ust lye in the breast of such as seem to espouse the Prisoner’s Cause, and w ith a resolved sort o f incredulity to be­ lieve neither Evidence on Oath, matter of Fact, or their ow n Sences? What w onder is it if H is M ajesty, cannot have the C om m on Justice they distribute to their private selves; to every Tyter, or Jack S traw , that has but a Property to a Stall, a Shop, a T ool, or a green Apron; when these Gentlemen of the Yard and T ool, themselves must decide the Controversie; w ho I warrant you w ill be sure to take more care o f their ow n P ropertte, than o f his P rerogative? But are these all the thankful A cknowledgm ents H is M ajesty must expect for His Gracious Charter? . . . And m ust those Immunities, and Priviledges he gives them for their Liberty, be used by those ungrateful W retches as Spoils and Trophies of his P rerogative?43

The City of London w as in fact one of N orthleigh’s principal targets in The Parallel. This perennial source of disaffection w ith the government purported to be “His Majesties L oyal C ity,” he observed wryly, “yet I think seldome call’d so, but in some A ppeal fro m the C ountrey, or in the head of their own Petitions.” M ore realistically, London was “th a t Bed­ lam of deluded Fools and M ad-m en, gull’d always w ith the specious names of Liberty and Religion.” He denounced the citizens of London repeatedly, declaring th a t “I am sure this Instrum ent [the draft of the Association] expresses more the sense and clam our of their mighty Baby­ lon., than o f the C ountrey Representatives, ” and suggesting th a t it “was first hatch’t w hen the last Parliam ent sate at L o n d o n , when the Licen­ tiousness o f the City was such, as nothing but the Tum ults in the late Times could exceed it.” 44 A nother festering source of disaffection w ith the R estoration Settle­ m ent was to be found in the Dissenters, a standing reproof to the Act of Uniform ity w ho constituted a perm anent opposition insistently pro­ nouncing, as L’Estrange declared, “u p o n the C hurch of England, to be Popish, for Agreeing w ith the Church of R om e in th a t which is O rthodox and Sound.”45 Freed from m ore pressing concerns, the governm ent had begun enforcing the penal laws against them m ore rigorously, and nearly every issue of Benskin’s D om esttck Intelligence now carried news from all over the kingdom of constables dispersing conventicles. The new cam­ paign could perform valuable service in justifying this course of action as a necessary means of preventing another civil w ar. “The United Dissent­ ers,” L’Estrange w arned his readers, “ are Separating themselves together·, and the keeping up of Conventicles is the very Soul of the Conspiracy.”46 One of the m ost significant ways in which the abhorrences supported the new Tory cam paign was in their repeatedly singling o u t the Dissent­ ers, either alone or in com bination w ith republicans, as the culprits who,

according to the grand jury of the C ounty of N o rthum berland, were con­ triving “the ruine of our G lorious Church and the antient M onarchy of this Kingdom. ” Thus the authors o f the abhorrence from the C orporation of Wigan, “finding (to o u r grief) th at the restless attem pts of Factious Republicans, and U nderm ining Dissenters, are still vigorously carried on against the G overnm ent, both in Church and State,” condem ned “ all such Contrivances as shal any w ay tend to the Subversion of the antient M onarchical G overnm ent o f this N ation, or the alteration of Religion, as ’tis now by Law established in the C hurch of E n g l a n d while assuring “your M ajesty th a t we will never take p art w ith them th a t joyn in the Rebellion of A bsalom , o r follow the Counsels o f A ch ito p h el."47 It comes as no surprise, then, to find some abhorrences urging th a t the laws against conventicles be p u t into execution m ore vigorously.48 An effective m eans of encouraging suspicion of the Dissenters was the parallel the Tories w ere draw ing w ith 1643. The language of the intended Association, w hich “began in piety b u t ended in treaso n ,” according to the popular form ula, did in fact encourage com parisons w ith the Solemn League and C ovenant. In proposing a union of “ all true P rotestants,” the notorious paper assigned prim ary im portance to m aintaining and defend­ ing “ the true P rotestant Religion” against n o t only Popery b u t “ all Popish Superstition, Idolatry, or Innovation,” those very faults th a t Puritans of every hue had always professed to find in the Established C hurch. Tory propagandists had no difficulty, therefore, in associating this program with th at o f the Solem n League and C ovenant concluded w ith the Scottish Presbyterians: “the preservation of the reform ed religion in the C hurch of Scotland,” and “ the reform ation of religion in the kingdom s of England and Ireland in doctrine, w orship, discipline and governm ent,” beginning with the extirpation o f prelacy.45 Small w onder, then, th a t T ory propagandists were able to exploit the intended Association as evidence of another threat to the Established Church posed by the spiritual heirs o f the Puritans, “the Sects, and the Heads of th em ,” w ho, in L’Estrange’s w ords, “all Joyn as O ne M an, in One C om m on Project, and D eterm ination, for the O verthrow ing both of the Church, and the State.” The Dissenters, in fact, appeared on center stage in L’Estrange’s cam paign against the Association week after week in the O bservator. H is favorite tactic w as to profess agreem ent w ith Fer­ guson that there w as “N o Protestant-Plot, for the Protestant Religion does not allow of any disorderly Practices to disturb the G overnm ent under any C olour w hatsoever.” It w as in tru th “ a Phanatical P lo t,” which he described in its broadest term s as “ a D ow nright Conspiracy, and Conjunction of Republicans, and Fanaticks against the C onstitution of the Church and State," hut m ore narrow ly as “a Schismatical Conspir­ acy against the D octrine, and Discipline of the Church E stablish'd."10

The author o f Billa Vera; or, The A rraignm ent o f Ignoram us, pub­ lished in February, agreed, declaring that “a P rotestan t P lo t, I do confess, is a Title I do not w ell relish,” all true English Protestants being loyal members o f the Church of England, whereas this latest plot w as the work o f “som e Z elo ts o f R eform ation” w ho “have spread their pretensions much wider than the P rotestan ts.”51 N orthleigh, in turn, referred habitu­ ally to “the Presbyterian P lo t,” which he described as “a complicated Conspiracy, though not proved w ith an actual Rebellion, and w hich I am apt to believe has been carrying on, ever since the death o f the Protec­ to r .”52 Since London w as the N onconform ists’ seat o f pow er, in practice the tw o offered Tory propagandists a single target.53 T o L’Estrange, for ex­ ample, the Dissenters and the City that w as their stronghold were both tarred with the same seditious brush. Or is it not an Insufferable thing rather that your London-Schism atiques cannot content themselves to D am n, P oyson, and Seduce within the sound of Bow-Bell; but that they must, {like the D o cto rs [O a te s’s] Jesuites) run tamper­ ing o f his M ajesties People into Seditious, and Schismaticall Practices against the Government, from one End o f the land to the other? N ay, and at a time too when the Factious Teachers have as good as abandon’d their Flocks, and the w hole project had already fallen’ to the ground, if it had not been for Supply’s from your M etro p o lis.54

Ferguson had been preparing his response to the latest version o f the Protestant Plot for several m onths, and when it finally appeared in midFebruary as The T hird Part o f N o P rotestan t Plot, w ith O bservation s on the Proceedings upon the Bill o f Indictm en t against the E. o f Shaftsbury, it came as no surprise to find this deprived minister cham pioning the be­ leaguered Dissenters. M uch of the book w as devoted, as one might ex­ pect, to attacking the credibility of the witnesses at the inquest, showing the contradictions in their testim ony, and defending the Association. But these particulars were instrumental to his purpose o f show ing that this sham Protestant Plot, like its predecessors of 1679 and 16 8 1 , had been concocted by the Papists to divide the English Protestants w hile distract­ ing attention from their ow n genuine plot. Their m ost successful attempt to create such divisions “since H is M ajesties R estoration,” Ferguson ar­ gued, could be seen in the penal laws passed in recent years against “those that are called Protestant D issenters,” because “it is to the influence w hich the Papists have had upon our Publick M inisters, that w e ow e the Enacting of those Laws, which as they were directly calculated to ruin many o f H is M ajesties Protestant Subjects, so they have w eakned the w hole Reformed Interest in these Kingdoms, by encreasing our Differ-

ences, and inflaming Jealousies, H eats and Animosities am ongst us.” But “now w hen neither the C hurch can be able to subsist, nor are any means left to the preservation of the Protestant Religion, unless M oderation and Lenity be exercised to D issenters,” the Papists had contrived this latest means of setting “ one half of the Protestants against the o th er.” If the Dissenters were “left destitute of all other m eans of relieving themselves,” he hinted darkly, they m ight “ become so far exasperated and incensed” as to challenge “the validity of the principal Laws upon w hich they suf­ fer,” and then “ no m an can undertake w h at a rich and courageous people may d o .” 55 L’Estrange, w ho began answ ering Ferguson in the O bservator on 20 February, took these w ords as an adm ission th a t the Dissenters were “already Prepar’d, and R esolv’d to follow the W ord w ith a Blow, the Rel[en]ting of the rigour of the Law upon these M enaces,” he w arned, “were to lay the G overnm ent at their feet.”56 But the principal Tory re­ joinder to Ferguson came on 4 M arch w ith the publication of A Protes­ tant Plot N o Paradox; or, Pbanaticks under T hat N a m e Plotting against the King and G overnm ent, w hich implied another historical parallel to the new P rotestant Plot by reprinting the “ Indictm ent, A rraignm ent, Tryal and Sentence” of six P rotestant Dissenters executed in late 1662 for one of the num erous sectarian conspiracies th a t h ad bedeviled the govern­ ment during the early years following the R estoration.57 A timely opportunity for flogging the Dissenters appeared w hen the date for the annual m artyrdom sermons fell early in the new cam paign. Just as the G unpow der Plot sermons on 5 N ovem ber were traditionally the occasion for attacking the Catholics, the m artyrdom serm ons p ro ­ vided a sim ilar excuse each 30 Jan u ary for assailing the Dissenters. In 1682, however, some prom inent Anglican preachers w ent further, tu rn ­ ing the anniversary into an occasion for reinforcing Tory pro p ag an d a tying the Dissenters to the new P rotestant Plot. In such serm ons the pulpit became practically indistinguishable from the governm ent press. These homilies were m ore overtly political than before, and they reversed the direction of the historical parallels th a t had long been fam iliar in anni­ versary sermons. Traditionally these parallels were used, as we noticed earlier, to liken the m artyrdom of Charles I to previous instances of such crimes in both sacred and profane history. But some preachers now turned the rebellion leading up to his death into a historical parallel of its own for 1682, w hen the same religious sects were attem pting once again to subvert the Established C hurch and the m onarchy. In their sermons the times of Charles II came to replace those of Abel and Zedekiah, or of Edward II and Richard II, as the closest analogue to the later reign of the Royal M artyr.

The sermon George Hickes preached on 30 January before the lord m ayor and alderm en at Bow Church m ust have tried the patience of a congregation long hardened to these rituals, for he liberally quoted, “w ithout any other Apology, but w hat the Day will m ake for m e,” forty seditious principles taught by anti episcopal w riters “n o t only in the time of the late Rebellion, but since the late liberty of the Press. And from the men of these Principles it is, th at we have had w ithin these Three last years so m any Impious and Treasonable books P rinted.” These are the men “th a t have m ade so many Protestant P lots,” and indeed they are so far from undoing w hat they formerly did, and abhorring themselves for their former practices; that if you com pare the former, and these later things, which have hapned together, you will find them speaking to the people in the very same Prologue, and already entred upon the same prelude that preceeded the beginning o f that Execrable Tragedy which they concluded this day. Search in the books o f the Records o f your fathers, and you shall find and know , that the men o f these unchristian principles have been a rebellious peo­ ple, hurtful to Kings and Princes, and that they have o f old time m oved Sedition w ithin this City and K ingdom , and turned the world upside d ow n.58

In m uch the same fashion, Edw ard Pelling exploited the subject of this day to show how “the Same Pretences which are so Rife in this A ge, were so Fatal in th a t” of Charles I. In those days as in these, “ the W orld was filled w ith Insinuations and Com plaints, as if the Liberties of the People were in D anger; as if Religion was going out of the Land, and Arbitrary Power coming in; as if his M ajesties Counsellors were Evil; as if the Intro­ duction of Popery and Tyranny were the Design, and the King him self were consenting to the P lo tT 59 As L’Estrange was doing in the case of contem porary Dissenters, Pelling stressed the essential link between the earlier fanatics and their Lon­ don stronghold when he reminded his City congregation “ th at the Origi­ nal and G row th of our Late Troubles, and the Sin of This D ay, were all in a great m easure owing to the wicked Practices of a prevailing Party here, whose Confederacies in T reason did help strongly to give the Fatal blow to Three K ingdom s,” and suggested th at they “ do but Look into the Annals of the Times, and you will Blush to see, th a t so much G uilt was contracted w ithin the Walls of L o n d o n T 60 W hat is m ost rem arkable ab o u t the new governm ent offensive against the Whigs, firmly in place before the beginning of M arch, is the consis­ tency w ith which various groups— Anglican clergy, pam phleteers, news­ paper publishers, and legal bodies throughout the land— pursued the same essential program . In a m atter of a few weeks the concerns of 1681— the obstreperous behavior o f recent parliam ents, the justification of the king’s action as a last-m inute rescue operation, the p lot to seize him

and keep him prisoner until he had assented to Exclusion— had been p u t behind in favor of a new plot centered on the Association, supported by Dissenters w ith the encouragem ent of the City of London, and designed not to alter the Succession but to destroy both the m onarchy and the Established Church.

The foregoing account of im portant changes th a t were taking place in Tory propaganda at the very time D ryden was w riting The M edall should help clear up certain m isunderstandings about th at poem , published on 16 M arch 1682. Tw o assum ptions in particular th a t have beclouded dis­ cussions of The M edall can be traced to a failure to perceive the new political climate out of w hich it emerged. Critics of Absalom and A chitophel w ho com m ent on The M edall at all (they are a minority) usually stress the surprising differences between tw o poems w ritten by the same hand, dealing w ith the same ostensible sub­ ject— Shaftesbury and the W higs— and published w ithin four m onths of each other. They are particularly struck by the change in D ryden’s tone, the note of harsh invective th a t m arks off The M edall from the earlier poem. It is custom ary to see this as a reflection of D ryden’s surprise and alarm at Shaftesbury’s acquittal. O ne m odern critic, for exam ple, writes that “after Shaftesbury’s tem porary trium ph, D ryden seems to have been throw n off balance, put on the defensive. The tone of The M edall lacks the poise of Absalom and Achitophel, perhaps because his fear o f incipi­ ent chaos is now too stro n g .” A nother concludes that “D ryden did not appreciate the King’s astute tactics [against the Whigs]; and his concern over Shaftesbury’s not very meaningful acquittal led to his w riting the harsher and m ore polemical poem The M edalld' 61 To read The M edall as evidence of D ryden’s rising alarm in contrast to the confident m ood he had shown in Absalom and A chitophel, however, is to confuse his rhetorical stance in these poems w ith his em otional state at the time he w rote them. His tone of anger and exasperation in The Medall (it is anything but fearful) is an effective rhetorical tactic to which his real feelings, w hatever they may have been, are irrelevant. Along with other T ory propagandists in the w inter of 1681-82, D ryden has raised the pitch of his discourse and adopted w hat I have been calling the rheto­ ric of outrage. The M edall and its preface ad o p t the same note of shocked resentm ent at Ignoramus justice and the W hig Association as had been struck by so m any Tory jeremiads over the preceding four months. The other im portant difference between the tw o poem s th a t has a t­ tracted critical com m ent is the greater simplicity and brevity of The Medall in contrast to the complexity and length of Absalom and Achito-

phel. Such com m ents usually assume from the proxim ity of the two poem s in tim e and subject th at their purpose is also the same. O ne critic, for exam ple, rem arks th a t “[The M edall’s] simplified use of the complex procedures of A bsalom and A chitophel suggests th a t Dryden, intent on repeating the success of the first poem , self-consciously condensed his proven m ethods and reproduced them, alm ost according to rule and for­ m ula, in the second.”62 W hat such com ments fail to consider, however, is th a t the greater sim­ plicity and brevity of T he M edall are inevitable in view of rapidly chang­ ing conditions following Shaftesbury’s inquest, which in a few weeks had altered the thrust o f political propaganda on both sides. If The M edall is shorter and simpler than A bsalom and Achitophel, this is n o t because it is a condensed version of the earlier poem but because it is an altogether different poem , responding to different conditions, and w ritten in a dif­ ferent political climate. In the space o f a few weeks, m uch th a t appears in A bsalom and A chit­ ophel, adm irably suited to the governm ent’s cam paign of 1681, had be­ come irrelevant to the new cam paign of 1682. If the Popish Plot, Charles and his supporters, the duke-of York, M onm outh, Parliam ent, Bucking­ ham , Bethel, O ates, the problem of the Succession, and the plot to seize the king, along w ith m uch else in the earlier poem , find no place in The M edall, these topics had also receded in im portance o r had been com ­ pletely displaced in m ost Tory propaganda th a t had been appearing over the preceding four m onths. The reordering of priorities we have been observing in the cam paign against the Association and in the Abhorrence M ovem ent th a t was an im portant com ponent of the new offensive had focused attention on Shaftesbury, Ignoramus juries, Dissenters, and the City of London th a t was their com m on stronghold. M onm outh, along w ith the plot to seize the king, had been quietly forgotten, while even the Exclusion Bill lost much of its form er prominence. The failure to pass such a bill had supposedly occasioned the project of an Association, it is true, but since the latter was viewed as a parallel to the Solemn League and Covenant, an attem pt to achieve a second P uritan Revolution th at w ould have destroyed the m onarchy as well as the church, the issue of the succession was rendered m oot. The M edall belongs as much to the new cam paign of 1682 as A bsalom and A chitophel does to th a t of 1681, although their timing differs. The earlier poem , appearing only a week before Shaftesbury’s inquest, was the last significant contribution to a cam paign th a t had been in progress since April 1681, w hereas The M edall was w ritten at a relatively early stage in the new cam paign, less th an four m onths old in M arch 1682, but destined to last until the summer of 1683. Nevertheless, it is the preface

to the latter poem th a t m ost directly resembles the other prose contribu­ tions to the new cam paign, while The M edall itself, although dealing w ith the same issues, shows far greater independence. In the “ Epistle to the W higs” prefixed to T he M edall, D ryden associ­ ates himself w ith the current controversy in the press far m ore openly than he had done in the preface to A bsalom a n d A ckito p kel. O n the ear­ lier occasion, it is true, he had made a virtue of draw ing “ his Ten fo r one Party” in the debate between “W hig and Tory.” His pose of m oderation was not a claim to neutrality, therefore, but it certainly was an attem p t to dissociate him self from the passions o f the Tory pam phleteers and the professional com m itm ent of such as L’Estrange. He cam e to the cam ­ paign as an outsider, he w ould have us believe, moved to intervene a t last solely by the merits of the case. In the “Epistle to the W higs,” on the other hand, he changes his stance to one th a t is in these respects the very reverse of his earlier role. H e drops any pretense of m oderation, substituting the exaggerated rhetoric of outrage: “N ever w as there practis’d such a piece of notorious Impudence in the face of an Establish’d G overnm ent” as when the Whigs “ put out this M edall.” 63 Yet he no longer claims to be drawing “ his Pen for one Party.” In fact he never m entions the Tories o r even alludes to them . There is now only one “ Party,” or “Faction,” th a t of the Whigs, opposed n o t to another p arty but to the great m ajority o f the nation, loyal to their king and determ ined to avoid another civil w ar. A lthough m uch th a t D ryden says in his preface is applicable to the Whigs as a w hole, his polemical epistle is particularly addressed to the Whig pam phleteers. This is a preface, after all, to a “Satyre against Sedi­ tion,” and in the absence of a parliam entary forum it was the W hig press that had been m ost active recently in spreading w h at the Tories regarded as sedition. “ 'Tis apparent th a t your Seditious Pam phlets are stuff’d w ith particular Reflexions [on the king],” he tells the W higs, for he has made them his particular study. “I have perus’d m any of your Papers” ; so many, in fact, th a t he could cite “ a thousand Passages, which I onely forbear to quote, because I desire they should die and be forgotten.” D ryden’s polemical “Epistle to the W higs” is w ritten, in fact, very much in the m anner of certain abusive letters to their adversaries th a t Tory propagandists had begun publishing in recent weeks, during the very time, presum ably, w hen he was adding this preface to his poem. O n 24 February a W hig w riter published a defense o f Shaftesbury and his grand jury th a t dismissed the Association as a forgery. It appeared under the title A L etter from a Person o f Q uality to H is Friend, a b out Abhorrers and Addressers, supposedly replying to an earlier letter seeking advice, and was shortly followed by A Second L etter fro m a Person o f Q uality to His Friend.64

A dopting a tactic they had used w ith some success in answ ering the Legorn Letters at the height of the Exclusion Crisis, the Tories quickly issued a sequel, A Letter from a Friend, to a Person o f Q uality, suppos­ edly a reply to the first letter by the “friend,” w ho proved to be anything but am icable.65 This time, however, they carried the h o ax a step further. Since Shaftesbury was widely believed to have w ritten the notorious L et­ ter from a Person o f Q uality condem ned by the H ouse of Lords in 1675, the Tory “ friend” pretended th a t his correspondent on this occasion was the same “Person of Q uality,” now shamelessly denying his responsibility for the Association. W hen a third W hig “Letter to a Friend” claiming the paper of Association to be a forgery appeared shortly afterw ards, again replying to a fictitious letter seeking advice, the Tories pretended to be­ lieve it another missive from the indefatigable W hig leader.66 O nce more the “friend” answ ered him w ith A Second Return to the L etter o f a N oble Peer even m ore abusive than the first.67 Eventually the ruse exasperated the W higs enough to draw an indignant reply from them denying Shaftes­ bury’s p art in the spurious correspondence.68 W hat distinguishes these pam phlets from m ost Tory propaganda of the time is the epistolary form allowing the authors to engage in a frontal attack on the supposed author of the Association and his followers. W ith­ out ever m entioning his name, the authors of these T ory letters can grossly abuse Shaftesbury to his face, relying on allusions to his speeches and past actions to disclose his identity to every reader. At the same time, under cover of an epistle to the leader of the party, they can directly assail the Whigs as a whole. Except for the hoax of replying to Shaftesbury, D ryden5S abusive “Epistle to the W higs” follows suit, singling o u t tw o of their pam phle­ teers, each of w hom he treats as representative of a whole group of w riters for th a t party. The slightly earlier group consists of the W hig re­ spondents to Absalom and A chitophel, m ost (though not all) of them hav­ ing published their answ ers between the middle of December and midJanuary, from w hom he chooses the m ost vulnerable au th o r to represent the lot: the “N on-conform ist P arson” (C hristopher Nesse) w ho had w rit­ ten A Key (with the W hip) to O pen the M ystery o f Iniquity o f the Poem Called, Absalom and Achitophel, published on 13 January, a reply so doggedly literal-m inded th a t it is often ludicrous.69 Those w ho believe D ryden had succumbed to his em otions by M arch 1682 should consider the latter p art of his preface, where he disposes of these answers to his earlier poem. His bantering tone here, oscillating between irony and open derision, shows how easily he can m odulate his m ood to suit his subject. T hroughout m ost of his preface, however, D ryden joins in the furious assault, now several m onths old, against the W hig pam phleteers defend-

ing Shaftesbury and the Association. The w riter he chooses to represent this group is its m ost im portant m em ber, R obert Ferguson, w hose Third Part o f N o Protestant Plot, published in m id-February, he nam es no fewer than three times. Since Ferguson had covered the W hig territory so thoroughly, his book affords D ryden all the opportunity he needs to re­ hearse once again m any of the points m ade so often by governm ent p ro p ­ agandists in the paper w ar. He parallels the A ssociation w ith the Solemn League and Covenant, of course, charging th a t the Whigs had stolen both “your first C ovenant, and new Association, from the holy League of the French G uisards,” a subject to w hich I shall retu rn later. Taking up the alternative parallel the W higs had been draw ing w ith their Association, he tells them: “In the m ean tim e you w ou’d fain be nibbling at a parallel betw ixt this Association, and th a t in the time of Queen Elizabeth. But there is this small difference betw ixt th em ,” he adds, echoing N orthleigh, L’Estrange, and the au th o r of the Rem arques, “that the ends of the one are directly opposite to the other: one w ith the Queen’s approbatio n , and conjunction, as head of it; the other w ith o u t either the consent, or knowledge of the King, against w hose A uthority it is manifestly design’d .” Turning to the other stan d ard W hig response to attacks on the Associ­ ation, he continues: “Therefore you doe well to have recourse to your last Evasion, th a t it w as contriv’d by your Enemies, and shuffled into the Pa­ pers th a t were seiz’d: w hich y et,” he adds, alluding to the abhorrences that by this time were appearing daily, “ you see the N atio n is n o t so easy to believe as your ow n Jury; But the m atter is n o t difficult, to find twelve men in N ew-gate, w ho w o u ’d acquit a M alefactour.” 70 This is the fam iliar stuff of any num ber of pam phlets, as we have seen, and w ould scarcely have borne repeating for its ow n sake, since D ryden has nothing to add here to w h at others had said at far greater length. But it establishes the right tone o f exasperation for the poem th a t follows, while picturing those w ho persist in defending Shaftesbury and his sup­ porters as shameless scribblers w ho have forfeited any claim to respect. This note of contem pt is anything but fearful, how ever, and it is n o t m eant to persuade the reader “ th at real dangers threatened, calling for a swift response.”71 Ignoram us justice is a grievance, certainly, w hich m ust be redressed as soon as possible by im posing greater control on the City, but neither this nor the intended Association, discovered in good time, poses any im m ediate danger justifying public alarm . D ryden adopts an offhand tone of dismissal in this scornful epistle to the W higs th a t p re­ pares us for the disdainful treatm ent of their cham pion and his infam ous supporters in the poem . “The late Copy of your intended Association, you neither w holly justify nor condem n,” he tells them before launching

his poem. “So, now, w hen your Affairs are in a low condition, you dare not pretend th a t to be a legal C om bination, but w hensoever you are afloat, I doubt n o t but it will be m aintain’d and justify’d to purpose. For indeed there is nothing to defend it but the Sword: ’tis the proper time to say any thing, w hen men have all things in their pow er. ” But the im por­ ta n t point is that they are n o t in pow er, and he never suggests th a t they are about to be. As long as the nation continues to be vigilant, mindful th a t whenever the Whigs are again “ afloat” they will m aintain themselves w ith “the S w ord,” those w ho now possess the upper hand can make sure th a t their enemies rem ain powerless, unable to raise their affairs from the “low condition” into w hich they are now fallen. It is a long way from D ryden’s purpose, after all, to spread alarm am ong his readers and to leave them expecting a W hig revolution. For him to suggest th a t such a tu rn of events was now im m inent w ould be to deny the w hole tenor of the preceding year’s cam paign show ing th a t the king had saved the nation, and to imply instead th a t the Tories had been deluding themselves in their complacency at w hat had now proved to be no m ore than a tem porary respite. In D ryden’s case, the prophetic lines at the close of Absalom and Acbitopbel, “ H enceforth a Series of new time began, / The m ighty Years in long Procession ra n ,” w ould be quickly proved false by a new poem sounding the alarm at dangers th a t had been lurking undetected even as his earlier poem appeared. In the T ory version of events, as we noticed earlier, the draft of the Association had been prepared either in December 1680, tow ard the end of the W estm inster Parliam ent, if N orthleigh was right, or in M arch 1681, before the meeting of the O xford Parliam ent, but had never m ateri­ alized in any case, thanks to the king’s timely action in scattering the Whigs assembled at O xford before they could subscribe to the docum ent. Thus the discovery th a t a treasonable Association w as being projected at the time the king dissolved the O xford Parliam ent confirm ed his w isdom just as m uch as had the earlier belief th a t the W hig members had been planning to seize his person on the same occasion. Indeed, the Association could have been used for the same purpose as the p lot to seize the king, had it been necessary, in a continuing cam paign to justify his action in M arch 1681 and to prom ote the legend th a t he had saved the nation by his decisive intervention on th a t occasion. This seems to have been the im m ediate response to Shaftesbury’s ac­ quittal by Tory propagandists habituated to the cam paign of 1681 and now casting about for ways of exploiting the Association. A T ory verse broadside significantly entitled The Recovery, published a few weeks after Shaftesbury’s inquest, uses “th a t H orrid Paper . . . W hich does al­ m ost exceed in Villany, / Satani or his Vicegerent Sb ry ” as fresh evi­ dence of the perils from w hich the king had rescued the nation.

Yet once m ore Peace turns back her head, to smile, And take som e Pity on our stubborn Isle; She, and her Sister Truth n o w H and in H and, Return to visit our forsaken Land. I see, I see, O AlbionX Bless the Sight! Truth long Eclips’d lift up her Sacred Light, And chase away the obscene Birds o f N igh t. Already thy G la d Influence W e find, And all now see but They w ho w ill be blind: They see w hilst Thou holds’t up thy G uiding L igh t, The D angerous Errour o f their Former N ight; But n o w the C harm ’s D issolv’d, and E ngland’s free From the E nchantm ent, does it’s M adness see; Prevailing Truth has open’d Britains Eyes, And Folly seen, begins to make Her w ise. AU t h i s t o t h y Defender C h a r l e s i s due, W ho now w ith Thee H is G lo ry does renew; Already w ith Fresh Beams the C row n does shine, P ow er Sacred grow s, and M ajesty D ivine.72

Except for the use of the Association, these verses could have appeared at any time between the heyday of the Loyal Address M ovem ent and the publication of Absalom and Achitophel. They repeat the same fam iliar motifs of peace returning to the troubled land, o f tru th having a t last “open’d Britains Eyes,” of an evil charm suddenly dissolved, and of the king’s having been responsible for all these blessings, which had been the theme of the earlier cam paign.73 But th a t was no t to be the them e of the cam paign of 1682, w hich had quickly acquired a new objective. By the time this poem appeared, the Loyal Address M ovem ent w as already coming to a close, b u t n o t before it had seemed to prove once and for all that in thanking the king for saving the nation the public was firmly convinced of his w isdom and jus­ tice in dissolving the recent parliam ents. There was no longer any need for T ory propagandists to continue looking to the past and endlessly to recapitulate events th a t by this tim e were receding into history. Instead, the cam paign o f 1682 w ould soon be busy exploiting the Association as evidence to prove the recalcitrance of the W hig diehards, and the true nature of their design, w hich had been all along to use the issue of the Succession as a blind for destroying the m onarchy and the church. It

focused therefore on the present and the future, on the means of preserv­ ing and extending the state of peace to which the king had restored the nation by ensuring th at the factious City of London and the turbulent Dissenters were deprived of any chance to renew their treasonable m achi­ nations. Yet the T ory propaganda did at times seem to forget the previous cam­ paign’s thesis th a t the king had restored peace to the nation, in its eager­ ness to show the urgency of curbing the City of London and the Dissent­ ers before it was to o late. W hen L’Estrange w arns th at the Dissenters are “already Prepar’d, and R esolv’d to follow the W ord w ith a B lo w ”; when N orthleigh infers from the draft of an Association th a t “there remains nothing to do but to drive the King out of his Palace,” raise an army, “and then we shall have exactly a second 4 3 ”; or when Hickes assures his con­ gregation th a t the nonconform ists are “already entred upon the same prelude that preceeded the beginning of th a t Execrable T ragedy” of Ja n u ­ ary 1649, their intent is clear: to justify the intended revocation of the City’s charter and the stricter enforcem ent of the penal laws against the Dissenters already in progress.74 But their alarm ist rhetoric threatens to undo the propaganda of the previous year th a t had celebrated the bless­ ings of civil peace the king had w on for his people. In particular, it under­ cut th a t favorite theme of C harles’s heroism by which at O xford, at one stroke and w ith alm ost instantaneous effect, he had broken the W higs’ evil spell, so that, in the w ords of The Recovery, “ now the Charm ’s Dis­ solv’d, and England’s free / From the E nchantm ent.” If the W higs posed as dangerous a threat to the nation now as before, the king’s heroism had proved to be an em pty gesture. It was an irony they were n o t prepared to appreciate th a t T ory p ro p a­ gandists were, in such unguarded m om ents, unw ittingly agreeing w ith the Whigs, w ho refused to adm it th a t their tem porary setback the previous year was a defeat. The “Bells, Bonfires and A cclam ations” proudly re­ ported in W hig broadsides, w ith which they had since 24 N ovem ber been celebrating Shaftesbury’s “victory,” had been designed to convince the public th a t they were as effective a political force as before, th a t the “ re­ covery” to be celebrated was their ow n, and th a t it was the Tories w ho had now suffered a defeat.75 The M edall is a sequel to Absalom and A chitophel n o t because Dryden is trying to repeat his recent success by recasting the earlier poem in a briefer form but because it is founded on the same unchanging premise: that the king’s decisive action at the height of the political crisis the previous M arch had indeed restored peace and stability, inaugurating a “ Series of new tim e” th a t Dryden, for his p art, refuses to consider once more in jeopardy. But in responding to the new political situation, The Medall puts th a t premise to new uses in the service of a different purpose.

W hereas the earlier poem had used it to justify the king’s behavior tow ard Parliam ent th a t the Whigs had condem ned as arbitrary and autocratic, the new poem uses it to deflate tw o reactions to the outcom e of Shaftes­ bury’s inquest that, from either cam p, now threatened to revive the p o p u ­ lar fears and disquiets of the Exclusion Crisis. The far m ore serious of the two, of course, w hich the poem openly confronts and disparages, is the trium phant m ood of the Whigs, publicly celebrating their leader’s release as a victory for their party and hoping to use it to rally new supporters to their ranks. But another reaction D ryden hopes to minimize is the inflated rhetoric of some Tory propagandists w hose scare tactics threaten, h ow ­ ever innocently, to underm ine the success of their earlier cam paign by exaggerating the W higs’ rem aining pow er. The fact th a t The M edall is “A Satyre against Sedition” rather th an a “historical” poem like A bsalom and A chitophel reflects D ryden’s differ­ ent purpose in w riting his new poem. As a satire it seeks to discredit the Whigs and dim inish their im portance in order to forestall the revival of popular fears. D ryden has no wish to encourage complacency, of course, and in this respect he agrees w ith the other Tory propagandists. But vig­ ilance is n o t the same as alarm , and by encouraging the form er attitude he hopes to make the latter unnecessary. The im pression he seeks to create with his poem is th at the W higs have been crushed and scattered as an effective political force capable of disturbing the peace by the king’s ac­ tions of the previous year and by the revelations of their infamy th a t fol­ lowed. The surviving rem nant o f the Whigs m ust still be reckoned with, of course, but now th a t it has lost its national pow er base in Parliam ent it is reduced to a hard core of Dissenters and adventurers sheltering them ­ selves w ithin the walls of London, to w hose charter they owe their tem po­ rary im m unity from justice. If this was D ryden’s purpose in The M edall, he was n o t the only Tory w riter a t this time trying to deflate the W higs’ apparent trium ph as the em pty boasts of a noisy minority. From the time of Shaftesbury’s acquit­ tal, Heraclitus R idens, the m ost brazenly satirical of the T ory new s­ papers, had been pursuing the same objective. As early as the first week in December, the new spaper’s Earnest, deriding “ the Whiggs th a t were so scandalously stack’d ab o u t the C ourt t’other day, for the great end of hooping and hollow ing” over Shaftesbury’s Ignoramus, observed th at this event had set in m otion a series o f celebrations th a t gave no sign of abating. “The W higgs are trium phant now; n o t an honest T ory dare peep out; nothing but Bonfires and Io Paeans, for the victory some men have gotten over their Consciences.” 76 A m onth later, the same paper’s Jest noted th a t the W higs’ “forsaken Scriblers” had grow n so bold th a t “poor Absalom and A chitophel m ust e’n hide themselves in the old Testament again.”77

Only a week after Shaftesbury’s release from the Tow er, Heraclitus Ridens carried a mock advertisement: “W hereas the Wives and Children of some Artificers have shew ’d a desire to kiss the hands of the Prince of Wbigg-Iand since his R estauration, these are to give notice, th a t so soon as we understand th a t his W orthiness h ath setled his days of appearance in publick, we shall take the pains to let the w orld know it.” 78 The very next issue began w ith Jest announcing, “News! W hy I know none; you hear I suppose th a t the K. of Poland is so well recover’d as to go abroad, to the great joy and satisfaction of his People,” and w ith Earnest replying, “Yes, and some say they made Bonefires; b u t m atters at th a t distance are variously reported .”79 These jeers epitomize the tw ofold them e th at w ould be repeated incessantly in Heraclitus Ridens throughout the w in­ ter. O n the one hand, the leader w hose “ exoneration” was responsible for the trium phant m ood of the Whigs becomes a pygmy m onarch: the “ Roytelet of W higland,” or the insignificant king of Poland (sometimes “Prince T apski” ), or the elf king w ho receives “A C ongratulatory Poem on his happy R estauration, w ritten on the leaves of a M edlar-Tree, and sent by the Penny-Post” from iiO beron King of Fairies to the Prince of W h ig la n d ”80 O n the other hand, the subjects of this diminutive ruler, lavishing “n u ­ m erous Visits, C ongratulations and Baise-m ains” on their idol, are of corresponding im portance: “ the Wives and C hildren of some Artificers,” the authors of pam phlets “printed at W arsaw by his M ajesty of Poland's special C om m and,” o r “ the Associati, a dissatisfied and rebellious Clan, w ho have lately m ade him their H ead .”81 Yet while “a little old, uncer­ tain, quaking, stooping G entlem an should m ake but a sorry C ham pion in any C ause,” it is a special w onder th a t Shaftesbury, ab o u t w hom “it be questionable w hether he were ever of any R eligion,” should be chosen as the iiD u x Phanaticorum ” or ruler of W higland, “a kind of gathered C om m onw ealth, or a Kingdom in the Congregational w ay,” and th a t he should now be represented as “an Atlas stooping under the w eight of the Protestant Cause.”82 Therefore Heraclitus Ridens pretends to question W hig assertions that “the noble E. of Shaftsbury is the H ead o f the Party. . . . Let ’em prove th a t he goes to Conventicles, and then I’le believe something of w hat they say.” 83 The author of Heraclitus Ridens was not, of course, the only Tory satirist w ho was employing ridicule at the expense of the Whigs during the w inter of 1681-82, but in his case it was an instrum ent used singlemindedly for the purpose o f undercutting the attem pt by the Whigs to recover their m om entum , and of forestalling fears th at public unrest was ab o u t to return. “ ’Tis a year since” there w as cause for such fears, Earnest assured the readers of Heraclitus Ridens, “ and the Case is altered; the Whigs began to have fine Projects in their H eads, and were according to

very credible Evidence ab o u t to p u t ’em into A ct,” but th at w as before the king dissolved the O xford Parliam ent and issued his D eclaration. “The many honest men w ho by an easiness perhaps excusable were w rought upon to concur w ith their specious designs, are now undeceiv’d .” Conse­ quently, Jest rejoiced, “W higgism declines sensibly; they are forc’d now to court the Ostlers and C arm en.” In short, “ O ur Prophesie then is come to pass, th a t W higgism is fallen, it is fallen. Their stock is out, and they are come to Thieving.” 84

The ostensible occasion of The M edall, the striking of a m edal to com ­ mem orate the outcom e of Shaftesbury’s inquest and his release from the Tow er, has been treated in com m entaries on the poem as a notew orthy event of some im portance independent of D ryden’s response to it. Yet this is belied by the paucity of contem porary allusions to the event, suggesting that in fact it attracted relatively little attention— so little, in fact, th a t there is no surviving evidence of w hen exactly it occurred.85 It seems rea­ sonable, however, to assume th a t the m em ento was being distributed w ithin a few weeks of Shaftesbury’s inquest (the date of w hich, 24 N o ­ vember, appears on the reverse of the medal), since the Whigs probably seized the occasion while excitem ent over Shaftesbury’s acquittal was still fresh, and at a time w hen they were feverishly celebrating the event w ith bonfires, public dinners, and other festivities. Any realistic estim ate of the time D ryden w ould have needed for w riting the poem before it was p u b ­ lished on 16 M arch w ould also support this hypothesis.86 In choosing as the occasion of his poem the striking of a medal and its circulation am ong the W higs as a com m em oration of their leader’s ac­ quittal and release, D ryden was probably influenced by several considera­ tions. In the first place, it w as an event, scarcely noticed beyond their own circle, that could typify all those public acclam ations by which the Whigs had been congratulating their leader since the conclusion of his inquest and flaunting their im m unity from prosecution w hen shielded by a Lon­ don grand jury. In this respect, the m edal can serve as an appropriate symbol of Ignoram us justice, the repeated abuse of privilege justifying the effort to reform the C ity’s m ethod of choosing its sheriffs. At the same time, the striking of the medal had been the W higs’ m ethod of erecting a trophy to their political victory in an effort to persuade the nation th a t they had regained their form er ascendancy. In this respect the medal allows D ryden to expose the reality behind the W hig boasts of recovered strength by using it as a symbol, appropriately m iniaturized on its tw o opposite faces, of the superannuated leader and his negligible supporters.

172

CHAPTER 4

D ry d e n ’s w ays o f in troducing the m edal in to his preface a n d his poem are n o t the sam e, a lth o u g h they com plem ent each other. A t the beginning o f his “ Epistle to the W higs” he tre a ts th e m edal in the b ro ad com ic m a n ­ ner o f H eraclitus R idens and the T o ry broadsides, a n d there he exploits both its sides sim ply as a joke a t S haftesbury’s expense. T h e im plicit leg­ end behind his jeers is th a t th e king of P oland has n o w been elected Prince of W h ig lan d , and th a t his ju b ilan t E nglish subjects have stru ck a m edal to com m em orate their “ N ew Sovereign’s C o ro n a tio n ,” w here they can “a d ­ m ire an d p riz e ” his picture, a p p ro p riate ly depicted “ in little .” Since all the g rav er’s “Kings are bo u g h t up a lre a d y ” by S haftesbury’s new P rotes­ ta n t subjects, “ m any a p o o r P olander w h o ,” being C atholic, “w o u ld be glad to w o rsh ip the Im age, is n o t able to go to th e cost o f him : But m ust be c o n te n t to see him h e re ,” in D ry d en ’s poem th a t presents the h e ro ’s “Picture d raw n a t len g th ,” a n d therefore includes m uch th a t is ju d i­ ciously om itted in the m ed a l’s bust in profile. This is all o f a piece w ith the h a rsh h u m o r w ith w hich he concludes his first m en tio n o f the m edal: “T ru th is, you m ight have s p a r’d one side o f y o u r M edall: th e H ead w o u ’d be seen to m ore advantage, if it w ere p lac’d o n a Spike of the T ow er; a little nearer to the Sun: W hich w o u ’d th en break o u t to better p u rp o se .” T his is below D ry d en ’s usual style o f controversy, b u t its level is consistent w ith th e rest o f the “ Epistle to th e W h ig s,” w hose to n e and subject are deliberately m odeled on the T o ry new spapers a n d pam phlets o f the p a st fo u r m onths. T he strain o f the poem itself is o f a som ew hat higher m ood. In his p o em , D ryden m inim izes the im p o rtan ce of the m edal fro m the o u tse t by m aking its ap p earan ce a purely local event a ttra c tin g the notice only of the rabble o f the City o f L ondon: O f all our Antick Sights, and Pageantry W hich English Ideots run in crowds to see, The Polish M edall bears the prize alone: A M onster, m ore the Favourite o f the T ow n Than either Fayrs or Theatres have show n. ( 1- 5 )

T his localization continues as he proceeds to describe the tw o sides o f the m edal th a t epitom ize the subject o f the poem : One side is fill’d w ith Title and w ith Face; And, lest the King shou’d w ant a regal Place, On the reverse, a T o w ’r the T ow n surveys; O’er which our m ounting Sun his beams displays. The W ord, pronounc’d aloud by Shrieval voice, Laetatnur, which, in Polish, is rejoyce,

The D ay, M onth, Year, to the great Act are join’d: And a new Canting H oliday design’d.

(10-17) It has been argued, w ith considerable ingenuity, th a t the significance of the medal for D ryden’s purpose is in supplying the design for his poem .87 I am not persuaded, however, th a t he attem pts to produce a “literary m edal” to com plem ent the other, for his language is n o t especially picto­ rial or descriptive, and m ost of the poem does n o t correspond to the de­ tails on the original. After the first twenty-five lines, in fact, D ryden ig­ nores the actual m edal, for by then it has served its purpose of allowing him to specify his quarry by a description of its tw o faces: the obverse with its “ king,” Shaftesbury himself, and the reverse w ith its “T o w n ” that constitutes his petty city state. The m edal D ryden describes is a perfectly creditable specimen of the m edalist’s art, and deserves m ore attention than it has usually received. Com m entators have often relied on the reproduction of the m edal John Evelyn used for his N um ism ata in 1697, w hich gives an inexact and m is­ leading approxim ation of its reverse face.88 The details actually depicted on the reverse are specific and reasonably accurate, but they combine features that were never at any date seen together. For the m ost p art it is a view of London as it existed before the Fire of 1666. In fact, George Bower, its engraver, was alm ost certainly w orking from W enceslaus H o l­ lar’s well-know n etching of London before the Fire viewed from the tower of St. M ary Overie in Southw ark, near the south end of London Bridge.89 Bower’s only addition has been to insert the M onum ent, fin­ ished in 1677, in its proper place close to the n orth end of London Bridge, in an attem pt to m odernize the scene in spite of the M o n u m en t’s incon­ gruous appearance am ong so many anachronistic details.90 Bower has severely compressed H ollar’s vista, of course, to meet the constraints of his much smaller m edium .91 But w h at is m ore significant is the fact th a t he has deliberately narrow ed its scope, encapsulating H o l­ lar’s etching into an iconic representation of the City of London. Like most such panoram as, H o llar’s etching offers an unenclosed prospect of the n orth bank of the Tham es.92 It extends from a point considerably west of St. Paul’s to slightly beyond the Tow er on the east, its boundaries de­ term ined only by the prospect supposed to be visible from this vantage point. Bower, on the contrary, frames his picture between old St. Paul’s, rising above the other buildings on the west, and the Tow er, elevated above its neighbors on the east, w ith London Bridge beginning at the center and form ing a diagonal across the foreground. By converting the tw o m ost prom inent City landm arks into bastions fram ing his scene, Bower has transform ed H ollar’s open prospect into an image epitomizing

the City o f L ondon w ithin its an cient w alls, D ry d en ’s “T o w n ” in its m ost literal d im ension.93 B ow er’s scene is m ean t to convey tw o co m plem entary m eanings. The sun breaking fo rth from the clouds directly above the T o w er o n the ex­ trem e right, along w ith the date “24 N o v 1 6 8 1 ” a t the b o tto m , com m em ­ orates th e acq u ittal o f th e noble p riso n er p o rtra y ed o n th e obverse an d his su b sequent release from the scene o f his confinem ent. T he w o rd “ Laetam u r” em blazoned across the sky above the City o f L o n d o n expresses the joy of its in h ab ita n ts, serving as a synecdoche fo r the people of E ngland. D eliberately ignoring B ow er’s synecdoche a n d applying a literal in te rp re ­ ta tio n , D ryden supplies altern ativ e m eanings fo r the sam e details. As the only royal palace w ith in the C ity o f L o n d o n , the T o w er is the m ost a p p ro ­ p ria te “ regal P lace” for the king of this u rb a n realm . T he w o rd “ Laetam u r” signifies in tu rn the in au g u ra tio n w ith in his city state of “ a new C anting H o lid a y ” by the D issenters w h o are his only acknow ledged subjects. R etu rn in g briefly to the obverse of the m edal w ith its b u st o f the satanic king, D ryden introduces a tra n sitio n from the g rav er’s restricted m edium to the greater latitu d e affo rd ed th e poet. Oh, cou’d the Style that cop y’d every grace, And plough’d such furrows for an Eunuch face, Cou’d it have form ’d his ever-changing W ill, The various Piece had tir’d the Graver’s Skill!

(22-25) T hese lines are o ften explained by co m m en tato rs as a use of the “ A d­ vice to a P a in te r” tra d itio n p o p u la r in political satires of the R esto ratio n period. But D ry d e n ’s p o in t, surely, is th a t n o p a in te r, or graver in this instance, co u ld possibly p o rtra y his subject’s inner ch a ra c te r, w h ich only the w ritte n w o rd — this poem , in fact— can do. If a literary antecedent lies behind these lines, as I believe it does, it is far m ore likely th a t D ryden is playfully alluding to Ben J o n so n ’s fam ous verses o p posite M a rtin D ro e sh o u t’s engraved p o rtra it of Shakespeare in the First Folio: This Figure, that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut; Wherein the Graver had a strife W ith N ature, to out-doo the life: O, could he but have drawne his w it As w ell in brasse, as he hath hit H is face; the Print w ould then surpasse AU, that w as ever writ in brasse. But, since he cannot, Reader, looke N o t on his Picture, but his Booke.94

In both cases the subject’s internal qualities— Shakespeare’s wit, Shaftes­ bury’s ever-changing will— have eluded the graver and can only be sup­ plied by the w ritten w ord— Shakespeare’s plays, D ryden’s poem. The implicit contrast between Jonson’s illustrious subject and D ryden’s infa­ mous one is as inescapable as the overt verbal parallels. By pretending at the outset of his poem th a t the medal depicts in m ini­ ature the present Whig leadership and its dwindling supporters, Dryden establishes the periphery of his satire before leaving the medal and its physical lim itations behind. Thereafter, throughout the entire course of The M edall, he m entions no other Whig leader except Shaftesbury and no Whig supporters outside the City of London. This is n o t offered as a literal canvass of the rem aining m embership of the party, of course, which w ould only invite disbelief as an obvious distortion of its actual composition. But just as the tw o faces of the medal symbolize at the outset the persons represented in the poem, these in tu rn epitomize the negligible components of the party as it now exists: those unrepentant demagogues exemplified by Shaftesbury, and the mindless rabble w ho are their willing tools. The M edall is a sequel to Absalom and Achitophel in another sense besides its sharing the earlier poem ’s premise th a t the king has restored peace to the troubled land. Published less than four m onths after Absa­ lom and Achitophel at a time w hen that poem was still a subject of intense interest and angry W hig replies to it were continuing to appear, The Medall reasonably assumes the reader’s familiarity w ith the earlier poem , depending for a good p art of its effect upon the m arked contrasts it cre­ ates w ith Absalom and A chitophel.95 Among the m ost noticeable of these differences is precisely the complexity and wide variety of individuals and groups m aking up the Whig leadership and its supporters in Absalom and Achitophel as com pared to the simplicity displayed in The Medall. The very different political situations Dryden portrays in his tw o poems are of course poetic fictions shaped by his disparate rhetorical p u r­ poses, but they w ould be implausible if they were entirely divorced from the historical realities to which they refer. In com paring the tw o poems it is im portant to keep in m ind th a t although they were published only four months apart, the situations they profess to describe are separated by an entire year: M arch 1681, the historical past when David resolves a grave political crisis in Absalom and Achitophel, and M arch 1682, the histori­ cal present depicted in The Medall. The declining fortunes of the Whigs between those tw o dates constitute the historical realities behind D ry­ den’s poetic fiction, which he alters freely to fit his political purpose. The essential difference in his version of events is th a t the W higs were danger­ ous on the earlier occasion, whereas they are now disabled. The first significant disparity between the tw o poems appears in the opening verse paragraph of The Medall, w here D ryden dismisses the in-

adequacies of the m edal’s p o rtrait in favor of a historical account of Shaftesbury’s career th a t can reveal his “ever-changing W ill.” This inevi­ tably rem inds us in some respects of the parallel narrative of his career in Absalom and A cbitophel (150-220). Yet the differences are m ore re­ m arkable than the similarities. Both poem s trace the same episodes of his career under Charles II: his m eteoric rise as a counselor to the king, his responsibility for the breaking of the Triple Alliance, his volte-face into political opposition, his assum ption of the role of demagogue. Both also isolate Shaftesbury’s ruling passion as perpetual restlessness fed by insa­ tiable am bition. In Absalom and A chitophel he is “ Restless, unfixt in Principles and Place; / In Power unpleas’d, im patient of D isgrace” (154— 55), just as in the latter poem the one constant ingredient in Shaftesbury’s inconstant career is “ his ever-changing W ill.” But in The M edall D ryden also introduces new details into both Shaftesbury’s career and his character th a t significantly alter the resulting impression of the W hig leader. His account of th a t career begins n o t with Shaftesbury’s protean history since the R estoration, as in the earlier poem , but w ith his service in the Parliam entary arm y during the Civil W ars, his experience as a counselor to Cromwell, and, m ost im portant, the allegation, here treated as a fact, th a t he was a Presbyterian under the Com m onw ealth and P rotectorate.96 Bar’tring his venal w it for sums o f gold H e cast him self into the Saint-like mould; Groan’d, sigh’d and pray’d, while Godliness w as gain; The low dest Bagpipe o f the squeaking Train.

(32-35) To his perpetual restlessness D ryden now adds Shaftesbury’s reputed lechery, a flaw th a t modifies his entire character.97 In Absalom and Achitophel Shaftesbury’s restlessness explains w hy a “ fiery Soul” endowed w ith “ G reat W it” and “ discerning Eyes,” destined by his unquestioned abilities for a brilliant career as a statesm an, was driven by “wilde Ambi­ tio n ” to become a fom enter of mischief, an instance of the m axim corruptio optim i pessima. Such unpredictable behavior m atched w ith great tal­ ents makes him all the m ore dangerous, a loose cannon crashing about the deck of the ship of state. In The M edall, on the other hand, Shaftes­ bury’s passions are shown to have been at odds w ith one another from his youth, his lust frustrating his am bition a t a time w hen it was to his advan­ tage to appear chaste. But, as ’tis hard to cheat a Juggler’s Eyes, H is open lewdness he cou’d ne’er disguise. There split the Saint: for H ypocritique Zeal A llow s no Sins but those it can conceal.

Whoring to Scandal gives too large a scope: Saints must not trade; but they may interlope. Th’ ungodly Principle w as all the same; But a gross Cheat betrays his Partner’s Game,

(36-43) Thus Shaftesbury’s kaleidoscopic career is now show n as the effect n o t just of his restless spirit fed by am bition but of his inability to control or conceal his other appetites, deflecting him from his im m ediate goals under the Protectorate and forcing a change in his allegiance w hich in that instance, at least, he w ould not have sought in his ow n interest. It is symptomatic of a fatal weakness th a t has frustrated his hopes in the past and may do so again in the future. For the m om ent, however, th a t future is suspended while D ryden ex­ amines in the rem ainder of the first verse paragraph the reasons why so undependable a figure has enjoyed an initial success each time he has turned demagogue. The explanation is th a t Shaftesbury appeals to the mob w ho share the same base motive underlying his own volatile behav­ ior. In all his turbulent career, “Pow ’r was his aym ” (50), the single un­ changing goal of his driving am bition. In seeking proselytes, he fastens on the same ruling passion in the com m on rabble. He preaches to the Crowd, that P ow ’r is lent, But not convey’d to Kingly Government; That Claimes successive bear no binding force; That Coronation Oaths are things o f course; M aintains the M ultitude can never err; And sets the People in the Papal Chair.

(82-87) This recalls the scene in w hich A chitophel preaches the same political philosophy to A bsalom in D ryden’s earlier poem: the People have a Right Supreme To make their Kings; for Kings are made for them. AU Empire is no m ore than P ow ’r in Trust, W hich w hen resum ’d, can be no longer Just.

(409-12) But in Absalom and A cbitophel this philosophy is tied specifically to the policy of Exclusion: Succession, for the general G ood design’d, In its ow n w rong a N ation cannot bind: If altering that, the People can relieve, Better one Suffer, than a N ation grieve.

(413-16)

Here the principle is extended to m onarchy itself: n o t only “T h at Claimes successive bear no binding force,” but, even more radically, “T hat Coro­ nation O aths are things of course.” It is the prospect of reclaiming to themselves the pow er relinquished to a m onarchical form of government th a t proves most alluring to those whose favor Shaftesbury solicits. “Pow er” is in fact the controlling term in D ryden’s characterization of “the C row d” th a t follows, just as it had been In his description of Shaftes­ bury earlier in the same paragraph. If the latter “M aintains the M ultitude can never err,” The reason’s obvious; In t’rest never lyes; The m ost have still their Int’rest in their eyes; The p o w ’r is always theirs, and pow ’r is ever wise. Almighty Crowd, thou shorten’st all dispute; Pow ’r is thy Essence; W it thy Attribute! N or Faith nor Reason make thee at a stay, Thou leapst o ’r all eternal truths, in thy Pindartque way!

(88-94) In Absalom and Achitopbel Dryden had introduced the same ironic theme of “might makes rig h t” in his account of Shaftesbury’s career: “H ow safe is Treason, and how sacred ill, / W here none can sin against the Peoples W ill” (182-83). Here, however, he raises the false maxim lex populi, lex D ei to tie rebellion to religious dissent. In the one case, “Crowds err not, though to both extremes they run; / To kill the Father, and recall the Son” (99—100). In the other, “The com m on Cry is ev’n Religion’s Test” (103), according to the principle behind all religious dis­ sent, w ith the result th a t “This side to day, and th a t to m orrow burns; /So all are G od-a’mighties in their tu rn s” (109-10). It was the realization th a t the pow er of the m ajority w ould be exercised in such an erratic m anner to the disadvantage o f the m inority th a t led to the establishment of a m onarchical form of governm ent by “our Fathers,” W ho, to destroy the seeds o f Civil War, Inherent right in M onarchs did declare: And, that a lawfull Pow ’r might never cease, Secur’d Succession, to secure our Peace. Thus, Property and Sovereign Sway, at last In equal Balances were justly cast.

(113-18) Once again, as in recounting Shaftesbury’s career earlier in the same par­ agraph, Dryden returns to the time of the Civil W ars to illustrate the effects of a resum ption of pow er by the people:

God try’d us once; our Rebel-fathers fought; He glutted ’em w ith all the p o w ’r they sought: Till, master’d by their ow n usurping Brave, The free-born Subject sunk into a Slave. We loath our M anna, and w e long for Quails; Ah, w hat is man, when his ow n w ish prevails! H ow rash, how sw ift to plunge him self in ill; Proud of his P ow ’r, and boundless in his Will! ( 127 - 3 4 )

Dryden’s pragm atic appeal to the people’s ow n self-interest, the argum ent that this is best secured by their entrusting to a m onarchical form of gov­ ernment the pow er they cannot exercise responsibly themselves, and the claim that under such an arrangem ent they already enjoy m axim um free­ dom (“Too happy England, if our good we knew ” [123]) all find their counterparts in his so-called “ discourse on governm ent” in A bsalom and Achitopbel (753—810). But they serve a different purpose here as a means of examining the com m on motive th a t has brought Shaftesbury and the dregs of the people into tem porary alliance. The succeeding lines, which conclude this long verse paragraph on Shaftesbury, m ight under other circumstances be alarmist: That Kings can doe no w rong w e must believe: None can they doe, and must they all receive? Help Heaven! or sadly w e shall see an hour, When neither w rong nor right are in their p o w ’r! Already they have lost their best defence, The benefit o f Laws, which they dispence: N o justice to their righteous Cause allow ’d; But baffled by an Arbitrary Crowd: And M edalls grav’d, their Conquest to record, The Stamp and Coyn o f their adopted Lord.

(135-44) In the atm osphere of early 1681 preceding the O xford Parliam ent, such lines w ould have accorded exactly w ith the defeatist sentiments of such poems as The Country-m ans C om plaint, w arning the king of im m inent defeat unless he and his governm ent at last arouse themselves to action. But in the far different climate of early 1682 their rhetoric serves instead to justify the quo w arranto proceedings by which the governm ent is al­ ready seeking to curb such miscarriages of justice. For it to do otherwise, Dryden’s rhetoric implies, w ould be to act irresponsibly, and to invite a return to the times of “our Rebel-fathers” th a t he has just recalled, w hen “neither w rong nor rig h t” was any longer in the pow er of a king beset on every side.

These closing lines supply a natural transition to the follow ing verse paragraph, from Shaftesbury, the beneficiary o f Ignoramus justice, to the the London grand jury that has dispensed it, at the same time depriving the king of “the benefit of Law s.” T he M an w h o lau g h ’d but once, to see an Ass M um bling to m ake the cross-grain’d T histles pass; M ight laugh again, to see a Ju ry ch aw T he prickles o f u n p alatab le Law. ( 145 - 4 8 )

The twisting evasions of which he accuses the jurors, echoing L’Estrange and the other Tory propagandists, consist in their professing to disbelieve testim ony from the same witnesses w hose credibility had been acclaimed by the Whigs at the time of the Popish Plot trials. The W itnesses, th a t, Leech-like, liv’d on bloud, Sucking for th em w ere m ed ’cinally good; But, w hen they fasten ’d o n their fester’d Sore, T hen, Justice an d R eligion they forsw ore; T heir M ay d en O ath s d e b au ch ’d in to a W hore. T hus M en are rais’d by Factions, an d decry’d; A nd R ogue a n d Saint distin g u ish ’d by th eir Side. ( 149 - 5 5 )

Dryden puns here on the w ord “Saint” (he had used it in the preceding verse paragraph, as we noticed, to refer to the Presbyterians), preparing us for the remainder o f the paragraph, in which he draws an analogy between the W hig jurors’ wresting of the law and the same party’s treat­ ment of Scripture. They rack ev’n S cripture to confess their Cause; A nd plead a Call to p reach, in spight o f Law s. But th a t’s no new s to th e p o o r in ju r’d Page; It has been u s’d as ill in every Age: A nd is c o n stra in ’d, w ith patience, all to take; For w h a t defence can G reek and H eb rew make? H a p p y w h o can this talking T ru m p e t seize; T hey m ake it speak w hatever Sense they please! ’Tw as fram ’d, at first, o u r O racle t ’ enquire; B ut, since o u r Sects in p rophecy gro w higher, T he Text inspires n o t them ; b u t they th e T ext inspire. ( 156 - 6 6 )

“T hey” are of course the grand jury with w hom Dryden began his verse paragraph, and the W hig party as a w hole o f which they are typical mem-

bers. They can w rest English law to th eir ow n pu rp o ses because, as D is­ senters, they have long been accustom ed to treatin g Scripture in the sam e fashion, applying the “priv ate sp irit” to the biblical tex t in o rd er to “make it speak w h atever Sense they please.” 98 T he “ C a u se ” fo r w hich they rack b o th divine a n d civil law for their ow n ends is the sam e, for the Whigs are m erely the “ Sects” in their political dim ension. The tra n sitio n th a t follow s is equally n a tu ra l, fo r if the actions of the London g ran d fury in a c o u rtro o m are of a piece w ith th eir religious p ra c ­ tices, their behavior is also consistent w ith th a t o f the disloyal L o ndon citizens for w hom they serve as a co nvenien t synecdoche. L ondon, thou great E m porium of our Isle, O, thou too bounteous, thou too fruitfull N ile, H ow shall I praise or curse to thy desert! Or separate thy sound, from thy corrupted p a rtI I call’d thee N ile; the parallel will stand: Thy tydes of W ealth o ’rflow the fattend Land; Yet M onsters from thy large increase w e find; Engender’d on the Slyme thou leav’st behind, (167 - 74 )

The N ile im age for the T ham es, in w hich the disloyal citizens of L ondon are likened to the plague o f the frogs visited u p o n P h a ro ah in E xodus, had also been used by N o rth leig h to castigate the W higs as “Frogs” w ho w ould “ fill the K ing’s C ham bers, w ith th eir h a rsh a n d d iscontented M urm urings, as they did the A egyptians once, w ith th eir C roakings: These little D em ocraticks, the scum o f those beggarly Elem ents, M u d , and W ater; still as m ean as the one, a n d restless as th e o th e r.” 99 A nd, like N orthleigh, D ryden launches a scathing a tta c k on th e disloyal L o ndon tradesm en th a t serves to justify the gov ern m en t’s efforts a t gaining c o n ­ trol over the City. But W isedom is to Sloath too great a Slave; None are so busy as the Fool and Knave. Those let me curse; w hat vengeance w ill they urge, Whose Ordures neither Plague nor Fire can purge; N or sharp Experience can to duty bring, N or angry H eav’n, nor a forgiving King! In Gospel phrase their Chapmen they betray: Their Shops are Dens, the Buyer is their Prey. The Knack o f Trades is living on the Spoyl; They boast, ev’n w hen each other they beguile. Customes to steal is such a trivial thing, That ’tis their Charter, to defraud the King. (185 -96 )

As in his earlier use o f “S ain t,” D ryden exploits tw o senses o f the term “C h a rte r.” L iterally, th e d ishonest L o n d o n tradesm en consider it their privilege to defrau d the king o f the custom s m oney, b u t in a m o re specific sense they tak e advantage of th eir royal c h a rte r to ro b him o f his p rero g a ­ tive. T h eir greed fo r m oney is o f a piece w ith th eir greed for political pow er: b o th are indulged by depriving their ruler of w h a t is rightfully his. Finally, D ryden ends this verse p a ra g ra p h by identifying the disloyal citizens of L o ndon w ith the D issenters, just as he h a d equated p a rt o f their n u m b er, the L o n d o n g ra n d ju ro rs, w ith the sam e D issenters a t th e end of his preceding p ara g ra p h . All hands unite o f every jarring Sect; They cheat the Country first, and then infect. They, for G od’s Cause their M onarchs dare dethrone; And they’ll be sure to make his Cause their ow n. W hether the plotting Jesuite lay’d the plan O f murth’ring Kings, or the French Puritan, Our Sacrilegious Sects their Guides outgo; And Kings and Kingly P ow ’r w o u ’d murther too. ( 197 - 2 0 4 )

T hus W higs, D issenters, a n d L ondoners are m erged in to the sam e indis­ tin ct m ass: the “p a rty ” o r “ sect” of hopeful regicides w h o have chosen, for the m om ent, S haftesbury as their u nsuitab le ch am pion to lead them to the prom ised land. In the follow ing verse p a ra g ra p h D ry d en su p p o rts his accusation of p o ten tia l regicide against the W higs by citing the in ten d ed A ssociation, fo rtu n a te ly disclosed before it could be p u t in to effect: W hat means their Trait’rous Com bination less, T oo plain t’evade, too shamefull to confess? But Treason is not o w n ’d when tis descry’d; Successfull Crimes alone are justify’d. (205 - 8 )

R etu rn in g for the last tim e to th e L o n d o n g ran d ju ro rs, he repeats the freq u en t charge w e have n o ticed in T o ry p ro p a g a n d a th a t by refusing to p rese n t the treaso n ab le A ssociation the ju ro rs h a d show n their su p p o rt fo r a p lo t th a t w as ultim ately directed against th e king himself. The M en, w ho no Conspiracy w o u ’d find, W ho doubts, but had it taken, they had join’d: Joyn’d, in a mutual C ov’nant o f defence; At first w ithout, at last against their Prince. (209 - 12 )

Dryden traces the steps whereby, “had it taken,” which fortunately it did not because of its timely discovery, the Association would have led by degrees from “the cooler methods o f their Crime”— depriving the king of his powers while permitting him “to exercise the N am e”— to the final step of abolishing the monarchy and taking the king’s life. But having raised this specter, he abruptly ends the verse paragraph on a reassuring note. Such im pious Axiomes foolishly they show; For, in some Soyles Republiques will not grow: O ur Temp’rate Isle will no extremes sustain, Of p o p ’lar Sway, or A rbitrary Reign: But slides between them both into the best; Secure in freedom, in a M onarch blest. And though the Clymate, vex’t with various W inds, W orks through our yielding Bodies, on our M inds, The wholsome Tempest purges w hat it breeds; To recommend the Calmness th at succeeds. ( 246 - 5 5 )

These lines provide a transition between the present, founded on the past, and the future, founded on both, with which the remainder of The M edall will be concerned. Once again, we are reminded o f several pas­ sages in Absalom and A chitophel where Dryden traced the periodic recur­ rence of English political instability to occasions when “every hostile H u­ mour, which before / Slept quiet in its Channels, bubbles o’r” (138-39). But he had raised the subject there to explain why such a people, “w ho, at their very best, / Their Humour more than Loyalty exprest” (6 1-62), are never quiet for long. He had portrayed them as an unsteady race “govern’d by the M o o n ” who Tread the same track when she the Prime renews: And once in tw enty Years, their Scribes Record, By natural Instinct they change their Lord. (217 - 19 )

Such images for English instability had continued to be popular more recently among Tory alarmists who viewed the Association as evidence that the cycle of periodic rebelliousness was about to recur. Edward Pelling, for example, prefaces his martyrdom sermon for 1682 by lamenting: But alas! since we have been healed of our Stripes, some seem to have alm ost forgotten the Rod, and are not only Willing, but Desirous to come under the Lash again. So unfixt and m utable are m any English Spirits, th at the only Cen­ ter they can rest in, is the Grave: For as the M oon, after so m any Periods,

returns into the same Phasis; so som e Erratick Hum ors, after so many Years, revert into the same M otion; and the only Way to save men the Charge o f being cured again o f their Lunacy, is to prevent the D isease. 100

N orthleigh had used a similar image to castigate returning English rebel­ liousness: “Strange th a t this A m azing fit should on the sudden surprise us, of w hich we have had n o t so much as a Sym ptom this tw enty Years. I suppose it w ould puzzle this quacking Statesman [Shaftesbury] to give the true cause o f this sudden shivering D istem per in the Body Politick, as much as it doth m ost Physicians truly to define the m atter of Agues in the Natural. ” 101 In The Medall, however, D ryden uses such imagery for an exactly op­ posite purpose: to point not to the recurrences of English disobedience but to their reassuring counterpart: an inevitable return to loyalty as a result of the same climate th a t accounts for their periodic instability. W hereas the earlier poem had draw n attention to the descending hemi­ sphere of the cycle, T he M edall emphasizes instead the inexorable ascent into a m ore lasting tranquillity th a t succeeds these interm ittent disquiets. The circle is a traditional image of change and restless m ovem ent, of course, which excludes any idea of perm anent stasis. But it can serve, as in Absalom and A chitophel, to suggest th a t “Life can never be sincerely blest” (43), calm always being followed by. turbulence, or, as in The M edall, to argue th a t this turbulence itself holds prom ise of “ the Calm­ ness th a t succeeds.” The climatic cycle prepares us for the historical cycle w ith w hich D ryden concludes the poem. The nation as a whole, its eyes opened at last to the delusions into which it had been led during the Exclusion Crisis, has already recovered its tranquillity. It is only the perm anently disaffected—Shaftesbury and the London Dissenters—w ho continue turbulent, and no period of public peace is ever free of such a minority. W ith the opening w ords of the suc­ ceeding verse paragraph, “But thou, the Pander o f the Peoples hearts” (256), D ryden returns in The M edall to Shaftesbury, “w hose blandish­ ments a Loyal Land have w h o r’d ” in the past (258), and w ho still inspires the Tongues, and swells the Breasts O f all thy bellow ing Renegado Priests, That preach up Thee for God; dispence thy Laws; And w ith thy Stumm ferment their fainting Cause; Fresh Fumes of M adness raise; and toile and sw eat To m ake the formidable Cripple great?

(267-72) Shaftesbury had been introduced in the first verse paragraph to recount his past; here we are offered his future, where he will end as he began, his

career finally com ing full circle. In his youth he h ad failed to ally him self for long w ith the rebellious Saints o f th a t tim e because his practices w ere at odds w ith theirs: “ his open Iewdness he c o u ’d n e’er disguise” (37). N ow his hopes o f reviving his w aning fortun es, dependent on his form ing a lasting alliance w ith the successors of those Saints, will fo u n d er on the incom patibility of his principles w ith theirs: “ Religion th o u hast none: thy M ercury / H as pass’d th ro u g h every Sect, o r theirs th ro u g h T h e e ” (2 6 3 -6 4 ).102 In A b sa lo m and A c h ito p b e l the existence o f a w ide variety of selfish and conflicting interests th a t go to m ake up the “T ra it’rous C om ­ bination” of disp arate rebels under A chitophel’s com m and d em onstrates his superior skill in form ing them into a n effective political organization: “W hose differing Parties he could wisely Joyn, I For several Ends, to serve the same D esign” (493—94). In T he M edall, on the o th er h an d , the d isp ar­ ity betw een the “several E n d s” dividing the D issenters from th o se like Shaftesbury w h o lead them m ust inevitably shatter their m om entary alliance: Yet, sh o u ’d thy C rim es succeed, sh o u ’d law less P o w ’r C om pass those Ends thy greedy H o p es devour, Thy C anting Friends thy M ortal Foes w o u ’d be; Thy G od and T heirs w ill never lon g agree. For thine, (if thou hast any,) m ust be on e That lets the W orld and H u m an e-k ind alone: A jolly G od , that passes hours to o w ell T o prom ise H e a v ’n, or threaten us w ith H ell; A Tyrant theirs; the H e a v ’n their P riesthood paints A C onventicle o f glo o m y sullen Saints; A H ea v ’n, like B e d la m , sloven ly and sad; F ore-d oom ’d for S ouls, w ith false R eligion , m ad.

(273-86) As I pointed o u t earlier, Shaftesbury epitom izes in this poem the W hig leadership am ong w h o m he alone is individualized. T he fatal incom pati­ bility betw een head and m em bers in the W hig body is n o t unique to the “ form idable C rip p le,” w eakened by age a n d ill health , w hose political career can n o t, in its n a tu ra l course, tro u b le the n atio n m uch longer. Shaftesbury exem plifies the intelligentsia of republican libertines w ho are the ideologues o f the party , intent o n destroying b o th church a n d state in hopes o f freeing them selves from all restrain ts, religious as well as civil. The religious fanatics w hose su p p o rt they need, on the c o n trary , are bent on replacing the existing church and state w ith a rigid theocracy like their idea of heaven, “ a Conventicle of gloom y sullen Saints” presided over by “a T y ra n t.” As long as their “greedy H o p e s” of overturning ch u rch and

state are not actualized, republican libertines and religious fanatics can make com m on cause, but “shou’d thy Crimes succeed,” their alliance w ould soon founder. In th at event, as Dryden will shortly predict, neither libertine nor Saint will achieve his cherished aims: “N o t T hou, nor those thy Factious Arts ingage / Shall reap th a t H arvest of Rebellious Rage” (291-92). Like many of D ryden’s poems, The M edall ends w ith a prophecy, but it is a prophecy w ith a difference. W ithout a Vision Poets can fore-show W hat all but Fools, by com m on Sense may know: (287 - 88 )

Dryden begins by explicitly rejecting any pretense to the kind of “eschatological prophecy” th at some recent critics have found in so many of his poems. He is offering a commonsense prediction based squarely on the n atio n ’s past experience, a practical application of history to its most im portant use that he was to describe the following year in his “Life of Plutarch” : It informs the understanding by the memory: It helps us to judge o f w hat will happen, by shew ing us the like revolutions o f former times. For M ankind being the same in all ages, agitated by the same passions, and m ov’d to action by the same interests, nothing can com e to pass, but som e President [s/c] o f the like nature has already been produc’d, so that having the causes before our eyes, we cannot easily be deceiv’d in the effects, if w e have Judgment enough but to draw the parallel. 103

In foretelling w hat will happen “ if True Succession from our Isle shou’d fail, / And Crowds profane, with impious Arms prevail” (289-90), Dryden draws just such a parallel. His picture of the future is simply a retell­ ing of the past: a deliberately recognizable account o f the cycle of English history between 1646 and 1660 in which “Republique Prelacy” under the Presbyterian yoke is shortly succeeded by civil w ar w ith the sects, the dictatorship of their general, and the overthrow of the Protectorate, con­ cluding the cycle at last where it began: Till halting Vengeance overtook our Age: And our wild Labours, wearied into Rest, Reclin’d us on a rightfull M onarch’s Breast. ( 320 - 2 2 )

D ryden’s predictive use of history in foretelling the future through the past depends on his being able to establish a probable parallel between a series of completed events, as mediated by his ow n political vision, and an analogous series of contingencies, still unrealized and therefore incapable

of being tested by experience. Its persuasiveness m ust therefore depend on the only parallel open to experience, not between the events themselves but between their agents. In his “Life of P lutarch” this takes the form of an axiom: “M ankind being the same in all ages, agitated by the same passions, and m ov’d to action by the same interests, nothing can come to pass, but some President of the like nature has already been produc’d .” In The Medall, however, D ryden does not need to rely on a general axiom. The same discordant factions th a t failed to w ork harm oniously in pursuit of a com mon aim during the late rebellion are once again pursuing the same divided aims, w ith easily predictable results. The entire poem has been establishing this parallel from the start. T hat is another im portant reason, besides suggesting their dwindling num bers, why D ryden has so relentlessly reduced the W hig supporters to those very elements— factious Londoners and religious fanatics— w ho had their closest counterpart among the various groups involved in the late rebellion and Civil W ars, while he individualizes the leadership of the party under Shaftesbury, whose progression in the poem from R oundhead adjutant to W hig dem a­ gogue, hoping to foment another rebellion like the earlier, encompasses in his ow n person both poles of the historical parallel between actual past and contingent future. The prophecy with which Dryden concludes The M edall differs in a n ­ other im portant respect from those with w hich some of his other political poems end. It is a contingent prophecy like th a t of Jonah to the people of Nineveh, which does n o t foretell w hat m ust inevitably take place but warns of w hat will follow from a course of action th a t can still be ab an ­ doned in time to avert its evil consequences. W hat is m ost dissuasive about D ryden’s picture of an England torn once again by civil w ar is not the sufferings it w ould entail, for a nation has often been willing to endure the greatest sufferings for the sake of an im portant goal. W hat Dryden emphasizes is the uselessness of suffering for the sake of changes th a t will prove im perm anent, and in pursuit of innovation th a t for this people is only a profitless dream . O ften as they forget their allegiance, they eventu­ ally return to it, “Secure in freedom, in a M onarch blest” (251). Therefore D ryden’s description of where a successful rebellion w ould ultimately lead brings The M edall to exactly the same point as his narrative of an aborted revolution in Absalom and Achitopheh A nd our w ild Labours, w earied in to R est, R eclin ’d us on a rightfull M o n arch ’s Breast.

(321-22) But th a t com forting assurance, like the spectacle of possible rebellion that precedes it, is also contingent on the resolution of the English people: a w arning as well as a prophecy. To the Whigs the impossibility of ever

perm anently achieving their goals should induce any w ho are still open to argum ent to abandon their futile efforts. M ore realistically, to the re­ m ainder of the nation, th a t purported m ajority of loyal Englishmen newly conscious of their blessings, it stands as a w arning th a t the fanatic Dissenter, sheltered w ithin the protective walls of London and exploiting its royal charter to his advantage, m ust never again be allowed the o p p o r­ tunity “to take the Bit between his teeth and fly / To the next headlong Steep of A narchy14 (121-22). W ithout ever m entioning the stricter en­ forcem ent of the penal laws and the continuing effort to revoke the City’s charter, D ryden implies th a t the n atio n ’s remedies are already at hand for those willing to use them.

By his ow n account, D ryden’s collaboration w ith N athaniel Lee on The D uke o f Guise began as soon as he had finished T he M edall and occupied him until sometime in the spring of 1682. In the norm al course of events, the play w ould have been produced on the stage tow ard the end of July and published several m onths later, allow ing Dryden, his prom ise to Lee fulfilled, to p u t the m atter behind him .104 But unforeseen circumstances w ere to prolong the business of The D u ke o f Guise for m ore than a year following the appearance of T he Medall. In the event, the play did not receive its first perform ance at D rury Lane until the end of N ovem ber; it was published in February 1683, and D ryden’s Vindication of the play followed in April of th a t year. In the rapidly changing circumstances of 1681, such a delay w ould have led to the play’s being overtaken by subse­ quent events long before D ryden had seen it staged and published and had tardily defended it. But in the absence of any significant change in the political climate between the end of 1681 and m id-1683, a play th a t reca­ pitulated the subject o f A bsalom and A chitophel and employed the rheto­ ric of The M edall retained its timeliness in the face of these delays. T hanks to D ryden’s Vindication, for w hich he could n o t have foreseen the necessity at the time he was w orking on the play, we know a good deal about the time The D uke o f Guise was w ritten, his share in it, and its subsequent fortunes. H e declares th a t “ after the writing of O edipus [in 1678], I pass’d a Promise to joyn w ith [Lee] in another; and he h ap p en ’d to claim the perform ance o f th a t Promise, just upon the finishing o f a Poem [The M edall], w hen I w ould have been glad of a little respite before the undertaking of a second T ask .” 105 We also learn from D ryden’s Vin­ dication a year after the event th a t “the Play was w holly w ritten [i.e., completed] a m onth or tw o before the last Election of the Sheriffs” (p. 44), which took place on 24 June 1682, although its outcom e was not decided until the end of the summer. This w ould place the com position of

the play betw een early M arch an d perhaps early M ay, a n d as Jam es W inn points out, the “ Epistle to the W higs” prefixed to T he M edall suggests th at “ D ryden w as clearly n o w reading (or rereading) th e m ain source for the new play, th e h isto ria n D avila, w h o m he specifically cites in the ‘Epis­ tle.’ ” 106 As a result, there is a seam less co n tin u ity betw een D ry d en ’s w o rk on The M edall an d his co n trib u tio n to T h e D u k e o f G uise, b o th o f them reacting to precisely the sam e political circum stances. T he extent o f th a t c o n trib u tio n w as p ro b ab ly greater th a n D ryden al­ lows in the V indication, how ever, w here he m inim izes his share of the play— less o u t o f m odesty th a n to redress the exaggerated role his enem ies were giving him as the p lay ’s p rincipal au th o r: “I k n o w very w ell, th a t the T ow n did ig n orantly call a n d tak e this to be m y Play·, b u t I shall n o t arrogate to m y self the M erits o f m y F rien d .” A ctually, he claim s, “ T w o thirds o f it belong’d to him·, an d then to m e only the First Scene of the Play; the w hole Fourth A c t, a n d the first half, o r so m ew h at m ore of the Fifth" (p. 3). But the first scene of the play com prises nearly h alf of act I. Act 4, w hich is w holly D ry d e n ’s, and act 5, w here so m ew h at m ore th a n half is his, are longer by som e distance th a n the o th er three. By his ow n reckoning, th en , D ryden w as p ro b ab ly responsible for m ore like half th an a th ird of T he D u k e o f G uise in a d d itio n to the pro lo g u e a n d epilogue.107 T he accusations against T he D u k e o f G uise th a t delayed its stage p r o ­ duction for fo u r m o n th s and led D ryden eventually to publish his V in d i­ cation are all v ariations on a single them e: th a t, in D ry d e n ’s w ords, “ som e G reat Persons w ere represented or p e rso n ated in it” (p. 2). T he first such charge, th a t M o n m o u th w as represented in the play u n d er the character of G uise, began before the play h a d even been perform ed, w hen rum ors to this effect reached the e ar of the lord cham berlain a b o u t a fortnight before it w as due to ap p e ar on the stage, and led him to issue an order p ro hibiting it from being acted until fu rth e r o rd e r.108 Since this ru m o r was gro u n d ed on a c t 4, scene I (by D ryden) in w hich Guise retu rn s to Paris against the k ing’s orders (as M o n m o u th h ad disobeyed his father in retu rn in g to L o ndon in N o v em b er 1679), D ryden w as com m anded to w ait on the lord cham berlain, “w hich I did, and h um bly d esir’d him to com pare the Play w ith the H isto ry, from w hence the Subject w as taken . . . and leaving D avila (the O riginal) w ith his L o rd sh ip .” C onsequently “a strict Scrutiny w as m ade, and no Parallel o f the G reat P erson design’d, could be m ade out. But this Push failing, there w ere im m ediately started som e terrible Insinuations, th a t the Person of his M ajesty w as represented under th a t o f H en ry the Third·, w hich if they could have found o u t, w ould have concluded, perchance, n o t only in the sto p p in g o f the Play, b u t in the hanging up of the P oets” (pp. 2 -3 ). By the tim e the au th o rities h ad satisfied them selves of the falsity of this second ru m o r, D ryden continues, “the Play it s e lf w as alm ost fo rg o tten ,"

but at last “there were O rders given for the A cting of it,” and it m ade its belated stage appearance on 28 N ovem ber. But next, before the play was even published, it had to contend w ith tw o Whig pam phlets, by Shadwell and Thom as H u n t respectively, which revived the accusations reponsible for the play’s postponem ent and amplified their gravity. D ryden, they charged, ignoring Lee, had “malitiously and mischievously represented the King, and the Kings Son” under the play’s tw o m ost vicious charac­ ters. “He puts the King under the person of H. 3d. o f France, w ho ap­ peared in the head of the Parisian M assacre [of Saint Bartholom ew ]. The Kings Son under the person of the Duke of Guise, w ho concerted it with the Queen M other of France, and was slain in th a t very place by the righteous judgm ent o f God, where he and the Queen M o th er had first contrived it.” 109 And in depicting the la tie r’s m urder by the French king in a justifiable light, they charged, D ryden had “invited, com m ended and encouraged” a repetition of the like crime: “the Assassination of the Duke of M o n m o u th .”110 W hen The D u ke o f Guise was finally published about 13 February 1683, D ryden added an advertisem ent prom ising th a t his answ er to these “tw o scurrilous Libels” w ould be “printed by it s e l f (p. 76). He w as already at w ork on his Vindication, w hich followed some­ tim e in April. D ryden begins his Vindication by declaring: “ In the Year of His M aj­ esty’s H appy R estauration, the First Play I undertook was the D u ke o f Guise, as the Fairest way, which the A c t o f lnd em p n ity had then left us, o f setting forth the Rise of the Late Rebellion·, and by E xploding the Villanies of it upon the Stage, to Precaution Posterity against the Like Er­ ro rs.” H e goes on to recount th a t on the advice of friends to w hom he showed the play he set it aside, and to claim th a t “the Scene of the Duke of Guise's Return to Paris, against the King’s Positive C om m and, was then w ritten; I have the Copy of it still by me, alm ost the same w hich it now remains, being taken Verbatim out of D avila” (p. I ) .111 Inasm uch as D ryden asserts th a t this earlier play w as entirely his ow n w ork, it obvi­ ously m ust have differed in many respects from the later play on w hich he collaborated w ith Lee. W e can assume, for exam ple, th a t it did n o t in­ clude such invented characters as M alicorne, M elanax, and, especially, M arm outier, whose rom antic relationship w ith Guise is so im portant in the plot of the later play. There is no reason to disbelieve D ryden’s assertion th a t he had w ritten a different play on the same subject as a parallel between the French and English civil wars in 1660 during the first flush of enthusiasm over the R estoration. H e had, after all, draw n th a t parallel the same year in Astraea R edux, where, com paring Charles to H enri IV, he had written: In such adversities to Scepters train’d The name of Great his famous Grandsire gain’d:

W ho yet a K ing alone in N am e an d R ight, W ith hu n g er, cold an d angry Jove did fight; Shock’d by a C oven an tin g Leagues vast P o w ’rs As holy an d as C ath o liq u e as ours: Till F ortu n es fruitless spight h a d m ade it k n o w n H er blow es n o t sh o o k b u t riveted his T h ro n e. (97 - 104 )

As Charles H. Hinnant has shown, the parallel between the two “Cove­ nanting Leagues” in France and England had been used by others in the immediate aftermath of the Restoration.112 I would add that Sir William Dugdale had revived the same parallel in May 1681, realizing its timeli­ ness in the critical state of current affairs, to which, implicitly, it bore a further resemblance.113 Some critics, surprisingly, have taken Dryden’s claim that he wrote an earlier version of this play as a parallel between the French and English civil wars to mean that “he essentially denies any intention to draw a parallel between the story of the House of Guise and contemporary En­ glish politics” in the play he later wrote with Lee.114 Yet Dryden repeat­ edly insists throughout his Vindication that the play he and Lee had now written about the French Leaguers is intended as a parallel to the Whigs. “For this Play does openly discover the Original and Root of the Practices and Principles, both of their Party and Cause” (p. 4). The Whigs are angry, he declares, because the play is a “Glass, which has shewed them their own Faces” (p. 14). He tells them that “your Party are certainly the men whom the Play attaques; and so far I will help you: the Designs and Actions represented in the Play, are such as you have Copyed from the League; for though you have wickedness enough, yet you wanted the W it to make a new Contrivance” (p. 42). Dryden seems to have had two reasons for revealing that he had writ­ ten an earlier version of the play in 1660. The first, and much the more valid, reason was to affirm, at a time when the Whig Association was repeatedly being paralleled with the Solemn League and Covenant, that a play about the Holy League could serve equally well as a parallel to either of them. Dryden specifically says so shortly afterwards when he states the purpose for which he and Lee wrote their play: “Our intention therefore was to make the Play a Parallel, betwixt the H oly League plotted by the House of Guise and its Adhaerents, with the Covenant plotted by the Rebels in the time of King Charles the First, and those of the new Associ­ ation, which was the Spawn of the old Covenant." He also points out in the same paragraph that the opening words of his prologue to the play had confirmed this intention: “The first words o f the Prologue [‘O ur Play’s a Parallel’] spake the Play to be a Parallel, and then you are imme­ diately inform’d how far that Parallel extended, and of what it is so. The

H oly League begot the Covenant, Guisards g o t the Whig, & c” (p. 7). T h at is to say, the H oly League spaw ned both the Solemn League and Covenant and the W hig Association. Yet of the two English parallels to the H oly League, the W hig Association is obviously the m ore central to the purpose of Dryden and Lee, as the other expressions of their inten­ tion, quoted in the last paragraph, m ake clear. This com plex parallel of the Holy League, the Solemn League and Cov­ enant, and the new Association had suggested itself to Tory propagan­ dists alm ost from the tim e th at the last of these had become public at Shaftesbury’s grand inquest. The abhorrences, which as a m atter of course drew a parallel, as we have seen, between the A ssociation and the Solemn League and C ovenant, often took care to suggest as well a further parallel between the Association and the H oly League in France. A ccord­ ing to the Com m on Council of the City of H ereford, whose abhorrence w as published in February 1682, the Association “ outstrips the Holy League in France, outdoes the Solemn League and C ovenant in Scot­ l a n d while the Artillery C om pany of the City of London, later in the same m onth, declared th a t the “Accursed Conspirators” responsible for the Association “have much outdone the Originals after which they Coppied: The Solemn League and Covenant, and the H oly League o f France.” 115 But the m ost detailed use of this further parallel a t the time D ryden was at w ork on The M edall, and ab o u t to collaborate w ith Lee on a new play, was made by his friend John N orthleigh in The Parallel, p u b ­ lished on 6 February. T hroughout m ost of his book, as we noticed earlier, N orthleigh had draw n a double parallel between the Association, the oath and covenant o f the H ouse of Com m ons signed in June 1643, and the Solemn League and C ovenant draw n up the following September. But having finished that task, he then turned to another: “And now we are in the Vein and H um or of draw ing Parallels between Covenants, I shall give them a tast too, of th at in France against the poor H ugonots . . . and let these deluded Zealots see,” he adds w ith unconcealed irony, “th a t they tread n o t only in the footsteps of the true Protestants of Charles the First in England, but also of the rank Papists of H enry the Third in France.” And he proceeds to prin t the articles of the French H oly League beside those of the English Association in parallel colum ns.116 D ryden’s second, and m ore questionable, reason for disclosing his au­ thorship of an earlier play ab o u t the League is to deny th a t the scene in which Guise returns to Paris in defiance of the king’s orders, w ritten in 1660, could have been designed as an allusion to M o n m o u th ’s reappear­ ance in London against his father’s wishes in 1679, “unless they will make the pretended Parallel to be a Prophecy, as well as a Parallel of Accidents, th a t were tw en ty years after to com e” (p. 2). But this ignores the real issue, w hich is w hether, in choosing to include this scene in their play of 1682, Dryden and Lee did not purposely allude to M o n m o u th ’s

similar escapade o f three years earlier. This rather disingenuous argument is only the first o f many such attempts throughout the V indication to answer H unt’s and Shadwell’s charges of defaming the king and his son by denying that T he D u k e o f G uise contains any allusions to individuals. “So then it is not, (as the snarling Authors o f the R eflections tell you) a Parallel o f the M en , but o f the T im es. A Parallel o f the Factions, and of the Leaguers” (p. I ) . T w o m onths earlier, in dedicating the printed quarto of The D u k e o f G uise to Lawrence Hyde, earl o f Rochester, Dryden had made a similar denial in assuring him that the play “w as neither a Libel, nor a Parallel o f particular P e r s o n sT n7 And even before H unt and Shadwell published their charges, Dryden had responded in much the same fashion to the rumors o f the previous summer with a new epilogue to The D u k e o f G uise, where the actress Sarah C ooke assured the audience: Yet no one M an was meant; nor Great, nor Small; O ur Poets, like frank Gamesters, threw at AU. They took no single Aim: But, like bold Boys, true to their Prince and hearty, H uzza’d, and fir’d Broad-sides at the whole Party. (Sig. A4)ns

But Dryden’s distinction between individuals and parties is im possible to maintain in practice, since any dramatic parallel of “the tim es,” or public events, must inevitably touch on not only the “factions” and “par­ ties” involved, but also the “particular persons” w h o play a significant role in them. The point is nicely illustrated by a Tory pam phlet published on 30 M ay 1682, at about the time Dryden and Lee finished writing their play. In the course o f drawing a parallel o f his ow n between the H oly League and the W hig A ssociation, the author declares: The Guises were a bloody Faction indeed, and design’d the overthrow of that M onarchy, by the same means and measures your Associators do that of ours. It was they deluded a youthful Prince with the hopes of a Crown, and strengthen’d their Party by the weakness of a young Duke: It was they m ade the profess’d Religion a pretence for all the Desolations that attended a miserable War: It was they drew up the primitive Association, and were the first Founders of an Holy LeagueT9

This certainly begins as “a Parallel o f the Factions, and o f the Leaguers,” b ut it slides alm ost imperceptibly into “a Parallel o f particular Persons” with an allusion to the duke of Guise that evokes M onm outh as a matter o f course. By its very nature, the parallel drawn in T h e D u k e o f G uise between the H oly League and the W hig A ssociation embraces much else besides the factions themselves. The French history related by Davila concerned

a Catholic country w ith a king w ho shared the religion of his countrym en but had no children, his collateral heir, the king o f N avarre, being a Prot­ estant; w here the Leaguers, w ho wished a t any cost to exclude th a t heir from the throne because of his religion, controlled the Estates General and enjoyed the support of the people of Paris; w here civil w ar threat­ ened, the king being forced to sum m on the Estates General to meet at Blois when he no longer dared tru st his capital; and w here peace was restored only when the indolent king, at the urging of his loyal support­ ers, resolved to “p u t on the L yon,” by which he recovered his authority. The rem arkable parallel between this series of actual events and the recent history of the Exclusion Crisis th a t had reached its clim ax in the O xford Parliam ent was unm istakable, and by dram atizing the French episode so soon after the conclusion of its English analogue, D ryden and Lee could be sure th a t their audience w ould recognize at least the m ost im portant respects in which “O ur Play’s a Parallel.” It is quite beside the point, therefore, for D ryden to deny th a t the scene in which Guise returns to Paris against the king’s orders can possibly allude to M onm outh because it is “taken Verbatim o u t of D avila” (p. I), or to assert in m ore general terms: “T h at w hich perfectly destroys this pretended Parallel, is th a t our Picture of the D u ke o f Guise is exactly according to the Original in the History·, his Actions, his M anners; nay, sometimes his very W ords, are so justly copied, th a t w hoever has read him in D avila, sees him the sam e here” (p. 6). Like N a b o tb ’s Vinyard and indeed m ost parallels (except Absalom and Acbitopbel), The D u ke o f Guise portrays a historical episode w hose contem porary analogue is only implicit. Just as C aryll’s poem relates the story from the first book of Kings concerning N ab o th ’s judicial m urder by Ahab and Jezebel, all the while encouraging the reader to infer the obvious parallel w ith the perse­ cution of the English Catholics in the Popish Plot trials, so T he D u ke o f Guise dram atizes, often quite literally, the French political crisis related in D avila’s history, at the same tim e alluding to the m ore recent political crisis in England by draw ing the audience’s attention, as we shall see, to some uncanny similarities w ith persons and events nearer home. Actually, D ryden acknowledges as m uch in his Vindication, where, ignoring the apparent inconsistency w ith his ow n w ords, he readily ad ­ mits in three different places to having implied th roughout the play a parallel between the king of N avarre and his grandson the duke of Y ork.120 T hat of course had been m eant as a flattering analogy, like the one D ryden had earlier draw n between N avarre and Charles in Astraea Redux. But his refusal here to concede the presence of unflattering analo­ gies between the rebel duke of Guise and M onm outh is of a piece w ith his dubious claim in “T o the R eader,” prefixed to A bsalom and Achitophel, th a t he had sought “ ίο Extenuate, Palliate and Indulge” M o n m o u th ’s

character in th a t poem . In both cases D ryden seeks to clear himself “ from the im putation of an ungrateful m an, w ith which my enemies have m ost unjustly ta x ’d m e” (p. 20) for having turned against his former patron. The fact that D ryden goes out of his way in the Vindication to insist th at he is “very far from detracting from him [M onm outh]” and to acknow l­ edge “the O bligations I have had to him ,” which “were those, of his Countenance, his Favour, his good W ord, and his Esteem ” (p. 20), sug­ gests the em barrassm ent he m ust have suffered on this sensitive topic ever since joining the ranks of the T ory propagandists.

By choosing to dram atize w hat had figured in the abhorrences and in N orthleigh’s book as a fairly simple parallel between the H oly League and the W hig Association, D ryden and Lee created something altogether different and far m ore complex. “This Parallel is p lain ,” D ryden pointed out in his Vindication, “th at the Exclusion of the L aw ful Heir was the main design of Both Parties” (p. 7). By deciding to po rtray the crises that had to rn both France in the 1580s and England in the 1680s as a conse­ quence of this same issue, the playwrights expanded the scope of the orig­ inal parallel to a considerable degree. The result of th a t decision was th at The D uke o f Guise w ould offer a parallel w ith precisely the same subject as Absalom a n d Acbitophel, al­ lude to m any of the same actions and agents, and recall the identical chro­ nological period covered in the poem. The differences w ould be consider­ able, of course, since the poem had recounted the T ory version of the Exclusion Crisis while alluding to a biblical parallel, w hereas the play would present a dram atized version of French history th a t implied nu­ merous analogues to the Exclusion Crisis. Nevertheless, one im portant benefit for Tory propaganda in a play suggesting another parallel with the Exclusion Crisis and its outcom e w ould be to allude once again to Charles’s decisive action of the previous year, and we may w onder why Dryden should have undertaken it at a time when w riters for the govern­ ment, having exhausted th at topic, had already em barked on a new cam ­ paign in which he had just participated himself w ith the publication of The Medall. The answ er is th at The D u ke o f Guise is not simply an infe­ rior recycling of Absalom and Achitophel. It w ould be closer to the m ark to say th at it is an updating of his earlier parallel w ith the Exclusion Crisis, allowing him to allude to the role played in th a t crisis by the Asso­ ciation, which had n o t become public until after the publication of his poem, and to give it corresponding im portance. Furtherm ore, it allows Dryden and Lee to exploit the rhetoric of the new cam paign by alluding much more frequently to the City of London and the Dissenters than

Dryden had done in Absalom and Achitophel. As a result, The D uke of Guise, while inviting a parallel with the previous year’s events, is very much a part of the new propaganda campaign of 1682. As Dryden’s various editors have pointed out, he speaks no more than the truth when he claims that most of the incidents in The D uke o f Guise (except those involving Marmoutier, Malicorne, and Melanax) are closely modeled on Davila. But as any good parallelist must do, the play­ wrights select and emphasize those historical episodes that bear most closely on their implicit subject, the Exclusion Crisis in England. The ma­ jority of such instances occur in the parts of the play for which Dryden was responsible, and it should come as no surprise that in some cases this selection and emphasis brings to mind Absalom and Achitophel. On oc­ casion, Dryden (and in one instance, even Lee) seems to have introduced into The D uke o f Guise deliberate verbal echoes of his poem, thus ex­ ploiting the public’s familiarity with Absalom and Achitophel as a means of enhancing the parallel with the subject shared by both his poem and his play. More often, of course, he and his collaborator simply rely on the audience’s acquaintance with recent events to insure their recognizing the suggested analogues. By noticing some of these instances of delib­ erate parallelism, we can better understand the political rhetoric of the play. In the opening scene Dryden wrote for the play, a consultation among the conspirators, Polin, who is secretly acting as the king’s spy, declares that “one prime Article o f our Holy League, / Is to preserve the King, his Pow’r and Person,” which the curate of St. Eustace dismisses as “a pretty Blind to make the Shoot secure” (p. 2), recalling the Whig pretence that their Association was designed to insure the king’s safety. Polin then turns to “the next Article in our Solemn Covenant”: P o l . T hat in case o f O p p o sitio n from any person w h atsoever— C u r . T h at’s w ell, th at’s w ell; then the K ing is n ot ex cep ted , if he o p p o se us— P o l . W e are o b lig ’d to join as on e, to punish AU, w h o attem pt to hinder or disturb us.

(P. 2) This recalls the Tory debating point we noticed earlier, that the paper of Association included a promise to destroy all opponents “without excep­ tion to His Majesty himself.” In the play, of course, the League is already in operation, whereas the intended Association had never actually materi­ alized. But it was supposedly being planned during the weeks before the Oxford Parliament, a period corresponding to the development of the French conspiracy represented in the play. Dryden also draws particular attention in this scene to the abortive scheme, which he had found in Davila, to kidnap the king while he was

taking part in the Lenten procession. The cardinal asks, “W hat hinders us to seize the Royal Penitent, / And close him in a Cloyster?” Guise, agree­ ing to the plan, orders his confederates to “guard him safe”: Thin Diet will do well; ’twill starve him into Reason; Till he exclude his Brother of Navarre, And graft Succession on a w orthier Choice. (P. 4)

By reminding his audience o f the plot to seize Charles at O xford and hold him prisoner in London until he would agree to the exclusion of his brother, the duke of York, Dryden ensures their recognizing that there were analogies in the French political crisis for both versions of the Prot­ estant Plot: that which the Whig grand jury had refused to believe at Shaftesbury’s inquest, and the Association that had replaced it in Tory propaganda. Since both plots were supposed to be forming at the same time preceding the Oxford Parliament, it is appropriate that these allu­ sions to them appear together in the first scene o f the play. James W inn has pointed out that in act I M armoutier’s words accusing Guise of courting popularity— “But, Sir, you seek it with your Smiles and Bows, / This Side and th a t Side congeing to the Crow d” (p. 9) — are “a close parallel to Dryden’s description of M onm outh in A bsalom and A chitophel, O n each side bow ing popularly lo w ’ (I. 6 8 9 ).”121 He surely is correct, and I w ould add that there are other such deliberate reminders of Absalom in act I. In the opening speech of the play, Bussy refers to “glorious G uise, the M oses, G ideon, D avid, I The Saviour o f the N a tio n ” (p. I), while M armoutier, in the speech to Guise I have just quoted, continues: You have your Writers too, that cant your Battels, T h at stile you the New David, Second Moses, Prop of the Church, Deliverer of the People.

(P. 9) These epithets are almost certainly meant to recall the similar language used o f Absalom , w hom Achitophel proclaims Thy Longing Countries Darling and Desire; Their cloudy Pillar, and their guardian Fire: Their second Moses, whose extended W and Divides the Seas, and shews the prom is’d Land: Thee, Saviour, Thee, the Nations Vows confess; And, never satisfi’d with seeing, bless. (232-41)

198

CHAPTER 4

Act 5 of the play, for which D ryden w rote “ som ew hat m ore” than the first half, takes place at Blois, w here H enri III has just opened the meeting of the Estates General, here regularly referred to as the “Parliam ent.” A lphonso Corso, referring to the king’s behavior a t this ceremony, de­ clares th at “I have heard, he made a sharp reflecting Speech upon their Party at the opening of the Parliam ent, adm onish’d M en of their Duties, pardon’d w hat w as past, but seem’d to threaten Vengeance, if they per­ sisted for the future” (p. 56). This is clearly m eant to recall Charles’s severe speech opening the O xford Parliam ent, which, as we noticed ear­ lier, covered exactly the same points except for the threat of vengeance at the close. Shortly afterw ard, the deputies of the Estates General appear before H enri III, and the cardinal, acting as their spokesman, tells the king that “ the Comm ons will decree to exclude N avar I From the Succession of the Realm of France” (p. 61). The king replies, Decree, my Lord! W hat one Estate decree, Where then are the other tw o, and w hat am I? The Government is cast up som ew hat short, The Clergy and N obility casheer’d, Five hundred popular Figures on a R ow , And I m y Self that am, or should be King, An o ’regrown Cypher set before the Sum. (P. 61)

This echoes rather closely one of D avid’s argum ents in his speech from the throne at the end of Absalom and Achitopheh W ould They im pose an Heir upon the Throne? Let Sanhedrins be taught to give their Own. A King’s at least a part o f Government, And mine as requisite as their Consent. (9 7 5 -7 8 )

Refusing to endorse the king of N avarre’s exclusion, H enri III goes on to praise his heir’s qualifications for the crown: I know my Brother’s nature, ’tis sincere, Above deceit, no crookedness o f thought, Says, what he means, and w hat he says, performs: Brave, but not rash; successful, but not proud, So much acknowledging that he’s uneasie, Till every petty service be o ’re paid. H e can forgive, but you disdain Forgiveness.

(P. 62)

This speech includes many o f the same qualities found in A bsalom ’s grudging praise o f the lawful successor in A bsalom and Achitophel: His B rother, th o u g h O p p re st w ith V ulgar Spight, Yet D auntless an d Secure o f N ativ e R ight, O f every R oyal V ertue stan d s possest; Still D ear to all th e B ravest, a n d th e Best. His C ourage Foes, his Friends his T ru th P roclaim ; His L oyalty the K ing, th e W o rld his Fam e. His M ercy even th ’ O ffending C ro w d w ill find, For sure he com es o f a Forgiving K ind. (3 5 3-60)

The m ost consistent use of deliberate parallelism, however, occurs in the opening scene of act I , in act 4, and in the early half o f act 5— that is to say, in every portion o f the play for which Dryden w as responsible— where he repeatedly emphasizes the major role played in the French crisis by the Parisians, incited by their religious leaders, in order to suggest an analogy with the central role in the Exclusion Crisis attributed by Tory propagandists to London and the Dissenters. This theme is so frequent in Dryden’s share of the play that selective quotation w ill have to suffice. The curate of St. Eustace boasts of having overcom e the scruples of some “weak Brothers of our Party” by producing arguments from a book written by a “Calvinist M inister” to j ustifie th e A dm iral [Coligny] For tak in g A rm s ag ain st the K ing deceas’d [C harles IX]: W herein he p roves th a t irreligious Kings M ay justly be d ep o s’d, a n d p u t to death. (Pp. 1-2)

“The A uthor,” the curate concedes, “w as indeed a H eretick,” but “the Matter o f the Book is good and pious.” In his “Epistle to the W higs” preceding The M edall, Dryden had already applied this parallel to the English faction: Any o n e w ho reads D avila, m ay trace y o u r Practices all along. T here w ere the sam e pretences fo r R efo rm atio n , an d L oyalty, the sam e A spersions o f the K ing, and th e sam e g ro u n d s o f a R ebellion. I k n o w n o t w h eth er you will tak e the H isto ria n ’s w o rd . . . th a t it w as a H u g o n o t M inister, otherw ise call’d a Presby­ terian, (for o u r C h u rch ab h o rs so devilish a Tenent) w h o first w rit a T reatise o f the law fulness of deposing an d m u rth erin g Kings, o f a different Persw asion in Religion: But I am able to prove fro m th e D octrine o f Calvin, and Principles o f B uchanan, th a t they set th e People abo v e th e M agistrate; w hich if I m istake not, is y o u r o w n F u ndam ental; an d w hich carries y o u r L oyalty no fa rth e r th an your likeing (p. 40).

As the co n su ltatio n am ong the c o n sp ira to rs proceeds, Bussy predicts: O ur Charters w ill g o next: B ecause w e Sheriffs Perm it n o Justice to be d o n e on those T he C ourt calls R ebels, but w e call them Saints. (P. 3)

In tallying th eir su p p o rters, the card in al boasts th a t “ all the Saints are C o v ’n an ters, an d G u isa rd s,” w hile Bussy announces th a t O ur C ity Bands, are tw en ty th ou san d strong; W ell D iscip lin ’d, w ell A rm ’d, w ell se a so n ’d Traitors; T h ick rinded h eads, that leave no ro o m for Kernel·, Shop C onsciences, o f p ro o f again st an O ath, Preach’d up, and ready tin ’d for a R eb ellion . (P. 4)

In act 4 the king exclaim s, “ O Paris, Paris, once m y Seat of T riu m p h ; / But n o w the Scene o f all thy K ing’s m isfo rtu n es” (p. 4 0 ), w hile a citizen rem inds his fellow P arisians, “W e have all pro fited by godly Serm ons th a t p ro m o te S edition” {p. 48). D ry d en retu rn s to the them e a t the beginning o f act 5, w here G rillon declares th a t “Paris is a d a m n ’d, unw eildy Bulk, an d w hen the P reachers d raw ag ain st the King, a P arso n in a P ulpit is a devilish F o re -h o rse,” ad d in g c o n tem p tu o u sly , “ w h a t dan g ero u s Beasts these T ow nsm en a re ” (p. 56). T his is the rhetoric of 1682, n o t 1681, and it finds its closest echoes n o t in A b sa lo m a n d A c b ito p h e l b u t in T he M edall. Since histo ry never repeats itself exactly, there w ere of course im p o r­ ta n t differences as well as sim ilarities betw een the tw o exclusion crises. T he civil disorders in F rance h a d no c o u n te rp a rt even in the T o ry version o f recent English history. A ct 4 of T be D u k e o f G uise dram atizes the re tu rn of Guise to Paris an d its sequel, the D ay of the B arricades, in w hich fighting to o k place in the streets o f Paris a n d H e n ri III w as besieged in the L ouvre, barely escaping w ith his life by fleeing to Blois. D ry d en and Lee m ake no a tte m p t to suggest English parallels fo r these disturbances, since th ere w ere none. “ 5Tis tru e, there w as n o R e b e l l i o n D ryden p o in ted o u t in his V indication, “ b u t w hoever told [the W higs], th a t I intended this Parallel so far?” (p. 44). O bviously, the k in g ’s a u th o rity h a d deterio rated m uch farth er in France th a n in E ngland a century later, a n d this is c o n ­ firm ed in act 5 w h en th e deputies brusquely inform the king th a t the Es­ tates G eneral intend the nex t day to a p p o in t G uise lieu ten an t general of the kingdom , effectively depriving H e n ri III of his royal p o w ers, a far m ore serious crisis th an th a t w ith w hich C harles w as c o n fro n ted a t O x ­ ford. But the m ost im p o rta n t difference o f all betw een the tw o exclusion crises is suggested by the m an n er in w hich the French em ergency is re-

solved, through the m urder of Guise and, subsequently, his brother the cardinal on the orders of the king. The parallel between the crises confronting H enri III and Charles II, as well as their different ways of resolving them , is central to the political design of The D u ke o f Guise. It is again, as in Absalom and Achitophel, a parallel of the kind that, a year later, D ryden w ould com m end Plutarch for writing: “N o t com paring M en at a lum p, nor endeavouring to prove they were alike in all things, but allowing for disproportion o f quality or fortune, shewing wherein they agreed or disagreed, and w herein one was to be preferr’d before the o th e r.” 122 The closest resemblance lay in the crises confronting the tw o kings and in their initial reluctance to act deci­ sively in the face of national emergency, by w hich they allowed the crises to grow m ore serious. Grillon, w ho plays Ventidius to the French king’s Antony, w arns his royal m aster: “If Kings will be so civil to their Subjects, to give up all things tamely, they first tu rn Rebels to themselves, and that’s a fair exam ple for their Friends” (p. 63). M arm outier urges the king to “ resume, my Lord, your Godlike tem per, / Yet do not bear more than a M onarch should” (p. 30). Their w ords recall the advice of the indulgent D avid’s “faithful Band of W orthies” in Absalom and Achitophel: They shew ’d the King the danger o f the W ound: That no Concessions from the Throne w oud please, But Lenitives fom ented the Disease.

(924-26) Yet the French king’s dilatory behavior had allowed m atters to slide much farther—to the very brink of the precipice, in fact—than Charles’s hesitation had done, and this is the first of the im plicit differences in the behavior of the tw o rulers th a t far outweigh the resemblances. D ryden and Lee evoke these differences particularly in the ways the tw o kings responded to their respective crises, and in the course of doing so they leave no doubt how greatly the English king “was to be preferr’d before the o th er.” These widely different responses are show n to be the result of sharp disparities in both personal character between the tw o m onarchs and national character between the tw o countries. In his Vindication, D ryden observed th at the greatest difference in per­ sonal character setting the tw o kings ap art lay in the contrast between Charles’s merciful nature—so great th a t iiPlutarch himself, were he now alive,” could not have found his equal “in th a t em inent vertue of his Cle­ mency'”— and the opposite tem peram ent of the French king, am ong whose virtues, he rem arked drily, “I do not find his forgiving qualities to be much celebrated. T h at he was deeply engag’d in the bloody Massacre of St. Bartholom ew ,” he adds, “is notoriously k n o w n ” (p. 9). Dryden

and Lee em phasize this im plicit contrast in their characterization of the French king. H enri IIFs vindictive feelings tow ard Guise are stressed repeatedly throughout the play. Early in act 2 he tells the queen m other, “ Know then I hate aspiring Guise to D eath ,” while a t the end of act 3 he vows before her, “M y H eart has set thee dow n, O Guise, in Blood, / Blood, M other, Blood, ne’re to be blotted o u t,” adding, “If I forgive him , m ay I n e’re be forgiv’n ” (pp. 14, 36). In resolving at last th a t “ ’Tis time to push my slack’nd vengeance home, I To be a King, or n o t to be at all,” he reveals the uneasy balance between reasons of state and hatred for his rival un­ derlying his decision, in w hich the latter is never far from the surface: “M y vengeance, ripen’d in the w om b of time, / Presses for birth, and longs to be disclos’d ” (p. 63). In emphasizing the crucial role played by the queen m other in that decision, D ryden and Lee underscore the differences in national character between France and England to the advantage of the latter. Early in the play, H enri III asks, “W hat H onours, Interest, were the W orld to buy him , / Shall make a Brave M an smile, and do a M u rd er?” and he goes on to condem n “sneaking Brutus, / W hom none but C ow ards and whiteliver’d Knaves / W ould dare com m end” (p. 13) for having acted tow ard Caesar in this fashion. By a fine stroke of dram atic irony, this is precisely the course he will com e to ad o p t himself tow ard Guise, under the tutelage of the queen mother: Catherine de M edici, the principal contriver of the M assacre of St. Bartholom ew and, to English minds, the personification of Catholic duplicity and Latin cruelty, Italian as well as French. H er prom inence in the play exemplifies the process of selection available to the parallelist in emphasizing similarities or, in this case, differences be­ tween the historical past and its contem porary reflection. C atherine de M edici did of course exert an im portant influence on H enri III, as she had done on his tw o brothers w ho preceded him on the throne. But the d ra­ matic representation of th a t influence, by w hich she and her clerical confi­ dant A bbot Delbene are show n as instrum ental in shaping the king’s pol­ icy at every turn, is an im portant means by w hich D ryden and Lee guide the audience’s attitude tow ard his actions. It is from her “ Cruel W it” (p. 13) th at he learns the “A rts” of outw ard friendship and secret intrigue, inviting Guise to “take this Embrace: I court you for my Friend” while all the time m editating revenge, and prom ising his m other th at “here your p art of me will come in play; / T h ’ Italian Soul shall teach me how to sooth” (pp. 20, 41). T h at policy, by which he arranges to have assassins m urder the unsus­ pecting Guise, is bluntly condem ned by the tw o m ost sym pathetic charac­ ters in the play, both of them loyal supporters o f the king’s cause. M ar-

moutier has personal reasons for urging the king to spare Guise’s life, since she loves him, but when she realizes w h at the king intends to do it is m oral revulsion th a t leads her to exclaim, “you w ould m urder G uise,” and to brush aside his plea th at she “use a softer w o rd ” (p. 59).Later, when H enri orders Grillon to assassinate Guise, his faithful soldier re­ fuses, in p art because he owes his life to Guise. But again it is m oral outrage at such a request th at leads him to blurt out, “N ow I understand you; I shou’d m urder him: / I am your Soldier, Sir, but n o t your H ang­ m an,” and to ask indignantly, “how have I / Deserv’d to do a M urder?” A s for C utting o ff a T raytor, H e execu te h im law fully In m y o w n F u n ction , w hen I m eet h im in the Field; But for you r C ham ber-practice, th a t’s n ot m y T alent. (Pp. 6 3 - 6 4 )

W hat is m ost significant, perhaps, is the accurate parallel M arm outier draws between the king’s intended action and the M assacre of St. Bar­ tholomew, to English Protestants the m ost heinous crime in French his­ tory. W hen H enri professes to her th a t “I am reconcil’d ” w ith Guise at the very time w hen he is already planning his brutal m urder, she declares, “These are your Arts to make [Guise and his friends] m ore secure, / Just so your Brother [Charles IX] us’d the Adm iral [Coligny]” (p. 58). Al­ though the king protests th at “ this is no Vigil of St. B artholm ew , ” the audience w ould have recognized the justice of the analogy, for it was the duplicity of the French court in professing am ity w ith the H uguenots th a t exacerbated the enorm ity o f the crime th a t followed. If H enri intended fewer victims on this occasion, he w as employing the same “ Italian” arts as his brother previously, in which both had been well schooled by their m other, Catherine de Medici. T o the French king, his assassination of the unsuspecting Guise is not m urder but “Soveraign Justice,” the term he uses to both M arm outier and Grillon, for he is an absolute ruler w ho believes, “I’m bo rn a M o n ­ arch; which implies, alone / T o weild the Scepter, and depend on n o n e” (p. 36). As a Frenchm an, even Grillon m ust grudgingly accept the legality of an action th a t he regards as m orally repugnant. This is how m atters are handled abroad, D ryden and Lee suggest, where French absolutism and Catholic cruelty prevail. In The D uke o f Guise France finds itself “ be­ tw ixt the tw o encroaching Seas of A rbitrary Power, and Lawless A nar­ chy,” as D ryden called them in dedicating AU for L ove to D anby in M arch 1678, and the playwrights leave no d o ubt th a t w here these are the only alternatives, the form er, which has been restored at the end of the play, is preferable to the latter. But no better can be expected, their au d i­ ence w ould agree, of a people w ho are not endow ed w ith those “ properly

E nglish V irtu es” th a t D ryden com m ended to D anby, artfully appealing to the chauvinism sh ared by m ost o f his readers, how ever great th eir dif­ ferences o n o th er grounds: N o People in the W orld being capable o f using them, but w e w ho have the happiness to be born under so equal, and so w ell-pois’d a Government; a G ov­ ernment which has all the Advantages of Liberty beyond a Com m onw ealth, and all the M arks o f Kingly Sovereignty w ithout the danger o f a Tyranny. . . . The Nature of our Government above all others, is exactly suited both to the Situation o f our Country, and the Temper o f the N atives . . . and therefore, neither the Arbitrary Power o f one in a M onarchy, nor o f many in a C om m on­ wealth, could make us greater than we are. 123

The playw rights’ im plicit c o n tra st betw een the French king’s w ay of resolving the exclusion crisis a t Blois a n d the English k in g ’s a t O x fo rd is unm istakable. C harles, w hile slow to act at first, h a d done so in go o d tim e before m atters h a d slipped beyond his co n tro l; he h ad exercised no m ore th a n his law ful prerogative in dissolving P arliam ent; and he h a d restored peace w ith o u t shedding blood. T h e c o n tra st w as m uch on D ry d e n ’s m ind a t this tim e, as w e m ight expect. In the “ P rologue to H is R oyal H ig h n ess” he w ro te for a special p erfo rm an ce o f Venice Preserv’d at D o rse t G arden on 21 A pril 1682, w hile he an d Lee w ere still a t w o rk on th eir play, D ryden uses the sam e them e again in general term s w hose a p p licatio n to C harles is obvious: “A T y ra n t’s P o w ’r in rig o u r is exprest: / T he F ather yearns in the tru e P rince’s B reast.” 124 T he a fterm ath to C harles’s decisive action, in w hich he so u g h t to p u n ­ ish the tra ito r chiefly responsible for the crisis, afforded as striking a co n ­ tra s t w ith the b eh av io r of H e n ri 111. "When th e F rench king responds to M a rm o u tie r’s accu satio n th a t “ you w o u ld m u rd e r G u ise” by exclaim ing “ M urder! w h a t M urder! use a softer w o rd , I A nd call it Soveraign J u s ­ tice,” M a rm o u tie r replies: W ou’d I cou’d: ButJustice bears the Godlike shape o f Law, And Law requires D efence, and equal Plea Betwixt th’ Offender, and the righteous Judge.

(P- 59) H er w o rd s are surely m ean t to rem ind th e audience th a t this w as precisely the w ay in w h ich C harles an d his ad m in istra tio n h ad m eted o u t English justice to Shaftesbury, w h o h a d been placed u n d e r a rre st fo r treaso n , b ro u g h t before a g ran d jury, an d , w hen the ju ro rs refused to indict him , released by the governm ent in spite o f official unhappiness over the o u t­ com e.

If Charles contrasts favorably with David in Absalom and Acbitopbel in respect of responsible action versus fatally protracted indulgence to ­ ward a rebellious son, he contrasts even more favorably with H enri III in The D uke o f Guise in respect of m oderate and lawful action versus the harsh and morally reprehensible conduct of a tyrant. By encouraging a mood of self-congratulation in the audience at the superiority of English law to French absolutism, Dryden and Lee hope to make Charles himself a beneficiary of those patriotic feelings while associating his enemies with the foreign cabals of religious zealots. The D uke o f Guise takes its rhetoric, then, from both Tory campaigns, that of 1681 as well as the later one of 1682. By its tacit reminders of Charles’s legitimate actions in M arch 1681, it once more justifies his be­ havior as reasonable and proper. By its implicit parallels between two rebellious capitals bursting w ith religious fanatics, it contributes to the ongoing attack on London and the Dissenters by sounding once more a warning Dryden had offered at the beginning o f 1682 in The M edall and, regarding the Dissenters, would repeat yet again tow ard the end of the year. In the Preface to Religio Laict, published on 28 N ovem ber 1682, the day on which The D uke o f Guise received its delayed premiere, Dryden quoted the “Prophetick speech” of “our venerable H ooker” about the Puritans of his ow n day: “There is in every one of these Considerations most just cause to fear, lest our hastiness to embrace a thing of so perilous Consequence (meaning the Presbyterian Discipline) should cause Poster­ ity to feel those Evils, which as yet are more easy for us to prevent, than they would be for them to remedy.” Dryden comments: “H ow fatally this Cassandra has foretold we know too well by sad experience: the Seeds were sown in the time of Queen Elizabeth, the bloudy H arvest ripened in the Reign of King Charles the M artyr: and because all the Sheaves could not be carried off w ithout shedding some of the loose Grains, another Crop is too like to follow; nay I fear ’tis unavoidable if the Conventiclers be perm itted still to scatter. ” 12S But that too is more easy to prevent than to remedy, and the means are already at hand in the penal laws against Dissenters, if only magistrates throughout the land will be diligent in en­ forcing them, insuring that the conventicles are dispersed before another bloody harvest can take place.

Chapter 5 A SECOND RESTORATION

F, AS D RY D EN A ND LEE implied, C harles’s action in saving his country from possible anarchy in 1681 w as m ore just and lawful than H enri IH’s, it also prom ised to be m ore lasting th an th a t of the French king, w ho w ithin a few m onths of arranging Guise’s m urder w ould “ dye a violent D eath himself; m u rd er’d by a Priest, an Enthusiast of his own Religion” (pp. 9-10) while investing his still rebellious capital: the judg­ m ent of Providence, D ryden suggested in the Vindication, for his p art in the M assacre of St. Bartholomew. Yet Charles’s capital, while not in open rebellion, still provided a ref­ uge for W hig diehards, offering them im m unity from prosecution while its presses, evading legal restraints, m ultiplied seditious pam phlets and newspapers: abuses condem ned explicitly or implicitly in both The M edall and The D u ke o f Guise. Until these lingering ailments w ere cured, the nation’s widely heralded recovery w ould rem ain incomplete.

I

The first encouraging sign from London had appeared even before Absa­ lom and Achitophel w as published. As early as O ctober 1681, a m onth after the tw o newly elected W hig sheriffs, Pilkington and Shute, had taken office, the co u rt had the satisfaction of seeing a m ore accom m odat­ ing lord m ayor, Sir Jo h n M oore, installed a t the Guildhall. T ory p ro p a­ gandists were quick to proclaim this a victory for their party, boasting th at “ Sir John is for Allegiance, which Rebels w o u ’d destroy.” 1 But w ith the sheriffs enjoying exclusive control over the selection o f jury panels, M oo re’s election could have no effect on Ignoram us justice. “The H ead is loyal which thy H eart com m ands,” D ryden conceded in T he M edall in M arch 1682, “But w h at’s a H ead w ith tw o such gouty H an d s?” (181— 82). T hat disability w ould be cured m ore quickly than D ryden could have expected: alm ost as soon as he and Lee finished w riting The D u ke o f Guise “a m onth or tw o before the last Election of the Sheriffs,” and well before their play m ade its delayed appearance on the stage. In the m id­ summer election of 1682 to w hich D ryden refers, the king’s p arty again p u t up its ow n candidates for sheriff, Dudley N o rth and R alph Box, against the W hig nominees, Thom as Papillon and John D ubois, both of

whom had been members of Shaftesbury’s grand jury. Once again the Whig candidates polled a m ajority of votes from the Com m on H all, but on this occasion, after a series of adjournm ents and contested tallies protracted throughout the summer, the pliable lord m ayor, acting under instructions from the court, declared N o rth and Peter Rich elected, the latter having replaced Box, w ho had earlier w ithdraw n from the em bar­ rassing contest. O n 28 September the new sheriffs were installed and d u r­ ing the night or early the following day Shaftesbury, his im m unity from indictment at an end, w ent into hiding. The behavior of the new London and M iddlesex juries, now packed w ith dependable Tories, soon con­ firmed his fears, and some tw o m onths later Shaftesbury slipped away to H olland, there to die in exile. True, the governm ent to all appearances had only gained a year’s respite from Ignoramus justice and m ust expect to renew the struggle each summer until a favorable outcom e of the quo w arranto proceedings afforded them perm anent relief. But to the Tories it denoted an im portant victory m arked by trium phant broadsides rejoic­ ing that “Ignoramus is out of D oors.”2 C ounting over the recent im prove­ ments to London in his Vindication in April 1683, D ryden was able to include “the last and the present Lord M ayor [the T ory Sir William Pritchard, w ho had succeeded M oore in O ctober 1682], our tw o H onourable Sheriffs,” and “the rest of the Officers, w ho are generally well affected, and w ho have kept out their factious Mem[bers] from its G overnm ent” (p. 54). Tow ard Shaftesbury, w ho had died in H olland on 21 January, he could afford to deal charitably now th a t he posed no fur­ ther threat, dismissing him as “a N oble Peer deceas’d: the Case is know n, and I have no quarrel to his memory: let it sleep; he is now before another Judge” (pp. 45-46 ). At the same time as its offensive against Ignoram us justice throughout the summer of 1682, the court renew ed its efforts against the London press th a t it held responsible for the spread of sedition. Determ ined to deprive the Whigs of the m ost im portant public forum remaining to them in the absence of a parliam ent, the government now took steps to silence the tw o W hig newspapers th a t had survived the pressures under w hich, as we noticed earlier, Benjamin H arris and Francis Smith had been forced to discontinue their ow n publications in mid-April 1681. A tth e end o f M ay 1682 Richard Janew ay was im prisoned and forced to purchase his free­ dom by agreeing to discontinue the Im partial Protestant M ercury, suc­ cumbing to the same tactic the government had used successfully against Francis Smith the previous year. Shortly afterw ard Langley Curtis w ent into hiding to avoid a similar fate, his wife continuing to publish the True Protestant M ercury for another five m onths, until her arrest and im pris­ onment at the end of O ctober 1682 brought this last of the W hig new s­ papers to an end. As had been the case w ith the proclam ation against

new spapers in M ay 1680, the T ory journalists suffered along w ith their W hig opponents. Jo h n Smith’s Currant Intelligence had died of natural causes at the end of December 1681 and Heraclitus Ridens cam e to a close in August 1682 on the grounds th a t its mission w as no longer neces­ sary, the W hig faction having grow n so feeble. But it was under pressure from the governm ent, wishing to appear im partial in its suppression of the new spapers, th at T hom pson’s L oyal Protestant and Benskin’s Dom estick Intelligence vanished together on 16 N ovem ber 1682. By the beginning of 1683, therefore, only the official L on d o n G azette and L’Estrange’s O bservator rem ained, neither of w hich had ever m ade any pre­ tence of reporting domestic news, and the public was reduced once more to depending on rum ors and private newsletters for its inform ation.3 N o w onder, then, th a t D ryden expressed so m uch satisfaction at the n atio n ’s rapid convalescence w hen The D u ke o f Guise w as finally pub­ lished in February 1683. As he assured Lawrence H yde, earl o f Rochester, in dedicating the play to him, the Whigs “can m ake the m ajor p art of no Assembly, except it be a M eeting-H ouse. Their Tyde o f Popularity is spent, and the natural C urrent of Obedience is in spight of them , at last prevalent” (sig. A2v). Tw o m onths later, when his 'Vindication appeared, D ryden’s assur­ ances th a t the W higs had been p u t to flight carried even greater convic­ tion. “The quarrel of the Party to [L’Estrange in the O bser vat or],” he declared, “is that he has undeceiv’d the ignorant, and laid open the shameful contrivances of the new va m p t A ssociation” (p. 40). Their late hopes “ of altering the Succession, ” he explained, returning to the theme of A bsalom and Achitophel, concealed mischiefs to the nation “ which our Gracious King, in his Royal W isdom well forsaw; and has cut up th at accursed Project by the Roots; w hich will render the m em ory o f his Jus­ tice and Prudence, Im m ortal and Sacred to future Ages, for having not only preserv’d our present quiet, but secur’d the Peace of o u r Posterity” (p. 35). Consequently, the Exclusion Crisis has passed into history. “N ei­ ther is it any w ay probable, th a t the like will ever be again attem pted: For the fatal Consequences, as well as the Illegality of th a t Design, are seen through already by the People” (p. 32). As a result, the W hig party is now reduced to libertines and religious fanatics, the same tw o incom patible groups am ong the surviving Whigs w hom D ryden had portrayed as the irreligious Shaftesbury and his godly supporters in The M edall the year before. And indeed, to look upon the w hole Faction in a lump, never w as a more pleasant sight than to behold these builders o f a new Babel, how ridiculously they are m ix’d, and w hat a rare confusion there is am ongst them. One part o f them is carrying Stone and M ortar for the building o f a M eeting-house, another

sort understand n ot that Language; they are for snatching away their W orkfellows materials to set up a Bawdy-house; some of them blasphem e, and oth ­ ers p ray, and both I believe with equal godliness at bottom: some of them are A theists, som e Sectaries, yet AU True P rotestants (p. 2 3 ).4

“But, the truth is,” Dryden concludes his Vindication, “their contrivances are now so manifest, th at their Party m oulders both in T ow n and C oun­ try: (for I will not suspect th at there are any of them left in C ourt.) De­ luded well-meaners come over out of honesty, and small offendors out of common discretion, or fear. N one will shortly rem ain w ith them, but men of desperate fortunes or Enthusiasts” (pp. 59—60). D ryden’s tactic has a familiar ring, for it is the same he had used some twenty years earlier in his poem celebrating the R estoration, w here he proclaimed the natio n ’s near unanim ity in welcoming that event. Indeed, these last sentences from his Vindication could be a paraphrase of his trium phant lines in Astraea R edux in 1660: The discontented now are only they W hose Crimes before did your Just Cause betray: O f those your Edicts som e reclaim from sins, But m ost your Life and Blest Example wins. (3 14-17)

Once again, as on the earlier occasion, Dryden portrays the nation as already experiencing the consensus he hopes it will soon achieve. His com mitment to this tactic over the past year and a half beginning with Absalom and A chitophel (“And willing N ations knew their Lawfull Lord” ) explains the hostility he, in com pany w ith other Tory p ropagan­ dists, expresses at this same period tow ard the Trimmers. D ryden’s harsh attacks on these individualists begin in N ovem ber 1682, the same m onth in w hich L’Estrange replaced T ory and W hig w ith Observator and Trim m er as the interlocutors in his new spaper, whose readers now learned that “ a Trim m er is a kind of a State-O tter, neither Fish, nor Flesh, and yet he Smells o f B o th .”5 In the new epilogue Dryden wrote for the delayed premiere of The D uke o f Guise on 28 N ovem ber, the actress Sarah Cooke relates a dialogue w ith a Trim m er who is shocked by her severe language against the Whigs and exclaims, “Fie, Mistress Cookel Faith you’re too rank a T ory!” In times like these, “Len­ itives, says he, suit best w ith our C ondition,” the direct reverse of the advice given David in A bsalom and Achitophel by his “ faithful Band of W orthies,” according to w hom “ Lenitives fomented the Disease.” Cooke concludes the dialogue by giving a scornful character of the Trimmers. Dam n’d N euters, in their middle w ay o f steering, Are neither Fish, nor Flesh, nor good Red-Herring:

N o t W higgs, nor Tories they; nor this, nor that; N o t Birds, nor Beasts; but just a kind of Bat: A Tw ilight Animal; true to neither Cause, W ith Tory W ings, but W higgish Teeth and Claws. (Sigs. A 4 -A 4 v )5

Five m onths later D ryden returned to the Trim m ers in his Vindication, where he seems especially irritated th at Thom as H u n t “ calls the Trim ­ mers, the more m oderate sort o f Tories. It seems those Polliticians are odious to both sides,” he observes, “ for neither ow n them to be theirs. We know them , and so does he to o in his Conscience, to be secret W higs, if they are any thing. But now the designs of W higgism are openly dis­ cover’d, they tack ab o u t to save a Stake, th a t is, they will n o t be villains to their ow n ruine” (p. 26). As in his epilogue, w here the Trim m ers are denounced as “D am n ’d N eu ters” w ho are “true to neither C ause,” it is their professed neutrality rather than their m oderation th a t m ost offends D ryden in his Vindication: “L oyal men may justly be displeas’d w ith this Party, not for their M oderation, as M r. H u n t insinuates; b u t because, under th at M asque of seeming m ildness, there lies hidden either a deep treachery, o r at best, an interressed luke-w arm ness” (pp. 2 7 -2 8 ). Indeed he discovers a historical parallel for the Trim m ers in the civil w ars of fourteenth-century Castile, w here a group of “N eu ters” had “neither Courage enough ” to engage on one side, “n o r Conscience enough” to support the other (pp. 2 6 -2 7 ). D ryden’s dislike for the Trim m ers is sometimes taken as evidence that his own political position was hardening a t this time. Since the Trimmers were m oderates, according to this view, D ryden’s distaste suggests th a t he w as com ing to ally himself ever m ore closely w ith the extrem ists in the Tory party. But his attacks on the Trim m ers tell us less about his ideolog­ ical position as a T ory than ab o u t his tactics in su p p o rt of the governm ent and his unwillingness to see th a t strategy lose its effectiveness. D ryden detests the Trim m ers because they spoil his picture of the English as a cohesive people w ho, now th at they are undeceived and “the designs of Whiggism are openly discover’d ,” are universally acclaiming the king and flocking to his standard, the only exception being a small band o f unre­ pentant Whigs, “ men of desperate fortunes or Enthusiasts, ” w ho are al­ ready so tarred w ith treason th a t for them there is no turning back. As neutrals w ho decline either to condem n the W higs completely or to com ­ mend the governm ent w ithout reservation, the Trim m ers continue to w ithhold the support th a t w ould lend credence to D ryden’s picture of unanimity. His irritation is understandable. From a tactical point of view, the Trim m ers are w orse than the Whigs. “The [Whig] Party indeed speaks out som etim es,” D ryden declares in his Vindication, “for wicked-

ness is not always so wise, as to be secret, especially w hen it is driven to despair” (p. 17). T hat is a consistent p art of the picture of the nation we have seen him drawing, a small m inority o f shameless reprobates still preaching sedition when there are none to hear. But there is no place on his canvas for a group of independents w ho disclaim the W hig label yet stubbornly refuse to join the swelling chorus hailing the king “for having not only preserv’d our present quiet, but secur’d the Peace of our Poster­ ity.” To Dryden they are an em barrassm ent, and when he accuses the Trimmers of “deep treachery” he seems to sense th at they threaten to betray not so much the governm ent itself as the impression of growing unanimity created w ith such effort by its dedicated publicists. But only a few months after D ryden published his Vindication in April 1683, new and surprising developments may have led even his m ost skep­ tical readers to adm it the essential accuracy of his optimistic picture.

By a rem arkable coincidence, the tw o events th a t w ould crow n the gov­ ernm ent’s long struggle against the Whigs w ith a conclusive victory in 1683 occurred on the same day. Under the heading “ W estm inster, June 12,” the L ondon Gazette inform ed the public: “This day the C ourt of Kings Bench unanim ously gave Judgm ent for the King upon the Q uo Warranto against the City of L ondon, T hat the Franchises and Liberties o f the said City be seized into the K ing’s hands.”7 The same day Josiah Keeling, a com m on oilman, was brought at his ow n request before Sir Leoline Jenkins, one of the principal secretaries of State, to begin disclos­ ing the last and m ost conclusive of the Protestant Plots th a t had been monopolizing the public’s attention ever since the first of them emerged at Lord H ow ard’s inquest in June 1681. The Rye H ouse Plot was n o t only the last but also the m ost complex of the Protestant Plots, and the one th a t w ould be exploited most skillfully by members of the governm ent w ho had by this time acquired consider­ able experience in propaganda. Unlike the earlier Protestant Plots, this conspiracy did not come to light all at once because of a single confession or the discovery of a single docum ent. It unfolded piecemeal, and as new facts came to light the governm ent recognized fresh possibilities th at it could put to its ow n use. In retrospect it is possible to detect three phases of the climactic propaganda cam paign the governm ent w ould m ount over the summer of 1683, and it is best to follow them in their proper sequence. The aspect of the Rye H ouse Plot best remembered today is the assassi­ nation scheme from which it acquired its name. This was the earliest dis­ covery to be made and appeared at first to be the entire substance of the

conspiracy. As Keeling revealed to Jenkins in the series of depositions he began m aking on 12 June, a consortium of forty obscure Whigs, many of them draw n from such hum ble occupations as joiners, distillers, salters, and dyers, had devised a bold plan for assassinating the king and the duke of Y ork the previous 7 April while the royal brothers were returning to London from their spring visit to N ew m arket for the races. The conspira­ to rs’ rendezvous was appointed at the Rye H ouse in H ertfordshire, where one of their num ber, Richard Rum bold, carried on his trade as a maltster, and from which they could am bush the royal pair on the Saturday before Easter as their coach passed the house on its way back to London. The outbreak of a fire at N ew m arket, which destroyed much of the tow n, forced the king and his brother to return to London four days earlier than expected, however, and the plans of the conspirators were for the m o­ m ent defeated, although they continued to meet in hopes of finding an­ other means of carrying out the assassination. For the first week after Keeling began making his disclosures the gov­ ernm ent kept the m atter a close secret while he continued to attend the meetings of the conspirators and to report their substance to Jenkins. It was not until 18 June, w hen the conspirators learned of w arrants for their arrest, that they hastily dispersed, some to be seized, others to go into hiding, and still others to make their escape to H olland. But a gratifying num ber surrendered themselves during the following days, offering, like most of those unfortunate enough to be arrested, to turn king’s evidence in hopes of saving their lives. The governm ent, on its p art, soon came to realize that a small num ber of prosecutions, abundantly supported by testimony from a large num ber of witnesses, w ould be the best means of reaping political profit from the chance discovery. In a m atter of a few days, therefore, Jenkins and other governm ent officials were busy taking depositions from a steady procession of inform ants, and w ord o f the con­ spiracy was rapidly spreading in spite of the absence of genuine news­ papers. On 23 June the governm ent first took public notice of the plot in a royal proclam ation, published immediately afterw ards in the London Gazette, offering in the king’s name a rew ard of £100 apiece for the arrest of nine fugitives from justice, m ost of them unknow n to the general p u b ­ lic, w ho “ have Traiterously Conspired together, and w ith divers other ill-affected and desperate Persons of this O ur Kingdom, to compass the D eath and D estruction of O ur Royal Person, and of our D earest Brother James Duke of York; And to effect the same, have held several T reason­ able Consultations, and made great Provision o f A rm s.” 8 The same day Sir Leoline Jenkins sent off letters to the lords-lieutenant of all the coun­ ties in England inform ing them of “a horrid design on his M ajesty’s and his Royal H ighness’ life having been discovered, which should have been

executed in his retu rn from N e w m a rk e t,” h ad n o t “the accident of the fire there hastened his com ing for L o ndon sooner th a n the tim e a p p o in te d .” 9 In short order a co rresp o n d en t w as w riting him a letter from G loucester to describe the “ bonfires an d ringing of all the bells in the city ” occa­ sioned by “ the good new s received to -day o f the p reservation of his M a j­ esty and his R oyal H ig h n ess.” 10 The initial phase of the new T o ry cam paign co u ld now begin in ear­ nest. O n 28 June L ’E strange first to o k notice o f the latest P ro te stan t Plot in the O b serva to r. “ T he T o w n I k n o w is alm ost all M a d u p o n the N oise o n ’t , ” T rim m er rem ark ed , “an d let a m an w alk the Streets from W estm in ­ ster to Billingsgate, he shall Scarce hear any thing else.” F or the n ex t few m onths little else w o u ld be heard from the O bservator itself. T o L ’Es­ trange the discovery o f a new P ro testan t Plot, w hoever the p articu lar W higs behind it, strengthened the credibility of all the earlier plots. “ I need n o t tell you how I have been M u m bled for S h a m m in g of Plots upon the P rotestants, ” O b serv ato r rem inded T rim m er a few days later. “ I w as not m uch o u t in my G uesse, you see; for (G od be Praised) we are n o w come to the R evelation o f the R o g u ery; a n d we have the D evil D ancing naked before us. ” 11 O n 30 June the appearance o f three verse broadsides w ithin a m atte r of hours m arked the beginning of a flood o f T o ry p ro p a g a n d a rejoicing at the latest discovery. T he p o p u larity o f such ironic titles as The L a st and Truest D iscovery o f the Popish P lot a n d N o P rotestant Plot; or, T he W higs L o y a lty indicates th a t, like L ’E strange, m ost T o ry publicists w ere behaving as if their entire series of allegations against the W higs in recent years h ad been confirm ed at a single stro k e .12 M eanw hile, p rep a ra tio n s w ere being m ade for a sequel to the A b h o r­ rence M ovem ent th a t h ad played so im p o rta n t a p a rt in the cam paign against the A ssociation the previous year. T w o days later, on 2 July, the submissive lord m ayor, alderm en, and C om m on C ouncil o f the City of London appeared in a body a t W hitehall to present the king n o t w ith an unw elcom e p etition, as o n so m any earlier occasions, b u t w ith the first abhorrence o f the Rye H ouse Plot. The cerem ony w as repeated by a n ­ other delegation before the day w as over, a n d in rapid succession by o ther official bodies from all p arts o f th e kingdom d uring the w eeks and m onths th a t follow ed. In m o u n tin g the fo u rth addressing m ovem ent in as m any years, the governm ent could by this tim e m ake use o f officials w ho w ere seasoned veterans of such cam p aig n s.13 O nce again the texts o f all the English and W elsh abhorrences w ere prin ted in the L o n d o n G azette, w hile the Irish abhorrences w ere sim ply listed, b u t the effect this tim e w as different. In each of the previous tw o m ovem ents the volum e of addresses and a b h o r­ rences h a d m o u n ted slow ly, so th a t only after several m o n th s did it be-

come necessary to publish double issues of the London Gazette to accom­ modate their numbers. Again, by carefully regulating their volume, those responsible for the addresses and abhorrences of 1681 and 1682 had managed to prolong each movement for nine months. On this occasion, however, greater importance was attached to the quantity of the abhor­ rences, and to the speed with which they appeared. So great was their flood from the very start that only a week after the king received the first of them the London Gazette began appearing in double issues to handle the unprecedented volume. At this rate, most of the abhorrences had come in by the end of four months, although they would continue until the end of the year, while the number eventually printed in the London Gazette (well over three hundred) would exceed the total reached in either of the two previous campaigns by some 50 percent. The logistics of the last of the address movements suggests that it was designed for a different purpose from those of its two immediate prede­ cessors. The loyal addresses of 1681 with their additional subscriptions of hundreds or thousands of signatures had passed for popular expres­ sions of support ratifying the king’s actions in dissolving the last two parliaments which some had been condemning as an abuse of the royal prerogative. The abhorrences of 1682 had served as official expressions of legal opinion on the treasonable nature of the Association which Whig propagandists were denying. In both cases they were meant to promote political beliefs on which the public was divided. But the new abhor­ rences, coming from many of the same official bodies as before, expressed a reaction that would have been instinctive to most Englishmen on first learning of the Rye House Plot or of any other scheme to assassinate their king. Their authors evinced horror and amazement at the news, congrat­ ulated the royal brothers on their happy escape, and offered thanks to Heaven for this deliverance. As such, they were expressions of support, certainly, but of a kind that said as much about the government’s ability to command such endorsements on brief notice as about the public’s will­ ingness to offer them. The very rapidity with which they were organized and produced was apparently intended to suggest not so much spontane­ ity, as on the earlier occasions, as predictable submission. If so, they may have been meant less to persuade the public at large than to intimidate stragglers by an open display of the government’s increased power. This impression is borne out by their language, noticeably more obsequious than that of the earlier addresses to the king.14

On 28 June the government unexpectedly issued a second royal procla­ mation that, like its predecessor, was immediately published in the L on­ don Gazette.15 This was worded exactly like the royal proclamation of 23

June except that it substituted the names of four new fugitives from jus­ tice, far better known to the public than those they replaced: M onmouth, his henchman Sir Thomas Armstrong, Lord Grey of W arke, and the irre­ pressible Robert Ferguson. The rewards for their capture were also suit­ ably increased to £500 apiece. The explanation for this new development is that, only a few hours after the appearance of the first royal proclamation on 23 June, the influx of informers eager to confess to the new Protestant Plot in hopes of saving their lives had begun to produce a more substantial class of witnesses than before, knowledgeable about much else besides the plans for assassi­ nating the king and his brother at the Rye House the previous April. The first of these to come in was the barrister Robert West, a member of the Middle Temple whose appearances before Jenkins beginning on 23 June would be repeated daily for almost a week. He was followed on 25 June by Colonel John Rumsey, and on 27 June by Thomas Shepherd, a promi­ nent wine merchant in the City who had been a member of Shaftesbury’s grand jury. The last of these valuable new informers to appear would be none other than Lord H ow ard of Escrick, discovered hiding in a chimney on 8 July and brought before the king three days later, only too happy to implicate his friends in hopes of a royal pardon.16 But, thanks to the three new informers who preceded him, the government did not have to await Howard’s tardy arrest to learn that the latest Protestant Plot had already been in existence for six months before the king’s return from New­ market in April, and that it had begun under the direction of six of the most prominent Whigs in the kingdom: the four fugitives named in the royal proclamation of 28 June, William Lord Russell, son and heir of the earl of Bedford, who had been arrested and sent to the Tower two days earlier, and Shaftesbury, who had died five months before in Holland. Except to issue the proclamation calling without explanation for the arrest of some of the principals involved, the government made no effort to publicize the flow of new information its officials would continue to be offered for another fortnight. Some word of the new developments leaked out, of course, but the fact that they were studiously ignored by the Ob senator and the abhorrences during this period suggests that the govern­ ment wished to choose its own time for revealing these developments to the public in w hat would become the second phase of its new campaign, once it was satisfied of being in possession of all the facts.17 That time had come once Howard finished telling his story to the king. The next morning, 12 July, twenty persons whom the informers had im­ plicated in the conspiracy were indicted for high treason at the Old Bailey.18 Fifteen of those named in the indictments had already fled from justice, but the remaining five were in custody, and their trials began in the same courtroom that very afternoon. The accused included three ob-

scure p a rticip a n ts in the assassination schem e— T h o m as W alco t, W illiam H o n e , an d W illiam Blague— in a d d itio n to the b e tte r-k n o w n J o h n Rouse, w h o , like S haftesbury and L o rd H o w a rd , h a d been a beneficiary o f Igno­ ram us justice in 1 6 81, a n d , m o st im p o rta n t, Russell, th e only one o f the six W hig principals m en tio n ed earlier o n w h o m th e gov ern m en t w as able to lay h a n d s, since M o n m o u th w as in hiding, Shaftesbury dead, a n d A rm ­ strong, G rey, a n d Ferguson safe in H o llan d . Like the O x fo rd P arliam ent, C ollege’s trial, a n d S haftesbury’s grand in quest o n earlier occasions, the trials of these five m en w ere intended above all as a th eatrical perfo rm an ce w here the g o v e rn m e n t’s latest p ro p ­ ag an d a cam paign could be staged w ith th e m ax im u m publicity. T h e five trials follow ed one a n o th e r in steady succession like th e five acts of a play, an d the star perform ers w ere Keeling, W est, R um sey, Shepherd, and H o w a rd , aided by a su p p o rtin g c ast o f lesser inform ers. T h eir testim ony, m utually consistent, w as disclosed in a co h e re n t scenario designed not only to convict the prisoners bu t, p erh ap s m ore im p o rta n t, to reveal for the first tim e in public the n a tu re an d com plexity of the design behind the new P ro te stan t Plot. As the a tto rn ey general, Sir R o b e rt Saw yer, an n o u n c ed by w ay of p ro ­ logue in his opening speech to the jury fo r the first trial, “ G entlem en, this design w as for a general R ising, an d a t the sam e tim e to assassinate the King a n d the D uke o f York: this is th e design w h ich th e w hole course of o u r Evidence w ill op en to y o u .” T h a t is to say, the d ram a of conspiracy th a t the governm ent w as a b o u t to u n fo ld in th e c o u rtro o m h ad a double plo t, the m ain one consisting o f plans fo r a general in su rrectio n , the u n d e r-p lo t involving plans fo r assassinating the royal b ro th e rs, a n d each w ith its o w n cast o f ch aracters, “ for every one h a d their p a rtic u la r p art; som e fo r the g rea t design o f the rising, som e fo r the killing of the K ing.” T h e tw o plots w ere in fact co n cu rren t, b o th datin g fro m early O cto b er 16 82, an d b o th directed from behind the scenes by “ a N o b le L o rd , th a t is gone n o w to his o w n p lace”— S haftesbury, acting in the safety o f his hiding place to w hich he h ad retired o n th e installatio n of th e new sheriffs a t the end o f Septem ber 1 6 8 2 .19 T h e pro x im ity o f th e tw o d ates w as n o t coincidental, for, as m any of the w itnesses em phasized, the new P ro tes­ ta n t Plot w as an act o f d esp eratio n u n d e rta k en by m en w ho saw th eir last refuge being w rested from th em by the election o f T o ry sheriffs w ho w o u ld bring Ignoram us justice to a n end. T h e u n d er-p lo t, to assassinate the king a n d the d u k e o f Y ork, w as orig­ inally supposed to take place w hen the royal b ro th e rs w ere retu rn in g to L o n d o n the previous O c to b e r from th eir sem iannual visit to N e w m a rk et for the races. As w o u ld prove to be th e case again a n d ag ain in a d ram a th a t w as m ore often com edy th a n trag ed y , th e c o n sp ira to rs assigned the role o f assassins, w ho had been supplied w ith arm s a n d m oney by Shaftesbury, m issed th eir cues, a n d the king a n d the duke w ere safely

back in L ondon by the tim e th eir enem ies w ere ready to act. Foiled fo r the m om ent, these secondary co n sp irato rs retired to the w ings to a w a it the next royal visit to N e w m a rk et in th e spring. At the sam e tim e as these plans w ere being m ade a n d ab a n d o n ed , the attorney general explained, o thers w ere busy rehearsing their p lo t o f a general insurrection, “ for there w as a tim e th a t they struggled w ith th em ­ selves, w hich sh o u ld be effected first, w h eth er they should first kill the King and the D uke; o r w h ether they should first rise, an d so prosecute him in an open R ebellion, and destroy him th a t w ay.” 20 In this general insurrection Shaftesbury w as to be responsible fo r raising the C ity o f L o n ­ don, w hile the levying of rebels from the rest of the co u n try w as left to the other five principals: M o n m o u th , Russell, Grey, A rm strong, a n d Fer­ guson, described by the atto rn ey general as “ the C ouncil o f State, as I m ay call them , to give fo rth directions for the general Rising th a t h a th a p ­ peared w as to have been w ithin this K ingdom .” 21 T his council, he ex ­ plained to the court, “w as the great C onsult, and m oved all the other W heels,” w hile the “ U nderlings,” as he called those “w h o m anaged the A ssassination, did tak e notice th a t these L ords and G entlem en o f Q uality were to m anage a n d steer the w hole business o f the R ising.”22 A fter re ­ peated d isappointm ents an d delays, th e date of the general insurrection was set fo r 19 N ovem ber, b u t w hen S haftesbury sent Colonel R um sey to his fellow co n sp irato rs to learn if all w as in readiness, they returned w ord th at the country still w as n o t p rep ared to rise, an d the earl, furious a t being d isappointed once again, w ith d rew in disgust to H o llan d . A fter Shaftesbury’s death in A m sterdam in Jan u ary 1683, the c o u rt w as told, the rem aining W hig leaders en tru sted the direction o f the general in su r­ rection to a reorganized C ouncil o f Six consisting of M o n m o u th , Russell, H o w ard, the earl o f Essex, Jo h n H a m p d e n , an d A lgernon Sidney. This cabal, hitting on a new p lan for a joint rising in E ngland an d Scotland, sent off m essengers to pro p o se a treaty to the Scottish P resbyterians, w ith w hom they w ere still negotiating b u t m aking little progress som e five m onths later w hen K eeling’s betrayal of the und er-p lo t led in tu rn to the exposure o f the m ain p lo t as well. The significance of these revelations to the coherence and consistency of the gov ern m en t’s successive p ro p ag a n d a cam paigns over the previous tw o years w as enorm ous. W h a t h a d a t first ap p eared , a m o n th earlier, to be sim ply a new and unrelated P ro te stan t Plot to a d d to the sum o f crim es w ith w hich the W higs w ere being charged as each new occasion arose w as revealed on closer exam in atio n to be a direct confirm ation of the cam ­ paign against the A ssociation in progress since N ovem ber 1681, and of the even older offensive against Shaftesbury. In the first place, the picture o f Shaftesbury th a t em erged a t the trials, instigating plans for a general uprising to w age w a r against the king and im patiently spurring his confederates to greater efforts, accorded exactly

w ith the interpretation of the Association, its contriver, and its secret pur­ pose th a t T ory propaganda had been presenting all along. Similarly, the “Council of State,” as the attorney general dubbed the cabal o f Whig m agnates, and its successor the Council of Six corresponded closely to the standing com mittee of “ disbanded m em bers” of the last parliam ent from w hom the other members of the Association were supposed to take their orders. The m em bership of the Council of Six in particular— half of them draw n from the H ouse of Lords, the other half prom inent W hig com m on­ ers— could have been modeled directly on the paper o f A ssociation.23 Again, that council’s negotiations for an alliance w ith the Scottish Presby­ terians to support their rebellion underscored precisely the parallel the Tories had long been draw ing between the Association and the Solemn League and Covenant. Less than a w eek after the conclusion of the trials, therefore, L’Estrange’s spokesm an w as asking in the O bservator: “And w hat was this Late H orrid Conspiracy, against the Life of his Sacred M aj­ esty, and of his R. H. but the Genuine, and N aturall Result of T hat Associationi And in fine; take the whole Series of th a t M atter, from First to Last, and you will find the C onnexion so Regular, as if Every Respective Part of it, were only a sever all L in k of the Same C hain.”24 Several days earlier the abhorrence from the City of W orcester had already draw n the same connection between the Rye H ouse Plot and the Association, declar­ ing that, thanks to the latest revelations, “we now see a full com ment upon the wily Earl’s Paper, and yet n o t w ritten, as design’d, in Characters of B lood.”25 Yet at the same time, the testim ony at the trials seemed to confirm the long-standing argum ents of Dryden, the au th o r of Heraclitus Ridens, and those other Tory propagandists w ho claimed th a t the W higs had been fatally w eakened by the king’s decisive action at O xford, entering a grad­ ual decline th a t by 1682 rendered them incapable of actualizing their hopes of overthrow ing the governm ent. In the case of the latest Protestant Plot, a crucial distinction w as draw n between the assassination scheme and the plans for a general rising. The form er w as indeed dangerous, since, as proved by the exam ple of the king’s grandfather, H enri IV, and m any another ruler, no public figure, then as now , could hope to be im­ m une from the assault of a determ ined assassin. As we shall see, the dan­ gers from this side of the conspiracy w ould be greatly em phasized, in fact, in the last phase of the governm ent’s new cam paign. But the fluctuating plans for the general insurrection disclosed by the witnesses at the trials were a succession of exaggerated hopes and inevitable disappointm ents am id m utual recrim inations th a t exactly bore out D ryden’s claim in April 1683 th a t “their Party m oulders both in T ow n and C ountry.” Shaftes­ bury, the court was told, had boasted to H ow ard th a t his support from the tow n was such th a t “ above Ten Thousand brisk Boys are ready to

follow me, when ever I hold up my Finger,” but his fellow conspirators discounted his claims, M onm outh agreeing with H ow ard’s conclusion that “his Judgment hath deserted him, w hen he goes about w ith those strange sanguine Hopes, that I can’t see w hat should Support him in the Ground of them .” But the hopes of M onm outh and his confederates that they might still find enough supporters in the country to raise a successful insurrection had proved just as illusory. M onm outh related to H ow ard the disappointing outcome of a typical interview with one of these coun­ try supporters when it came time to put their promises to the test. “Says he, I thought M r. Trencbard had been a brisker fellow; for when I told him of [the rising planned for 19 November], he looked so pale, I thought he would have swooned, when I brought him to the brink of A ction.”26 Finally, the judgment of Dryden and other Tory writers that by 1682 the Whig party had dwindled to an uneasy alliance between libertines and enthusiasts, two groups with widely different social backgounds, reli­ gious beliefs, personal morals, and ultimate political aims, was fully but­ tressed by the repeated testimony that the two plots each had its own cast of characters, “some for the great design of the rising, some for the killing of the King.” The gulf between the “Underlings who managed the Assas­ sination” and the “Lords and Gentlemen of Q uality” who “were to m an­ age and steer the whole business of the Rising” was not only social but religious and m oral.27 As for the former group, Sir George Jeffreys as­ sured the jury, “the most of these persons, nay, all of them, concerned in this hellish Conspiracy, were Dissenters from the Church of E nglandT 2i The “Lords and Gentlemen of Q uality” who made up the latter group, on the other hand, were, with the possible exception of Algernon Sidney, nominal members of the Established Church, but some of them, as the attorney general declared of Armstrong and Grey, were men of scandal­ ous personal lives.29 On the evidence of the latest conspiracy, therefore, L’Estrange was able to reaffirm that “we find AtheisticalI Republicans and Scbismaticall Dissenters L in kt in O ne C om m on Interest, as well as Principle, of Levelling the M onarchy, on the O ne hand, as well as the Church, on the Other.; under Imaginary Fears of Arbitrary Power Sc PoperyTio W ith such an array of witnesses for the prosecution, it can have come as no surprise that all but one of the prisoners were convicted of treason and sentenced to death, only Blague being acquitted when his jury deemed insufficient the evidence against him of the necessary second w it­ ness. An official transcript of the trials, published by authority of the lord mayor, was immediately offered to the public, w ho did not have to w ait long for the sequel. O n 20 July, W alcot, Hone, and Rouse were hanged at Tyburn, each of them delivering a dying speech adm itting to prior know l­ edge of the existence of the plot that had made them accessories before the

fact, w hile seeking to m itigate their ow n p a rt in the conspiracy.31 If these speeches w ere n o t everything the gov ern m en t m ight have h o p ed for, they w ere frank enough to pass for confessions, and since they w ere spoken in th e presence o f the cro w d a tten d in g the executions, they w ere far m ore satisfactory th a n the w ritte n confession Fitzharris h a d delivered to H aw ­ kins a t his ow n execution in 1681, only to have its genuineness disputed by the W higs as soon as he w as dead. L ord Russell, on the o th er h a n d , p ro v ed less cooperative. Beheaded in L incoln’s Inn Fields the day after his com p an io n s suffered, he died pro­ fessing th a t “I k n o w o f no Plot, either against th e K in g ’s L ife or the G ov­ e rn m e n t” and delivering a p a p e r to the sheriffs in w hich he system atically denied the allegations a t his tria l.32 In the face of such publicity, the sher­ iffs h ad no choice b u t to p u b lish the p a p e r u n d er their a u th o rity , along w ith the dying speeches o f the o th er three, an d to leave it to L ’E strange to so rt them o u t in the O bserva to r, exploiting the p en iten t speeches o f the three hanged m en, especially R ouse, w h o h a d m ade “a very H o p efu ll E n d ,” w hile rejecting R ussell’s p ro te sta tio n s of innocence.33 But R ussell’s p a p e r certainly w eakened the clim actic effect an ticip ated from the execu­ tions. H e h a d given advance copies o f the p ap er to his w ife, w h o arranged to have it separately published, a n d it w as being sold on the streets w ithin an h o u r o f her h u sb a n d ’s d e a th .34 T he g overnm ent co u ld n o t afford to ignore this challenge to the verdict o f the court. T w o answ ers to R ussell’s p a p e r soon ap p eared , one o f th em by L ’E strange, a su b sta n tia l w o rk of over fifty pages.35 A nd as had hap p en ed a t the tim e o f C ollege’s execution tw o years earlier, a n o th e r T o ry p am phleteer p ro d u ced a bogus a cco u n t of R ussell’s behavior on the scaffold w here “ he a t last m ade a w o rth y O ra ­ tio n acknow ledging his crim e, for w h ich he w as justly condem ned, [and] advising all to be Loyal an d T ru e .” 36 T he publicizing of the clim actic stage o f th e P ro te stan t P lot in all its dim ensions th a t c o n stitu ted the second p h ase o f the g o v e rn m e n t’s new cam paign w as to all intents a n d purposes com pleted w ith these trials, dying speeches, and executions, along w ith the official pu b licatio n s th at m em orialized th em .37 It w as n o w the tu rn of lesser T o ry pro p ag a n d ists to ex p lo it all the facets o f the final P ro te stan t Plot, an d they quickly did so, supplying a ch o ru s to accom pany L’E stran g e’s solo on the sam e refrain in the O bservator d u rin g the m o n th s th a t fo llow ed.38 O nce these trials an d their a fte rm a th had tak e n place in July, the gov­ ern m en t a t W hitehall show ed little in terest in pursu in g the legal aspect of the p lo t m uch fu rth e r, except to prosecute the rem aining m em bers of the C ouncil o f Six besides Russell an d the m ore fo rtu n a te H o w a rd , still eager to repay the king for his p a rd o n . M o n m o u th rem ained in hiding, but Essex, Sidney, an d H a m p d e n h a d all been arrested a n d co m m itted to the T o w er before the recent trials began. Essex cut his th ro a t on 13 July, the

day of Russell’s trial, and the other tw o rem ained in confinem ent for som e m onths before the governm ent tardily acted on their cases. Sidney was at last b rought to trial on 21 N ovem ber.39 W ith W est, Rum sey, and H o w a rd appearing against him , he was convicted o f treason and beheaded on Tower Hill on 7 D ecem ber, after delivering a p ap er to the sheriffs on the scaffold in w hich he defended him self and his co n tractu alist political phi­ losophy w ith great spirit.40 F our days after Sidney’s conviction M o n ­ m outh surrendered him self and confessed to his father and uncle. Still the indulgent D avid after all, C harles n o t only p ard o n ed him but granted his plea th a t he be excused from giving evidence against his confederates.41 Last of all, H am pden w as b ro u g h t to trial on 6 F ebruary 1684. In the absence of a second w itness to su p p o rt H o w a rd ’s testim ony to his tre a ­ son, he w as tried for the m isdem eanor o f disturbing the peace and sp read ­ ing sedition, and on conviction w as fined £ 4 0 ,0 0 0 .42 U nable to pay the fine, he rem ained in the K ing’s Bench until pard o n ed by Jam es II shortly after his accession. But neither these tw o later trials n o r the official history of the Rye H ouse Plot published a t the beginning of Jam es’s reign could add anything of im portance to the details of the last P ro testan t Plot a l­ ready know n to the public in m id-July 1683.43 It is quite possible th a t the governm ent h ad expected the public confes­ sions and executions of four of the Rye H ouse conspirators in late July to serve as the curtain scene to its latest theatrical perform ance, a decisive climax dem onstrating the guilt of all the traito rs beyond any possible cavil and offering the audience an exem plary w arning to treasure up against the future. But R ussell’s death had proved a disappointing anticli­ m ax to th a t of his com panions the previous day, and in m ore respects than just the publication of his p ap er and of the T o ry answ ers to it th at only prolonged a debate supposed to have ended by now. T he first sour note h ad been struck at Russell’s trial w hen a num ber of pro m in en t c h a r­ acter witnesses appeared o n his behalf, including the po p u lar L atitudinarian preachers G ilbert B urnet a n d John T illotson, already dean o f C anter­ bury. Burnet had visited Russell daily in the T ow er during the week after his sentencing and w as kn o w n to have assisted him in the com position o f his pap er for the sheriffs. O n the day o f R ussell’s execution, B urnet and Tillotson had accom panied him on the procession from the T ow er to the scaffold and, as the official published version of the dying speeches re­ lated, had m inistered to him before he approached the block. The king and the duke of Y ork w ere so incensed th a t they sum m oned B urnet and Tillotson before them the n ex t day to answ er for their behavior.44 There w ere good reasons for the royal anger and disappointm ent. The spectacle of tw o prom inent clergymen of the Established C hurch publicly com forting and supporting Russell in his last m om ents hardly consisted with the T ory line th a t the rem aining W hig m em bership w as confined to

“AtheisticaIl Republicans and Schismaticall Dissenters.” Even worse, it drew public attention to a rift in the supposedly united front of all the Anglican clergy, loyally supporting the government they were committed to uphold by the most fundamental tenets of their religion. Some such considerations as these may have suggested to the government that it had become necessary to introduce a third phase to its new campaign, in which the discovery of the Rye House Plot could be removed from the mundane level of debate in which it threatened to become immersed like the earlier dispute over the Association, and raised to an altogether higher sphere, royal and even divine.

On 28 July, exactly a week after Russell’s execution, appeared His Majes­ ties Declaration to All His Loving Subjects, concerning the Treasonable Conspiracy against His Sacred Person and Government, Lately Discov­ ered. Like the previous His Majesties Declaration, which had led off the first of the government’s campaigns twenty-seven months earlier, it was published “By His Majesties Special Command” and “Appointed to be Read in all Churches and Chappels within This Kingdom.” But such was the importance the government attached to favorable publicity by this time that the new declaration was also published in the London Gazette for good measure, and appointed to be read in the churches not once but on two successive Sundays.45 His Majesties Declaration professes two ostensible purposes. The first is to give a brief historical review of the political emergency in recent years beginning with the Exclusion Crisis, followed by a more detailed account of the Rye House Plot itself at a time when, these matters safely behind them, Englishmen supposedly awaited a definitive statement of them on the word of their king. As an epitome of the Tory interpretation of events between 1679 and 1682 the review contains nothing that was not already long familiar to the public: the alarming progress of “a Ma­ levolent Party” determined “to Promote Sedition,” by which “their Num­ bers increased” until they threatened to “gain upon the People, so as to perswade them to a total Defection from the Government” ; then an abrupt reversal in which their progress was arrested, “the Eyes of Our good Subjects” were finally opened, and “the Factious Party lost Ground daily. ” But this brief review of earlier events leads to a more comprehen­ sive account of the latest Protestant Plot, hatched when the factious party “became Desperate, and Resolved not to Trust any longer to the slow M ethods of Sedition, but to betake themselves to Arms,” some “Contriv­ ing a General Insurrection in this Kingdom, and likewise in Scotland,” while “Others were Conspiring to Assassinate Our Royal Person, and

Our Dearest Brother.”46 As a convenient summary of the most pertinent details, this narrative probably ensured a much wider dissemination of information about the recent conspiracy than w ould have been achieved by the transcripts of the trials alone. But at the same time th at it sealed the second phase of the government’s campaign w ith this authoritative pronouncem ent, His Majesties Declara­ tion inaugurated a third and final phase that was probably the more im­ portant of its tw o announced purposes. This was introduced in the words prefacing the account of the recent conspiracy: “But the Divine Provi­ dence, which hath preserved Us through the whole Course of O ur life, hath at this time in an Extraordinary manner, shewed it self in the W on­ derful and Gracious Deliverance of Us and Our Dearest Brother, and all O ur Loyal Subjects from this H orrid and Damnable Conspiracy.”47 When his account reaches the failure of the plans for an am bush a t the Rye House, the king produces the explanation: “ But it pleased Almighty God, by His wonderful Providence, To Defeat these Councels by the sud­ den Fire at N ew m arket, which necessitated O ur Return from thence be­ fore the time We had Appointed.”48 Finally, His Majesties Declaration closes by announcing: This We thought fit to make known to Our Loving Subjects, that they being sensible (as We are) o f the Mercy o f God in this great Deliverance, may Chearfully and Devoutly joyn with Us in Returning Solemn Thanks to Almighty God for the same. For which end We do hereby Appoint the N inth day of Septem ber next, to be observed as a day of Thanksgiving in all Churches and Chappels within this our Kingdom . . . in such manner as shall be by Us Directed, in a Form of Prayer with Thanksgiving, which We have Commanded to be prepared by Our Bish­ ops, and Published for that purpose.49

The idea that Providence was responsible for saving the king and his brother from assassination at N ew m arket would not have been unfamil­ iar to many readers of His Majesties Declaration. The abhorrences had been making frequent references to the role of Providence in the king’s escape ever since they began to appear on 2 July, and for obvious reasons. Expressions of gratitude to Heaven for the king’s deliverance were a n atu­ ral sequel to congratulations on his escape. Itw as also the highest form of flattery to remind the king, in the fawning language used by the grand jury of W arwickshire, “that as you are the Delight of our Eyes, and the Breath of our Nostrils, so you are the immediate care of H eaven.”50 But until now the government had not publicly acknowledged the m ir­ acle nor taken any steps to turn it to advantage. Sir Leoline Jenkins, when informing the lords-lieutenant of the counties of the king’s escape at N ew ­ m arket, had innocently referred to “the accident of the fire there” that

“hastened his coming for London sooner than the time ap p o in ted ,” and L ’Estrange had rem ained silent on the role o f Providence in the king’s escape, although the Rye H ouse Plot had been the sole topic of the Observator for an entire m onth before His Majesties Declaration w as made public. The appearance of His Majesties Declaration in which the king an­ nounced th a t the “m iraculous fire” at N ew m arket to which he owed his life had been due to a direct intervention of special Providence in English affairs signaled a decision by the governm ent to exploit this rare o p p o rtu ­ nity to its ow n advantage, and to solemnize it in the m ost public m anner by a thanksgiving service th at w ould figure as an exceptional event of the greatest im portance. Its publication on 28 July was accom panied the same day by the appearance of Som e Seasonable Reflections on the D is­ covery o f the Late Plot, by W illiam Sherlock, the popular preacher. Al­ though its subtitle vaguely describes this homily as “ a Sermon Preacht on T hat O ccasion,” the title page omits the inform ation ab o u t the date and place of delivery th a t is regularly supplied w hen, as in m ost cases, a printed sermon has earlier been preached to an actual congregation. It is likely, therefore, th a t Sherlock’s homily was w ritten and published by previous arrangem ent as a model of the kind of serm on expected on the day of solemn thanksgiving, offering those clergymen w ho needed them the appropriate “ heads” of a discourse for this occasion, in the m anner of the indispensable Book o f Homilies. The p aram ount im portance attached to these thanksgiving sermons by the governm ent w ould emerge during the weeks following 9 September, in the course of w hich at least twentyfive of them were separately published: a record unm atched for any other single occasion throughout the reign of Charles II except his restoration.51 W hat m ade the approaching thanksgiving service such an exceptional event was the infrequency of cases where special Providence w as believed to have intervened in the political affairs of the English nation, as distinct from those occasions (also rare) when special Providence interposed to save its creatures from physical danger, as in stopping the G reat Fire m the m iraculous m anner described by D ryden in A nnus Mirabilis. In his serm on, Sherlock carefully catalogued the four recognized occasions on which Providence had come to the rescue of Charles II during his lifetime: his escape from his enemies in 1651 following his defeat at W orcester; the m iraculous R estoration (“a great and w onderful deliverance both to Prince and People; a deliverance immediately w rought by G od, w ithout H um ane policy, contrivance, or pow er” ); the “discovery” of the Popish Plot; and the defeat of the Rye H ouse Plot (“the fire a t N ew m a rket was sent by God for the preservation of our King and his Royal Brother, for the preservation of these Kingdoms, of our Liberties and R eligion” ). T ak­ ing as his text Psalm 18, D avid’s song of thanksgiving for his deliverance

from his enem ies, Sherlock offered D avid’s behavior as an exem plary les­ son teaching the English people to respond w ith like gratitude on the present occasion, “ a case very parallel to D a v i d s since “the deliverances of our Prince are no w ay inferiour to th a t m ercy God shew ed to D avid. ” 52 The same parallel was officially sanctioned soon afterw ards w ith the p u b ­ lication of the Form o f Prayer for the approaching thanksgiving service, in w hich 2 Sam uel, chapter 22, a version of the E ighteenth Psalm , was designated the first lesson of the day.53 M any of the thanksgiving serm ons preached on 9 Septem ber, perhaps taking their cue from Sherlock, reiterated the same exhaustive list of four, and only four, cases w here special Providence w as believed to have inter­ vened to deliver C harles II from his enem ies.54 But his escape at W orcester and the “ discovery” o f the Popish Plot could be quickly passed over.55 It was the R estoration th a t em erged as the closest parallel to the “m iracu­ lous fire” a t N ew m arket, n ot only in the serm ons b u t in the religious observance a t w hich they w ere delivered. For in ord er to find the only exact precedent for this public celebration solem nizing the intervention of special Providence in English national affairs one w ould have to retu rn to 28 June 1660, the day of solem n thanksgiving at w hich the natio n had offered public th anks for the “m iraculous” R estoration, and to the anni­ versary services com m em orating th a t event every 29 M ay th ereafter.56 It w as natu ral th a t the fire at N ew m arket should be paralleled w ith the m iraculous R esto ratio n in the thanksgiving serm ons. Preachers w ho h a ­ bitually m agnified their subject by m aking it bigger and better th an any conceivable com petitors— the unparalleled parallel— o r th an all but a sin­ gle paragon— “this Plot, the m ost barbarous and bloody th a t w as ever laid since the G un-pow der T rea so n ”— found the m anner of the king’s deliverance from this latest conspiracy “ such an A stonishing, an d (al­ most) U nparallel’d Instance of the Divine Providence” th a t its only con­ ceivable precedent in their lifetime w as “ th a t great M iracle of his M aj­ esty’s R estaur a tio n .”57 This w as because the king’s resto ratio n and his escape a t N ew m arket shared a unique relationship in being able to supply preachers w ith su r­ prising m iracles of a kind th at invited com parison w ith som e of the m ore spectacular interventions of Providence recorded in the O ld Testam ent. If C harles’s earlier retu rn from exile “w ith o u t striking a blow , w ith o u t shedding a drop of B lood” could be described as “ no less a M iracle, than dividing the sea to give a safe passsage to the Israelites,” the fire a t N ew ­ m arket th a t snatched the king from the brink of destruction had in a few w eeks’ tim e grow n into a m iracle “ like the Angel th at hastened L o t o u t o f S o d o m .”58 The im portance of the m iracle w as th a t it authenticated C harles’s es­ cape as an intervention by special Providence. S upernatural w onders

w ere n o t essential in such cases—none had accom panied the “ discovery” of the Popish Plot certainly— but w hen vouchsafed they were practically certain to overawe skeptics and forestall argum ent. “ If ever you hear G ods Providence call’d in question by our bold A theists, ” one thanksgiv­ ing preacher advised his congregation, “choak them w ith the fire at N e w ­ m a rket.”59 By the same token, only a hardened religious skeptic could reject the political corollary of such a miracle. For if it were once accepted th a t special Providence had been moved to m ake one of its infrequent interventions in English public affairs to preserve the king’s life, one could no longer doubt the reality of the assassination plot, the gravity of the danger it had posed both to the king and to his governm ent, or the divine favor exhibited tow ard Charles through his continued preservation. “And surely,” another preacher argued, “he m ust be an Atheist, or w orse (if possible) one th a t believes there is a G od, b u t is resolved to fight against him and flie in his very face; if after all this he can either p lo t or speak evil against him w hom H eaven it self hath so plainly declared to be its Favourite.5,60 For over tw o years, from the spring of 1681 until the sum m er of 1683, governm ent propaganda had been crediting the natio n ’s recovery to the courage, resolution, and political skill w ith which Charles had outw itted his adversaries and opened the eyes of his deluded subjects to the snares being prepared for them . N othing proclaim ed from the pulpits through­ out the land on 9 September was m eant to deny the earlier cam paign nor to detract from C harles’s glory as savior of the nation in one o f its darkest hours. But the Rye H ouse Plot had introduced a new factor in which hum an resourcefulness could no m ore protect Charles from the treachery of an assassination scheme th a n his ow n efforts, or even those of General M onck, it w as believed, could have peacefully restored him to his throne in 1660. In m aking Charles the passive beneficiary o f a divine rescue mis­ sion, his supporters were far from trying to dism antle the heroic legend they had been diligently em broidering since early 1681. They were simply enlarging it by adding a feature th at appears in m ost such legends at least as early as H om er, and had already appeared, they rem inded their audi­ ence, on three earlier occasions in the life of their rem arkable m onarch. The respects in w hich religion and loyalty could be seen as supporting each other in the king’s providential escape were n o t limited to Charles personally. As w e noticed earlier, the m iraculous character of the R esto­ ration had elevated a political settlem ent into an act of G od com m anding the assent of all Englishmen. It w as the providential nature of the settle­ m ent th a t legitimated the new regime, and the governm ent, by com m em o­ rating th a t fact through the anniversary services, had been republishing its ow n credentials annually. N o w Providence had intervened again, this

time to preserve and reinforce its earlier settlem ent, thereby in a sense renewing the divine ch arter th a t legitimized the regime. Hence the im portance o f establishing a necessary connection betw een the m iraculous R estoration and the fire at N ew m arket as successive p u b ­ lications of the sam e divine m andate. T h a t thesis had already been propounded by L ’Estrange in A ugust, during the interval betw een the appearance of H is M ajesties D eclaration an d the day o f solem n th an k s­ giving. T aking his cue from the king’s D eclaration, he h ad tardily devoted an entire issue of the O bservator to the w onderful role o f Providence in the king’s deliverance, in the course of w hich the governm ent’s chief propagandist announced w h a t w ould be the keynote of the approaching thanksgiving service: “T he Providence of This Late D iscovery, is, a t least, a Second Birth; and a Second R estauration: T he K ing Lives, and the K ing Reigns again; a n d the Same D ivine M ercy th a t R e sto r’d him to Us, o u t of the very Jaw s of D eath, has set him once again upon his T h ro n e .”61 This is probably the reason why so m any preachers a t the thanksgiving service chose to expound the sam e specific instance from D avid’s m any providential deliverances, running an extended parallel betw een C har­ les’s recent escape and D avid’s retu rn to Jerusalem after the defeat of A bsalom ’s rebellion. T hat, as we noticed earlier, had long been the m ost popular O ld Testam ent parallel for C harles’s restoration, developed so often in anniversary serm ons every 29 M ay (where 2 Samuel, chapter 19, in w hich it is recorded, w as the first lesson of the day) th a t by this time it m ust have been indelibly associated w ith th a t event. Inevitably its appli­ cation now to C harles’s escape at N ew m arket as equally appropriate suggested the close proxim ity betw een this latest m ercy and his earlier restoration. The fam ous story from 2 Sam uel w as both better and w orse as a p a ra l­ lel for C harles’s latest deliverance th an as an analogue fo r his restoration. A bsalom ’s rebellion was o f course peculiarly ap p ro p riate as a parallel for the Rye H ouse Plot, “there being scarce a considerable circum stance in the rise, grow th, discovery, or defeating of the one, w hich h a th n o t a parallel line in the o th e r,” according to one thanksgiving preacher.62 To a far greater extent th an w as the case w ith the P uritan R evolution for which it served as an analogue in the anniversary serm ons on the R estora­ tion, A bsalom ’s rebellion afforded an uncanny parallel for the Rye H ouse Plot, as it had already done for W hig sedition in 1680 and 1681. M any of the sam e identifications th a t h ad become p opular during the Exclusion Crisis, in fact, w ould be pressed into service again on 9 Septem ber. “ W hat befell D avid, in the case o f his Son A bsalom , hath befaln our Sovereign, of a like un n atu ral Son, both R ighteous Kings afflicted w ith a Rebellious O ff-spring,” lam ented another thanksgiving preacher, adding th a t the

p a rt played in 2 Samuel by the “ notable A cbitophel” was exactly repli­ cated in the early stages o f the recent conspiracy by “the late Earl of Shaftsbury ”63 But why should D avid’s crossing the Jordan and returning to Jerusa­ lem at the invitation of his people, so appropriate an analogue for C har­ les’s being recalled from foreign exile in 1660 and settled upon his throne, have been enlisted again as a parallel for circumstances so completely dissimilar as Charles’s escape a t N ew m arket? Only because it helped pro­ mote the politically useful idea of Charles’s recent deliverance as a “’Sec­ ond R estoration” in which Providence had “set him once again upon his Throne,” thereby placing English affairs on a new footing, just as it had done in 1660 w hen Charles had returned from exile am idst general accla­ m ation. In preventing the king’s death and extending his reign, Provi­ dence had indeed been responsible for a second restoration, and, as the language referring to a second birth makes plain, this restoration, like the first, m arked another revolution of the historical cycle, revitalizing a na­ tion that had long been sick and establishing its king on a sturdier foun­ dation than ever before. “The w onderfull Deliverances H e has already receiv’d ,” declared a preacher on the day of solemn thanksgiving, do plainly say, that H e is still reserv’d for som e extraordinary W ork in the world. And from H is last miraculous Escape, w e may easily Presage what mighty Acts H e shall perform for these Kingdoms in Particular. N o w shall it be in His Power to subdue that Pestilence o f Puritanism, which for above these hundred Years has raged in this N ation, to crush the Seeds, and destroy the very Principles o f Schism. To Him it is reserv’d to bring the Church o f England up to those Glorious H eights, that She shall appear the Envy o f R om e, and the Terrour o f G eneva. T o settle the M onarchy upon so firm a Basis, that it shall be no m ore shaken by Republican Rage. H is Sacred Person shall be no longer lyable to Violence, nor His Subjects to Oppression. N o more shall M ajesty be affronted by the Sawcy V otes o f a Seditious Senate, nor w e made Prisoners by our Representatives. But long and secure shall H e Reign in the hearts and Af­ fections o f H is People.64

To those in the congregation w ho had reached middle age, th a t glowing prospect m ust have recalled the sanguine prophecies so frequent in press and pulpit at the time of Charles’s first restoration. If so, the recollection may have m oderated their excitement.

Just as The M edall and The D u ke o f Guise are both part of the campaign of 1682 and early 1683 exploiting the disclosure of the Association at Shaftesbury’s inquest, so The H istory o f the League and Albion and Al-

banius, Dryden’s last tw o works of political propaganda during the reign of Charles II, both belong to the new campaign of m id-1683 to 1685 capitalizing on the discovery of the Rye House Plot. But they appeared fairly late in th at campaign, and the first of them to do so, The H istory o f the League, was not published until a year after His Majesties Declar­ ation. In an exhaustive bibliographical study, Alan Roper has proved conclu­ sively that Dryden made his translation of Louis M aim bourg’s Histoire de la Ligue from a pirated Dutch edition that probably appeared some­ time in M arch 1684. Since Tonson published the translation in the last week of July, Roper plausibly argues th at Dryden must have been occu­ pied almost exclusively with The History o f the League between M arch and July of 1684.65 W hatever truth there may be to the stories first broached long after D ryden’s death th at he wrote Absalom and Achitophel and The Medall at the direction of the king, it is certain th at his translation of M aim bourg was undertaken on Charles’s orders, since the title page tells us as much, and in dedicating the book to the king Dryden speaks of “having receiv’d the H onour of Y our M ajesty’s Commands to Translate the History o f the League,” adding that the king was “a M aster of the Original, . . . having read this piece when it first was publish’d [15 October 1683].”66 Roper suggests that, once he had read M aim bourg, Charles lost no time in com ­ manding the translation “some time between mid-November 1683 and early January 1684,” arguing that “ Charles certainly needed great dis­ patch from Dryden. Above all, there should be no delay. But Dryden delayed,” since, as Roper has shown, he only began carrying out the as­ signment in late M arch.671 think it unlikely, however, that Dryden would have been so dilatory in obeying the king’s commands once he received them, and it is unclear why Charles should have been in such haste to issue them under the mistaken impression th at he “needed great dis­ patch.” It seems more probable th at it was the king who delayed after reading M aim bourg in the autum n of 1683, only deciding as an after­ thought to give commands for a translation from Dryden in M arch 1684, upon which the latter, as he declares in his dedication, “ apply’d my self with my utm ost diligence to Obey them ” (p. 3).68 In any case, the public was in no haste to buy and read the translation once it appeared, for as Roper shows, Tonson was still trying w ithout much success to dispose of the edition tw o years later.69 This has been attributed to the political m ood of a nation no longer in ferment, sated on government propaganda by this time, and particularly on the French Holy League, which had been publicized quite enough already, not least by The D uke o f Guise and the heated controversy it had provoked in 1682 and early 1683. In Roper’s words, “Just then, in the summer of

1684, the constitutional matter seemed settled. There was no more to say. There is, accordingly, an awesome superfluity to the announcement at the end of July 1684 that The History o f the League was ready for sale.”70 It seems just as likely, however, that the public was slow to buy the book not because of a sudden distaste for English political propaganda, even in the guise of another parallel between French League and Whig Association, but because it balked at buying the much larger package of which this was only a small component. The English propaganda and its familiar parallel were to be found not in M aim bourg’s History, after all, but in Dryden’s “Postscript of the Translator” appended at the back of the book, a forcefully written essay making an “application” of French history to current English affairs and drawing the parallel between them, just as many anniversary and thanksgiving sermons applied an episode of Old Testament history to contemporary circumstances. But this was bur­ ied under a 760-page history addressed to a French audience and describ­ ing French affairs from 1574 to 1598 in painstaking detail, to say nothing of another 82 pages of M aim bourg’s prolegomena and addenda. Some readers, no doubt, would choose to read the history and judge for them­ selves its applicability to English affairs, ignoring the “Postscript” as an impertinence. But most, it is safe to guess, preferred taking their history in small doses, as prescribed and administered by the pundits for either party. If “The Postscript of the Translator” had been offered for sale as an independent pamphlet of some fifty pages, in the manner of Dryden’s Vindication o f “The D uke o f Guise” the year before, there is no reason to believe it would not have sold as well as the earlier pamphlet, even though it expounded the same parallel in the service of much the same propa­ ganda. Instead, The History o f the League, replete with Dryden’s “Post­ script” as well as his “Dedication to the King,” tried catering to two audi­ ences: the smaller, with serious historical interests, finding themselves better served in this instance than the larger, whose appetite for political controversy gave no signs of abating as long as the product was clearly labeled and economically packaged.71 If there still existed a market for propaganda as well as prudential rea­ sons for the government’s supplying that market, this was sufficient justi­ fication for rehearsing familiar themes. Even Absalom’s rebellion, after all, which had inspired far more parallels than the Holy League and over a much longer period of time, was given a new lease on life by the discov­ ery of the Rye House Plot. There are several good reasons, in fact, why the king might have decided in M arch 1684 that it would be useful to revive interest in the French exclusion crisis by arranging a translation of M aimbourg’s History o f the League, and why Dryden would not have thought it redundant to publish this along with his “Postscript of the

T ra n sla to r” only a year after The D u k e o f Guise an d its Vindication had capitalized on the same subject.72 O n 28 M arch 1684 the three-year interval betw een parliam ents per­ m itted by the T riennial Act expired, and thereafter, during the last ten m onths of his reign, C harles w as violating the law under w hich he was required to sum m on a new parliam ent no m ore than three years after dissolving the last. T he m atter was obviously a delicate one. Less th an a fortnight after dissolving the O xford Parliam ent, the king h ad raised the issue o f a n o th e r parliam en t him self in H is M ajesties D eclaration, de­ nouncing the “ restless M alice of ill M en, w ho are labouring to poyson O u r People” by trying to persuade them “th a t W e intend to lay aside the use of P arliam ents,” and solem nly affirm ing th a t “W e are Resolved, by the Blessing of G od, to have frequent P arliam ents.” 73 M any W hig p a m ­ phleteers had responded by openly disbelieving the king’s prom ise and predicting th a t he w ould never sum m on an o th er parliam ent. For their p a rt, T ory propagandists had found themselves in an uncom fortable p o ­ sition w here they m ust repeatedly rem ind the public o f the king’s prom ise and confidently assure them of his sincerity in m aking it. As the m onths gave place to years and still the king m ade no sign of ordering new elec­ tions, it becam e increasingly clear th a t the W hig prophets h ad been right, and this grow ing suspicion w ould have been decisively confirm ed for the m ore observant w hen the date on w hich the three-year lim it expired w as allow ed to pass w ith o u t com m ent. Y e tT o ry propagandists could n o t al­ lude to the subject directly w ith o u t rem inding even the forgetful o f a vio­ lation o f the law they m ight otherw ise have overlooked. U nder the circum stances, it m ay have occurred to the king th a t the best oblique defense of his failure to sum m on an o th er parliam en t w ould be to revive the public’s flagging interest in the French political crisis of a h u n ­ dred years earlier, w here the Estates G eneral, like Parliam ent in English affairs m ore recently, had served as the principal instrum ent by w hich the enemies of the governm ent w ere able to dictate their wishes to the execu­ tive w ith im punity an d to th reaten its very survival. Some readers o f Dryden’s tran slatio n m ight be led to reflect by w ay of analogy th a t w h a t three English parliam ents in succession h a d done recently an o th er parliam ent m ight do again, and th a t the king w as show ing com m endable caution in hesitating to tak e a n action th a t could revive the dangers from w hich he h ad so recently rescued the nation. Less observant readers could be in­ spired w ith the sam e reflections by the “ Postscript of the T ra n sla to r,” w here D ryden draw s particu lar attention to specific respects in w hich the exam ple o f the Estates G eneral h ad supplied the W higs w ith “ Precedents o f underm ining the law ful A uthority o f their Soveraigns” (pp. 409, 413) by parliam entary m eans.

A second consideration would have suggested to Dryden, and perhaps to the king, the timeliness of a “Postscript of the Translator” that could go well beyond any previous applications of the League to English affairs. The earlier works of Tory propaganda exploiting the French Holy League had likened it to the Whig Association and, in the case of The D uke o f Guise, had drawn a parallel between the French and English exclusion crises themselves. But the more recent disclosure of the Rye House Plot in all its complexity had uncovered a rich lode of new analogues with the history of the League—events that, unknown to Dryden and Lee, were transpiring at the very time their play made its delayed appearance on the stage in November 1682. Just as The D uke o f Guise is an updating of Absalom and Achitophel in light of the disclosure of the Association a week after the poem appeared, Dryden’s “Postscript of the Translator” is an updating of The Duke o f Guise itself that capitalizes on the discovery of the Rye House Plot some six months after the play was finally per­ formed. For Dryden, the disclosure that the Rye House Plot consisted of a dou­ ble plot with separate casts of characters, so that, as he declares in a theat­ rical figure of his own, “instead of one Conspiracy, the Machines play’d double, and produc’d two, which were carry’d on at the same tim e” (pp. 412—13), suggested new and previously unsuspected parallels with the French civil disturbances of the 1580s. The plans for a general insurrec­ tion, contrived by Whig lords and gentlemen who were prominent veter­ ans of the Exclusion Crisis, could now be found reflected in events al­ ready depicted in The D uke o f Guise, since, as we noticed in the last chapter, matters had reached a more critical stage on the eve of Guise’s murder than before the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament. The W higs’ “Council o f Six,” Dryden writes, “was an imitation of the League, who set up their famous Council, commonly call’d O f the Sixteen·. And take notice, that on both sides they pick’d out the most heady and violent men of the whole Party” (p. 411). But the plans to assassinate Charles, insti­ gated by Shaftesbury and entrusted to a group of fanatic Dissenters who had previously attracted no public notice, found their analogue only in events that had occurred well after Guise’s death. “For when Henry the Third, by the assistance of the King of Navarre, had in a manner van­ quish’d his Rebels, and was just upon the point of mastring Paris, a Jacobin, set on by the Preachers of the League, most barbarously murther’d him; and by the way take notice, that he pretended Enthusiasm, or Inspiration of God’s holy Spirit, for the commission of his Parricide,” a set of circumstances “much resembling, the intended M urther of our gra­ cious King, at the R y e f Dryden observes. “ ’Tis true, the Jacobin was but one, and there were many joyn’d in our Conspiracy, and more perhaps than Rumsey or West have ever nam ’d; but this, though it takes from the

justness of the Comparison, adds incomparably more to the Guilt of it, and makes it fouler on our side of the W ater” (pp. 407-8). But D ryden’s “Postscript” updates The D uke o f Guise in more ways than by simply supplying a sequel to his earlier parallel. By finding a place in that parallel for the events of the Rye House Plot in the m anner of someone producing the missing pieces to a puzzle, Dryden attempts to give the aggregate of Whig actions in recent years the kind of consistency and coherence that M aim bourg, with the hindsight of someone writing a century after the events, had given to his H istory o f the League. L’Estrange, we noticed earlier, had argued that “this Late H orrid Conspir­ acy'” was “the Genuine, and N aturalI Result of [the Whig] Association Dryden shapes his parallel to a similar, but broader, conclusion, “that on both sides they began with a League, and ended with a Conspiracy” (p. 407). For he too wishes to persuade the reader, in L’Estrange’s w ords, to “take the whole Series of th at M atter, from First to Last, and you will find the Connexion so Regular, as if Every Respective Part of it, were only a severall Link of the Same Chain,” but he also intends to find coun­ terparts to that chain and to each of its links on the other side of the Channel.74 For this reason D ryden’s “Postscript” consists of tw o parts, in which the English and French rebels are considered first in “their Principles,” and then in “their Practices.” The principles used to justify the Protestant Plot are traced in an unbroken chain from “the Anabaptists of G erm any” through the Scottish Presbyterians to the English Puritans, and this chain is then shown to have its m irror image in the principles of the Jesuits that inspired the Catholic League in France. But this first part of the “Post­ script” need not detain us, since, as John H arrington Smith was the first to show, D ryden’s entire discussion of the rebels’ principles is simply a paraphrase of Sir William DugdaIe.75 The second, and longer, part th at follows, on the practices of the En­ glish and French rebels, holds more interest. In setting out to show “that both the last Rebellion,” with its Solemn League and Covenant, “and this present Conspiracy,” w ith its Association, “were originally founded on the French League” (p. 401), Dryden retraces some of the same ground covered in his earlier Vindication, as we noticed in the last chapter. But in comparing the rise and decline of the tw o plots, Dryden adds some valu­ able observations on the Exclusion Crisis and its afterm ath th at bear out the differences we noticed earlier between Absalom and Achitophel and The M edall as to the gravity of the respective situations depicted in the two poems. In The D uke o f Guise, we recall, the Leaguers’ power reaches its crest in act 4 on the Day of the Barricades when the king is briefly at their mercy, while the scene in which he manages to escape from Paris and

im m inent capture at the close of the act m arks the turning point o f the tragedy. In his “Postscript” D ryden expresses the same view as earlier of the crisis in the French rebels’ affairs th a t he and Lee had dram atized in their play: “The Duke of Guise was always ostentatious of his pow er in the States [General], where he carried all things in opposition to the King: But by relying too much on the pow er he had there, and n o t using Arms when he had them in his hand, I mean by not prosecuting his Victory to the utterm ost, when he had the King inclos’d in the Louvre, he miss’d his opportunity, and Fortune never gave it him again” (p. 414). W ith this careful preparation, m ost readers will have already antici­ pated Dryden by the time he produces his parallel: not between the rebel leaders themselves, so different in their characters, but, “to pass by their Persons, and consider their Design” (p. 407), between their tactics leading to the fatal mistakes th a t blasted the hopes of each. The late Earl of S baftsbury, w ho was the undoubted H ead and Soul of that Party, w ent upon the same m axim es, being (as we may reasonably conclude) fearful o f hazarding his Fortunes, and observing that the late Rebellion under the former King, though successful in War, yet ended in the Restauration o f His Present M ajesty, his aim was to have excluded His Royal Highness by an Act o f Parliament; and to have forc’d such concessions from the King, by pressing the chymericat dangers o f a Popish Plot, as w o u ’d not only have destroy’d the Succession, but have subverted the Monarchy. For he presum’d he ventur’d nothing, if he cou ’d have executed his design by form o f Law, and in a Parlia­ mentary way. In the mean time, he made notorious mistakes: First, in im agin­ ing that his pretensions w ou’d have passed in the H ouse o f Peers, and after­ wards by the King, When the death o f Sir E dm ondbury G odfrey had fermented the people, when the City had taken the alarm of a Popish Plot, and the G ov­ ernment o f it was in Fanatique hands; w hen a Body o f white Boys was already appearing in the West, and many other Counties waited but the w ord to rise, then was the time to have push’d his business (p. 414).

This period of time when Shaftesbury and his confederates were m ost dangerous and the crow n alm ost w ithin their grasp corresponds exactly to the span of time covered in A bsalom and A chitopbel: the era o f p o p u ­ lar hysteria over the Popish Plot, of Whig supremacy in the City of Lon­ don, of M onm outh’s trium phant progress in the W est, and of repeated efforts to alter the Succession “ in a Parliam entary w ay” which, taken together, describe the Exclusion Crisis in its ascendant, and Shaftesbury at the high tide of his fortunes. “Then was the time to have push’d his business,” while the king procrastinated and the friends of the court were disheartened in 1680 and the beginning of 1681. But Shaftesbury too procrastinated, Dryden observes, trusting, like Guise, to his legislative m ajority to w ear dow n the king eventually instead of “ using Arms when he had them in his h an d .” His last opportunity to do so occurred w hen he

and his confederates “w ent to the Parliament at O xford, ” each “attended with his G uard of Janizaries, like Titus: So that w hat w ith their followers, and the seditious Townsmen of that City, they made the formidable ap­ pearance of an Army; at least sufficient to have swallowed up the Guards, and to have seiz’d the Person of the King, in case he had not prevented it by a speedy removal, as soon as he had Dissolv’d th at Parliam ent” (p. 411). But Charles did prevent it, by unexpected and decisive action, and Shaftesbury’s opportunity had vanished, “which he himself observ’d too late, and w ould have redress’d by an Insurrection which was to have begun at Wapping, after the King had been m urder’d at the R ye” (pp. 414-15). T hat retrospective view of events, even to the plot to seize the king at O xford, explicitly supports the rhetoric of Absalom and Achitophel, where the grave jeopardy into which the nation has been pushed by Shaftesbury’s skillful arts is shown to justify and indeed necessitate the king’s severe measures at the end of the poem. But at the same time its emphasis on the missed opportunity supports by implication the rhetoric of The Medall, where, their chance of realizing their aims irretrievably lost, the remaining Whigs, weakened in numbers and divided in aims, had become objects of derision rather than alarm. “There was neither H onour nor Conscience in the Foundation of their League,” Dryden observes of that later phase of the crisis, “but every man having an eye to his own particular advancement, was no longer a Friend, than while his Interest was carrying o n ” (p. 404). As he had done tw o years earlier in depicting Shaftesbury and his supporters in The M edall, Dryden dwells on the irreconcilable differences dividing “the Heads of their Faction,” among w hom “greater looseness of Life, more atheistical Discourse, more open Lewdness” was not to be found, and “the Zealots of their Faction,” men “as morose in their W orship, as were those first Sectaries” (pp. 403-4) the Puritans, and again he concludes that no last­ ing danger was to be feared from such an incongruous combination. “For my ow n part, when I had once observ’d this fundam ental error in their Politiques, I was no longer afraid of their success: N o Government was ever ruin’d by the open scandal of its opposers. This was just a Catiline's Conspiracy, of profligate, debauch’d, and bankrupt m en” (p. 404). Yet this is no excuse for complacency, Dryden warns. The religious zealots “are still to be accounted dangerous, because, though they are dispers’d at present, and w ithout an H ead, yet time and lenity may fur­ nish them again with a C om m ander” more compatible with their own beliefs and practices. What my Author [Maimbourgl says in general of the H uguenots, may justly be applyed to all our Sectaries: They are a malicious and bloody Generation, they bespatter honest M en with their Pens when they are not in power; and when

they are upperm ost, they hang them up like D ogs. T o such kind o f people all means o f reclaiming, but only severity, are useless, w hile they continue obsti­ nate in their designs against Church and Government: For th o ’ n ow their claws are par’d, they may grow again to be m ore sharp; they are still Lyons in their N ature, and may profit so much by their ow n errors in their late managem ents, that they may becom e more sanctify’d Traytors another time (p. 405).

Paradoxically, this latest setback for the Whigs could provide the grounds for their recovery. The death of Shaftesbury in January 1683 and the arrest or flight the following sum m er of the other “libertines” and “atheists” w ho had made up the W hig leadership in recent years may turn out to have been n o t decapitation b u t lifesaving surgery. Freed from the divided aims that had proved all but fatal to the party in 1682 and 1683, the religious fanatics may now begin to revive, spaw ning new leaders who by sharing their objectives will restore their fortunes. The “severity” Dryden recom mends is of course the strict execution of the penal laws against these very Dissenters who now constitute the p rin ­ cipal survivors am ong the “ differing Parties” of Whigs w hose num ber and com plexity he had been at such pains to emphasize only three years earlier in Absalom and A cbitophel. As L’Estrange, unveiling the chief re­ maining cause of all the nation’s troubles, declared in the im m ediate afterm ath of the Rye H ouse trials: “Will you have the whole bus’ness in One w ord? Sum up AU the Apprehensions; all the D istem pers; AU the Inconveniencies th a t we Eabour under; and the R o o t o f them All, is C onven­ tic le s" 76 By the sum m er of 1684 when D ryden was w riting his “P ostscript,” L’Estrange was tailoring the O b se rv a to f s rhetoric to suit its now sim pli­ fied objective, persistently calling for a m ore vigorous program o f dis­ persing conventicles and prosecuting their ministers, while brushing aside T rim m er’s pleas for toleration by w ondering: “W here’s the H ard Usage of it, to Execute the L aw upon Those People, th at, by their Inco n fo rm ity, and Disobedience, Cast themselves o u t of the Protection of it?”77 As L’Estrange and D ryden were well aw are, the governm ent needed no en­ couragem ent from them to enforce th a t policy. But by w arning of the dangerous consequences th a t could follow from any leniency tow ard the Dissenters, D ryden seeks to justify the ongoing offensive against conven­ ticles as the only course consistent w ith the public safety.

If D ryden’s “Postscript of the T ran slato r” calls for “severity” to w ard the Dissenters by a vigorous enforcem ent of laws entailing fines or even im­ prisonm ent, his “Dedication to the King” appears to advocate such bloodthirsty measures tow ard the conspirators im plicated in the Rye

H ouse Plot th a t it has em barrassed m ost of his biographers beginning w ith Scott, w ho adm itted regretfully th a t “the dedication to the king contains sentim ents w hich savour strongly o f p arty violence, and even ferocity.” 78 Unlike his discursive “ P ostscript,” D ryden’s “ D edication” is a coher­ ent and forceful argum ent on a single topic: the folly of granting individ­ ual pardons or a general am nesty to the Rye H ouse conspirators. M ost com m entators have assum ed th a t D ryden, relentlessly p ursuing a per­ sonal vendetta against all those incrim inated by the inform ers, is sternly urging the governm ent to prosecute the rem aining plotters for treason, so th at they m ay share the fate already m eted o u t to Russell and his com pan­ ions. C om m enting on one o f the m o st n o to rio u s sentences in the “D edica­ tio n ,” “These Sons o f E arth are never to be trusted in their M o th e r Ele­ ment: They m ust be hoysted into the Air and Strangled” (p. 4), Scott rem arked: “ I wish the fervour of D ryden’s loyalty had left this e x h o rta ­ tion to such w riters as the a u th o r of ‘justice T riu m p h a n t.’ ” 75>T he T ory versifier responsible for th a t angry broadside, published on 3 N ovem ber 1683, m ost certainly did hope to see “ the W higs in the Tow er, / W ho thought to m ake us a prey” speedily brought to justice, predicting th a t in th at event they “to Tyburn m ust trudge a m a in ” in the footsteps of those executed the previous July.80 Like m any com m entators since Scott’s tim e, Charles E. W a rd shares his assum ption a b o u t the purpose of the “D edication.” Pointing out th a t “some of the lesser figures” im plicated in the Rye H ouse Plot “ had n ot been punished, no r w ere they ever to b e,” he declares th a t “this latest exam ple of C harles’s clem ency irritated D ryden,” w ho “goes as far as he prudently can in reproving the King on this p o in t.” In W a rd ’s view, “ D ry­ den n o t unreasonably could feel th a t he is being exposed to a danger th a t m ight be obviated by sterner actions by the governm ent.” Consequently his “D ed ication” “ seems alm ost a cri du coeur, as strong a rem onstance as an outraged loyal subject can m ak e .” 81 It is true th a t the four conspirators w ho were tried, convicted, and executed in July 1683— Russell, W alcot, H one, and Rouse— represented only a small fraction of those im plicated in the Rye H ouse Plot. Even after discounting the sizable num ber w ho had escaped prosecution by testify­ ing against their confederates, o r w ho h ad evaded the governm ent’s net and w ere now safely beyond seas, there still rem ained several dozen o th ­ ers suspected of involvem ent in the p lo t w ho had been sw ept up in the mass arrests of June and July and placed in custody.82 T h ro u g h o u t the sum m er an d autum n of 1683 it w as fairly com m on to hear supporters of the governm ent express vindictive sentim ents to w ard this sizable rem nant, even from the pulpit, w here a greater spirit of forgiveness m ight have been w ished for, if n o t expected. O ne of the thanksgiving preachers

on 9 September, for example, applying to Charles his text, “H e shall Reign over them ,” declared: First in Judgement; in a legal Execution o f those Bloudy Conspirators who w ould have murthered Him, They must suffer, or He cannot be safe: Mercy w ould here prove Cruelty, Pardon an affront to Justice, and the highest Ingrat­ itude to Heaven. They are n ow under the com m and o f those Laws which they w ould have destroyed, under the hands of those Judges w hom they had destin’d to Slaughter; and every judge must remember that He is the M inister o f God, a Revenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil.83

W hen even clergymen did not hesitate to express such sentiments, it is not surprising to find them widely shared by the authors of Tory broadsides, many of them, like Justice Trium phant, published in N ovem ber 1683.84 The timing of these latest Tory calls for the strict enforcem ent of the treason statutes can be explained by the approaching deadline under which a more recent law w ould have to be obeyed. U nder the terms of the H abeas C orpus Act the Rye H ouse prisoners m ust be either indicted or released by the last day o f M ichaelmas term , 28 N ovem ber, the same stipulation under which Shaftesbury and H ow ard had w on their freedom exactly two years earlier. As we noticed already, however, the govern­ ment at W hitehall was by this time only seriously interested in prosecut­ ing the tw o members of the Council of Six w ho rem ained in custody. It made sure therefore th a t Algernon Sidney was indicted by a grand jury on 7 N ovem ber, and John H am pden on 27 N ovem ber, but it took no action against any of the other prisoners, all of w hom were consequently bailed or discharged by the last day of term .85 The governm ent’s decision was quietly accepted by its propagandists, the cases of Sidney and H am pden were disposed of over the next few m onths as I have related, and the entire issue had become m oot well before D ryden began his translation of The H istory o f the League in M arch 1684. If we wish to understand why D ryden’s “ D edication,” w ritten in late June or early July 1684, a full year after the discovery of the Rye H ouse Plot, argues w ith such vehemence against extending mercy tow ard those involved in the conspiracy, we m ust piece together a now forgotten inci­ dent that occurred the previous spring, rousing a furor th a t was still re­ verberating when Dryden w rote his “D edication.” H e had probably in­ tended to dedicate The H istory o f the League to the king ever since he agreed to translate it, and presum ably he received C harles’s permission along w ith his com m ands. D ryden could n o t have foreseen in M arch 1684 the squall that was to develop well before he finished translating the H istory and writing “The Postscript o f the T ran slato r.” But by the time he was ready last of all to write his “D edication,” he was able to make it the occasion for responding to this recent development.

One of those w hom W est and Rum sey had im plicated in the Rye House Plot w as Jam es H ollow ay, a m erchant of Bristol, w ho was to have been responsible for raising the rebel forces in th a t city a t the time of the general insurrection.86 Indicted for treason along w ith his confederates on 12 July 1683, H ollow ay was one of the fifteen conspirators nam ed in the indictm ents th a t day w ho m anaged to elude arrest and flee abroad. By absconding instead of appearing to answ er the charges in his indictm ent, H ollow ay, like his fellow fugitives from justice, incurred outlaw ry and in consequence stood attain ted o f high treason w ith o u t benefit o f trial. Seek­ ing refuge in France at first, he eventually m ade his w ay to the W est Indies with w hich he had often traded as a m erchant. H ere he was betrayed by his factor to the authorities on the island of Nevis and arrested in late January 1684. Like Fitzharris in 1681, H ollow ay apparently staked his life on m aking himself useful to both sides— an even m ore reckless gam ble in his case, since the W higs w ere no longer able to help their supporters. The p attern of his future behavior was set before he even em barked from Nevis. Among the articles confiscated a t the tim e of his arrest w as an extrem ely damaging paper in his ow n hand th a t the governor, Sir W illiam Staple­ ton, prom ptly dispatched to Sir Leoline Jenkins w ith the request th a t it be shown “ to his Royal H ighness, he being therein im pudently traduced, besides intolerable reflections on his M ajesty and governm ent.” 87 Yet only a week later Stapleton was w riting Jenkins again th a t on H ollow ay’s “prom ises to me of doing some considerable service in order to a further discovery I prom ised him to p ray you to intercede for him , as I now ear­ nestly d o .” 88 W hen this news reached London along w ith the prisoner in early A pril, it roused m uch initial excitem ent am ong governm ent officials. L’Estrange predicted to Jenkins th at the prom ised inform ation w ould “produce a great discovery,” while Sunderland reported th a t “ the King is very well pleased w ith the taking of H ollow ay and hopes it m ay be of great use tow ards a further discovery.”89 A pparently the hints H ollow ay w as d ro p ­ ping h ad led the court to anticipate a previously unsuspected dim ension to the Rye H ouse Plot rivaling in im portance the assassination scheme and the plans for a general insurrection. Their hopes w ere quickly dashed. B rought before the Privy C ouncil for questioning on 10 April, H ollow ay repeated his offer of a confession and w as returned to N ew gate w ith orders th a t he be given “pen and ink in order to a n arrative.” 90 But when he produced this docum ent before the council the next day it proved to be only another account o f the plans and consultations tow ard a general rising already retailed so m any tim es by earlier inform ers, along w ith the nam es of some citizens of Bristol w ho had been privy to the scheme. H aving em ptied the prisons of several dozen such m inor conspir-

ators a few m onths before, the governm ent was n o t about to launch a new round of arrests, nor could it repose complete confidence in a confes­ sion whose repeated charge th at W est and Rumsey, H ollow ay’s tw o ac­ cusers, had headed the assassination p lot am ounted to an obsession.91 Although, as H ollow ay adm itted, his confession w as “ made w ithout conditions of a p ard o n ,” he certainly w rote it, as he was to repeat with growing alarm , in “hopes of finding mercy” from the king.92 But when he was brought before the C ourt o f King’s Bench on 21 April he received a far shorter measure o f mercy than he had anticipated, the attorney gen­ eral announcing that the king was willing to offer the prisoner as “a Mercy and a G race” the trial to which he had forfeited any right by incur­ ring outlaw ry, “ if he hath any thing to say that could defend him from [the indictm ent].” It was probably a token gesture, offered as a substitute for the pardon the king was unwilling to grant, and in any case a m ean­ ingless concession, for as Hollow ay explained in declining the favor, “I cannot undertake to defend my self, for I have Confessed before his M aj­ esty that I am Guilty o f many things in th a t Indictm ent, and I throw my self on the Kings Mercy.” 93 The lord chief justice thereupon aw arded exe­ cution upon his attainder and H ollow ay was returned to Newgate, whence he sent the king an anguished petition for a pardon on 23 April th a t was rejected tw o days later.94 W hat alm ost certainly sealed H ollow ay’s fate, however, was not the disappointing confession he produced before the Privy Council on 11 April but another docum ent from his pen that, unknow n to him , had fallen into Jenkins’s hands several days earlier, offering unm istakable evi­ dence of his duplicity. During the ten weeks he had spent crossing the A tlantic as a prisoner, H ollow ay had busied himself com posing not his promised confession but a lengthy paper of an altogether different cast, also addressed to the king. As soon as his ship had anchored in the D owns, he sent off a messenger to tw o of his friends w ith copies of this paper, accompanied by instructions to arrange for its publication “if I com e to any disaster,” presumably execution.95 But a glance at the con­ tents of the paper was enough to convince H ollow ay’s friends of the jeop­ ardy in which he had placed them should they be found in possession of such an incriminating docum ent, and they lost no time in turning over their copies to Jenkins.96 O n H ollow ay’s second exam ination before the Privy Council at which his confession was read, he was suddenly ques­ tioned about this other paper. Throw n into confusion, he at first denied its authorship, but when confronted w ith one of the cover letters he was forced to own his handw riting.97 It was this paper, Holloway came to believe, th a t w ould eventually cost him his life. “If I die,” he w rote Jenkins three days later in a frantic effort

to explain aw ay his blunder, “I shall esteem th a t the cause o f my death and th at I do n o t die for the p lo t.”98 H e m ay have been right, since w h a t­ ever inclinations the king m ight otherw ise have had to w ard offering H o l­ loway a p a rd o n w ould alm ost certainly have been dispelled on reading his paper and realizing th a t he had been secretly taking steps to ensure its dissem ination am ong the public. This o ther paper addressed to the king boldly challenged the entire thrust o f T ory pro p ag an d a over the p ast three years, according to w hich the W higs had been losing credibility a t such a rate th at by the beginning of 1683 their tide of p o pularity w as spent, w hile a newly enlightened public w as eagerly flocking to the king’s support. The paper is a fascinat­ ing docum ent in w hich, long before public opinion polls came into exis­ tence, H ollow ay analyzes “the opinion o f m ost o f your subjects concern­ ing late proceedings” ; carefully distinguishes five persuasions, and then estimates, on the basis of personal observation rath er than a canvas, the p ro portion of the p opulation w ho subscribed to each of the m ajor opp o s­ ing views a t the tim e he fled the country in the sum m er of 1683. Those sharing the first three opinions, “w ho all agree in the m ain th a t there was and is now m ore th an ever a design [by the court] for arb itrary govern­ m ent and P opery,” constitute “ m ore th a n four parts of the n a tio n ,” i.e., over 80 percent. Those w ho “ pretend to believe as the C o u rt believes, at least will act as those w ho carry the greatest sway at C o u rt will have them ,” m ake up “n o t near the fifth, I think I m ay say n o t the ten th p a rt of the subjects, though they m ake such a noise w ith addresses,” i.e., less than 10 percent. A th ird category consists of the rem ainder, am ounting to some 10 percent, w ho “ do n o t care w h at is done, w ho is king, w h a t gov­ ernm ent they live under n o r w hat religion they are of, provided they can go on quietly w ith their trades, ploughs, etc.,” an d w ho w ould ap p ear in a m odern poll under the heading of “N o O p in io n .”99 It is easy to imagine the king’s reaction to this docum ent carefully dis­ crim inating the views o f the first three groups, supposedly constituting 80 percent of his subjects: those w ho believed th a t the king w as his b ro th e r’s catspaw , playing the role o f M on m o u th , as it w ere, to the duke of Y ork’s Shaftesbury; those w ho believed th a t the brothers w ere acting in equal partnership in laying their schemes against English liberties; and those w ho were convinced th a t Charles w as the prim e m over w ho h a d been prom oting a rb itrary governm ent since a t least the tim e of the Second D utch W ar and the Fire of L ondon. H ollow ay’s estim ates, the p ro d u ct of wishful thinking, greatly exaggerated the p ro p o rtio n of those w ho still distrusted the king. But had he succeeded in circulating his paper as he had intended, he could have provoked an unw elcom e debate over T ory claims a b o u t the near unanim ity o f public su p p o rt for the governm ent.

U nder the circum stances, the king w o u ld n o t have been inspired to go out o f his w ay to save the life o f one w h o had arrived in E ngland already a condem ned outlaw . H ollow ay w as n o t pard o n ed , but he did get the last w o rd , a n d in a m ost public m anner. O n 30 A pril he w as d raw n to T y b u rn , w here he was able to play the last o f his duplicitous perform ances before a large and attentive audience. L’Estrange w as later to com plain in the O bservator w ith som e bitterness a b o u t the strange— th o u g h by this tim e surely not unexpected— discrepancy betw een the w ritten an d oral p a rts o f th a t p ro ­ duction. A bout the form er the governm ent could be fairly confident. The contents of H o llo w ay ’s confession o r “ n a rra tiv e ” a n d o f his petition to the king w ere of course already k n o w n to them , and w hile the officials had no advance know ledge o f the contents of a p a p e r he delivered to the sheriffs on the scaffold, this proved to be for the m ost p a rt in n o cu o u s.100 “ I look upon his Paper to the Sh eriffs,” O b serv ato r declared, to be much at One with his Narrative to his Majesty. Which Narrative, together with his Petition, were written I suppose, in a Prospect of some Possibility of Pardon. But his Discourse at the Place of Execution, falls most Uncharitably Foul upon the Government, for a man in his Condition. . . . For he Charges a great deal more upon the Government at his Death, then he takes upon Himself. . . . . . . And Represents the King much more Criminal toward the People, then the Pris’ner toward the Government.101 T his “discourse,” w hich occupied eight colum ns in the published ver­ sion and, w ith its speech tags an d rapidly alternating dialogue, exactly resem bled a printed play, w as actually a spontaneous exchange betw een the condem ned m an and his three surprised interlocutors, consisting of Sheriffs D aniel an d D ashw ood a n d the keeper of N ew gate, C aptain Rich­ ardson. H ollow ay began by asking liberty “ to speak w h a t I desire to sp e ak ,” w hich w as quickly granted him on the assum ption th a t w h a t he had to say w ould “ be by w ay o f D iscovery to the W o rld o f w h a t you are b ro u g h t here to dye for. ” T he officials w ere soon disabused b u t they kept th eir prom ise, and, although they challenged m any o f H o llow ay’s accusa­ tions and p rotested a t tim es th a t “ this is n o t fit” o r “this is reflecting upon the G o v ern m en t,” they m ade no atte m p t to silence him . H o llow ay’s discourse w as in large p a rt a privileged rehearsal of stock W hig charges against the governm ent w hich by this date could seldom be heard in public. H e adm itted once again th a t, besides the assassination p lo t forw arded by W est and Rum sey according to his acco u n t, there had been a schem e for a general insurrection in w hich he h a d been involved him self, b u t he blam ed the governm ent for driving w ell-m eaning Protes­ tan ts to such a desperate course. “T here w as a dam nable Popish Plot, and

I look upon the stifling of T hat to be the only Cause that any man did any thing in This.” Finding “th at all ways were used against Protestants; sev­ eral Sham-Plots; but no justice could be had against Papists,” men were driven at last to take m atters into their own hands. “It was feared that Arbitrary Government and Popery was designed, and truly I think at this present time by w hat I can understand, th at there is little better designed.” While Holloway conceded th at Charles was not aware of the extent to which “things have been ill managed in England” and to which “many things have been done contrary to Law ,” he turned the king’s refusal of a pardon to his disadvantage and used it to suggest an affinity between the king’s unforgiving nature and the arbitrary government th at suited his inflexible temperam ent even if he was not actively engaged in introducing tyranny. “If T ruth and Plainness would have merited a Pardon, I might have had it,” but obviously such qualities passed for nothing with the one man who could have granted such a boon. M ore ominously, “I thought that if any good had been designed for England, th at I had done enough to merit a Pardon, for I had W rote so much of Truth, and was so fair and plain in it, that I thought it would have merited a Pardon, if any good were designed.” The conclusion about the king’s real designs for England could be left to the imagination. Potentially even more damaging was H ollow ay’s parting advice to the king: “T hat his Majesty would be pleased to call a Parliament, and pass an Act of Oblivion for all Plotters w hatsoever.” This oblique reminder of the king’s violation of the Triennial Act for the past m onth probably ap­ peared less mischievous to the officials than the other part of his sugges­ tion, repeated later in more menacing terms: “I wish the King w ould con­ sult his own Safety, and the Safety of the N ation; and that an Act of Oblivion might pass, for I believe there are many Concerned.” 102 Thomas W alcot had begun his own, far more penitential, speech at Tyburn the previous July by referring to similar advice he had offered Charles in person: “I told the King . . . I thought an Act of Indulgence would be very necessary, because he had a great many men to take Judg­ ment of.” He had ended his speech by fervently repeating his plea: And I do m ost heartily desire, and my earnest Prayer to the Almighty is, That this may be the last Bloud spilt upon this account. I know Acts of Indulgence and Mercy in the King would make him much easier in his Government, and would make his People sit much easier under it; and that the Lord may encline his heart to Mercy, ought to be the Prayer of every good man. . . . I have not more to say, Mr. Sheriff: but truly you will do an act of a great deal o f Charity, if you will prevail with the King for an Act o f Indulgence and Lib­ erty to his People; I think so: and so the Lord have mercy upon me.103

The suggestion th a t by n a tu re the king w as n o t p ro n e to m ercy was certainly p lan ted by this earlier speech, a n d w o u ld have been confirm ed a few m o n th s late r w hen the shedding o f Sidney’s blood p ro v ed th a t the L o rd h ad still n o t succeeded in inclining C harles’s h e a rt to mercy. But W a lc o t’s call for an A ct o f Indulgence a ttrac ted little notice a t a tim e w h en the Rye H ouse Plot h ad only recently been discovered, the public w as still in a state of shock over its disclosure, a n d dem ands fo r the rig o r­ ous pro secu tio n o f the p e rp e tra to rs w ere still com m on. T he pu b lic’s craving for justice is short-lived in every age, how ever, an d by the spring o f 1684 the call for an A ct of O blivion m ight be listened to m ore readily. A public th a t in the m eantim e had g ro w n accustom ed to hearing the k in g ’s p rovidential escape described as a second resto ratio n m ight be p ersu ad ed th a t the A ct o f O blivion accom panying the first resto ­ ra tio n o u g h t to be repeated on the occasion o f the second. A n A ct of O blivion, fu th erm o re, carried a very different c o n n o ta tio n in the spring of 1684 from w h a t it h a d im plied the previous sum m er w hen the prisons w ere new ly filled w ith dozens of accused persons, m o st of w h o m the governm ent itself w o u ld see fit to set a t liberty before m any m o n th s had passed. By this tim e, th e only rem aining plo tters to w h o m an A ct o f O b livion w o u ld apply w ere the dozen or so Rye H ouse co n sp ira­ to rs w ho had fled a b ro a d the previous year, m o st o f them to H o llan d , and w h o , like H ollow ay, h a d incurred O utlaw ry by w hich they faced certain d eath if they w ere ever to retu rn to E ngland. T o m any m em bers o f the governm ent as well as its su p p o rters this w as a fo rtu n a te solu tio n to the recu rren t th re a t to its stability posed in recent years by som e of the m ost d angerous an d incorrigible o f its o p ponents: m en like Ferguson, Grey, a n d th e tw o G oodenoughs, w h o w ere n o w in v o lu n tary exile, rendered harm less as long as they rem ained there, yet incapable of ever retu rn in g in safety. As a T o ry verse b ro ad sid e in Ja n u a ry 1684 show ed one such exile lam enting in a letter from A m sterdam , Yet do I wish to live, and see once more Britains chief seat, but dare not venture o’re, Though I am tyr’d with this detested Shore.104 T he governm ent a n d its su p p o rters could n o t fail to be alarm ed a t the p rospect of a g ro u n d swell of public su p p o rt for an A ct of O blivion th a t m ight signal the m ass re tu rn of this b a n d o f exiles, eager to tak e up their schem ing an d a g ita tio n w here they h a d left off. Som e m easure o f the c o u rt’s concern over the possible effects o f H o l­ lo w ay ’s farew ell perform ance a n d o f the inevitable prin ted version th a t follow ed shortly afterw ard s is provided by the m ajo r offensive L’Estrange m o u n ted in the O b serva to r, w here he began by devoting five consecutive issues to the subject in late M ay, alm ost as so o n as the p rin te d version

appeared.105 This initial series is about equally divided between attempts to refute Holloway’s accusations against the government and efforts to offset the possible attractions of his call for a general amnesty. “If an Act of Oblivion would have done the w ork,” Observator brusquely declares, “the Safety of the King and Kingdom had been provided for, over and over, many a Fair Day ago: But the State has found, by Experience, that One Execution works wore, upon This sort of People, then Twenty Acts o f Grace. Beside, . . . To Grant an Oblivion, because the Offenders are Many·, would make it an Act of Fear, not of Mercy; and Consequently, a Concession, both Dishonourable, and Dangerous.5,106 But such bluff dismissals of Holloway’s appeal for an act of oblivion, coupled with tactless reminders that Walcot’s earlier suggestion had also been ignored, were unlikely to dispel any lingering impression of the king’s obduracy, and L’Estrange, apparently sensing that he had not laid Holloway’s ghost, kept returning to him intermittently over the next two months, bringing his obsessive attack to a close with two successive issues of the Observator on 19 and 21 July. The latter also carried Tonson’s long-awaited announcement that Dryden’s translation of The History o f the League would be published “at the Latter End of This Week.”107

Although Dryden had written nearly a score of dedications by 1684, The History o f the League was the only one of his works to be dedicated to the king. It offered him a unique opportunity, therefore, of publicly address­ ing Charles in prose, and he made full use of it. Holloway, a condemned traitor, had petitioned the king for a pardon and urged him to extend an amnesty to the other Rye House conspirators as well. Dryden, while never so much as mentioning Holloway’s case, petitions the king to discontinue the general policy of indulgence toward the Rye House conspirators he had adopted upon the first discovery of the plot, now that “Pardons are grown dangerous to Your Safety, and consequently to the Welfare of Your Loyal Subjects,” for whom Dryden claims to be acting as spokesman. This, Sir, is the general voice of all true Englishmen·, I might call it the Loyal Address o f three Nations infinitely solicitous of Your Safety, which includes their ow n Prosperity. ’Tis indeed an high presumption for a man so inconsider­ able as I am to present it, but Zeal, and dutifull Affection in an Affair of this Importance, will make every good Subject a Counsellor: ’Tis {in my Opinion) the Test of Loyalty, and to be either a Friend or Foe to the Government, needs no other distinction than to declare at this time, either for Remisness, or Justice

(p. 4).

The present situation w hereby only a foe to the governm ent could wish to see the continuation of a policy th a t all loyal Englishmen have come to deplore is due to the unforeseen effects of indulgence. W hereas forgive­ ness is m eant to recognize repentance and encourage reform ation, the royal policy, now a year old, of granting pardons to the Rye H ouse con­ spirators in return for their confessions, under w hich H ollow ay came to expect a pardon in his ow n case, has had just the opposite effect on their confederates. “But frequent forgiveness is their Encouragem ent, they have the Sanctuary in their Eye before they attem pt the Crime, and take all measures of Security, either not to need a Pardon, if they strike the Blow, or to have it granted if they fail: U pon the whole m atter Y our M aj­ esty is not upon equal Terms w ith them , You are still forgiving, and they still designing against Y our Sacred Life; Your principle is M ercy, theirs inveterate M alice” (p. 3). While the policy of offering a general amnesty to the Rye H ouse conspirators has n o t yet been tried, the likelihood, am ounting to a near certainty, th a t this w ould lead to the same dangerous consequences as the granting of individual pardons is suggested by the results of this policy “ at Y our M ajesty’s happy R estau ratio n ,” when “the Amnesty you gave, p roduc’d n o t all the desir’d Effects” (p. 5). For as D ryden explains a little earlier, If the Experiment o f Clemency were new, if it had not been often try’d w ithout Effect, or rather with Effects quite contrary to the intentions o f Your G oodness, your Loyal Subjects are generous enough to pity their Countrey-men, though Offenders: But when that pity has been always found to draw into exam ple of greater M isch iefs;. . . Ingratitude so far from being Converted by gentle means, that it is turn’d at last into the nature o f the dam n’d, desirous o f Revenge, and harden’d in Impenitence; ’Tis time at length, for self preservation to cry out for Justice, and to lay by M ildness w hen it ceases to be a Vertue (p. 4).

By attributing exclusive responsibility for the pardons to the king, w hom he portrays as m otivated solely by “Y our natural Clemency,” “Y our Fatherly Indulgence,” and “th at Treasury of M ercy which is w ithin Y our Royal Breast,” D ryden greatly simplifies both the govern­ m ental authority w ith which the pardons originated and the considera­ tions th at led to their being granted. These were far m ore com plex and less altruistic than he intimates. H ollow ay was by no means the first Rye H ouse conspirator to confess his p a rt in the plot w ithout receiving a pardon. Russell and Sidney, who died protesting their innocence, and Blague, w ho w on acquittal at his trial, did not, of course, at any tim e adm it to prior knowledge of the plot. But W alcot, H one, and Rouse all confessed their guilt to governm ent offi­ cials fully and at length as soon as they were captured and exam ined, only to find themselves p u t on trial, convicted, and executed.108 W ith such an

array of witnesses appearing against them , it m attered little th at the gov­ ernm ent m agnanim ously declined to introduce their confessions as evi­ dence before the court. A t no tim e follow ing the first discovery of the Rye H ouse Plot were pardons offered as a m atter o f course to all voluntary inform ers, as had been the case w ith the Popish Plot, w hen the king routinely granted such pardons under pressure from Parliam ent and the p u blic.109 Josiah Keel­ ing, it is true, w ho first revealed the existence o f the p lot to startled gov­ ernm ent officials, was treated in the trad itio n al fashion and given not only a p ard o n but a rew ard of £500 and a pension.110 But thereafter the governm ent grew m ore circum spect. W est and Rum sey, w hose testim ony at the trials of their fellow conspirators was to carry so m uch weight, both began by approaching governm ent officials w ith an offer to confess in return for the prom ise of a p ardon. Each w as firm ly rebuffed and told th a t the governm ent was n o t prepared to m ake term s w ith the conspira­ tors, but th a t the king w ould deal w ith their individual cases thereafter as they deserved.111 The same policy w as adopted to w ard the others w ho cam e in voluntarily or were captured in late June and July 1683 and w ho, like W est and Rum sey, agreed in the end to confess w ith o u t conditions and to th ro w themselves on the k ing’s mercy. U nder these circum stances, those w ho acknow ledged their guilt found themselves on an equal footing a t first, all of them ignorant of their fates, w hich had n o t yet been decided. For over a w eek before the trials of July 1683 began, the Privy Council, w ith the king in attendance, m et daily. D epositions w ere read and discussed, their au th o rs produced for diligent exam ination, and confrontations arranged in w hich pairs of deponents w ould be brought face to face before the council in hopes of uncovering discrepancies in their accounts.112 W ith their lives hanging in the balance, the culprits m ust com pete w ith each other to win the tru st of the king and council. These w ere eager to learn as m uch as possible ab o u t the nature and extent of the p lo t and to ensure th a t it had been effectively disabled; but they w ere also bent on choosing witnesses w hose testim ony at the trials w ould b o th convict the defendants and persuade the public beyond any d oubt th at the Rye H ouse Plot was a genuine conspiracy. As late as 10 July, tw o days before the trials w ere to begin, W est was still protesting his veracity in an agony o f d o u b t as to w hether his role w ould be th at of witness or defendant, while the council debated his fate.113 O n the other hand, Rouse w ent on clinging to hope th at his life m ight be spared until 9 July, w hen the Council finally decided to cast him as one of the “exam ­ ples” w ho m ust stand trial for treaso n .114 Even after the conclusion o f the trials w hen the usefulness of the witnesses w as at an end, only Shepherd and Lord H o w ard were actually issued pardons, w hile the others, only som e o f w hom were ever called to testify, w ere bailed or discharged by

the end o f term along w ith the o th e r rem aining culprits, or, in the case of W est a n d R um sey, p aro led in the custody of m essengers w h o w ere still acting as th eir w ard ers the follow ing year.115 By ig n o rin g the role o f the Privy C ouncil in these decisions as w ell as the p ru d en tial co n sid eratio n s th a t influenced them , D ryden creates the im pression th a t the “p a rd o n s ” o riginated solely w ith th e ten d erh earted king, acting on his o w n responsibility and a g ain st th e better ju d g m en t of his advisers. T he recent denial o f a p a rd o n to H o llo w ay , the rea d e r is left to infer, m ust have been a t the m ore successful su it of these sam e advisers, an d as an exception to the k in g ’s co n tin u in g policy o f indulgence to w a rd th e c o n sp irato rs. In this w ay D ryden deflects accusations o f rig o r from the m ild -n atu red king, heedless o f his o w n safety, to his m ore p ru d en t “ C o u n sello rs,” am ong w h o m he w illingly n um bers him self, loyal sub­ jects w ho m u st persuade their m o n a rc h to set aside his n a tu ra l feelings an d replace m ildness w ith justice fo r the sake of self preservation. This tactic is sim ilar to the one D ryden had used in A b sa lo m a n d A chitophel, of course, w here w e are to ld th a t D a v id ’s advisers, “ a sm all but faithful B and / O f W o rth ie s,” shew ’d the King the danger o f the W ound: That no C oncessions from the Throne w oud please, But Lenitives fom ented the Disease. ( 924 - 2 6 )

In his “ D e d ic atio n ,” D ryden retu rn s to this earlier occasion on w h ich the king h a d heeded the advice o f his counselors to the benefit o f him self and his subjects, rem inding C harles of “ Y our D eclaratio n , after the D issolu­ tio n of the last P arliam ent, w hich p u t an end to the A rb itra ry E n cro ach ­ m ents o f a P o p u lar F a c tio n ” th a t h a d th re a te n e d th e very survival o f his governm ent. Since which time it has pleas’d Almighty God so to prosper Your Affairs, that w ithout searching into the secrets o f Divine Providence, ’tis evident Your M ag­ nanim ity and R esolution, next under him, have been the immediate Cause of Your Safety and our present Happiness: By weathering of which Storm, may I presume to say it w ithout Flattery, You have perform’d a Greater and more Glorious work than all the Conquests o f Your Neighbours. . . . T o Govern a Kingdom which was either possess’d, or turn’d into a B edlam , and yet in the midst of ruine to stand firm, undaunted, and resolv’d, and at last to break through all these difficulties, and dispell them, this is indeed an Action which is w orthy the Grandson o f H enry the Great (p. 6).

But the firm ness an d resolution C harles h ad a d o p te d three years earlier have p roved to be no m ore th a n a tem p o rary m easure, succeeded since the discovery o f the Rye H ouse P lot by a re tu rn o f the k in g ’s in h eren t m ild-

ness. D ryden’s language, in fact, draw s an explicit contrast betw een C harles’s earlier behavior, in w hich he “contended w ith Y our natural Clemency to m ake some Exam ples of Y our Justice” (p. 6), this proving to be “the im m ediate Cause of Y our Safety and our present H appiness,” and the “ unseasonable” renew al of “ Y our R oyal Clem ency” in recent m onths, w hereby “ Pardons are grow n dangerous to Y our Safety, and consequently to the W elfare of Y our Loyal Subjects” (p. 3). Indeed, the king’s present policy threatens to undo the heroic achievem ents th a t had led D ryden and the governm ent’s other supporters in recent years to cele­ brate Charles as the n a tio n ’s savior: “ But by how m uch the m ore You have been willing to spare them , by so m uch has their Im pudence in­ creas’d, and if by this M ildness they recover from the G reat Frost, w hich has alm ost blasted them to the roots, if these venem ous plants shoot o ut again, it will be a sad C om fort to say they have been ungratefull, w hen ’tis Evident to M ankind th a t Ingratitude is their N a tu re ” (pp. 6—7). The earlier situation had been one in w hich, under the ordinary opera­ tions of com m on Providence, the king’s ow n efforts were “the im m ediate C ause” of the n a tio n ’s recovery. But since the m iraculous intervention of special Providence a t the tim e of the Rye H ouse Plot, D ryden im plies, the king has resum ed a less active role, in w hich “ Fatherly Indulgence” has replaced the vigorous exercise of exem plary justice. Almighty God has hitherto M iraculously preserv’d You; but who knows how long the Miracle will continue? His Ordinary Operations are by second Causes, and then Reason will conclude that to be preserv’d, we ought to use the lawfull means of preservation. If on the other side it be thus Argu’d, that of many Attempts one may possibly take place, if preventing Justice be not em­ ploy’d against Offenders; W hat remains but that we implore the Divine Assistance to Avert that Judgment: which is no more than to desire of God to work another, and another, and in Conclusion a whole Series of Miracles? (P·

4)

D ryden argues th a t we have no right to depend on special Providence to rem edy our ow n lack of prudence, and th a t such occasional m iracles m ust n o t be m ade the excuse for relaxing hum an exertion. Far from re­ flecting a skeptical attitude to w a rd the doctrine of Providence, his argu­ m ent expresses a long fam iliar w arning against perm itting providential interventions to encourage presum ption. A rchbishop Sancroft, preaching before the H ouse o f Lords on the preceding occasion w hen Providence had come to the rescue of Charles II, the “discovery” of the Popish Plot, pointed out th a t in the Age o f Miracles indeed, . . . well might the watch-word be, Stand still and see the Salvation o f God; The L ord shall fight for you, and ye shall do

nothing. But the season is chang’d, and ’tis n ow , C om e forth, an d help the Lord against the M ighty. . . . W e must not presume to use our Lord, as H erod did; call for him, when we please, to W ork us a fine Miracle; neglect our Affairs, and leave them embroyl’d, and ruffled on purpose, that he may com e dow n ap o m ekhanes [ex machina], to disentangle them. . . . . . . They trust not in G od, they presume, and tem pt him , w ho work not together w ith him, but receive his Aids in vain, and look, that H e should bring about in extraordinary manner, w hat they take no care o f themselves; but lie flat upon their Backs looking upward, and w ill stir neither H and, nor Foot, to help them selves. 116

At the time of the thanksgiving service for the king’s m iraculous escape from assassination at the Rye H ouse, preachers had likewise cautioned the governm ent against relaxing its vigilance. John Cave, for exam ple, assured his congregation th a t “G od by this Deliverance, hath told our King, and his Magistrates, as by a Voice from H eaven, how m uch it con­ cerns them to keep a watchful Eye, and a strict H and, upon M en of such lewd, loose, and dangerous Principles; to m ark their M otions, observe their Tendencies, and by prudent and timely Restraints, to curb the first stirrings of Rebellion.” But he also assumed th at the king and his magis­ trates were harking to th a t voice, and th a t loyal subjects need fear no further dangers, since from the miscarriage o f this Attem pt, we may conceive som e good reason to hope, that the W orkers o f Iniqu ity are already fallen, and are so cast d o w n , that they shall n o t be able to rise. . . . W e have reason to hope, that G o d w h o hath graciously delivered the Soul o f our King from this D eath , also hath now delivered his feet from falling; that he hath not only stilled the Raging o f the Sea, the N oise o f the W aves, the Tum ults o f the People; but thereby brought our Soveraign into his Haven: And that the W inds and Storms which so lately shook and threatned our R o ya l O a k , have only setled it, and given it a surer and firmer rooting; and that our Government stands upon a more stable and durable Basis than heretofore, if God so please.117

T h at feeling of euphoria at the n atio n ’s providential delivery had been nearly universal at the time of the Rye H ouse Plot’s discovery, but Dryden, writing a year later, encourages a very different m ood. To m easure the distance th a t D ryden’s rhetoric had moved in the space of the tw o or three years th a t separate The M edall and The D u ke o f Guise from The H istory o f the League, we need only recall th at earlier time. In 1682 and early 1683, a t a time when some Tory spokesmen were raising alarm s over the projected Association th a t had never actually material-

ized, Dryden, along with the author of Heraclitus Ridens, sought to calm those fears and to assure the public that the danger was past. In the spe­ cial prologue to Venice Preserv’d he wrote for the performance of O tw ay’s play on 31 M ay 1682, at which the duchess of York made her first public appearance since returning from Scotland, Dryden predicted to the audience at Dorset Garden that D istem per’d Z eal, Sedition, canker’d H ate, N o m ore shall vex the Church, and tear the State; N o m ore shall Faction civil D iscords m ove, Or onely discords o f to o tender lo v e.118

And as late as April 1683 he was affirming in his Vindication o f “The D uke o f Guise” that in putting the Whigs to flight at Oxford two years earlier the king had “not only preserv’d our present quiet, but secur’d the Peace of our Posterity” (p. 35). But that was tw o months before the discovery of the Rye House Plot. N ow in June or July 1684, in his “Dedication,” Dryden changes his tack completely, warning the king: I look not on the Storm as O verblow n. 'Tis still a gusty kind o f W eather: there is a kind o f Sickness in the Air; it seem s indeed to be clear’d up for som e few hours; but the W ind still blow ing from the sam e Corner; and w hen n ew matter is gather’d into a body, it w ill n ot fail to bring it round and pour upon us a second Tempest. I shall be glad to be found a false Prophet; but he w as certainly Inspir’d, w h o w hen he saw a little C loud arising from the Sea, and that no bigger than a hand, gave im m ediate notice to the King, that he m ight m ount the Chariot, before he w as overtaken by the Storm (pp. 4 —5).

The immediate purpose of this alarmist rhetoric is of course to per­ suade the public that in such perilous times it would be folly for the king, who already “stands expos’d by his too much Mercy to the unwearied and endless Conspiracies of Parricides” (p. 5), to grant a general amnesty, inviting the most dangerous of the Rye House conspirators to return from exile. But D ryden’s ominous tone here serves a wider purpose as well. His adm onition in the “Dedication to the King” to “lay by M ildness” and administer “preventing Justice” to the conspirators who stand ready to “pour upon us a second Tempest” accords exactly with his call in the “Postscript of the T ranslator” for “severity” tow ard the Sectaries, who, “tho’ now their claws are p ar’d ,” may “grow again to be more sharp” (p. 405). It is a note th at L’Estrange had never stopped sounding in the Observator, but which Dryden would only come to adopt in the afterm ath of the Rye House Plot. It is characteristic of such rhetoric to hint at grounds for alarm that are never specified. The very absence of civil commotion, oddly enough, be-

comes a portent of approaching peril. In the “P ostscript,” as we noticed earlier, D ryden intim ates th a t the W higs’ quiescence may prove to be a time of convalescence and reorganization from which they will emerge stronger than ever. L’Estrange, writing in the O bservator during this same period at the end of June 1684, suggests through his spokesm an that the suppression o f overt sedition has simply made w ay for m ore insidious threats to the kingdom : “The King, and the Church have several sorts of Enem ies·,. . . and those Enemies, are either O pen, or Secret: T hereafter as they find Themselves, Stronger, or Weaker. W hen they see they cannot Carry it by Battery, or Assault·, they fall to Mining; And while O ne Part of them is at w ork U nder-Ground, there’s A nother Part is Em ploy’d to Spy upon us; Creeps into the T ow n, and m akes an Interest w ithin the W a llsT 1i9 In any case, and from w hatever quarter, the enemies o f the state are already regrouping and preparing for a new assault in which they m ay well prove stronger than before, cleverly learning from their earlier mistakes. This new rhetoric of suspicion and fear is obviously designed to sup­ port the governm ent’s escalating consolidation of pow er, which a contin­ uation o f the earlier propaganda could only discredit. The king’s policy of dissolving four parliam ents in tw enty-six m onths had been justified in 1681 as a response to a grave emergency, a pro tem pore m easure whose wisdom was proved by the result: the king had thereby saved the nation from anarchy, and, as the loyal addresses testified, his subjects had aw ak ­ ened at last to the snares from which he had rescued them. But three years had now passed since that time and, if the emergency had ceased, the justification for these o r any other extraordinary measures on the p a rt of the governm ent no longer existed. Yet borough corporations w ent on forfeiting their charters through quo w arran to proceedings, conventicles up and dow n the land were being dispersed week after week, and the king gave no sign of intending to sum m on another parliam ent in spite of the fair w ords in H is Majesties Declaration a t the time of the O xford dissolu­ tion. Clearly the governm ent’s defenders needed to change their tack. H enceforth the nation w ould be pictured as existing in a continuing state of crisis whose end could n o t be predicted and therefore ought n o t to be expected. Consequently the saving of the nation through emergency m ea­ sures m ust no longer be presented as a finite action, confined to a p articu­ lar place and time— O xford in M arch 1681— and producing a perm anent settlem ent th a t w ould shortly allow a return to norm al conditions as they existed before the Exclusion Crisis. Instead, the saving of the nation be­ came an ongoing activity by a governm ent that, in the face o f an indefinite state of emergency, m ust constantly ad o p t sterner measures to meet fresh threats from its tireless enemies and to safeguard its endlessly beleaguered people.

The note of urgency in D ryden’s “ D edication to the King” enhances the im pression of continuing crisis, as does the fervor of his plea for less mercy and greater severity to w a rd the n a tio n ’s enemies. But it is hardly the cri de coeur th a t W ard hears from a D ryden “ irrita te d ” by C harles’s clemency. The “ p a rd o n s” D ryden professes to deplore w ere, as he surely realized, m otivated by reasons of state and granted w ith the advice and consent of those very counselors he portrays as dism ayed by the king’s im prudent exercise of forgiveness. Furtherm ore, those “p a rd o n s” were hardly evidence o f an ongoing policy of indulgence to w a rd the Rye H ouse conspirators, since they were now a year old and had been follow ed by no sequels, either in H o llow ay’s case or in th a t of another culprit w hose fate w as being decided even as D ryden w orked on his “P ostscript” and “D edication” for T he H istory o f the League. In M ay 1684 Sir T hom as A rm strong, one o f the fugitive m em bers of the “ Council of State” originally responsible for planning the Rye H ouse Plot, was arrested in Leiden and, w ith the acquiescence of the D utch au ­ thorities, b rought back to England. Like H ollow ay, he had been indicted for treason on 12 July 1683, and, by fleeing abroad instead o f appearing to answ er the charges in his indictm ent, had incurred outlaw ry, w ith the result th a t he stood attainted of high treason w ith o u t benefit of trial. B rought before the C o u rt o f K ing’s Bench on 14 June, A rm strong de­ m anded a trial, arguing th a t under a statute of E dw ard VI he had reversed his outlaw ry by yielding him self w ithin a year’s tim e, and protesting th a t H ollow ay had been offered a trial under sim ilar circum stances. His plea was brusquely denied on the grounds th a t he had n o t yielded him self voluntarily, and th at H ollow ay had been offered a trial n o t as a right but as a grace and m ercy of the king, w ho did n o t choose to extend A rm ­ strong the same favor. The lord chief justice thereupon aw arded execu­ tion upon his attainder and on 20 June A rm strong w as draw n to T yburn, w here he delivered a paper to the sheriffs in w hich he protested his in n o ­ cence and denied any know ledge o f the plot, bitterly com plaining a t his treatm ent before the bench, w here he had been “ denied the Laws o f the L and.” 120 T he paper w as published along w ith the proceedings early in July and attracted w idespread a tte n tio n .121 The issues raised by A rm strong’s case w ere entirely different from H o l­ low ay’s, o f course. Since he denied his guilt, he was in no position to seek a pardon, and he never raised the subject of a general amnesty. But m any o f the public were shocked at the handling of A rm strong’s case and be­ lieved th a t he had been treated w ith unprecedented rigor in being denied due process. So w idespread was the indignation th a t the governm ent, re­ luctant to prolong public discussion of the m atter, took the unusual step o f quietly forbidding its propagandists to publish any o f the usual “ reflec-

tions” on the paper Arm strong had delivered to the sheriffs, and L’Estrange, with rare self-denial, refrained from any com m ent on the subject in the O bservator.122 If D ryden’s vigorous protest in his “ Dedication to the King” against continued indulgence tow ard the Rye H ouse conspirators creates a fiction that glosses over the facts, his argum ent th a t rigor is essential to the sur­ vival of king and country becomes an oblique vindication of the govern­ m ent’s actual policy. By ostensibly advising the king to ad o p t a course he is already em barked upon and can be expected to continue to pursue in the future, Dryden implicitly justifies Charles’s behavior to the reading public who make up the actual audience he is seeking to persuade.123

Just as D ryden’s translation of The H istory o f the League w ith its “Post­ script of the T ranslato r” and “Dedication to the K ing” harks back to the second phase of the cam paign of 1683—the public disclosure of the plot against the governm ent through the trials, confessions, and executions of the conspirators in July of th a t year— A lbion and Albanius draw s its in­ spiration from the third phase of th at campaign— the celebration of the king’s providential deliverance solemnized in the day of public thanksgiv­ ing on 9 September 1683. Thus D ryden’s last tw o w orks of propaganda in Charles’s service com plement each other by dealing w ith the Rye H ouse Plot in tw o separate dimensions: one natural, the other super­ natural. The fact that Albion and Albanius, no less than The H istory o f the League, is p art of the propaganda offensive first launched in the summer of 1683 has been obscured by the circumstances of its com position. Begun and in large part w ritten before The H istory o f the League, D ry­ den’s opera did no t reach the stage or appear in print until alm ost a year after his translation of M aim bourg was published, by which time the campaign for which it was w ritten had already come to an end. In the preface to Albion and Albanius, first published in June 1685, Dryden traces the genesis of his opera: “ It was Originally intended only for a Prologue to a Play. . . . But some intervening accidents having hith­ erto deferr’d the performance of the main design, I propos’d to the Ac­ tors, to turn the intended Prologue into an Entertainm ent by it self, as you now see it, by adding tw o acts more to w hat I had already W ritten.” 124 He w ould later identify the “play” as his semiopera King A rthur (whose per­ formance continued to be deferred until 1691), indicating the year of this twin birth as 1684.125 Presumably Dryden had been at w ork writing King A rthur and turning its “intended Prologue into an Entertainm ent by it self” in the early months of th a t year before the king interposed his com-

mands to translate M aim bourg. For in a letter to Tonson in the late sum­ mer of 1684, shortly after his translation of The History o f the League was published, Dryden reveals that only one act of King Arthur still re­ mains to be written, while he has finished Albion and Albanius and is anxious to know “ whether the Dukes house [Dorset Garden] are makeing cloaths Sc putting things in a readiness” so th at it can “ be playd im ­ mediately after M ichaelmasse.” 126 But Albion and Albanius was not ready to be performed after M ichael­ mas, and although Charles was “pleas’d twice or thrice to com m and, that it shou’d be practis’d, before him, especially the first and third Acts,” in rehearsal, its public performance continued to be delayed, perhaps be­ cause of the elaborate scenery and machines required for such a produc­ tion. A t last, Dryden relates, “it was all com pos’d [arranged], and was just ready to have been perform ’d when he, in H onor of w hom it was principally made, was taken from us.”527 W ith Charles’s death on 6 Feb­ ruary 1685 the theaters were immediately closed, and they remained shut until 27 April.128 As a result of this series of misfortunes, it was not until 3 June, some four m onths after James II had succeeded his brother, that the opera was finally seen at Dorset Garden. “It might reasonably have been expected,” Dryden observed, “th at [the king’s] D eath must have chang’d the whole Fabrick of the Opera·, or at least a great part of it. But the design of it Originally, was so happy, th at it needed no alteration, properly so call’d: for the addition of twenty or thirty lines, in the A pothe­ osis of A lbion, has made it entirely of a Piece. This was the only way which cou’d have been invented, to save it from a botch’d ending; and it fell luckily into my im agination.” 129 But if the design of the opera remained unaltered, the same could not be said of the political climate in which it had been written or the govern­ ment policies it had been designed to support. By the time Albion and Albanius finally opened at Dorset Garden, the new king’s coronation had taken place, elections to the House of Commons had been held for the first time in four years, and a new parliam ent had been sitting for six weeks. In yet another week M onm outh w ould land at Lyme Regis to begin the last and briefest of his ventures for the crown, quickly supplant­ ing in importance the earlier conspiracies in which he had been involved. In the light of these new circumstances accompanying its appearance, D ryden’s opera would later come to be seen in a very different light, as a retrospective tribute to the dead king where, in Scott’s words, “the lead­ ing incidents of the busy and intriguing reign of Charles II are successively introduced.” 130 In order to understand w hat Dryden’s opera is all about, however, we must return to the period in which it originated: the weeks immediately following the thanksgiving service of 9 September 1683. It was in this

same m onth that Thom as Betterton, dispatched to France on an operatic mission by the king, persuaded Louis G rabu, w ho w ould write the music for D ryden’s opera, to return w ith him to England, and it was probably during the autum n of 1683 th a t D ryden began w ork on the earliest ver­ sion of A lbion and Albanius, the one-act prologue to K ing A rth u r.131 It is invariably assumed in discussions of A lbion and Albanius that w hen Dryden speaks of “adding tw o acts m ore to w h at I had already W ritten” he means th at he appended them seriatim to the intended p ro ­ logue, which m ust have corresponded therefore to the first act of the present opera, referring to Charles’s restoration in 1660. O n the same assum ption, the tw o acts w ritten later are identified w ith the second and third acts of the present opera, referring to the Protestant Plot and its collapse when the assassination of the king was averted. But it is distinctly im probable th a t in the im mediate wake of the excitem ent over the Rye H ouse Plot D ryden w ould have reached back to the king’s restoration in 1660 to find a subject for his prologue. It is far m ore likely th a t the p ro ­ logue w ould have concerned the one topic of consuming interest in the autum n of 1683 (and for m any m onths afterw ards), the king’s providen­ tial deliverance a t N ew m arket. In th a t case, when Dryden speaks of “ad d ­ ing tw o acts m ore” he means th a t he expanded w hat he “ had already W ritten” (the present third act) by writing tw o additional acts to precede it, one representing the m iraculous R estoration, the other providing a transition between the tw o providential deliverances, thus producing “ an Entertainm ent by it self” that, he points out, “plainly represents the dou­ ble restoration of his Sacred M ajesty” (p. 11), the very keynote, as we have seen, of the solemn thanksgiving service on 9 September 1683. It is a mistake, therefore, to think of A lbion and Albanius as represent­ ing any “incidents” of Charles’s reign, m uch less all the leading ones, if this term is taken, as it usually is, to mean historical events in their natural dimension. D ryden’s opera translates several widely separated incidents into their supernatural dim ension and presents them from an unfam iliar perspective. This is why he considers the tw enty or thirty lines he later added to the third act such a lucky stroke of invention. To have repre­ sented Charles’s death or any other natural event w ould have created a jarring shift of perspective bringing the spectacle dow n to a lower plane, and producing the “ botch’d ending” he was striving to avoid. Only by transform ing the king’s death into an apotheosis, in w hich Charles is vis­ ibly translated to a higher sphere through divine agency, could D ryden m aintain a supernatural perspective consistent w ith the rest of the opera and make it “ entirely of a Piece.” As several critics have suggested in recent years, A lbion and Albanius is a hybrid form th a t owes at least as much to the early Stuart court m asque as to opera itself.132 In fact, D ryden found in both genres those

elements that served his purpose of bringing upon the stage visible em­ bodiments of things unseen. Opera suited his needs because, as he pointed out in his Preface, “the suppos’d Persons of this musical Drama, are gen­ erally supernatural,” and because its subject, “ being extended beyond the Limits of Humane N ature, admits of . . . marvellous and surprizing con­ duct” (p. 3). The same, he might have added, was true of the court masque, but in a form more specifically adapted to his needs, its supernat­ ural persons being allegorized divinities and personifications precisely suited to Albion and Albanius, since, as Dryden observed, “the Subject of it is wholly Allegorical” (p. 11). The theatrical components of his opera were also to be found just as readily in the court masque, “consisting largely of music, dancing, pageantry, and spectacular scenic effects,” as Stephen Orgel describes the latter genre. Finally, the subject of D ryden’s opera, representing “the double restoration of his Sacred M ajesty,” has obvious affinities with that of the court masque, which, Orgel observes, “is always about the resolution of discord; antitheses, paradoxes, and the movement from disorder to order are central to its nature.” 133 But if, like the court masque, Albion and Albanius is in a general sense about the resolution of discord, the means by which th at resolution is brought about in Dryden’s opera are entirely different and reflect an alto­ gether distinct purpose: the portrayal of the role of Providence in the king’s double restoration. To disregard the role of Providence in Albion and Albanius and to assume that it was written for the same purpose as the early Stuart court masques is to misunderstand Dryden’s opera com­ pletely. One recent critic, for example, observing that in the early Stuart period “masques are celebrations of political order,” that “the politics of the masque are heroic,” and that the hero celebrated in a masque is the king (who is “the power by which miracles are perform ed” ), reads Dry­ den’s text in the light of this heroic tradition and finds in his opera “the theme of the rescue and revival of Augusta, or London, by Albion and Albanius [Charles and his brother James].” 134 Another, who sees the opera as “Dryden’s deployment of traditional iconography in the cause of the restored Stuart monarchy, meeting the uncertainty of a new reign with a slightly strident assertion of kingly pow er,” severely criticizes Albion and Albanius as “an unsatisfactory w o rk ” because that assertion is never realized dramatically as it is in the early Stuart court masques. “ Charles as Albion moves through a play in which he is essentially passive in the face of the personified hostility of the London opposition. He does not act, either as a politician or as a monarch with kingly power and sacred aura, and there is little encompassing imagery to supplement the meaning of his role.” 135 But since Albion and Albanius, written not in the uncertainty of a new reign but in the apparent certainties of an old one, was never intended as

an assertion of kingly pow er, such criticism is beside the point. If we w ant to find D ryden celebrating Charles’s exercise of kingly pow er to save the nation, we can read Absalom and A ch ito p h el. A lbion and Albanius on the other hand is, for once, a dram atic w ork centrally concerned w ith Divine Providence, a subject m uch rarer in R estoration dram a than some recent critics would have us believe, but w hich, once adopted, excludes all claims for kingly pow er or any other hum an agency. In such a case, Dryden writes in his Preface, “H um ane Impossibilities, are to be receiv’d, as they are in Faith; because where Gods are introduc’d, a Supreme Power is to be understood; and second Causes are out of d o o rs” (p. 3). The Christian doctrine of Providence undergirds D ryden’s entire opera, in which “ a Supreme Power is to be understood,” although it never appears, and could not easily be m ade to appear w ithout irreverence. Instead, the allegorized pagan divinities D ryden borrow ed from the court masque are put to new uses as dram atic agents, messengers, m anifestations, and in­ fernal adversaries of the C hristian God w ho, under the nam e of Jove, invisibly orders, perm its, or nullifies the actions observed on stage. In such a scenario, these allegorized divinities are the only conceivable agents of change, while the terrestrial characters and personifications about w hom all this celestial and infernal traffic revolves— Albion and A lbanius as well as Augusta and Tham esis—-are by design represented as completely passive creatures, unable to move or act w ithout external prom pting from above o r below.

The intervention o f special Providence in hum an affairs is an inherently dram atic subject and naturally invites the use of dram aturgic imagery. Anglican clergymen delivering sermons on special Providence found it natural to resort to the imagery of the playhouse, and in dram atizing Charles’s tw o providential deliverances D ryden w as adopting the form m ost congenial to his materials. But the interventions o f special Provi­ dence were as varied as the crises th at provoked them , and C harles’s tw o deliverances were no exception. By exam ining the som ew hat different theatrical imagery applied in the p u lpit to the R estoration and to the kind of deliverance exemplified by the fire at N ew m arket we can better appre­ ciate D ryden’s distinct ways of dram atizing each of these m iraculous oc­ currences in A lbion and Albanius, bringing out differences between them as well as similarities. In a serm on m arking the anniversary of the R estoration, preached on 29 M ay 1684, George Hickes chose as his subject special Providence and the seven m arks or characters “w hereby we m ay know , w hen any Event is the Lords special doing, or an Effect of his Special Providence.” The

fifth indication of G od’s special Providence in any event is the harmony of its parts, which is particularly exemplified by the miraculous Restora­ tion. T hat so many different Interests should combine, and so many accidents at several times, and divers places, should all concurr, as it were by design, to work the deliverance of this day, cannot w ithout manifest Violence to common Reason, but be ascribed to his particular Contrivance, who was able to range so many Causes in Order, and judge of the Seasons, and Junctures o f Affairs. As Nature is nothing but Divine Art; so such admirable revolutions [as the Restoration] can be nothing but Divine Artifice, and Contrivance; unless it can be imagined, that a thing wherein there is so much o f Plot, and which was so curiously contrived, that no Human W isdom could wish it, or contrive it better, may reasonably be imputed to Chance. . . . Wherefore is it not m ost reasonable to conclude, that it was the Consult o f a special Providence, since it was contrived in a manner so apparently worthy of the Divine Wisdom, and since the united Reason o f M en and Angels, could not have contrived it in a better way, than it really fell out. Certainly the seasonable contrivance of so many wonderful Scenes into every Act, and of so many curious Acts into one harmonious Play, must needs have been the study and invention of a very skilful Author, even of the All-wise, and Almighty Dramatist; w ho hath the World for his Theatre, and seldom less than a Kingdom for his Stage.136

The divine dram atist and the theatrum m undi were long-familiar im­ ages for Providence and its domain. But their normal use was to express the creation, conservation, and governance of the w orld by general or common Providence through a portrayal of hum an life as a vast ongoing play written, cast, staged, and kept in production by the divine dram atist who will finally close the performance on Judgment Day.137 Hickes’s use of these images, however, is very different from this. He employs them here to express the particular interventions of special Providence, as in the case of the Restoration, as individual well-made plays specially written and produced for the occasion by the divine dramatist, their plots so skill­ fully designed th at they benefit not only the dramatis personae themselves but also the audience, awed and edified by a spectacle in which they per­ ceive the handiw ork of divine wisdom. The key words are “contrive” and “contrivance,” used more than half a dozen times in this brief passage, and suggesting an artifice in which characters and events are at every moment completely responsive to the mysterious designs of their heav­ enly creator. Dryden need not have been indebted to any particular source for his conception of the Restoration in the first act of Albion and Albanius, which in any case probably antedates Hickes’s sermon by a few months. The habitual manner in which the miraculous Restoration had been rep-

resented in the pulpit ever since 1660 w ould have suggested H ickes’s ser­ m on as well as D ryden’s opera, which opens on a scene n o t of disorder but of the exhaustion th a t succeeds disorder. In front of the Royal Ex­ change, Tham esis, personifying L ondon’s river, and A ugusta, its p o p u la­ tion, are found lying in “dejected postures,” sunk beneath calamities they are incapable of repairing by their ow n efforts. M ercury appears and, after listening to A ugusta’s com plaints th a t Albion, her “Plighted L o rd ,” is gone, prom pts her to confess her culpability for his loss, adm itting that she has broken her nuptial vow. The m om ent she has confessed her sin, M ercury announces th at he has been sent from H eaven “Thy A lbion to restore” (1.1.62) if she will meet certain conditions. T h at is to say, Al­ bion’s restoration is made dependent on divine forgiveness of his subjects’ guilt. The conditions of forgiveness are confession, repentance, and am endm ent. M ercury’s first question, therefore, once Augusta has made confession of her sin, is “ C an’st thou repent?” W hen she answers “My falshood I deplore,” M ercury next requires of her “ some loyal D eed” whereby she may “regain / Thy long lost R eputation,” th a t is to say, an outw ard sign of her conversion from sin. Democracy and Zeal, by w hom she was formerly seduced, now put in their appearance to make fresh dem ands of her.138 But Augusta, urged by M ercury to “Resist, and do not fear” (1.1.80), rem ains firm in spite of their angry threats, thus giving proof of her am endm ent. Oblivious of the god’s presence, A rchon (General M onck) now ap ­ proaches Augusta independently, offering, like M ercury before him, “thy A lbion to restore” (1.1.129), but by force of arms. M ercury orders him to “ Cease your A larm es,” since it is H eaven th a t will bring ab o u t A lbion’s restoration, and by peaceful means at that. But when A rchon, his wellm eant efforts rebuffed, asks “W hat then remaines for m e,” M ercury as­ signs him an instrum ental role as his assistant, inviting him to “Take my Caduceus” w ith which to touch Dem ocracy and Zeal, thereby plunging them into a deep slumber. M ercury’s “ aweful W an d ” may evoke pagan magic m ore readily than Christian Providence, but it is actually an effective w ay of externalizing the invisible means by which the R estoration was supposed to have been produced. The m iraculous nature of th a t event consisted of a change of heart am ong Charles’s enemies w hereby they came to acquiesce in a bloodless Restoration: a reversal so unexpected and im probable th at it must be credited to a divine influence softening the hearts of his once implacable foes. Hickes, using the R estoration to illustrate his first m ark of special Providence in any event, “ w hen it is brought a b o u t by Invisible M e a n s ” declares: That so m any different Elements should jumble into such an happy mixture, and Causes so contrary conspire to one Effect, that all the Enemies o f the Gov-

ernment should be, as it were Planet-struck, and all the Interests against it invisibly subdued, that scarce one Party, or one Man among them should ap­ pear to oppose this Revolution, nor one D og among them move his Tongue, but that it should be brought about without M utiny, without Murmur, or without a drop of Blood, was an admirable Scene o f Affairs, worthy the con­ trivance of infinite W isdom, and ought to be esteemed, as his doing alone, who can work by repugnant Causes, bring Order out o f Confusion, and take from men their Hearts o f Stone, and give them H earts o f Flesh. 139

D em ocracy and Zeal, personifying the political and religious ideologies responsible for A lbion’s exile, are literally “P lanet-struck” and visibly subdued by M ercury’s w and, m urm uring “ Let A lb io n ! let him take the C ro w n !” (1.1.151) before they fall asleep, leaving the w ay open for his return. Ju n o , “ G reat Q ueen o f N up tial R ites,” now appears, announcing th a t the gods have agreed to the reunion of A lbion w ith his contrite spouse, Augusta. Iris relates how Albion, conducted safely across the seas by Venus, has been w elcom ed at D over by the unanim ous acclaim o f his subjects. T hen, their m ission accom plished, the gods retu rn to heaven, m aking w ay for a m ute A lbion, accom panied by A lbanius, to appear at last, sent by the gods, A ugusta declares, “to p ard o n and to pity me, / And to forgive a guilty N a tio n !” (1 .1.252-53). Every detail of this act has been calculated to m inimize the hum an factors involved in the R estoration in the interest of focusing attention on divine intervention. A rchon’s share in the event is acknow ledged, but only in the m odest role of a n instrum ent of Providence. A lbion’s share is even less; he is sim ply an au to m ato n w ho responds on cue to H eaven’s bidding. T he entire scenario dram atizes the providential version o f events we earlier saw expressed by G ilbert Sheldon, preaching before the king on the solem n day o f thanksgiving for the R estoration, 28 June 1660, w hen he rem inded his congregation of the infinite gulf betw een hum an in stru ­ m ents and divine pow er, w arning them th a t “w hoever were the In stru­ m ents of ou r deliverance, we m ust still rem em ber to raise up our thoughts to him by w hose pow er they w rought it, and give him the glory of all; since nothing is m ore certain th a t none did it, none could do it but h e .” 140 R eading the first act of A lbion and A lbanius, it is easy to understand w hy the term s “ contrivance” and “ artifice” are so app ro p riate to d ram a ­ turgic portrayals of the m iraculous R estoration. For from this perspective it appears as an episode in w hich the hum an characters, w hether wittingly or no t, are enacting parts assigned them by the divine dram atist, their speeches and actions following a carefully prepared script. W hen all is in readiness, the heavenly emissaries descend in their m achines, not in order to interfere in the action or interru p t im pending events b u t to hasten the

ordained outcom e tow ard which every incident has been moving from the outset. The fire at N ew m arket, on the other hand, suggested very different dram aturgic imagery by which to express the action of special Provi­ dence. For the m iraculous fire was seen as a last-m inute intervention by Providence to frustrate the evil designs laid by others w ithout its contriv­ ance and to rescue its people from harm . In dram atic terms, this is the kind of celestial interference w ith which the phrase “ deus ex m achina” has come exclusively to be associated. Its paradigm in seventeenth-cen­ tury sermons was the discovery of the G unpow der Plot, an exhibition of divine brinkm anship th a t supplied the closest analogue to the fire at N ew ­ m arket. For as Edw ard Pelling rem inded his congregation in his 5 N o ­ vember sermon in 1683, only tw o m onths after the day of solemn thanks­ giving for Charles’s happy deliverance, “the difference is not great, w hether a Powder-Treason be Acted at the Parliament-House, or at R um bolds·. the Principle upon w hich both Parties Act, is the sam e.” 141 And so, he m ight have added, was the theatrical m anner in w hich Providence it­ self had acted, choosing in both cases to allow m atters to proceed to the verge o f disaster before a t last intervening. N o w onder, then, th a t both events suggested the same imagery draw n from the playhouse. In the 5 N ovem ber serm on he preached in 1673, Isaac Barrow had chosen as his subject special Providence and the seven m arks o r charac­ ters “upon which may be grounded Rules declarative of special Provi­ dence,” unknow ingly providing Hickes w ith the quarry from w hich, a decade later, he w ould appropriate m ost of the same rules along w ith m uch of Barrow ’s language. The second “character of special Provi­ dence,” according to Barrow, is “ the Seasonableness, and Suddenness of Events. W hen that w hich in it self is n o t ordinary, n o r could well be ex­ pected, doth fall out happily, in the nick of an exigency, for the relief of innocence” or such another cause. In view of the occasion for his sermon, the example th a t a providential intervention “in the nick o f an exigency” is m eant to recall is the discovery of the G unpow der Plot; b u t the fire at N ew m arket w ould fit just as well. W arm ing to his subject, Barrow envi­ sions the scenario preceding such a dram atic intervention by special Prov­ idence: God ever doth see those deceitful workers o f iniquity, laying their m ischief in the dark; he is always present at their Cabals, and clandestine meetings, wherein they brood upon it. H e often doth suffer it to grow on to a pitch of maturity, till it be thoroughly formed, till it be ready to be hatched, and break forth in its m ischievous effects; then in a trice he snappeth and crusheth it to nothing. God beholdeth violent men setting out in their unjust attempts, he letteth them proceed on in a full career, until they reach the edge o f their design;

then instantly he checketh, putteth in a spoak, he stoppeth, he tumbleth them down, or turneth them backward.142

In such cases as these, God is conceived of as playing a complex theatri­ cal role, first as spectator, observing with distaste a play contrived by other hands, and then as deus ex machina, suddenly intervening in the action on stage, circumventing the expected outcome, and giving the plot a surprising denouement. As Barrow explains, “G od could prevent the beginnings of wicked designs; he could supplant them in their first onsets; he could any-where sufflaminate and subvert them: but he rather winketh for a time, and suffereth the designers to go on, till they are mounted to the top of confidence, and good people are cast on the brink of ruine; then apo mekbanes [ex machina], surprisingly, unexpectedly he striketh in with effectual succour.” 143 Barrow reinforces this dram aturgic image of the deus ex machina, which we earlier noticed Archbishop Sancroft using in a sermon on the providential discovery of the Popish Plot, by quoting in the margin H orace’s advice to the aspiring dramatist: uN ec Deus inter­ sit, nisi dignus vindice nodus inciderit [And let no god intervene, unless a knot come w orthy of such a deliverer]. ”144 To dramatize this kind of providential intervention adequately in A l­ bion and Albanius, Dryden needed two acts, the earlier to represent the contrivance of the evil designs th at the later will show being turned to nought. In the tradition of the early Stuart court masque that lies behind Albion and Albanius, the second act is an antimasque whose infernal dramatis personae, committed to destroying order, are the direct antithe­ ses of those celestial agents responsible for the resolution of disorder in the first and last acts. M ore specifically, as the table shows, Dryden has designed act 2 as an antithetical parallel to the previous act, recalling and inverting each of its four principal episodes in their exact order. Antithetical Parallelism in Albion and Albanius A ct I

A ct 2

Thamesis and Augusta plead with Mercury to restore Albion.

Democracy and Zeal implore Pluto to undermine A lbion’s authority.

Mercury’s caduceus lulls Democracy and Zeal to sleep, restoring peace to Augusta and Thamesis.

Alecto’s serpent stings Augusta to madness and jealousy, destroying her former peace.

Juno renews the marriage bonds between Augusta and Albion.

Democracy and Zeal seduce Augusta into breaking her marriage vows.

Albion and Albanius, returning by water from exile, are restored to their native land.

Albanius, torn from Albion’s side, departs by water to undergo a second exile.

The events represented by these allegorical episodes of act 2 are rele­ vant not to the Rye H ouse Plot immediately but to the alleged Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis, the earlier stages o f w h at D ryden portrays in his opera as being a seamless Protestant Plot culm inating in the assassination scheme. The act begins w ith Pluto and his cohorts contriving, w ith the assistance of “ a R ogue” (Titus Oates), “To forge a Plot / In seeming Care of A lbion1s Life” and to “Inspire the Crow d / W ith Clam ours loud / T 5 involve his Brother and his W ife” (2.1.85-89). It ends w ith their plan succeeding so far th a t Albion is forced to send Albanius into exile in order to calm public excitem ent over “im aginary D angers” (2.2.48), alluding to Jam es’s enforced absences abroad during the height of the Exclusion Crisis. Act 3 opens at Dover, w here Albion, “ Betray’d, forsaken, and of hope bereft,” stands deploring his lot, despondent and defenseless in the face of “Rebellion arm ’d w ith zeal” (3.1.20). D emocracy and Zeal appear in the com pany of their allies, Tyranny and Asebia (atheism), w ith w hom they soon come to blows over their differing goals: an overt allusion to the divided aims of those w ho contrived the Association. Yet in spite of Pro­ teus’s assurance to Albion th at “Thou shalt be restor’d agen” (3.1.145), his life hangs in the balance as D em ocracy and Zeal, having subdued their rivals, “ return w ith their Faction, ” announcing “ ’tis by us th a t Albion m ust be Slain” (3.1.161). But just as the “one-E y’d Archer” (Rumbold) advances to do their bidding, “a fire arises b etw ixt them and A lbion,” the surprised conspirators “all sink together,” and Albion calls for a public thanksgiving in acknow ledgem ent of H eaven’s intervention: Let our tuneful accents upwards m ove, Till they reach the vaulted Arch o f those above; Let us adore ’em; Let us fall before ’em. ( 3 . 1 . 179 - 8 2 )

Venus now emerges from the sea escorting the exiled A lbanius, w hom she restores to the grateful Albion, and the opera, as originally w ritten before Charles’s death, closes w ith a brief scene, set at W indsor, w here Fame decrees everlasting renow n for “ G reat A lb io n 1s N am e” (3.2.3). A lbanius’s role in D ryden’s opera is always subordinate to A lbion’s, and never more so than in the climactic scenes of his exile and restoration in the second and third acts.145 By agreeing to accept banishm ent in order to protect Albion from the same fate— “ O h Albionl hear the Gods and me! / Well am I lost in saving Thee” (2.2.98—99)— Albanius endures a vicarious exile in his bro th er’s place, and D ryden is able to dram atize “the

double resto ratio n of his Sacred M ajesty” th rough the recurrent images of A lbion o r his proxy A lbanius departing and returning by w ater. The incident to w hich A lbanius’s reunion w ith his brother refers, Jam es’s retu rn to L ondon from exile, had taken place n o t after the failure of the Rye H ouse Plot, of course, w hich w as m eant to destroy the tw o brothers at a single stroke, b ut a year before th a t event, on 8 April 1682. It w as celebrated by bonfires, bell ringing, and a series of public appear­ ances over the next fortnight culm inating in a public dinner a t M erch an t T aylors’ H all on 20 April, and a special perform ance o f Venice Preserv’d the following night to w hich D ryden contributed a new prologue. This public fanfare over the duke’s retu rn had been carefully orchestrated as a T ory response to the bonfires th a t had accom panied Shaftesbury’s acquit­ tal, and to the public dinner the W hig leader had been given a t Skinners’ H all follow ing his release from the T ow er some five m onths earlier.146 It w as designed as a victory celebration signaling the decisive end of the Exclusion Crisis th a t had m ade Jam es’s exile necessary, b u t it was also rem iniscent in some respects of the excited welcom e given Charles on his entry into L ondon on 29 M ay 1660. In the interest of enhancing the p a r­ allelism of the double restoration, D ryden reverses the ord er of events and m akes this episode, rather th an the m iraculous fire a t N ew m arket, the clim ax o f the th ird act, and rightly so. A lbanius’s retu rn from exile here m irrors closely his appearance in the com pany of A lbion a t the end of the first act, w hereas the m iraculous fire has no co u n terp art elsewhere in the opera. F urtherm ore, D ryden intensifies the sim ilarity by having both re­ turns from exile take place a t D over under the m antle of Venus, the m other and pro tecto r of Aeneas, w hom he had used as an analogue for the exiled C harles in his poem s celebrating the king’s restoration in 1660 as well as his coronation the follow ing y ear.147 A lthough D ryden and the other T ory propagandists had long been crediting the resolution of the Exclusion Crisis to the king, extolling him as the savior of the n ation, Albion is assigned as passive a role in the second act of D ryden’s opera, referring to th a t crisis, as in the third, w hich leads w ith o u t interruption to the Rye H ouse Plot. A lbion’s speeches in both acts express a wide range of descending and ascending em otions, successively registering disillusionm ent, anguish, despair, g ra t­ itude to w a rd the gods, and joy at being reunited w ith his brother. But none of his speeches ever initiates an action o r influences an event. In act 2 A lbion declares, in w ords recalling A bsalom and A chitophelri “The fumes of m adness th a t possest / The Peoples giddy Brain, / O nce m ore disturb the N ations rest” (2.2.57—59), an d he goes on to d raw for him self the sam e lesson th a t D avid had to learn from his “ faithful Band of W orthies” :

I thought their love by mildness m ight be gain’d, By Peace I w as restor’d, in Peace I Reign’d: But Tum ults, Seditions, And haughty Petitions, Are all the effects o f a merciful Nature; Forgiving and granting, E’re M ortals are w anting, But leads to Rebelling against their Creator. ( 2 .2 . 67- 74 )

Yet A lbion never acts o n his newly acquired w isdom as D avid had done in Absalom and Acbitophel, and of course it w ould violate dram atic de­ corum if he did. For in an opera solely concerned w ith the role of special Providence in the king’s double restoration there is no room w hatever for hum an agency. From th a t perspective, “second Causes are out of d o o rs,” and A lbion’s p a rt in the latter tw o acts is simply to react em otionally to events initiated by others, sinking ever deeper into helplessness and de­ spair, like Barrow ’s good people “cast on the brink of ruine,” until he is suddenly delivered from all his troubles by a single divine action. In one respect, A lbion and Albanius is unique am ong D ryden’s histori­ cal parallels, or at least those we have been considering. Unlike Absalom and A cbitophel, The D u ke o f Guise, and The H istory o f the League, which only im ply a parallel w ith their subject either by alluding to an ­ other series of events or, in the case of the H istory, by relying on its tim e­ liness, A lbion and Albanius overtly dram atizes bo th poles of the parallel by representing in allegory “ the double restoration of his Sacred M aj­ esty.” 148 But as was the case w ith D ryden’s earlier political parallels, dis­ parities are as im portant as similarities here, as Proteus makes explicit in a song to Albion epitom izing the subject of the opera just before the ap ­ pearance of the m iraculous fire: Still thou art the care o f H eav’n, In thy Y outh to Exile driv’n: H eav’n thy ruin then prevented, Till the guilty Land repented: In thy Age, w hen none could aid Thee, Foes conspir’d, and Friends betray’d Thee; T o the brink o f danger driv’n, Still thou art the Care o f H eav’n. ( 3 . 1 . 147- 54 )

The similarity of the tw o restorations, both of them divine interven­ tions on A lbion’s behalf, conveys the same political lesson here— “ still thou art the Care of H eav’n ”— as on the day of solem n thanksgiving for

the king’s escape from assassination, w hen preachers proclaim ed Charles “ him w hom H eaven it self hath so plainly declared to be its Favourite.” 149 The disparities in the parallel, betw een a first restoration brought ab o u t when “ the guilty Land repented,” im ploring the gods for A lbion’s return, and a second w here “ Foes conspir’d, and Friends betray’d T hee” until their designs were unexpectedly frustrated by the gods, are intrinsic to the dissimilar theatrical im agery associated, as we have noticed, w ith differ­ ent providential interventions. T he first, traditionally associated w ith the R estoration, had em phasized a reconciliation of political differences am ong English Protestants th at, for the m om ent at least, had restored national harm ony. The second, traditionally associated w ith the G u n ­ pow der Plot but also applied in recent years to the Popish Plot, tu rned on the presence of an internal enemy— stubbornly refusing allegiance to a heretical prince, im placable in its hostility to the C hurch of England, and impervious to overtures of forgiveness— w ho could only be curbed by external restraints. In adopting this fam iliar image for C atholic intrigues and applying it to the P rotestant Plot in A lbion and Albanius, D ryden w as draw ing the same political lesson from the Rye H ouse Plot as other propagandists for the governm ent had already done the year before. O n the day o f solem n thanksgiving for the king’s escape from assassi­ nation, one of the preachers described C harles’s second restoration in term s th a t implicitly em phasized the differences setting it a p a rt from his first. G od hath made it a new Settlement to his Throne; an addition of Strength and Security to his Empire, by washing off the Paints, the Colourings, and Counter­ feits, both of Religion and Loyalty; shewing him who are True Protestants, and w ho are False Brethren; who are good Subjects, and who are Movers of Sedi­ tion, and inordinate Seekers of Prebemmence. Jn a word, who are the Friends, and w ho are the Enemies, not only o f the Succession, but o f the M onarchy.150

T h a t view of events offers, in place of the perfect harm ony betw een king and people celebrated on the occasion of the first restoration nearly a quarter of a century earlier, the prospect of a nation perm anently di­ vided betw een friends and enemies of the C row n. It is the same view th a t inspires D ryden’s allegorical dram atization o f C harles’s second resto ra ­ tion in A lbion and A lbanius, as well as his “D edication to the K ing” of The H istory o f the League, both w ritten w ithin a few m onths of each other. It envisions a future in w hich a perm anently disaffected m inority of Protestant Dissenters will linger in the n a tio n ’s m idst, unreconciled to the m onarchy and the Established C hurch and relentlessly plotting their de­ struction by any available m eans. It involves relinquishing once and for all the sanguine expectations accom panying C harles’s first restoration th a t had produced a degree o f euphoria never quite recaptured in the

celebrations of his deliverance from the Rye H ouse Plot. But the change is not all loss, as the thanksgiving preacher appreciates. W ith greater in­ sight into the real state of the nation and a clearer recognition of his ene­ mies, the king has gained the greater “Strength and Security” he will need to m aintain order in a society where false brethren will always be found alongside true Protestants, and movers of sedition am idst good subjects. O r so the propagandists of press and pulpit w ould now have the public believe.

EPILOGUE

E M UST N O T exaggerate the im portance of T ory p ro p a ­ ganda. It w as not directly responsible for the governm ent’s success or for the collapse of the W hig party. But while such m easures as dispensing w ith parliam ents, suppressing new spapers, seiz­ ing charters, and dispersing conventicles were responsible for the govern­ m ent’s actual victory, it was propaganda th a t m ust w in public tolerance for these debatable actions.1 By late sum m er of 1683 those policies had to all appearance gained the w idespread, though n o t of course the universal, com pliance o f a public for w hom the Rye H ouse Plot as skillfully ex­ ploited by the governm ent figured as the final episode laying to rest any lingering doubts a b o u t the existence of a P rotestant P lot.2 G ilbert Burnet, w hose views w ere certainly n o t biased in favor of the governm ent, be­ lieved th a t if Charles had sum m oned a parliam ent at any tim e thereafter, “ both the king and the duke m ight have expected every thing th a t they could desire: for the body of the nation w as yet so possessed w ith the belief of the [Rye House] Plot, th a t probably all elections w ould have gone as the c o u rt directed, and scarce any of the other p arty w ould have had the courage to have stood for an election any w here.” 3 T o establish and m aintain general credit in this, the last and m ost convincing of a series of P rotestant Plots it had publicized in recent years w ith grow ing success, the governm ent had been able to d raw freely on the w hole range o f p ro paganda resources it had been developing since early 1681 and tailoring constantly to fit changing political conditions and suc­ cessive crises: addressing m ovem ents, the politicized theaters of D rury Lane and D orset G arden, along w ith the political theater of trials, execu­ tions, and anniversary o r thanksgiving services, and the inexhaustible stream of contributions from the press: printed serm ons, dying speeches, new spapers, pam phlets, and anonym ous broadsides, quite as m uch as the political poem s, prose w orks, dedications, prologues, epilogues, and p ro ­ ductions for the stage th a t cam e to m onopolize D ryden’s energies during the last four years of C harles’s reign. The evidence presented above show s D ryden to have been far m ore widely acquainted w ith contem porary T ory propaganda th an has previ­ ously been realized, and also m uch m ore deeply com m itted to every one of the governm ent’s successive cam paigns aim ed a t w inning public acqui­ escence in its policies. In his “Epistle to the W higs” prefixed to The M edall, D ryden established his credentials as a political polem icist by assuring the w riters for the opposition th at “I have p eru s’d m any of your

W

Papers” (p. 40). He could have made an even stronger claim of this kind to fellow Tory writers, with many of whose newspapers, pamphlets, and broadsides he demonstrates the close familiarity of a colleague engaged with them in a common cause, and wishing to ensure that his goals ac­ cord with theirs. That engagement on Dry den’s part was slow in coming, and only took place once the government’s supporters, having abandoned a defensive and apparently deteriorating position, were already mounting an offen­ sive in support of the more resolute and effective policy adopted by the king and his advisers in the spring of 1681. But from the time that Dryden joined the first o f these Tory campaigns later that year he entered into a firm commitment to the cause of persuading the public to accept the king’s policies, and he never deviated from that resolution as long as Charles lived. Thereafter Dryden would lead the way in shaping a variety of literary genres into new and effective instruments o f political propa­ ganda appealing to a reading public whose own interests had been in­ creasingly concentrated and politicized by a long succession of public cri­ ses and partisan debates. Varied as were the journalistic, literary, and subliterary media in which Tory propaganda was conveyed to the public, there was remarkable agreement among the authors themselves in the objectives that they pur­ sued in each o f the government’s three campaigns between early 1681 and the end o f Charles’s reign. Yet it would be a mistake to think of the Tory propaganda machine as an organization in any modern sense. There is no evidence that at any time officials were orchestrating the efforts of this sprawling mass of writers in the way that L’Estrange and other court­ iers directed and regulated the successive addressing movements. L’Estrange’s intimacy with other government officials, as well as the privi­ leged status granted the O bservator, undoubtedly encouraged many Tory writers to take their cues from that newspaper in particular, and, as was certainly true in Dryden’s case, the government’s more effective publicists were probably loyal readers of each other’s publications. But the princi­ pal guideposts for both publicists and public alike in each new propa­ ganda campaign, and in each new phase of those campaigns, were un­ doubtedly that remarkable series of official publications provided by the government itself at every stage along the way: His Majesties Declaration, Fitzharris’s Confession, the proceedings at Shaftesbury’s grand inquest, the royal proclamations against the Rye House conspirators, the printed trials of five o f them, and finally the second of these publications to bear the title of His Majesties Declaration. It was these documents, most of them published by order in council, that set the course to be followed by the official bodies involved in the addressing movements as well as by the government’s unofficial journal-

ists and pam phleteers. W ith these clear guidelines for publicizing and m aking palatable the governm ent’s policies, the propagandists could be left to them selves to develop their ow n individual m eans of achieving the com m on goal, in this w ay supplying the variety and vitality th a t are such noticeable characteristics of every one of the successive T ory cam paigns. As is well know n, D ryden’s com m itm ent to w riting p ropaganda in support of the C row n, once m ade, did n o t end w ith C harles’s death. D u r­ ing the brief reign o f Jam es II th a t follow ed, he was to w rite three substan­ tial poem s in favor of the king w hose succession he had w orked so long to ensure. But in certain im p o rtan t respects his later activity on behalf o f Jam es was less a co n tin u atio n o f his earlier career as a governm ent p u b li­ cist th an a new and very different kind o f loyal effort. For D ryden’s p o lit­ ical poem s w ritten betw een 1685 and 1688— Threnodia A ugustalisi m ourning the death of C harles II and welcom ing his b ro th e r’s accession, The H in d and the Panther, supporting Jam es’s policy of religious to lera­ tion, and Britannia Rediviva, celebrating the birth of the Prince o f W ales— are addressed to distinct occasions and issues, consistent w ith each other and w ith the policies of the C row n, certainly, b u t displaying none o f th a t singleness of purpose, m onth after m onth and year after year, th a t distinguishes D ryden’s literary activities in response to the p ar­ am ount political crisis of C harles’s last years. M ore im p o rtan t, D ryden’s poem s on behalf of Jam es were in m ost respects autonom ous. For even though the d eath of Charles and the birth of the Prince of W ales were m arked by the usual outpouring of loyal tributes, these were n o t p ro ­ duced to advance a particular political goal. The great T ory propaganda cam paigns of C harles’s last years in w hich D ryden to o k p a rt were a unique phenom enon. They w ere invigorated by a sense of com m on p u r­ pose am ong a w ide variety o f w riters w ith different backgrounds and unequal talents. D ryden w ould never share th a t kind o f exhilarating ex­ perience again.

Appendix I POLITICAL ALLUSIONS IN D R Y D E N ’S PROLOGUES AN D EPILOGUES, 1 6 7 8 -1 6 8 4

H ER E A PR O LO G U E or epilogue was w ritten for the first perform ance o f a play, I have in m ost cases taken the date of the latter from the L o n d o n Stage. In the case o f three plays, how ever, I have follow ed the m odified dates o f first perform ance sug­ gested by Ju d ith M ilhous and R obert D. H um e in “ D ating Play Premieres from Publication D ata, 1 6 6 0 -1 7 0 0 ” (H arvard Library Bulletin 22 [1974]: 374—405). They suggest th a t D ryden’s Troilus and Cressida m ay have been perform ed slightly earlier th a n the L o n d o n Stage date of April 1679 (p. 389), th a t “ Lee’s The Princess o f Cleue is a real puzzle,” w ith the L o n d o n Stage date of Septem ber 1680 no better th an a term inus a quo for the first perform ance (p. 393), and th a t Saunders’s Tam erlane the G reat was probably first perform ed at D rury Lane before the L o n d o n Stage date of M arch 1681 (p. 393). In the case of prologues and epilogues w ritten for revivals o r special perform ances of plays, I have generally follow ed volum es I and 2 of D ry­ den’s W orks. In three cases, how ever, the C alifornia editors seem to me to be clearly w rong, and I have therefore revised their conclusions for the follow ing reasons. John H arold W ilson has show n from internal evidence in D ryden’s epilogue to Banks’s The U nhappy Favourite th a t the play alm ost certainly received its first perform ance in the late spring of 1681— perhaps May. (See his “Six R estoration Play-D ates,” N o te s and Q ueries 9 [1962]: 2 2 1 23.) This date has been accepted by the editors of the L o n d o n Stage and o f D ryden’s W orks. The latter com m ent, however: “The first edition o f the play (1682) contains another prologue, preceding D ryden’s, w ith the heading ‘Spoken by M ajo r M o h u n , the First Four D ayes’. W hether D ry­ d en ’s pieces w ere spoken on the fifth day or later we do n o t know. . . . T he full title of D ryden’s prologue m akes clear th a t his pieces w ere w rit­ ten for a very special occasion, but we do n o t know w hen the King and Q ueen attended a perform ance of The U nhappy Favourite . . . [that] was acted a t the T heatre Royal, and it is probable th a t the com pany called u p o n D ryden for the special prologue and epilogue, even though he knew nothing of B anks” (2:388-89). There are no grounds, however, for link­ ing the prologue and epilogue together as having b o th been w ritten a t the

W

same time for the special perform ance. In fact, their titles draw a clear distinction between the tw o in the edition of Banks’s play: “Prologue, Spoken to the King and Queen on their com ing to the H ouse, and W ritten on purpose by M r. D ryden,” and, at the end of the play, “Epilogue, By M r. D ryden.” Furtherm ore, the first edition of the play contains n o t two but three prologues: the one spoken by M ajor M ohun the first four days, D ryden’s w ritten for the com m and perform ance, and a third “Prologue, Intended to be spoken, W ritten by the A uthor. ” It seems m ost likely that, after the first four nights, Banks’s prologue w as spoken for the rem ainder o f the play’s first run. There is no reason to believe th a t the special perfor­ m ance before the King and Q ueen, for which D ryden w rote his prologue, necessarily took place during the initial run. It may just as easily have taken place later in the spring, or sometime in the following autum n, since the play, w ith its three prologues, w as n o t published until the beginning of 1682. O n the other hand, the only epilogue published w ith the play is D ryden’s, which was presum ably w ritten, therefore, for the first perfor­ mance. This is of course the assum ption underlying W ilson’s argum ent that the first perform ance o f The Unhappy Favourite took place in the spring, since D ryden’s epilogue alludes to various events th a t occurred at that time. Clearly, then, D ryden’s prologue was w ritten later th an his epilogue, and for a different occasion, although we do n o t know how long an interval separates the tw o. There are tw o versions of D ryden’s “Prologue at O xford, 1680,” the first of which was included in the second edition of Lee’s Sophonisba in the spring of 1681, while the second, w hich differs from the first in a num ber of respects, w as published in D ryden’s Miscellany Poems in 1684 (see W orks, 1:160-61). O n the gratuitous assum ption th a t the tw o ver­ sions were w ritten for tw o different plays, the editors of D ryden’s W orks speculate th a t the 1684 version w as w ritten first, for a perform ance of a play at O xford in July 1679, while the 1681 version, suitably revised, was used for the perform ance of a different play at O xford in the sum m er of 1680. “The allusion to ‘us C ardinals’ and ‘Pope Jo an ’ in line 22 [of the 1684 version] identifies the play for w hich it m ust have been spoken as Settle’s The Female Prelate: Being the H istory o f the L ife and D eath o f Pope Joan. Settle’s play was first introduced to the London audience about September 1679. . . . [It presumably] was tried at O xford in July of 1679, before its London premiere, the prologue in the version [of 1684] being used on th a t occasion; and . . . w hen the com pany returned the following summer it used the prologue again, for Sophonisba, b u t in so doing had to refurbish it” (1:362-63). It is now know n for certain, how ­ ever, th a t The Female Prelate had its first perform ance on 31 M ay 1680 (see the L ondon Stage, p. 286; M ilhous and H um e, “D ating Play Premieres,” p. 376). There are therefore no grounds for believing that

D ryden’s prologue was w ritten in 1679, and scarcely m ore for believing th at it w as first w ritten, a t any date, for The Female Prelate. The m ention of “ us C ardinals” and “Pope J o a n ” can just as easily be explained as allusions to Settle’s new play in July 1680 w hen D ryden’s prologue was spoken a t the revival of Lee’s play, judging from its publication w ith Sophonisba the follow ing spring. In any case, w hatever the play for w hich it w as w ritten, there is no reason to question the accuracy of the title in M iscellany Poem s, “The Prologue a t O xford, 1 6 8 0 .” The tex t of the p ro ­ logue in th a t collection certainly differs from the one found in the second edition o f Sophonisba, b u t there is no solid evidence for believing th at D ryden’s revision, whichever tex t is the later, w as due to his refurbishing the prologue for an o th er play. Finally, it is probable th a t the “ Prologue to the University of O x fo rd ” (not to be confused w ith the preceding) was w ritten for a perform ance there in the sum m er of 1679 rather th an , as the editors of D ryden’s W orks have suggested, the sum m er o f 1680. In this prologue (see W orks, 1:164—65), D ryden draw s a hum orous com parison betw een the rebellion in Scotland and another th a t had taken place in the King’s C om pany, some of w hose principal m em bers had deserted it to form a theatrical com pany in Scotland. Discord, and Plots which have undone our Age With the same ruine, have o ’erwhelm’d the Stage. Our H ouse has suffer’d in the com m on W oe, We have been troubled with Scotch Rebels too; Our Brethren, are from Thames to T w eed departed, And of our Sisters, all the kinder hearted, To Edenborough gone, or Coacht, or Carted. W ith bonny Blewcap there they act all night For Scotch half Crown, in English Three-pence hight.

As he regularly does in his prologues and epilogues, D ryden alludes here to events of current interest. The Scottish rebels had been crushed by M o n m o u th ’s arm y a t Bothwell Bridge the previous m onth, on 22 June 1679, and the news of this victory was still causing great excitem ent in July. It w as during the theatrical season of 1 6 7 8 -7 9 th a t some o f the King’s C om pany’s m em bers deserted it and w ent to Edinburgh: another event of recent interest in the sum m er o f 1679. By February 1680 the rebels had returned to the K ing’s Com pany. (See the L o n d o n Stage, pp. 271, 279.) In choosing to date D ryden’s prologue in July 1680, the edi­ tors of D ryden’s W orks m ust argue th at in Scotland “ trouble w as still going on in the sum m er of 1 6 8 0 ,” as evidenced by an entry in L uttrell’s D iary in July, although they adm it th at “w hether this latest affray w ould have com e to D ryden’s attention early enough to have inspired the com-

276

APPENDIX

I

parison in 1.4 it is impossible to say” (1 :3 6 7 -6 8 ). Similarly, they argue that som e rebels from the King’s Com pany still remained in Scotland after their leaders’ return in February. In both cases, they are appealing for support to the mere vestiges in 1680 o f tw o rebellions that com ­ manded greatest attention in 1679, when they w ould have been far more likely to invite allusions. Under “First Publication” below I have indicated when and in w hat form the prologue or epilogue was first published: in the first edition of the play for which it was written, or independently, either as a single half sheet soon after it was spoken in the theater, or in Dryden’s M iscellany Poem s or Exam en Poeticum som e years later. I have also indicated in the same colum n whether or not Dryden’s authorship o f these verses was made know n at the time o f first publication. D ry d en ’s Prologues and Epilogues, 1 6 7 8 -1 6 8 4 Piece

Play

First P erform ance

First P ublication

Allusions

Prologue

O edipus (D ryden and Lee)

Early a u tu m n o f 1678 D o rset G arden

M arch 1679 w ith play Identified as D ry d e n ’s

N one

Epilogue

O edipus (D ryden and Lee)

E arly a u tu m n o f 1678 D o rset G ard en

M arch 1679 w ith play Identified as D ry d e n ’s

N one

Prologue

T roilus a n d Cressida (D ryden)

E arly 1679 D o rset G arden

A utum n 1679 w ith play Identified as D ry d en ’s

N one

Epilogue

T roilus a n d Cressida (D ryden)

E arly 1679 D o rset G arden

A utum n 1679 w ith play Identified as D ry d e n ’s

AntiCatholic

P rologue

Caesar Borgia (Lee)

M ay 1679 D o rse t G ard en

N o v em b er 1679 w ith p lay Identified as D ry d e n ’s

AntiCatholic

“ P rologue to the U niversity of O x fo rd ”

Play u n k n o w n

July 1679 O x fo rd

1684 (M iscellany P o em s) Identified as D ry d e n ’s

Playful hit at Scottish rebels

Prologue

T he L o ya l G eneral (Tate)

D ecem ber 1679 D o rset G ard en

F ebruary 1680 w ith p lay Identified as D ry d en ’s

C om ­ plaints about cu rren t turm oil

“ Prologue a t O x fo rd , 1680”

Sophonisba (Lee)

July 1680 O x fo rd (Revival)

Spring o f 1681 w ith play Identified as D ry d en ’s

A ntiDissenter

Prologue

T he Princess o f Cleve (Lee)

L ate 1 6 8 0 -e n d 1682 D o rset G ard en

1684 {M iscellany Poem s) Identified as D ry d en ’s

N one

Epilogue

The Princess o f Cleve (Lee)

L ate 1 6 8 0 -en d 1682 D o rset G ard en

1684 (M iscellany P oem s) Identified as D ry d e n ’s

N one

D ry d e fl’s

P rologues a n d E pilogues, 1 6 7 8 -1 6 8 4 (cont.)

Piece

Play

First P erform ance

F irst P ublication

A llusions

Prologue

T h e Spanish Fryar (D ryden)

N o v e m b e r 1680 D o rset G arden

M a rch 1681 w ith play Identified as D ry d e n ’s

A ntiC atholic

Epilogue

Tam erlane th e G reat (Saunders)

E arly 1681 D ru ry Lane

Spring o f 1681 w ith play Identified as D ry d e n ’s

N one

“Epilogue Spoken to the King at Oxford”

Tam erlane th e G reat (Saunders)

19 M a rch 1681 O x fo rd (Special p erform ance)

(1) M a rch 1681 (O xford) Separate publ. (an o n .) (2) E arly 1681 (L ondon) S eparate p u b l. (D ryden)

Im partial

Epilogue

T h e U nhappy Favourite (Banks)

A pril o r M a y 1681 D ru ry Lane

E arly 1682 w ith play Identified a s D ry d e n ’s

A ntiW hig b an ter

“Prologue to Play u n k n o w n the U niversity of O xford, 1681”

July 1681 O x fo rd

1693 {E xam en P oeticum ) Identified as D ry d e n ’s

Seriously loyalist

Prologue

T he U nhappy Fa­ vourite (Banks)

L ate sp rin g o r a u tu m n o f 1681 D ru ry Lane (Special perform ance)

E arly 1682 w ith play Identified as D ry d e n ’s

Seriously loyalist

Prologue

M ithridates (Lee)

O c to b er 1681 D ru ry Lane (Revival)

(1) 28 O c to b er 1681 in p a rt [Im partial P rotestant M ercury) (anon.) (2) End of 1681 Separate publ. (anon.)

A ntiPopish P lot w itnesses

Epilogue

M ith n d a te s (Lee)

O c to b e r 1681 D ru ry Lane (Revival)

(1) 29 O c to b e r 1681 in p a rt (L o y a l P rotestant) (anon.) (2) End o f 1681 Separate publ. (anon.)

A ntiPopish Plot w itnesses

Prologue

T h e L o y a l B ro th er (Southerne)

F e b ru a ry 1682 D ru ry Lane

7 F eb ru ary 1682 Separate publ. (D ryden)

Seriously an ti-W hig

Epilogue

T h e L o y a l B ro th er (Southerne)

F eb ru ary 1682 D ru ry Lane

7 F eb ru ary 1682 Separate publ. (D ryden)

A ntiW hig b a n te r

“Prologue to His Royal Highness”

V enice P reserv’d (O tw ay)

21 April 1682 D o rset G a rd en (Special p erform ance)

21 A pril 1682 Separate publ. (D ryden)

Seriously anti-W hig

“Prologue to Venice P reserv’d the D u tch ess” (O tw ay)

31 M ay 1682 D o rse t G a rd en (Special perform ance)

I June 1682 Sep arate publ. (D ryden)

Seriously anti-W hig

“Prologue to the King a n d Queen”

N o v e m b er 1682 D ru ry Lane U nited C o.

16 N o v e m b er 1682 Separate publ. (D ryden)

A ntiW hig b a n te r

Play u n k n o w n

278

APPENDI X I

D ry den’s Prologues and Epilogues, 1 6 7 8 -1 6 8 4 I,com .) Piece

Play

First P erform ance

First P ublication

Allusions

“ Epilogue to th e K ing and Q u een ”

Play unknow n

N o v em b er 1682 D rury L ane U nited Co.

16 N o v em b er 1682 Separate publ. (D ryden)

None

Prologue

T he D u k e o f Guise (D ryden and Lee)

28 N o v em b er 1682 D ru ry Lane U nited Co.

3 0 N o v em b er 1682 S eparate publ. (D ryden)

Seriously anti-Whig

Epilogue

T he D u k e o f Guise (D ryden and Lee)

28 N ovem ber 1682 D ru ry Lane U nited Co.

30 N o v em b er 1682 S eparate p u b l. (D ryden)

AntiW hig and antiTrim mer

A nother Epilogue

The D u k e o f Guise (D ryden and Lee)

28 N o v em b er 1682 D ru ry Lane U nited Co.

30 N ovem ber 1682 Separate publ. (D ryden)

AntiW hig banter

Epilogue

C onstantine the G reat (Lee)

N ov em ber 1683 D ru ry Lane U nited Co.

14 N o v em b er 1683 Separate pub!. (D ryden)

AntiTrim m er

Prologue

T he D isa p p o in tm en t (Southerne)

April 1684 D ru ry Lane U nited Co.

5 A pril 1684 Separate publ. (anon.)

N one

Appendix 2 THE MISPLACED LINES IN A B SA L O M A N D ACH1TOPHEL

OME EIGHTY-FIVE LINES into Absalom and Acbitopbely Dryden turns from relating the earlier part of the king’s reign, when “David's mildness manag’d it so well, / The Bad found no occasion to Rebell” (77-78), to describe the abrupt reappearance of civil unrest occasioned by public excitement over the Popish Plot, explaining that “The Good old Cause reviv’d, a Plot requires” (82). He begins his ac­ count of this plot by tracing its origins to the civil disabilities of the Cath­ olic minority.

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90

100

T h ’ inhab itan ts of old Jerusalem W ere Jebusites-. the T ow n so call’d from them ; And their’s th e N ative right---------B ut w hen the chosen people grew m ore strong, T he rightfull cause a t length becam e the w rong: A nd every loss the m en of Jebus bore, They still w ere th o u g h t G o d ’s enem ies the m ore. T hus, w o rn and w eak en ’d, well o r ill content, Subm it they m ust to D avid’s G overnm ent: Im poverisht, an d d epriv’d of all C om m and, T heir T axes doubled as they lost their Land, A nd, w h a t w as h a rd e r yet to flesh an d b lood, T heir G ods disgrac’d, and b u rn t like com m on w ood. This set th e H eath en P riesthood in a flame; F or Priests of all Religions are the same: O f w h atso e’r descent their G odhead be, Stock, Stone, or o th e r hom ely pedigree, In his defence his Servants are as bold As if he had been born of beaten gold. T he Jew ish R abbins tho their Enem ies, In this conclude them honest m en an d wise: For ’tw as th eir duty, all the L earned think, Τ ’ espouse his Cause by w h o m they eat and drink. From hence began th a t Plot, the N a tio n ’s Curse, Bad in it self, but represented worse:

HO

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130

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R ais’d in extrem es, an d in extrem es decry’d; W ith O a th s affirm ’d, w ith dying V ow s d e n y ’d: N o t w eigh’d, or w in n o w ’d by the M u ltitu de; B ut sw allo w ’d in the M ass, u n ch ew ’d an d C rude. Some T ru th there w as, b u t d a sh ’d an d b re w ’d w ith Lyes; T o please the Fools, an d puzzle all the W ise. Succeeding tim es did equal folly call, Believing n o th in g , o r believing all. T h ’ E gyp tia n R ites the Jebusites im b ra c ’d; W here G ods w ere recom m ended by th e ir T ast. Such savory Deities m u st needs be good, As serv’d a t once for W orship an d fo r Food. By force they could n o t In tro d u ce these G ods; F or Ten to O ne, in form er days w as odds. So F raud w as us’d, (the Sacrificers trad e,) Fools are m o re h a rd to C o n q u er th a n P ersw ade. T h eir busie T eachers m ingled w ith the Jews·, A nd r a k ’d, for C onverts, even th e C o u rt an d Stews: W hich H eb rew Priests th e m ore u n k in d ly to o k , Because th e Fleece accom panies the Flock. Some th o u g h t they G o d ’s A no in ted m ean t to Slay By G uns, invented since full m any a day: O u r A u th o u r sw ears it n o t; b u t w ho can k n o w H o w far the D evil an d Jebusites m ay go? T his Plot, w hich fail’d fo r w a n t o f com m o n Sense, H a d yet a deep an d d an g ero u s C onsequence: For, as w h en raging Fevers boyl the B lood, T h e stan d in g L ake so o n floats in to a Flood; A nd every hostile H u m o u r, w hich before Slept q u iet in its C hannels, bubbles o ’r: So, several F actions fro m this first Ferm ent, W o rk up to F oam , an d th re a t th e G overnm ent.

The entire passage is clearly designed to show , first, h ow the depressed condition o f the English Catholics led some of them to concoct a genuine plot against the lawful government, and, secondly, h ow this embryonic conspiracy was then exaggerated and exploited by Protestant adherents o f the G ood Old Cause to create public “Jealosies and Fears” that were readily believed because o f the contem pt and distrust in which the Catho­ lics were held by their countrymen. But while no one seems to have raised the subject before, there are a number o f serious problems with the ar­ rangement and continuity of these lines as they appear in all editions of A bsalom and A ch itopbel starting with the first, and continuing dow n to the California edition from which I quote here.

First o f all, w here we w ould expect D ry d en ’s account to follow a straig h tfo rw ard course show ing how the peculiar situation of the C a th o ­ lics led to the Popish P lot, w e find th a t in reality it w anders back and forth betw een the tw o topics in a puzzling m anner. T he passage begins, as we m ight expect, by introducing the C atholic m inority (85), and after tw enty-three lines tu rn s to the second topic: “F rom hence began th a t Plot, the N a tio n ’s C urse” (108). But ten lines later the account digresses unex­ pectedly to describe certain C atholic beliefs and practices n o t im m edi­ ately related to the Plot (“ T h ’ E gyptian Rites the Jebusites im b rac’d ” [118]), while after another twelve lines it returns ab ruptly to the subject of the Plot (“ Some th o u g h t they G o d ’s A nointed m ean t to Slay” [130]). Secondly, there is a noticeable absence o f transitions to p rep are the reader for any of these sudden changes o f subject. In the first o f these, the w ords “ From hence began th a t P lo t” (108) directly follow four lines ex­ plaining th a t “ the Jew ish R a b b in s” (the A nglican priesthood) agreed w ith the “H eath en P riesth o o d ” (the C atholic clergy) th a t it w as their duty “Τ ’ espouse his Cause by w hom they eat and d rin k .” But h o w does this ex­ plain the beginnings of the Plot o r the readiness w ith w hich it w as be­ lieved? A gain, there is no discernible reason w hy a digression on the rites and practices of the English C atholics (118) should be occasioned by the previous lines assessing the credibility o f the Plot, a subject resum ed just as inexplicably at the end of the digression (130). T he only satisfactory w ay of accounting for this confusion, I believe, is to hypothesize th a t for som e unexplained reason the tw elve lines begin­ ning “T h ’ Egyptian Rites the Jebusites im b rac’d ” (11 8 -2 9 ) w ere in the first edition set in type (or im posed on the stone) ten lines beyond their proper position, and w ere never restored in subsequent editions to their correct location betw een the present lines 107 and 108. M y reasons for entertaining this hypothesis should becom e clear w hen these tw elve lines (printed in italics below for easier identification) are restored to w h a t I believe w as their original place in D ryden’s holograph. Once this is done, the confusion disappears entirely.

90

Th’ inhabitants o f old Jerusalem Were Jebusites: the Town so call’d from them; And their’s the N ative right---------But when the chosen people grew more strong, The rightfull cause at length became the wrong: And every loss the men of Jebus bore, They still were thought G od’s enemies the more. Thus, worn and w eaken’d, w ell or ill content, Submit they must to D a vid ’s Government: Impoverisht, and depriv’d of all Command, Their Taxes doubled as they lost their Land,

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A nd, w h a t w as h ard er yet to flesh an d blood, T h eir G ods disgrac’d, an d b u rn t like com m on w ood. T his set th e H eath en P riesth o o d in a flame; For Priests o f all R eligions are th e same: O f w h a tso e ’r descent th eir G o d h ead be, Stock, Stone, o r o th er hom ely pedigree, In his defence his Servants are as bold As if he h ad been b o rn o f beaten gold. T he Jew ish R a b b in s th o their Enem ies, In this conclude th em h o n est m en an d wise: F or ’tw as th e ir d u ty , all the L earned th in k , T ’ espouse his C ause by w h o m they eat and drink. T h ' E gyptian R ites the Jebusites im b ra c’d; W here G ods w ere reco m m en d ed by their Tast. Such savory D eities m u st needs be g o o d , A s serv’d a t once fo r W orship a n d fo r Food. B y force th ey could n o t In tro d u ce these G o d s; For Ten to O ne, in fo rm e r days w as odds. So Fraud w as u s ’d, (the Sacrificers trade,) Fools are m o re h a rd to C onquer th a n Perswade. T heir busie Teachers m ingled w ith th e Jews; A n d r a k ’d, fo r C onverts, even the C o u rt an d Stews: W hich H eb rew Priests the m ore u n k in d ly to o k , Because the Fleece accom panies the Flock. F rom hence began th a t Plot, the N a tio n ’s C urse, Bad in it self, b u t rep resented w orse: R ais’d in extrem es, an d in extrem es decry’d; W ith O a th s affirm ’d, w ith dying V ow s d eny’d: N o t w eigh’d, o r w in n o w ’d by th e M u ltitu d e; B ut sw allo w ’d in th e M ass, u n ch ew ’d and C rude. Some T ru th th ere w as, b u t d ash ’d an d b rew ’d w ith Lyes; T o please the Fools, a n d puzzle all the W ise. Succeeding tim es did equ al folly call, Believing n o th in g , o r believing all. Some th o u g h t they G o d ’s A nointed m e a n t to Slay By G uns, invented since full m an y a day: O u r A u th o u r sw ears it n o t; b u t w h o can k n o w H o w far the Devil and Jebusites m ay go? T his Plot, w hich fail’d for w a n t o f com m on Sense, H a d yet a deep an d d an g ero u s C onsequence: F or, as w hen raging Fevers boyl th e B lood, T h e stan d in g Lake soon flo ats in to a Flood; A nd every hostile H u m o u r, w hich before

140

Slept quiet in its Channels, bubbles o ’r: So, several Factions from this first Ferment, Work up to Foam, and threat the Government.

As soon as this single transposition is made, the Jebusites become the exclusive subject of the first thirty-five lines (85-119), after which, with the w ords “From hence began th at P lot,” Dryden takes up this second subject, pursuing it w ithout interruption throughout the rem ainder of the passage (120—41). Similarly, the aw kw ard breaks we noticed earlier in D ryden’s account disappear, to be replaced by sm ooth transitions. The first and m ost striking of these occurs a t the point, following line 107, where I have inserted the twelve italicized lines. The preceding couplet, referring to the Catholic priesthood, declares: “For ’tw as their duty, all the Learned think, / T ’ espouse his Cause by w hom they eat and d rin k ” (106—7). The italicized lines then go on to develop this imagery of eating and drinking for another four lines in order to ridicule the Catholic doc­ trine of Transubstantiation: Th’ Egyptian Rites the Jebusites imbrac’d; Where Gods were recommended by their Tast. Such savory Deities must needs be good, As serv’d at once for W orship and for Food.

W ith these twelve italicized lines (108-19), the account of the English Catholics comes to an end, providing a logical transition to the subject of the Plot and its credibility, which is now prepared for n o t by a topic on which the Anglican clergy consider the Catholic priesthood “ honest men and wise,” as before, but by the Catholic practice of proselytizing among the members of the Church of England, w hereby they incur the hatred and distrust of an Anglican clergy eager to believe, and to encourage the faithful to believe, the m ost dam aging accusations against their enemies. Finally, the subsequent account of the avidity w ith which the multitude credited every allegation concerning the Popish Plot, however extrava­ gant, now logically includes the succeeding (but formerly separated) lines, “Some thought they G od’s Anointed m eant to Slay / By Guns, invented since full many a day: / O ur A uthour swears it n o t” (130-32). This is not the place to speculate on how these twelve lines came to be misplaced or, even more curiously, why they were never restored to their original position in subsequent editions. But those w ho wish to pursue the m atter further m ight begin by noting th a t in the first edition (Mac­ donald 12a, a folio) the point at which the twelve lines were apparently omitted occurs four lines from the bottom of B2v (i.e., tow ard the end of the gathering), while the point a t which they do appear, out of their proper order, occurs six lines from the top of C lr. N ow as is well know n,

C l is a cancel leaf, a n d a n o th e r, m ore fam ous, set o f tw elve lines— those e x p anding the verse c h aracter o f A chitophel (1 8 0 -9 1 ) first prin ted in the th ird L o ndon edition (M acd o n ald 12e, a q u a rto )— w o u ld have follow ed im m ediately after w h a t is now the last line o f C lv if indeed, as is w idely believed, they existed from the s ta rt in D ry d en ’s h o lo g ra p h , b u t w ere de­ leted from the first edition— p erh ap s to m ake ro o m for o th er lines— w hen the original C l w as replaced by the cancel leaf after th e poem (but n o t the p relim inary m atter) had been p rin ted . Speculation u ntil now has focused u n d erstan d ab ly on the contents of C lv before the original leaf w as c a n ­ celed (see V inton A. D earin g ’s tex tu al notes in the C alifornia edition [Wor&s, 2 :4 1 1 —12] and E dw ard L. Saslow , “ S haftesbury C ursed: D ry ­ d e n ’s R evision o f the A c h ito p b e l L ines,” Studies in B ibliography 28 [1975]: 2 7 6 —83). But of course C l r also h a d to be reset in m aking up the cancel leaf, an d the ap p earan ce there of the tw elve m isplaced lines dis­ cussed above should encourage a tte n tio n to the obverse o f C l ju st as m uch as to its reverse side.

CJ

C SPD

D ry den, W orks Grey

HMC O rm o n d e

LJ L o n d o n Stage

N

ote o n

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Journals o f the H o u se o f C o m m o n s. Calendar o f State Papers, D o m estic Series, o f the Reign o f Charles II, 1660—1 6 8 5 . 28 vols. L ondon: Η . M . S tationery O ffice, 1 8 6 0 -1 9 3 8 . T he W o rks o f J o h n D ry den. T o be com pleted in 20 vols. Berkeley: U niversity o f C alifornia Press, 1 9 5 6 -. D ebates o f the H o u se o f C o m m o n s, From the Year 1667 to the Year 1694. C ollected by th e H o n . A nchitell Grey, Esq. 10 vols. L o n d o n , 1763. H istorical M an u scrip ts C om m ission. Calendar o f the M anuscripts o f the M arquess o f O rm o n d e, K. P., Pre­ served in K ilken n y Castle. N ew Series, vol. 6. L ondon: Η . M . S tationery O ffice, 1911. Journals o f the H ouse o f L o rd s. T he L o n d o n Stage, 1 6 6 0 -1 8 0 0 ; P a r ti: 1 6 6 0 -1 7 0 0 . Ed. W illiam V an Lennep, E m m ett L. Avery, a n d A rth u r H . Scouten. C arbondale: Southern Illinois U niversity Press, 1965.

o c u m e n t a t io n

F or all p rin ted w orks earlier th a n 1900, the place o f pu b licatio n is L on­ d o n unless otherw ise indicated. W here exact dates of pub licatio n (day, m o n th , and year) for R esto ratio n w o rk s are supplied, the source is in every case N arcissus L uttrell, unless som e o th er a u th o rity is specified. W here dates by m o n th a n d y ear are given, these are based o n firm internal evidence, unless som e o th er source, such as A nthony W o o d , is identified.

NOTES

CHAPTER I THE PULPIT 1. The m o st th o ro u g h recen t stu d y o f p o p u lar attitu d es to the R estoration can be fo u n d in T im H arris, L o n d o n C row ds in the R eign o f Charles II: Propa­ ganda a n d Politics fro m the R estoration u n til the E xclusion Crisis (C am bridge: C am bridge U niversity Press, 1987), chap. 3. H e concludes th a t in spite o f doubts expressed by som e recent historians, “m ost L ondoners did su p p o rt a resto ratio n o f m onarchy by the spring o f 1 6 6 0 ,” alth o u g h it w ould be “ w rong to assum e from this th a t there w as a political consensus am ongst L ondoners a t this tim e” (pp. 6 0 -6 1 ). 2. T he D iary o f John E velyn, ed. E. S. de Beer, 6 vols. (O xford: C larendon Press, 1955), 3:246. 3. The Speech o f Sir H a rb o ttle G rim sto n 1 B aronet, Speaker o f the H o n o r­ able H o u se o f C om m ons, to the Kings M o s t E xcellent M ajesty, D elivered in the B anqu ettin g H o u se a t W hitehal, 2 9 M ay 1660, the M em bers o f T h a tH o u s e Being There Present (1660), pp. 3 -4 . 4. G ilbert Sheldon, D avids D eliverance and Thanksgiving: A Serm on Preached before the K ing at W hitehall u p o n Ju n e 28, 1660, Being the D ay o f Solem n T han ksg ivin g fo r the H a p p y R eturn o f H is M ajesty (1660), pp. 1 7 -1 8 . 5. Ibid., p. 17. 6. A ndrew B row ning, ed., English H istorical D ocum ents, 1 6 6 0 -1 7 1 4 (London: Eyre and Spottisw oode, 1953), p. 61. 7. R ichard L. Greaves, D eliver Us fro m Evil: T h e R adical U nderground in Britain, 1 6 6 0 -1 6 6 3 (O xford: O x fo rd U niversity Press, 1986), p. 6. For the governm ent’s exaggerated fears th a t such incidents as W hite’s P lo t and V enner’s Rising represented “ only a corner o f a n ation-w ide co n spiracy,” see pp. 38—40, 5 3 -5 7 , 7 0 -7 2 ; and R o n ald H u tto n , T he R estoration: A Political and Religious H istory o f England a n d W ales, 1658—1667 (O xford: C larendon Press, 1985), pp. 136, 151, 1 7 8 -7 9 , 231. 8. Q u o ted by G erald S traka in “T he Final Phase o f D ivine R ight T heory in England, 1 6 8 8 -1 7 0 2 ,” English H istorical R eview 77 (1962): 6 3 8 -5 8 , an excel­ lent account o f the use of “providential th e o ry ” to justify the revolution of 1 6 8 8 89. (The citation appears on pp. 653—54.) See also J. P. K enyon, R evo lu tio n Prin­ ciples: T he Politics o f Party, 1689—1720 (C am bridge: C am bridge U niversity Press, 1977), pp. 2 4 -2 9 . 9. D ryden, “P o stscrip t” to T he H istory o f the League, W orks, 18:399. 10. F or general accounts o f these serm ons, see H elen W . R andall, “T he Rise an d Fall o f a M arty ro lo g y : Serm ons on C harles I,” H u n tin g to n Library Q uarterly 10 (1947): 1 3 5 -6 7 ; C arolyn A. Edie, “R ig h t Rejoicing: Serm ons on the O ccasion o f the S tu art R esto ratio n , 1 6 6 0 ,” B ulletin o f the Jo h n Rylands U niversity Library o f M anchester 62 (1979): 61—86. A recent article by Jo h n Spurr, “ ‘V irtue, Reli­ gion an d G overnm ent’: T h eA n g lican Uses o f P rovidence,” in The Politics o f Reli-

gion in Restoration England, ed. Tim H arris, Paul Seaward, and M ark Goldie (O xford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp. 2 9-47, brings a different perspective to these and num erous other Restoration sermons on both general and particular Provi­ dence, considering their role in a “campaign for the reform ation of national m an­ ners” th at laid the foundation for “the ‘m oral revolution’ o f the 1690s.” 11. Thom as Sprat, The H istory o f the Royal-Soctety o f L ondon for the Im ­ proving o f Natural Knowledge (1667), p. 357. 12. Sheldon, Davids Deliverance, p. 16. (Placement of parentheses as in orig­ inal.) 13. R obert South, Ecclesiasticall Policy the Best Policy; or, Religion the Best Reason o f State: In a Sermon Delivered before the H onourable Society o f Lincolnes Inn (Oxford, 1660), pp. 6—7. 14. John Tillotson, Sermons Preach’d upon Several Occasions (1671), pp. 136-37. 15. Certain Sermons or H om ilies A ppointed to Be Read in Churches, in the Ttm e o f Q ueen Elizabeth o f Famous M emory, and N o w T hought Fit to Be R e­ printed by A uthority from the Kings M ost Excellent M ajesty (1673), pp. 343—44, 346, 359—60. (Roman substituted for black letter.) 16. See the useful list o f such sermons in the index to Evelyn’s Diary, 6:135. 17. R obert Twisse, England’s Breath Stopp’d: Being the Counter-part o f Judah’s Miseries, L am ented Publickly in the N etv-C hurch at W estminster, on January 30, Being the Anniversary o f the M artyrdom o f King Charles the First o f Blessed M em ory (1665), p. 4. 18. Isaac Barrow, A Sermon Preached on the Fifth o f N ovem ber, 1673 (1679), pp. 2 6 -27. 19. Sprat, History o f the Royal-Society, p. 360. 20. William W hitaker, A Disputation on H oly Scripture [1588], trans. W il­ liam Fitzgerald (Cambridge, 1849), p. 407. 21. Certain Sermons or Homilies, pp. 3 66-67. (Rom an substituted for black letter.) 22. Sheldon, Davids Deliverance (n. 4 above) discusses D avid’s sufferings from Absalom on p. 8; he speaks of M oses’ troubles related in N um bers, chapter 16 (C orah’s rebellion), on pp. 10—11. 2 3 . George Stradling, A Sermon Preach 'd before the K ing at White-HalI, Jan. 30, 1675, a t the Anniversary C om m em oration o f the M artyrdom o f King Charles I. Printed by His Majesties Special C om m and (1675), p. 13. 24. John Spencer, The Righteous Ruler: A Sermon Preached at St. Maries in Cambridge, June 28, 1660, Being A ppointed a Day o f Publick Thanksgiving to G od for the H appy Restauration o f His Majesty to his K ingdomes (Cambridge, 1660), p. 5. 25. William H ayw ood, A Sermon Disswading from O bloquie against Governours, Preached on Sunday, Decemb. 7, 1662, in a Solemne Audience (1663), p. 14. 26. Richard M eggott, A Sermon Preached before the Right H onourable the L ord M ayor and Aldermen, &c. at Guild-Hall Chappel, January the 30th, 1673/4 [1674], p. 19. 27. William Sancroft, A Sermon Preach’d to the H ouse o f Peers, N ovem b.

13th, 1678, B eing the Past-D ay A p p o in te d by the King to Im plore the M ercies o f A lm ig h ty G o d in the P rotection o f H is M ajesties Sacred Person, and His K ing­ d o m s (1 6 7 8 ), pp. 2 5 —26. 28. F or exam ples of serm ons draw in g detailed parallels betw een C harles and C hrist, see T hom as L am bert, Sad M em orials o f the R oyal M artyr; or, A Parallel b e tw ix t the Jew es M urd er o f Christ, a n d the English M urder o f K ing Charls the First (1670); Stradling, Serm on Preach’d before the King. 29. F or exam ples o f such elab o rate parallels, see H enry G lover, Cain and A b el Parallel’d w ith K ing Charles a nd H is M urderers (1664); D avid Jenner, C ain’s M ark a n d M urder, K. Charls the I H is M artyrdom : D elivered in a Serm on on January the T hirtieth (1681); Tw isse, E n g la n d’s Breath S to p p ’d (n. 17 above) (Charles and Z edekiah); Sam uel C rossm an, T w o Serm ons Preached in the Cathedral-C hurch o f Bristol, January th e 3 0 th , 1679/80, a n d January the 3 1 th , 1680/1, Being D ays o f H u m ilia tio n fo r the E xecrable M urder o f O u r Late Soveraign, King Charles I (1681) (C harles an d Z edekiah in both); Jo h n A llington, T h e Regal P rotom artyr; or, T h e M em orial o f the M a rtyrd o m o f Charles the First. In a Ser­ m on Preached u p o n the First Fast o f Puhlick A p p o in tm e n t fo r It (1672) (Charles and Stephen); Jam es D u p o rt, Three Serm ons Preached in St. M aries Church in Cam bridg, u p o n the Three Anniversaries o f the M artyrdom o f Charles I, Jan. 30; B irth a n d R etu rn o f Charles II, M a y 29; G u n -pow der Treason, N o ve m b . 5 (1676), the first o f w hich is a m arty rd o m serm on draw ing a parallel betw een Charles and Stephen. 30. “T he C om parison o f T iberius and Caius G racchus w ith Agis and Cleomenes” is unique in considering four ra th e r th a n the usual tw o lives. 31. Plutarchs Lives. Translated fro m the G reek by Several H ands. T o w hich is p refixt the L ife o f Plutarch [by D ryden]. T h e First V olum e (1683), p. 260. 32. For a th o u g h tfu l recent essay on the use of parallels in this period, see Alan R oper, “D raw in g Parallels and M aking A pplications in R esto ratio n Litera­ tu re ,” in R ichard A shcraft and A lan R oper, Politics as Reflected in Literature (Los Angeles: W illiam A ndrew s C lark M em orial L ibrary, 1989), pp. 2 9 -6 5 . A s his title indicates, R oper is concerned w ith literary rath er th a n hom iletic uses o f the p a ra l­ lel, b u t his observations are applicable to b o th . I believe R oper is m istaken, h o w ­ ever, in the case of tw o o f the “ fo u r reasonably co n stan t featu res” he predicates of R esto ratio n parallels: “ Secondly, parallels concentrated u p o n sim ilarity to the exclusion o f difference, thus diverging from the practice o f P lu tarch ,” and “T hirdly, parallels aim ed to blacken by association and only incidentally cele­ brated by asso ciatio n ” (pp. 4 0 -4 1 ). As the present and succeeding chapters will show , I find the exact opposite to be tru e o f b o th hom iletic and literary parallels of the R estoration period. 33. G lover, Cain a n d A b e l Parallel’d, p. I . H e com pares and co n trasts C h ar­ les I w ith C o n rad in , king of N aples, on p. 2. Twisse, E ngland’s Breath S to p p ’d, com pares and c o n trasts C harles I w ith E dw ard II and R ichard II on p. 4. 34. Peter H eylyn, A Serm on Preached in the Collegiate Church o f St. Peter in W estm inster, on W ednesday, M ay 2 9 th , 1661, Being the Anniversary o f H is M aj­ esties M o st J o y fu l R estitu tio n to the C row n o f E ngland (1661), p. 25. H eylyn’s tex t is Ps. 31:21. 35 . Ibid., pp. 26 , 29.

36. See A Form o f C om m on Prayer, to Be Used upon the Thirtieth o f Janu­ ary, Being the Anniversary D ay A ppointed by A ct o f Parliament for Fasting and H um iliation. Published by His M ajestie’s C om m and (1661). 37. Simon Ford, Parallela dusparallela; or, The Loyal Subjects Indignation fo r His Royal Sovereign’s Decollation, Expressed in an Unparallel’d Parallel be­ tween the Professed M urtherer o f K. Saul, and the H orrid A ctual M urtherers o f King Charles I (1661), pp. 36, 44. 38. Gilbert Burnet, The R oyal M artyr Lam ented, in a Sermon Preached at the Savoy, on King Charles the M artyr’s Day, 1674/S (1675), p. 15. For other m artyrdom sermons using 2 Samuel to draw an extended parallel between the deaths of Saul and Charles I, see A rthur Bury, The Bow; or, The Lam entation o f D avid over Saul and Jonathan, A pplyed to the R oyal and Blessed Martyr, King Charles the I (1662); H enry Hesketh, A Sermon Preached before the R ight H on­ orable L ord M ayor and Alderm en o f the City o f L ondon at Guild-Hall Chappel, on January 30th, 1677/8 (1678). 39. See A Form o f Prayer, with Thanksgiving, to Be Used o f AU the Kings Majesties Loving Subjects the 29th o f M ay Yearly, for His M ajestie’s H appy Re­ turn to His Kingdoms; It Being also the D ay o f His Birth. Set Forth by His Majes­ ties A u thority (1661). 40. Simon Ford, Parallela; or, The Loyall Subjects E xultation fo r the Royall Exiles Restauration, in the Parallel o f K. D avid and M ephibosheth on the O ne Side; and O ur Gracious Sovereign, K. Charts, and His L oving Subjects, on the O ther. Set Forth in a Sermon Preached at All-Saints Church in N ortham pton, Jun. 28, 1660, Being the D ay A ppointed for Solem n Thanksgiving for His R oyal M aj­ esties H appy Restitution (1660), pp. 1-2. 41. Ibid., pp. 3 -4. 42. See John Parker, A Sermon Preached a t Christ-Church, D ublin, before Both H ouses o f Parliament, M ay the 29th, 1661, Being the Anniversary o f His M ajesty King Charles the Second, His M ost M em orable and H appy Restauration (Dublin, 1661). 43. See The Diary o f Samuel Pepys, ed. R obert Latham and W illiam M at­ thews, 11 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970—83): 2:109. 44. Parker, Sermon Preached at Christ-Church, pp. 34—35. CHAPTER 2 PARLIAMENT AND THE PRESS

1. Andrew Browning, Thom as Osborne, Earl o f D anby and D u ke o f Leeds, 1 632-1712, vol. 2: Letters (Glasgow: Jackson, Son and Co., 1944), p. 70. 2. See Iohn Kenyon, The Popish Plot (London: W illiam H einem ann, 1 9 7 2 ), pp. 1 5 7 - 6 5 , 1 7 8 - 8 0 .

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

See ibid., pp. 168-76. Grey, 8:60. CJ, 9:530. Grey, 6:365. Ibid., p. 362. Ibid., p. 363.

9. Ibid., p. 306. 10. See J. R. Jones, T he First Whigs: T he Politics o f the E xclusion Crisis, 1 6 7 8 -1 6 8 3 (London: O x fo rd U niversity Press, 1961), pp. 3 5 -4 0 . 11. Grey, 7:4. 12. CJ, 9:575. 13. G rey, 7:67, 14. Ibid., p. 72. 15. Ibid., p. 125. 16. See ibid., p. 116. 17. Ibid., p. 179. 18. CJ, 9:605. 19. Ibid., p. 607. 20. Ibid., p. 620. 21. Grey, 7:266. 22. Ibid., p. 325. 23. See K enyon, Popish Plot, p. 183. 24. Grey, 8:111. 25. Ibid., p. 159. 26. For the royal declaration, see L o n d o n G azette, 10 June 1680. 27. See the W hig acco u n t o f this progress in A Trite N arrative o f the D u k e o f M o n m o u th ’s L a te Jo urney into the W est, in a L etter fro m an E ye-w itness Thereof, to H is C orrespondent in L o n d o n (3 Nov. 1680). 28. See The H u m b le A ddress a n d A dvice o f Several o f the Peeres o f This Realm , fo r the Sitting o f the Parliam ent, Presented to H is M ajesty at W hite-H all, the 7th o f D ecem ber, 1679 (1679). 29. For the royal p ro clam atio n against tum ultuous petitions, see L o n d o n G azette, 15 Dec. 1679. 30. True D o m estick Intelligence, 6 Jan. 1680. 31. T h e D iary o f John E velyn, ed. E. S. de Beer, 6 vols. (O xford: C larendon Press, 1955), 4:172. 32. T im othy Crist, “ G overnm ent C on tro l o f the Press after th e E xpiration of the Printing Act in 1 6 7 9 ,” P ublishing H isto ry 5 (1979): 4 9 -7 7 . (The citation appears on p. 53.) I am indebted here to C rist’s excellent account of the subject. 33. See ibid., pp. 56—57. 34. For the royal proclam atio n against unlicensed new spapers, see L o n d o n G azette, 2 0 M ay 1680. 35. See A L etter fro m Legorn, D ecem . I , 1679 (12 Jan. 1680). 36. See A Second L etter fro m Legorn, w ith a Farther A ccount, as Incredible and UnparalelPd as the First, fro m aboard the Van-herring, D ecem ber 10, 1679 (14—17 Jan . 1680); A n A n sw er R etu rn ed to the Letter fro m Legorn, b y a M er­ chant concerned in the Ship ( 19 Jan . 1680); A n A n sw e r to the Second L etter fro m Legorn: B eing an A c c o u n t o f Som e Further D iscovery o f a C ontinued P lot aboard the Ship V an H erring (23 Jan . 1680). 37. See A n A n sw er to th e M erchants Letter, D irected to R alph M ean-w ell, N o w on B oard the Van-H erring, w ith a P ursuit o f the Former Legorn Letter, 19 January 1679 (22 Jan . 1680). T here w as one further sham Legorn L etter from the T ories, m entioned in the n e x t chap ter, b u t it w as published in the late sum m er of

1681, long after the second W hig series of Legorn Letters, listed below, had ceased. 38. See A nother Letter from Legorn, to an E m inent M erchant in Lond., Sept. 23, 1680 (25 Oct. 1680); A n Answ er to A nother L etter from Legorn, to an E m i­ nent M erchant in Lond., O ctob. 29, 1680 (2 Nov. 1680); The A nsw er to the Letter fro m Legorn Answered, in a Third Letter to a M erchant in L ondon (N o­ vember 1680); From aboard the Van-Herring: Being a Full Relation o f the Present State and Sad Condition o f That Ship, in a N e w L etter from Legorn, to a M er­ chant in L ondon (January 1681). 39. Valuable inform ation on the legal technicalities involved in the selection of juries can be found in Roger N o rth ’s Exam en (1740), pp. 8 9 -1 1 7 and 5 8 2 624. 40. See Crist, “G overnm ent C ontrol of the Press,” pp. 6 3 -6 7 . Ignoram us juries were less com m on before Bethel and C ornish took office, but no t entirely unknow n. C rist seems to overlook the fact that no t Bethel and Cornish, installed on 28 September, but their im mediate predecessors w ould have been responsible for the recalcitrant juries of September 1680 th a t he discusses. 41. The Car-man’s Poem; or, Advice to a N est o f Scriblers (2 Feb. 1680). 42. The G ood O ld Cause Revived (2 Feb. 1680); N ew Advtce to a Painter (23 Feb. 1680), p. 4. 43. The notation appears on the title page of W ood’s copy of the poem , now in the Bodleian Library. 44. W ood identifies M alchus and Python w ith O ates and Tonge in his copy of the poem , but does no t identify Arod w ith any individual. 45. [John Caryll], N a b o th ’s Vinyard·, or, The Innocent Traytor: Copied from the Original o f H oly Scripture, in H eroick Verse (O ctober 1679), p. 12. 46. A bsalom ’s Conspiracy; or, The Tragedy o f Treason (I July 1680), p. I. There is another Tory parallel between Absalom and M onm outh w ritten in 1680, which I have n o t discussed above because it w as apparently never published. This is “A Dialogue between N athan and Absolom e,” a poem discovered in m anu­ script and subsequently published by H ow ard H. Schless. (See his “ D ryden’s Absalom and Achitophel and A Dialogue between N athan and A bsolom e,” Phil­ ological Q uarterly 40 [1961]: 139-43.) The poem is a dram atic scene in which the prophet N athan reproves Absalom for his disobedience, Absalom stubbornly defies him, and a voice w arns of A bsalom ’s im pending death upon the tree. The scene, though invented, is faithful to the biblical story, like the episodes in N a b o th ’s Vinyard. It contains no allusions to the present, however, and the im­ plicit parallel w ith M onm outh depends entirely on its timeliness. 47. In some anniversary sermons as well the preacher omits the application, inviting the congregation to develop the im plicit parallel themselves. Thus in a 5 Novem ber serm on one preacher finishes the exposition of his text by announcing, “I shall leave it to your memories to run the parallel between D avid’s C onspira­ tors and these T raytors [Guy Fawkes and his associates]” (Henry Dove, A Sermon Preached before the H onourable H ouse o f C ommons, at St. Margarets W estm in­ ster, N ovem ber 5, 1680 [1680], p. 12). 48. See A rthur Jackson, A nnotations upon the Rem aining Historicall Part o f the O ld Testament (Cambridge, 1646), pp. 343, 385; John M ayer, M any Com-

m entaries in O n e (1647), p. 367; A n n o ta tio n s u p o n A ll the B o o ks o f the O ld a n d N e w Testam ent, 2 n d ed. (1651), com m ents on 2 Sam. 3:2, 3:3, and 3:5. For the custom ary denial of “any rig h t o f in h eritan ce” to the children of concubines, see A n n o ta tio n s u p o n A ll the B o o ks, com m ent on I Kings 11:3. 49. See Jackson, A n n o ta tio n s, pp . 3 8 9 , 391; M ayer, M any C om m entaries in O ne, pp . 4 1 0 , 424; A n n o ta tio n s u p o n AU the B o o ks, com m ents on 2 Sam. 14:1 and 15:1; Jo h n D io d ati [G iovanni D iodatej, Pious a n d Learned A n n o ta tio n s u po n the H o ly B ible, 4 th ed. (1664), com m ents on 2 Sam. 14:14 and 15:1. 50. T he com m en tato rs based their inference th a t M aach ah w as D avid’s wife and consequently A bsalom his heir n o t on anything found in 2 Samuel b u t on a passage in a later book of the O ld T estam ent, w here a list of D avid’s nineteen sons, including A bsalom , co nstructed from the inventories in 2 Sam. 3 :2 -5 and 5 :1 3 -1 6 , ends w ith a new verse: “These w ere all the sons o f D avid, besides the sons o f the concubines, an d T am ar their sister” (I C hron. 3:9), im plying th a t all those nam ed w ere the offspring o f D av id ’s wives. 51. M a tth e w Poole, A n n o ta tio n s u p o n the H o ly Bible, vol. I (1683), com ­ m ent on 2 Sam. 15:12. This is an English redaction o f the five volum es of P oole’s Synopsis C riticorum (1 6 6 9 -7 6 ). 52. A L etter to His Grace the D . o f M o n m o u th , This IS th o f July, 1680. B y a True L o ver o f H is Person, a n d the Peace o f the K ingdom (15 July 1680), p. 3. (Italics reversed.) 53. A Ballad: The T h ird Part (1679). 54. [T hom as D urfey], T he Progress o f H onesty; or, A View o f a C ourt an d C ity (11 O ct. 1680), pp. 1 1 -1 2 . 55. A Seasonable A d dress to B o th H ou ses o f Parliam ent concerning the Suc­ cession, the Fears o f Popery, a n d A rbitrary G o vernm ent (1681), p. 13. 56. A Ballad upon the Popish Plot (1679). See also A Ballad: T he T hird Part, w hich characterizes Shaftesbury as the “ politique h e a d ” w ho “ first fram ed this [Popish] P lo t.” F or a T o ry broadside o f 1680 th a t singles o u t Shaftesbury as the chief am ong “the M ak ers o f the [Popish] P lo t,” see T he L o y a l Tories D elight; or, A Pill fo r Fanaticks [1680]. 57. LJ, 13:610. 58. G rey, 7:441. 59. Ibid., 8:262. 60. C f, 9 :6 6 5 -6 7 . 61. Ibid., p. 655. 62. G rey, 8:150. 63. Ibid., p. 266. 64. CJ, 9:679. 65. Ibid., p. 685. 66. A Speech L ately M ade by a N o b le Peer o f the Realm (31 Dec. 1680), pp. 1- 2 . 67. See W illiam Late V iscount o f Stafford, H is L a st Speech upon the Scaffold on Tow er-hill, D ecem b . 2 9 ,1 6 8 0 , as I t W as G iven by H is O w n H and to a Specta­ tor There [1680]. 68. See K. H . D . H aley, T he First Earl o f Shaftesbury (O xford: C larendon Press, 1968), pp . 5 7 1 -7 2 , 575.

69. LJ, 13:733. 70. CJ, 9:701. 71. Grey, 8:254. 72. Ibid., p. 261. 73. CJ, 9:702. 74. See A C oppy o f the Journal-Book o f the H ouse o f C om m ons fo r the Sessions o f Parliament Begun at 'Westminster the 21 D ay o f October, 1678, and C ontinued until the 30 D ay o f Decem ber N e x t Following, Being Then Prorogued (1680). 75. See A True C opy o f the Journal-Book o f the Last Parliament, Begun at W estm inster the Sixth D ay o f March 1678/79, C ontaining the Transactions from the First D ay o f Their Sitting, to the D ay o f Their Prorogation and D issolution (1680). 76. CJ, 9:643. 77. See Votes o f the H ouse o f C om m ons, Perused and Signed, to Be Printed According to the Order o f the H ouse o f C om m ons, by Me, William Williams, Speaker. Fifty-eight continuously num bered and separately published half-sheets (I Nov. 1680-10 Jan. 1681), plus an unnum bered prelim inary issue of 16 pp. covering the business of the Com m ons from 21 to 30 O ctober 1680, four addi­ tional issues of 8 to 15 pp. w ith num bers duplicating some of those in the regular series, and seven unnum bered issues dealing w ith the appearance of witnesses concerning the Popish Plot. 78. See A n E xact Collection o f th e M ost Considerable Debates in the H onourable H ouse o f Commons, at the Parliament H eld at W estm inster the O ne and Tw entieth o f October, 1680, W hich Was Prorogued the Tenth, and D is­ solved the Eighteenth o f January Following (1681). 79. E ngland’s M ournful Elegy for the Dissolving the Parliament (21 Jan. 1681), p. I . 80. Protestant (Domestick) Intelligence, 25 Feb. 1681. (Italics reversed.) 81. Ibid., 15 M ar. 1681. (Italics omitted.) 82. [Elkanah Settle], The Character o f a Popish Successour, and W hat E n­ gland M ay E xpect from Such a One: H um bly O ffered to the Consideration o f B oth Houses o f Parliament, A ppointed to M eet at O xford, on the O ne and T w en­ tieth o f March, 1680/1 (1681), p. 15. 83. Vox Populi; or, The Peoples Claim to Their Parliaments Sitting, to Re­ dress Grievances, and Provide for the C om m on Safety, by the K now n Law s and Constitutions o f the N ation: H um bly Recom m ended to the King and Parliament at Their Meeting a t O xford, the 21th o f March (M arch 1681), pp. 5, 13. 84. Thom as Long, A Sermon against M urmuring: Preached in the Cathedral Church o f St. Peter E xon, on the 29th o f M ay, 1680 (13 July 1680), sig. A3. (Italics omitted.) 85. Samuel Crossman, T w o Sermons Preached in the Cathedral-Church o f Bristol, January the 30th, 1679/80, and January the 31th, 1680/1, B eingthe Days o f H um iliation for the Execrable M urder o f O ur Late Soveraign, K ing Charles I (1681), pp. 34, 3 6 -37. 86. Francis T urner, A Sermon Preached before the King on the 30/1 o f January 1680/1, Being the Fast fo r the M artyrdom o f King Charles I o f Blessed M em ory (1681), p. 8.

87. A L etter fro m a C itizen o f O x fo r d to a Citizen o f L o n d o n , concerning the D issolution o f the Parliam ent (January 1681), pp. 1 -2 . 88. A L etter fro m Scotland, W ritten O ccasionally upon the Speech m ade by a N o b le Peer o f T his R ealm (1681), pp. 1 -2 . 89. O edipus, w hich D ryden w ro te w ith N ath an iel Lee, w as apparently fin­ ished n o later than Septem ber 1678 an d first perform ed early in the autum n. O ates an d T onge did n o t m ake th eir first ap p earance before the Privy Council until 28 Septem ber. For th e dates o f D ry d en ’s plays, prologues, and epilogues w ritten betw een 1678 an d 1684, see A ppendix I. 90. See, for exam ple, Bruce K ing’s discussion o f T he Spanish Fryar in D ry­ d e n ’s M ajor Plays (N ew Y ork: Barnes and N o b le, 1966), pp. 1 4 8 -6 4 . 91. Irvin E hrenpreis, “ D ryden th e P lay w rig ht,” in A cts o f Im plication: Sug­ gestion a n d C overt M eaning in the W o rks o f D ryden, S w ift, Pope, and A u sten (Berkeley: U niversity of C alifornia Press, 1980), p. 34. 92. [R obert G ould], T he L aureat (24 O ct. 1687), p. 3. 93. See E dm und M alone, T h e Critical a n d M iscellaneous Prose W orks o f Jo h n D ryden, 4 vols. (1800), 1:119; Sir W alter Scott, The W orks o f J o h n D ry d e n , 18 vols. (1808), 1 :2 3 3 -3 7 , 6 :3 6 8 -6 9 , 9:443; R o b ertB ell, Poetical W orks o f John D ryd en (1854), pp. 4 8 -5 2 ; W . D. C hristie, T he Poetical W orks o f Jo h n D ryden (1870), pp. xlvi-xlvii; Louis I. Bredvold, “Political Aspects of D ryden’s A m b o y n a and The Spanish Fryar,” University o f M ichigan Publications in Language a n d L iterature 8 (1932): 1 1 9 -3 2 . 94. Ju d ith M ilhous an d R ob ert D. H um e, Producible Interpretation: E ig h t English Plays, 1 6 7 5 -1 7 0 7 (C arbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985), pp. 1 4 6 -4 9 . T h eir discussion of th e play (pp. 1 4 1-71) is in m any respects invalu­ able. 95. Susan Staves, Players’ Scepters: Fictions o f A u th o rity in the R estoration (Lincoln: U niversity of N eb rask a Press, 1979), p. 77. 96. M y rem arks a b o u t an assum ed system o f values in a play apply equally to Troilus and Cressida. R ecently, the C alifornia editors (D ryden, W orks 13:518) have argued th a t m this play “D ryden appears to be draw ing specific parallels betw een the contem p o rary political situ atio n an d the tim e of the T ro jan W a r.” As th eir exam ple, how ever, they cite the p o p u lar hostility a t this tim e to the king’s m istress, the duchess o f P ortsm o u th , and com m ent: “W hen T roilus is m ade to defend the virtue o f Cressida in a violent quarrel w ith his b ro th er H ector, the audience could n o t help b u t be rem inded o f a n o th e r pair o f royal brothers and the w ay a m istress w as helping to destroy everyone’s peace of m ind.” T he parallel, if there is one, is extrem ely farfetched: P o rtsm o u th w as the elder, n o t the younger, b ro th e r’s m istress, the royal bro th ers did n o t quarrel over her, and no one (least o f all C harles) w o u ld have attem p ted to defend her chastity. It is even h a rd er to im agine w hy D ryden w o u ld have draw n a parallel so offensive to the court. I have discussed o th er recent attem p ts to find political parallels in D ryden’s plays o f this period in “D ryden in 1 6 7 8 -1 6 8 1 : T he L iterary and H istorical Perspectives,” in T he G olden and the Brazen W orld: Papers in Literature and H istory, 1 6 5 0 1800, ed. Jo h n M . W allace (Berkeley: U niversity o f C alifornia Press, 1985), pp. 5 5 -7 7 . 97. D ryden, “Second Prologue to Secret L o v e ” [1667], W orks 9:120. (Italics om itted.)

98. D ry d en , “P rologue a t O x fo rd , 1 6 8 0 ,” ibid. 1 :1 6 0 -6 1 , 4 0 1 . (Italics re­ versed in last cou p let q uoted.) 99. D ryden, “P rologue to T h e Spanish Fryar; or, T h e D o u b le D isco v ery” (1681), sig. a l . (Italics reversed.) T he date o f first perfo rm an ce is N o v em b er 1680. 100. D ry d en , “ P rologue to Caesar B o rg ia ” [M ay 1679], W o rk s 1:162. 101. D ryden, “ Epistle D e d ic a to ry ,” Troilus a n d Cressida, ibid., p p . 2 2 1 -2 2 . T he p ro lo g u e to N a h u m T a te ’s T h e L o y a l G eneral, first perform ed in D ecem ber 1679, offers a sim ilar case w h ere D ryden is c o n te n t to deplore the presen t co n fu ­ sions w ith o u t a d o p tin g a p a rtisa n stan ce (see ibid. 1:163—64). H ere his chief co m ­ p la in t is th a t the n a tio n ’s tu rm o il h as c o rru p te d its literary taste to th e d isad v an ­ tage o f b o th players an d serious playw rights like T ate: T he Plays th a t tak e on o u r C o rru p te d Stage, M eth in k s resem ble th e d istracted Age; N oise, M ad n ess, all u n reaso n ab le T hings, T h a t strike a t Sense, as Rebels do a t Kings! T he stile o f F o rty O ne o u r Poets w rite, A nd you [the audience] are g ro w n to judge like F orty Eight. Such C ensures o u r m istak in g A udience m ake, T h a t ’tis alm o st g ro w n S candalous to T ake! This is com ic raillery a t th e expense o f b o th audiences an d th e playw rights w ho cater to th e ir c o rru p te d taste by w ritin g farces instead o f tragedies. B ut in a n o th e r year o r tw o th ese jo cu lar similes of rebels an d regicides fo r b a d poets an d cen so ri­ ous audiences respectively w o u ld becom e to o highly charged fo r any use ex cept a political (and th erefo re divisive) one. 102. D ryden, “ Epistle D e d ic a to ry ,” T he Spanish Fryar, sig. A4. (Italics re ­ versed.) 103. See H aley, First E arl o f S h a ftesb u ry (n. 68 above), pp. 357, 3 60. 104. See T ru e D o m e stic k Intelligence, 9 Dec. 1679. 105. T h e C abal (18 Feb. 1680). 106. SeeJ. R. Jo n es, “ S haftesbury’s ‘W o rth y M e n ’: A W hig V iew o f the P a rlia ­ m ent o f 1 6 7 9 ,” B ulletin o f th e In stitu te o f H istorical Research 30 (1957): 2 3 2 41. 107. See A n d rew B row ning an d D oreen J. M ilne, “A n E xclusion Bill D ivision L ist,” ibid., 23 (1950): 2 0 5 -2 5 . 108. See T he H u m b le A d d ress a n d A d vice o f Several o f the Peeres o f This R ealm (n. 28 above). 109. See R easons fo r th e In d ic tm e n t o f th e D . o f Y o rk, Presented to the G rand-Jury o f M id d lesex, Saturday, J u n e 26, 80, by the Persons here undern a m ’d [1680]. T his b ro ad sid e also describes th e renew al o f the atte m p t on 30 Ju n e in w hich L o rd C lare w as involved. 110. See E. S. de Beer, “T h e H o u se o f L ords in the P a rlia m e n to f 1 6 8 0 ,” B u lle­ tin o f the In stitu te o f H istorical Research 2 0 (1 9 4 3—45): 2 2 -3 7 ; LJ, 13:666. 111. T he Earl o f E ssex H is Speech a t the D elivery o f the P etition (27 Jan. 1681), p. 2. 112. A t a b o u t th e sam e tim e as his ded icatio n o f Troilus a n d Cressida to Sun­ d erlan d (the au tu m n o f 1679), D ryden d edicated T h e K in d K eeper to L ord

V aughan. But this latter dedication m akes only the m ost perfunctory allusion to con tem p o rary affairs. CHAPTER 3 THE N A T IO N ’S SAVIOR

1. See the ch ap ter on “ Revenue an d T a x a tio n ” in D avid Ogg, E ngland in the Reign o f Charles II, 2 vols. (O xford: C larendon Press, 1934), 2 :4 2 1 -4 9 , still one o f the best discussions of the subject. 2. T he C ountry-m ans C om plaint, a n d A d vice to the K ing (9 Feb. 1681), pp.

1- 2 . 3. H is M ajesties M o st G racious Speech to B o th H ouses o f Parliam ent, at the O pening o f the Parliam ent a t O xfo rd , M o n d a y, the 2 1 th day o f M arch 1681 (O xford, 1681), pp. 5 -6 , 3 -4 , 4 -6 , 7. 4. CJ, 9:708. 5. See Votes o f the H ouse o f C om m ons, at O x fo rd . Five continuously num bered and separately published half-sheets (2 3 -2 8 M ar. 1681). The first issue covers the initial three days o f the session before the passage o f the reso­ lution. 6. CJ, 9:711. 7. LJ, 13:757. 8. O n the subject o f C harles’s negotiations w ith the French over a subsidy and o f his deliberately laid strategy against the W higs at O x fo rd , my assessm ent agrees w ith th a t of J. R. Jones (Charles II: R o ya l Politician [London: Allen Sc U nw in, 1987], pp. 1 6 6 -7 0 ) and m o st o th er recent historians. For a c o n trary inter­ p retatio n , w hich represents C harles as indifferent to B arillon’s proposals until the last m om ent, an d sees his dissolution of P arliam ent as a decision reluctantly reached only after the session w as already in progress, see R onald H u tto n , Char­ les the Second: K ing o f E ngland, Scotland, a n d Ireland (O xford: C larendon Press, 1989), pp. 3 9 8 -4 0 3 . H e appears to confuse C harles’s seeming indifference to B arillon’s overtures, fo r the sake of driving the best financial bargain, w ith genu­ ine nonchalance at the prospect of a subsidy. H u tto n ’s idiosyncratic judgm ent on C harles’s dissolution o f the O x fo rd P arliam ent is th a t this action did n o t represent “the end of the ‘Exclusion C risis’, w ith C harles’s ‘triu m p h ’ over the W higs,” but “a m om ent o f p ro fo u n d failu re” in w hich “ before the eyes o f Europe the English sovereign had adm itted his inability to w o rk w ith his national assem bly” (pp. 401—2). H e does n o t explain w hy this spectacle w ould have dism ayed o r disap­ pointed observers in contem p o rary E urope, or w hy it did n o t just as easily show “the w o rld ,” as C harles and his advisers hoped, the unw illingness of his national assem bly, o r at least th e m ajority of its low er house, to w o rk w ith their king. 9. H is M ajesties D eclaration to AU H is L o v in g Subjects, Touching the Causes a n d R easons T h a t M o v e d H im to D issolve the T w o L a st Parliaments (1681), passim . (Printed by o rd er in council o f 8 A pril 1681.) 10. T h e G o o d O ld Cause R evived (2 Feb. 1680). 11. T h e D isloyal Forty a nd Forty O ne, a n d the L o ya l Eighty, Presented to Publick V iew in a Prospect a nd Schem e; Shew ing the D ifference o f the Years Forty, a nd Forty O ne, fro m the Year E ighty (1680), p. I .

12. A Letter to the Earl o f Shaftsbury This 9th o f July, 1680, from Tom Tell-Troth, a D ow nright Englishman (9 July 1680), pp. 3^4. 13. The Presentment and H um ble Petition o f the G rand Jury fo r the County o f M iddlesex (23 M ay 1681), p. 2. 14. A Letter from a Person o f Q uality to His Friend concerning H is Majesties Late Declaration Touching the Reasons W hich M oved H im to Dissolve the Tw o Last Parliaments at W estminster and O xfo rd (April 1681), p. I. 15. A Just and M odest Vindication o f the Proceedings o f the T w o Last Par­ liaments [1681], p. 46. 16. The Genius o f True English-men (18 Apr. 1681). 17. O xfords Lam entation in a Dialogue between O xfo rd and London, con­ cerning the Dissolution o f the Parliament (30 M ar. 1681), p. 2. (Italics reversed.) 18. See V ox Patriae; or, The Resentm ents and Indignation o f the Free-born Subjects o f England, against Popery, Arbitrary Government, the D uke o f York, or A n y Popish Successor: Being a True Collection o f the Petitions and Addresses Lately M ade from Divers Counties, Cities, and Boroughs o f This Realm, to Their Respective Representatives, Chosen to Serve in the Parliament Held at O xford, March 21, 1680 (13 Apr. 1681). 19. See The Debates in the House o f C om m ons Assembled a t O xfo rd the Tw enty First o f March, 1680(/81] (28 Apr. 1681). 20. The Country-mans C omplaint (n. 2 above), p. 2. 21. The Answers C om m anded by His M ajesty to Be Given . . . upon Several Addresses Presented to His M ajesty in. Council at H am pton-C ourt (24 May 1681), pp. 2, 4. 22. The E. o f Shaftsbury’s E xpedient fo r Setting the N ation, Discoursed with His Majesty in the House o f Peers, at O xford, Mar. 24th, 1680/1 (1681), passim. A full account of Shaftesbury’s proposal for “settling the C rown upon the Duke of M o n m o u th ” w as also published in the Loyal Protestant, 9 Apr. 1681. 23. The Deliquium; or, The Grievances o f the N ation Discovered in a Dream (8 Apr. 1681), p. 2. Almanzor, the nam e used for the duke of Y ork here, was of course the hero of The Conquest o f Granada. Dryden had already draw n a flatter­ ing com parison between the tw o in dedicating his play to the duke in 1672. See W orks, 11:6-7. 24. Poor Robins Dream; or, The Visions o f Hell, w ith a Dialogue between the T w o Ghosts o f Dr. Tonge and Capt. Bedlow (30 Apr. 1681), p. 3. 25. The W aking Vision; or, Reality in a Fancy (April 1681). There were at least tw o editions of this broadside, both published by Thom pson. The date is supplied by Anthony W ood on his copy of the poem, now in the Bodleian. The fact th at this poem ends with advice to the king that, along the lines of The C oun­ try-mans C omplaint tw o m onths earlier, urges him to exert himself, indicates that it appeared in early April, perhaps before the publication of His Majesties Decla­ ration, and certainly before the new Tory propaganda campaign w as launched later in the m onth. 26. Grimalkin; or, The Rebel-Cat: A N ovell Representing the Unwearied A t­ tem pts o f the Beasts o f His Faction against Sovereignty and Succession since the Death o f the Lyons in the Tow er (4 M ay 1681), p. 3. 27. A Seasonable Invitation fo r M onm outh to Return to Court (23 June 1681), p. 2.

28. Observator, 13 Apr. 1681. 29. Ibid., 16 Apr. 1681. 30. Loyal Protestant, 9 M ar. 1681. (Italics reversed.) 31. Memoirs o f Sir John Reresby, ed. Andrew Browning (Glasgow: Iackson, Son and Co., 1936), p. 247. 32. D om estick Intelligence, 18 July and 8 Aug. 1681. 33. Religion and Loyalty Supporting Each Other; or, A Rational Account H o w the Loyal Addressers Maintaining the Lineal Descent o f the Crown Is Very Consistent with Their Affection to the Established Protestant Religion (1681), p.

2. 34. Loyal Protestant, 10 M ay 1681. (Italics reversed.) 35. D om estick Intelligence, 13 M ay and 14 July 1681. 36. A Vindication o f Addresses in General, and o f the Middle-Temple A d ­ dress and Proceedings in Particular, in Answ er to the Impartial Account o f A d ­ dresses, Wherein the Popular Pretences o f Some Men Are Exposed (19 Aug. 1681), p. I. 37. Vox Angliae; or, The Voice o f the Kingdom: Being a Compleat Collec­ tion o f AU Those N um erous Addresses Lately Presented to His Majesty, from the Greatest Part o f the Counties, Cities, Boroughs, and O ther Corporations and Societies in England and Wales, &c. Expressing Their Thanks for His Late Gra­ cious Declaration (1682), vols. 1/1, pp. 3, 6, 1/2, p. 14. (Advertised in the Loyal Protestant, 28 Feb. 1682.) 38. Ibid., 1:7 (italics omitted), 25. 39. Ibid., p. 3. 40. See, for example, the loyal address from the borough of Haslemere, ibid., p. 5. 41. Heraclitus Ridens, 12 April 1681. (Italics reversed.) 42. Edward Sclater, A Sermon Preached in the Church o f Putney in the County o f Surrey, upon the 24th o f April, 1681, His M ajesty’s Declaration Being Read That D ay (1681), pp. 3, 4, 31. 43. Henry Anderson, A Sermon Preached in the Cathedral Church at W in­ chester, the 29 o f M ay 1681 (1681), pp. 26-27. 44. Dom estick Intelligence, 21 July 1681. 45. A N ew Letter from Leghorn, from aboard the Van-Herring to a Mer­ chant in London, Fully Discovering the Present State o f That Ship (1681), pp. I, 3 -4 . This was published between 14 July and 17 August (internal evidence). 46. The libel was subsequently published as Treason in Graine: That M ost Traiterous [sic], or Libel o f Fitzharris, . . . Falsly and M alitiously Called by Him, The True English-man Speaking Plain English, in a Letter from a Friend to a Friend [1681]. In spite of the scandalized tone of the title, the pam phlet appeared w ithout an im print and was probably a Whig publication whose purpose was anything but loyal. 47. See The Arraignment and Plea o f Edw. Fitz-Harns, Esq; with All the Argum ents in Law, and Proceedings o f the Court o f Kings-Bench Thereupon, in Easter Term 1681 (1681). 48. Loyal Protestant, 10 M ay 1681. (Italics reversed.) 49. See The Tryal and Condemnation o f Edw. Fitz-Harris, Esq; for HighTreason, at the Barr o f the Court o f K ing’s Bench, at Westminster, on Thursday,

the 9th o f June, in Trinity Term, 1681 (1681). The story spread by the Tory journalists was that the W hig jurors had planned to acquit Fitzharris, but th at one of their num ber (William Cleave) proved to be a Tory and threatened to produce a hung jury until he secured a conviction. See Heraclitus Ridens, 21 June 1681, and Observator, 16 July 1681. 50. Impartial Protestant Mercury, 14 June 1681. 51. Ibid., 17 June 1681. 52. N otes o f the Evidence Given against the Lord H ow ard o f Escrick (1681), p. 2 (italics reversed); Impartial Protestant Mercury, 24 June 1681 (italics re­ versed). 53. See Im partial Protestant M ercury, I July 1681, for Janew ay’s account of these arrests. 54. See The Last Speech o f Edw ard Fitz-harris, at the Tim e o f His Execution at Tyburn, the First o f July, 1681 (1681). 55. The Confession o f Edw ard Fitz-harys, Esquire, W ritten w ith His O w n Hand, and Delivered to D octor H aw kins, M inister o f the Tower, the First o f July, 1681, Being the D ay o f His E xecution. Together w ith His Last Speech (1681), pp. 3^1. (Printed by order in council of 2 July 1681.) There is another edition of this confession in a tw o-colum n form at. 56. A Narrative: Being a True Relation o f W hat Discourse Passed between Dr. FIawkins and Edw ard Fitz-Harys, Esq; Late Prisoner in the Tower; w ith the Manner o f Taking His Confession. Published by A uthority (1681), p. 4. (Printed by order in council o f 2 July 1681.) 57. See Fitz-Harys's Last Sham Detected; or, A Vindication o f His Sacred M ajesty from Those Foul Aspersions Cast upon H im by T h a t Im p u d en t Libel Called, Fitz-Harys’s Last Confession, L eft under His O w n Hand, and Published by Dr. H aw kins (1681); Truth Vindicated; or, A D etection o f the Aspersions and Scandals . . . in a Paper Published in the N am e o f Dr. Francis H aw kins, M inister o f the Tower, Intituled, The Confession o f E dw ard Fitz-Harris, Esq. (1681); Som e Short b u t Necessary Anim adversions on the Paper Delivered to Dr. H a w k­ ins, together with a Copy o f the Paper It Self Entituled, The Confession o f E d­ w ard Fitz-Harris, Esq; W ritten with His O w n Hand, and Delivered, &c. (1681); A Vindication o f the H onourable the Sheriffs and Recorder o f L ondon, from Those Im pudent Reflections Cast upon Them in Fitzharris’s Libel, Entituled, His Confession, &c. [1681]. See also H ow ard’s ow n denial of Fitzharris’s charges against him in A Letter from M y Lord H ow ard o f Escrick, to His Friend (1681). 58. See The Ghosts o f E dw ard Fits Harris and Oliver Plunket, W ho Was Lately Executed at Tyburn fo r High-Treason, w ith Their Sentim ents about the Times (7 July 1681). 59. The Tryal and C ondem nation o f Several N otorious Malefactors, at a Ses­ sions o f Oyer and Terminer H olden for the City o f London, C ounty o f M iddlesex, and Goal Delivery o f N ew gate, Beginning July 6, 1681, Ending the 9 o f the same M onth, at the Sessions H ouse in the Old-Bayly (1681), p. 3. 60. For early examples, see A Congratulation on the H appy D iscovery o f the Hellish Fanatick Plot (26 July 1681); A Song o f the N ew Plot (5 Aug. 1681); The M ad-m en’s Hospital; or, A Present Rem edy to Cure the Presbyterian Itch. A Poem (5 Aug. 1681).

61. CSPD 1680-81, p. 372. 62. Ibid., p. 399. 63. The Arraignment, Tryal1 and Condemnation o f Stephen Colledge for High-Treason1 in Conspiring the Death o f the King, the Levying o f War, and the Subversion o f the Governm ent (1681), pp. 2 -3 , 19, 28-30, 34. (Italics reversed for pp. 2—3; tw o sequences of pp. 27—30.) Besides the statute of 25 Edward III to which N orth referred in his instruction, College was also convicted under the Act for the Preservation of the King (1661), which explicitly made it a capital offense to devise or intend the imprisonment or restraint of the king’s person. See Andrew Browning, ed., English Historical Documents, 1660-1714 (London: Eyre Sc Spottiswoode, 1953), pp. 63-65. 64. The Speech and Carriage o f Stephen Colledge at O xford, before the Cas­ tle, on Wednesday, A ugust 31, 1681: Taken Exactly from His O w n M outh at the Place o f Execution (1681), pp. 4, 2. 65. See The Last Speech and Confession o f Mr. Stephen Colledge, W ho Was Executed at O xford on Wednesday, August 31, 1681 (1681). 66. See A Ra-ree Show (1681). College insisted at his trial that “I know noth­ ing o f the Original, the Printer, nor the A uthor” (Arraignment, Tryal, and Con­ dem nation o f Stephen Colledge, p. 75). 67. See, for example, A Song o f the N ew Plot, where Fitzharris, H ow ard, College, and Shaftesbury are specifically linked as the four principal culprits in the new plot. 68. Vox Angliae (n. 37 above), 1:42 (grand jury of the County of Wilts, 18 July). See also the addresses from the grand juries of the counties of Essex (12 July), Hereford (12 July), and D urham (13 July), ibid., pp. 31-33. 69. The Ignoramus Ballad (27 Aug. 1681); The Riddle o f the Roundhead (9 Sept. 1681). 70. Some M odest Reflections upon the C om m itm ent o f the Earl o f Shaftsbury, Arising from the Late Indictm ent against Mr. Stephen Colledge (12 July 1681), p. 3. (Exact date from imprint.) 71. Truth Vindicated (n. 57 above), p. 8. 72. Some M odest Reflections, p. 4. 73. A Civil Correction o f a Sawcy Im pudent Pamphlet, Lately Published, Entituled, A B rief Account o f the Designs Which the Papists Have Had against the Earl o f Shaftsbury, &c. (1681), pp. 1 ,4 . (Italics reversed.) 74. A Dialogue between Mrs. Celier and the L. S y (5 Aug. 1681). (Printed on the same broadsheet with A Song o f the N ew Plot.) 75. A n Excellent N ew Ballad o f the Plotting H ead (26 Sept. 1681). 76. See A Congratulation on the H appy Discovery o f the Hellish Fanatick Plot and A Song o f the N ew Plot (n. 60 above); The Riddle o f the Roundhead·, Stephen Colledge’s G host to the Fanatical Cabal (15 Sept. 1681); An Excellent N ew Ballad o f the Plotting Head; Have You A ny W ork for a Cooperf or, A Comparison betw ixt a Cooper’s, and a Joyner’s Trade (26 Sept. 1681); and Trea­ son Unmasqued; or, Truth Brought to Light (1681; another version of The Riddle o f the Roundhead). 77. A Dialogue between the E. o f Sh[aftesbury] and L. Bellfasyse] in the Tower, concerning the Plot (13 July 1681), p. I.

78. Arraignment, Tryal, and Condem nation o f Stephen Colledge (n. 63 above), p. 30. 79. The Riddle o f the Roundhead. 80. A rare exception seems to be A N ew Ballad O f Jo cky’s jo u rn ey into England, in the Year 1681, w ith His Rem arkes upon the Times (29 Sept. 1681). The au th o r of these wretched verses describes the conspirators as agreeing to Shaftesbury’s “T raiterous Design” and deciding “ ’tw as fit th at Young J[emm]y su ’d Joyn. / W ho Guld w ith the glittering Hopes of a Crown; / And w ith Fatal Applause, was to side w ith ’em, led.” The purpose of the conspiracy is “Their M onarch to Seiz.” 81. See the letter of R ichard M ulys dated 11 July in H M C O rm onde, p. 97, See also Impartial Protestant M ercury, 29 July 1681, and L oyal Protestant, 15 Oct. 1681. The possibility of obtaining an indictm ent in either W estm inster or Southw ark was also being considered. 82. A n Excellent N e w Ballad o f the Plotting Head. For other hopeful predic­ tions of Shaftesbury’s execution, see A N e w Ballad o f L ondons L oyalty (July 1681) and A Congratulation on the H appy Discovery o f the Hellish Fanatick Plot. 83. See M emoirs o f Sir John Reresby (n. 31 above), p. 233 (entry for 13 Oct.). 84. Letter dated 18 O ctober, H M C O rm onde, p. 198. 85. See A Particular A ccount o f the Proceedings at the O ld Bayly1 the 17 and 18 o f this Instant O ctober, w ith Relation to the Earl o f Shaftsbury, and Others, Prisoners in the Tower; and Mr. Rouse, W ho Was Indicted o f High Treason, & c. (1681). 86. See the letter from Longford to O rm ond dated 25 O ctober, H M C O rm onde, p. 208. 87. See the letter of Peter Rich to Jenkins dated 11 October, CSPD 1680-81, p. 504, and the inform ation of Laurence M ow bray dated 28 O ctober, ibid., p. 538. 88. M emoirs o f Sir John Reresby, p. 236 (entry for 6 Nov.). 89. Letter to O rm ond dated 15 Novem ber, H M C O rm onde, p. 229. 90. The Whiggs Lam entation for the Death o f Their Dear Brother Colledge, the Protestant Joyner (4 Nov. 1681). 91. Heraclitus Ridens, 15 Nov. 1681. (Italics reversed.) 92. [Robert Ferguson], N o Protestant-Plot; or, The Present Pretended C on­ spiracy o f Protestants against the King and G overnm ent Discovered to Be a C on­ spiracy o f the Papists against the King and His Protestant-Subjects (October 1681), p. 32. In the Loyal Protestant of 15 O ctober 1681, Thom pson denounced the recent publication of this “scurrilous, false Seditious Libel.” 93. The Inform ation ofC a p t. Hen. W ilkinson, o f W hat H ath Passed b etw ixt H im and Som e O ther Persons, W ho Have A ttem pted to Prevail w ith H im to Swear High Treason against the Earl o f Shaftsbury (1681), p. 2. There are tw o editions of this publication, differing in pagination. 94. [Robert Ferguson], The Second Part o f N o Protestant Plot. By the Same H and (Novem ber 1681), p. 12. This appeared after The Inform ation o f Ca p t . Hen. W ilkinson, but before Shaftesbury’s inquest (internal evidence). 95. See Ferguson, N o Protestant-Plot, pp. 19—20, 28-32.

96. Roger L’Estrange, N otes upon Stephen College: Grounded Principally upon His O w n Declarations and Confessions, and Freely Subm itted to Pubhque Censure (1681). p. 35. (Roman substituted for black letter.) (Advertised in the Observator, 2 Nov. 1681.) 97. Ferguson, The Second Part o f N o Protestant Plot, p. 4. 98. His Majesties Gracious Speech to Both Houses o f Parliament, on Thurs­ day, the 21st o f October, 1680 (22 Oct. 1680), pp. 6-7. 99. Dryden, “Epilogue Spoken to the King at O xford,” W orks, 2:180-81. Dustin Griffin interprets this epilogue as evidence of Dryden’s open enlistment in the Tory cause as early as M arch 1681 (see “Dryden’s Charles: The Ending of Absalom and Achitophel,” Philological Quarterly 57 [1978]: 359-82 [especially 373-74]). By m isinterpreting Dryden’s words about the “Genius” of “This Place the seat of Peace” (genius loci) as referring to Charles rather than to the peaceful spirit of Oxford, he finds a partisan tone in the epilogue that is not justified by Dryden’s lines. 100. Dryden, “Epilogue to The Unhappy Favourite,” W orks, 2:182. 101. Dryden, “Prologue to the University of Oxford, 1681,” ibid., p. 184. 102. See my discussion of the date of this prologue in Appendix I. 103. Dryden, “Prologue, Spoken to the King and Queen at their coming to the House, and W ritten on purpose by M r. Dryden,” W orks, 2:181. 104. Dryden, “Prologue to M ithridates,” ibid., p. 186. 105. Impartial Protestant Mercury, 28 Oct. 1681. To “ admire a t” is of course to feel surprise or astonishment, often accompanied by indignation. 106. Loyal Protestant, 29 Oct. 1681. Janeway’s and Thom pson’s extracts were presumably taken from shorthand transcriptions made in the theater. For a summary by the California editors of the vexed textual problems connected with these two pieces, see W orks, 2:459—60. 107. The prologue and epilogue to Mithridates were published anonymously at the end of 1681 or the beginning of 1682. Those to The Unhappy Favourite were published at the beginning of 1682 and attributed to Dryden. The epilogue at the time of the O xford Parliam ent was published twice in the spring of 1681, and on one of these occasions under Dryden’s name, but this theater piece was, as we have seen, impartial. 108. An anonym ous prose pam phlet, His Majesties Declaration Defended, in a Letter to a Friend: Being an Answ er to a Seditious Pamphlet, Called, A Letter from a Person o f Quality to His Friend, was attributed to Dryden by Roswell G. H am (“Dryden as Historiographer-Royal: The Authorship of His Majesties Dec­ laration Defended, 1681,” Review o f English Studies 11 [1935]: 284-98) and subsequently included by the California editors in the appropriate volume of Dry­ den’s Works (17:195-225). The attribution has been challenged, persuasively I believe, by Edward L. Saslow (“Dryden as Historiographer Royal, and the Au­ thorship of His Majesties Declaration D efended,” Modern Philology 75 [1978]: 261-72), who argues very cogently that the supposedly parallel ideas H am de­ tected in this pamphlet and in D ryden’s acknowledged political writings begin­ ning w ith Absalom and Achitophel, when they do not prove on closer examina­ tion to be actually dissimilar, are simply commonplaces shared by num erous Tory pam phlets, while the alleged stylistic similarities, traditionally regarded as the

weakest kind of internal evidence in argum ents for attribution, are particularly unconvincing in this case. Jam es Anderson W inn continues to accept D ryden’s authorship of the pam phlet, citing further verbal parallels th at I do not find per­ suasive (John Dryden and His W orld [New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987], pp. 3 4 3 -4 8 , 596). In any case, acceptance of the attribution does n o t affect my argum ent th at Dryden m aintained the nonpartisan stance he had been ad o p t­ ing throughout the Exclusion Crisis until sometime in the spring o f 1681, for His Majesties Declaration D efended was no t published until 15 June 1681. 109. There are no grounds for the assertion, repeated by several of D ryden’s biographers in recent years, th at “ the actual beginning of Absalom and Achitophel” took place in the sum m er and autum n of 1680, over a year before its pub­ lication. See Charles E. W ard, The Life o f John Dryden (Chapel Hill: University of N o rth Carolina Press, 1961), p. 156; George M cFadden, Dryden: The Public Writer, 1660 -1 6 8 5 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 208. 110. M y view that the poem was w ritten to celebrate and justify remedial actions on the king’s part th at had already taken place is in some respects the exact opposite of M cFadden’s, w ho sees the poem as deliberative rhetoric by means of which Dryden “wished to bring the nation to its senses and stiffen the backbone of his royal m aster” (Dryden: The Public Writer, p. 236). This certainly describes the wishes of many T ory propagandists a year earlier, but w ould have been an anachronism long before Novem ber 1681. It m ay explain, however, M cFadden’s belief, indicated above, th at Dryden began w ork on A bsalom and Achitophel in the summ er of 1680 when the Tories were close to despair. 111. Dryden, “To the R eader,” Absalom and Achitophel. A Poem, W orks, 2:4 (italics reversed). 112. Luttrell’s copy of the poem is now in the H untington Library. 113. Dryden, “The Life o f Plutarch” [1683], W orks, 17:281. As the C alifor­ nia editors point out, Dryden is here paraphrasing M ontaigne’s Defence de Seneque et de Plutarque. 114. See Steven N. Zw icker, D ryden’s Political Poetry: The Typology o f King and N ation (Providence, R.I.: Brown University Press, 1972). 115. A nnotations upon AU the B ooks o f the O ld and N ew Testament, 2nd ed. (1651), sig. X X X I. (Italics reversed.) This popular com m entary was the com ­ bined labor of eight English scripturists. 116. Several revisionist studies of Absalom and A chitophel in recent years have emphasized the fallible David of 2 Samuel and the com m entaries, refuting the popular view th at D ryden’s biblical parallel excuses and justifies Charles’s promiscuity, and offering a valuable corrective to the exclusively mystical view of David (see Zwicker, D ryden’s Political Poetry) draw n uncritically from Puritan sermons and typological m anuals of the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods. See Κ. E. Robinson, “A Reading of Absalom and A chitophel,” Yearbook o f English Studies 6 (1976): 53—62; Jerom e Donnelly, “Fathers and Sons: The N orm ative Basis of D ryden’s Absalom and A chitophel,” Papers in English Language and Literature 17 (1981): 363-80; H ow ard D. W einbrot, “ ‘N atu re’s H oly Bands’ in Absalom and A chitophel: Fathers and Sons, Satire and C hange,” M odern Philol­ ogy 85 (1988): 37 3 -92. But by em phasizing to different degrees the adulterous David of 2 Samuel, chapters 11 and 12, and arguing th at Dryden likens Charles to this David in order to blame the king’s sexual prom iscuity for his recent trou-

bles, these studies argue the presence of a p rim arily m oral them e in A bsalom and A ch ito p b el th a t I am unable to find there. 117. Jo h n T rap p , A n n o ta tio n s u p o n the O ld an d N e w Testam ent, 5 vols. (1662), vol. 1/2, p. 2 7 6 ; A n n o ta tio n s upon A ll the B o o ks, com m ent on 2 Sam. 18:4. 118. Ibid., com m ent on 2 Sam. 15:1. See also A rth u r Jackson, A n n o ta tio n s u p o n the R em aining H istoricall Part o f the O ld T estam ent (C am bridge, 1646), p. 395; M a tth e w Poole, A n n o ta tio n s u p o n the H o ly Bible, 2 vols. (1683), vol. I, com m ent on 2 Sam. 14:22. 119. T rap p , A n n o ta tio n s, vol. 1/2, p. 278. 120. Ibid., p. 279. 121. A n n o ta tio n s u p o n A ll the B o o ks, com m ent on 2 Sam. 18:32; see also T ra p p , A n n o ta tio n s, vol. 1/2, p. 273. 122. Jo h n M ayer, M any C om m entaries in O ne (1647), p. 441; see also T rap p , A n n o ta tio n s, vol. 1/2, pp. 2 9 3 -9 4 . 123. For D ryden to call the biblical D avid “g o d lik e” for this reason is no m ore serious th an his applying th e epithet to C harles at this p o int in the poem . As one biblical com m en tato r p ointed o u t, “ Polygam y (how soever it w as tolerated, in those tim es, yet it) was n o t allow ed, as his ordinance, to m ake a fruitful Progeny” (.A n n o ta tio n s upon AU the B o o ks, com m ent on 2 Sam. 3:2). T h a t is to say, polyg­ am y w as allow ed in biblical tim es n o t because o f the divine com m and to “ be fruitful, an d m u ltip ly ,” b u t as a tem p o rary concession to hum an w eakness. 124. T rap p , A n n o ta tio n s, vol. 1/2, p. 279. 125. D ryden, “T h renodia A ugustalis” [1685], W orks, 3:99. 126. See Steven N . Z w icker, Politics a n d Language in D ryd en ’s Poetry: The A rts o f D isguise (Princeton, N .J.: P rinceton U niversity Press, 1984), pp. 9 7 -9 8 . In Z w ick er’s view, “ the harsh rem edy th a t this poem prescribes is the block for W hig lead ers” (p. 93) in place o f the m isguided policy ad opted to w a rd the k in g ’s form er enem ies a t the tim e of the R estoration. 127. AU peers of the ran k o f earl or higher are styled “ cousins” of the sover­ eign in royal w rits an d com m issions. 128. D ryden, “A straea R e d u x ” [1660], W orks, 1:29. 129. D ryden, “T o M y L ord C han cello r” [1662], ibid., p. 39. 130. By disregarding this change of circum stances and assum ing th a t the cou­ p let “A nd D a vid ’s m ildness m an ag ’d it so w ell, / T he Bad found no occasion to R ebell” applies to the period of the Exclusion Crisis as well, Griffin concludes th a t D ryden is celebrating C harles’s successful resolution of the crisis th ro u g h an unchanging policy o f m ildness and mercy. “H is m ild, indulgent n a tu re and his exceptional political skills enabled him to defuse the o p p o sitio n ” (“ D ryden’s C harles” [n. 99 above], p. 373). 131. F or recent exam ples th a t h a d appeared since Shaftesbury’s arrest, see The Badger in the Fox-Trap; or, A Satyr u p o n Satyrs (9 July 1681); A Vision in the T ow er, to the L . H d in H is C ontem plation (22 July 1681); A Dialogue, betw een Toney, a nd the G h o st o f the L ate L o rd V iscount S ta ffo rd (24 July 1681); A n Elegy on the D eath o f the P lo t (19 Sept. 1681). 132. T he anonym ous au th o r of A Seasonable Invitation fo r M o n m o u th to R eturn to C ourt (n. 2 7 above), published the previous 23 June, had in fact com ­ bined 2 Samuel and Genesis (not Paradise L ost) to create a fitting image o f M on-

m o u th , w h o , “ like Sinful A d a m , sh ro w d s him self in craggy an d obscure Places, fearing to a p p e a r before th a t M ajesty w h o gave him B eing,” a fte r he has suecum bed to th e te m p ta tio n s o f Shaftesbury. “W ho is it, th a t h a th Exiled you from y o u r F ather’s Love? W ho is it th a t h a th tu rn e d you o u t o f a P aradise o f D elights, to w a n d e r in strange an d u n k n o w n P aths. . . . w here you m eet w ith n o o th e r C om p an y th a n C aballing Devils·, w h o , like cursed A ch ito p h el, are ever p o u rin g Poison in the Ears o f p o o r Y o u n g A b s o lo m ?” (p. I). In th e c o n te x t o f a p am p h let concern ed w ith M o n m o u th ’s loss o f royal fav o r a n d his ban ish m en t fro m co u rt, the biblical a c co u n t o f A d a m ’s fall fro m grace a n d his expulsion fro m P aradise affords an a p p ro p ria te analogy. B ut it w o u ld have been com pletely irrelev an t to D ry d e n ’s subject: S haftesbury’s tem p tin g M o n m o u th w ith the p ro sp e ct o f his fa­ th e r’s th ro n e. 133. M o st o f th e above allusions to Paradise R egained have been n o ted p revi­ ously by A. B. C ham bers, “A b sa lo m a n d A chitophel: C hrist a n d S a ta n ,” M o d ern Language N o te s 74 (1959): 5 9 2 -9 6 , o r W . K. T h o m a s, T he C rafting o f “A b sa lo m a n d A c h ito p h e l” (W aterloo, O n t.: W ilfrid L au rier U niversity Press, 1978), p. 77. For the te x t o f m y q u o ta tio n s from Paradise R egained I have used T he Poetical W o rk s o f Jo h n M ilto n , ed. H elen D arb ish ire (L ondon: O x fo rd U niversity Press, 1958). 134. A Seasonable A d d ress to B o th H ouses o f P arliam ent concerning the Suc­ cession, th e Fears o f Popery, a n d A rb itra ry G o v e rn m en t (1681), p. 5. 135. T he C o u n try-m a n s C o m p la in t (n. 2 above), p. 2. 136. T h e G h o st o f th e L a te H o u se o f C om m o ns, to the N e w O n e A p p o in te d to M e e t a t O x fo r d (18 Feb. 1681); ThP D eliq u iu m (n. 23 above), p. I . 137. T h e G o o d O ld Cause R evived (n. 10 above). 138. T he C o u n try-m a n s C om plaint, p. 2. 139. T h e W a k in g V ision (n. 25 above) (italics reversed); N e w A d vice to a Painter (23 Feb. 1680), p. 4. 140. T h e T ru e E nglishm an: B eing a V indication o f T hose M a n y L o y a l A d ­ dresses P resented to H is M a jesty fo r H is L a te G racious D eclaration (1681), p. 8. (A dvertised in the L o y a l P rotestant, 15 O ct. 1681.) 141. As co m m en tato rs have frequently observed, the details o f A b salo m ’s “ P rogress” here are d ra w n from M o n m o u th ’s journey th ro u g h the w est o f E n­ gland in th e late sum m er o f 16 8 0 . B ut D ry d en rearran g es th e o rd e r o f events so th a t th e jo u rn ey follow s the second E xclusion P arliam en t instead o f preceding it, in o rd e r to m ak e M o n m o u th ’s p rogress a final canvass o f p o p u la r su p p o rt for alterin g th e Succession by force “ before they cam e to b lo w s.” 142. F or a recent exam ple o f this p o p u la r assu m p tio n , see M ichael M cK eon, “ H isto ricizin g A b sa lo m a n d A c h ito p h e l,” in T h e N e w E ighteenth Century: T h e ­ ory, Politics, E nglish L iterature, ed. Felicity N u ssb au m a n d L au ra B row n (Lon­ don: M eth u en , 1987), pp . 2 3 -4 0 (especially p. 32). 143. [Roger L ’E strange], A n A n sw e r to th e A p p e a l fro m the C o u n try to the C ity (1679), p . 24. 144. A Seasonable A ddress (n. 134 above), p p . 1 ,1 8 . 145. A n A n sw e r to a L a te P am phlet, E n titu led , A C haracter o f a Popish Suc­ cessor, a n d W h a t E n g la n d M a y E x p e c t fro m Such a O n e (1681), p. 13. (A dver­ tised in th e L o y a l P rotestant, 15 M a r. 1681.)

146. A Seasonable Address, pp. 14-15. 147. Englands Concern in the Case o f His R. H. (1680), pp. 10, 14. 148. A n A nsw er to a hate Pamphlet, p. 15. 149. See Grey, 7:243, 246—48, 257. The same argument was offered during the debate on the second reading of the bill on 21 M ay 1679. See ibid., p. 313. In a recent article on “ O tw ay’s Caius Marius and the Exclusion Crisis” (Modern Philology 85 [1988]: 363-72), John M . Wallace discusses the use of this argument in the debate on 11 M ay 1679 (p. 368). 150. See Grey, 7:402-3, 407-9. The same argument was offered during the de­ bate on the third reading of the bill on 11 November 1680. See ibid., pp. 450—51. 151. Seeibid., 8:318. 152. His Majesties Declaration (n. 9 above), p. 7. 153. For a convenient summary o f these exaggerated conceptions of “godlike” as applied to Dryden’s David, see Griffin, “Dryden’s Charles” (n. 99 above), pp. 360-61. Adopting an opposite extreme to these views, Griffin denies any serious­ ness to the epithet here, arguing that “the ending of the poem brings not cosmic affirmation from divine thunder but comic recognition of the king’s political adeptness at appearing godlike” (pp. 361—62). 154. Certain Sermons or Homilies Appointed to Be Read in Churches, in the Time o f Queen Elizabeth o f Famous M emory, and N o w Thought Fit to Be R e­ printed by Authority from the Kings M ost Excellent Majesty (1673), pp. 344-45. (Roman substituted for black letter.) 155. The Country-mans Complaint (n. 2 above), p. 2. 156. See Zwicker, Politics and Language (n. 126 above), p. 99. 157. See Godfrey Davies, “The Conclusion of D ryden’s Absalom and Achitophel,” H untington Library Quarterly 10 (1946): 69-82. 158. See His Majesties Declaration, pp. 9, 5, 4. 159. The True Englishman (n. 140 above), p. 9. 160. Ibid., p. 18. CHAPTER 4 THE ASSOCIATION

1. The Proceedings at the Sessions House in the Old-Baily, London, on Thursday, the 24th Day o f Novem ber, 1681, before His Majesties Commissioners o f Oyer and Terminer, upon the Bill o f Indictm ent for High-Treason against A nthony Earl o f Shaftsbury (25 Nov. 1681), p. 6. 2. See ibid., pp. 19-22. 3. The testimony of the witnesses at College’s trial implicated Shaftesbury as a central figure in the conspiracy, but because the Whig leader had not yet been indicted the printed account of the trial substituted for his name such circumlocu­ tions as “a great M an ,” “a Person of H o n o u r,” and “a Person of Quality.” 4. [Robert Ferguson], N o Protestant-Plot; or, The Present Pretended Con­ spiracy o f Protestants against the King and G overnment Discovered to Be a Conspiracy o f the Papists against the King and His Protestant-Subjects (Octo­ ber 1681), pp. 30-32. Richard Baldwin was charged on 14 O ctober for its pub­ lication.

5. See The Narrative o f Mr. John Smith o f Walworth, in the County-Pala­ tine o f Durham, Gent.: Containing a Further Discovery o f the Late Horrid and Popish-Plot (1679). 6. See John. Kenyon, The Popish Plot (London: Heinemann, 1972), pp. 138-41, 148, 159, 162, 191-92, 243. 7. The Tryal o f William Viscount Stafford for High Treason (1681), p. 60. 8. The Arraignment, Tryal, and Condemnation o f Stephen Colledge for High-Treason, in Conspiring the Death o f the King, the Levying o f War, and the Subversion o f the Government (1681), p. 88. 9. Ibid., pp. 92—94. 10. CSPD 1682, pp. 162-63 (12 Apr.). 11. Proceedings at the Sessions House, p. 23. Rouse’s “trial” was his in­ quest on 18 October at which a London grand jury returned the bill endorsed Ignoramus. 12. Advice to the Painter, from a Satyrical Night-Muse, for Limning to the Life the Witnesses against the Right Honourable Anthony Earl o f Shaftsbury (3 Dec. 1681). 13. Proceedings at the Sessions House, pp. 15-18. (Italics and black letter omitted.) 14. See, for example, Ignoramus: An Excellent N ew Song (15 Dec. 1681), and An Excellent N ew Song o f the Unfortunate Whigs (1682). 15. Observator, 17 Dec. 1681. L’Estrange returned to this criticism of the grand jury in the issues of 2 and 4 M arch 1682. The argument was developed most fully in an anonymous Tory pamphlet that appeared in February, Billa Vera; or, The Arraignment o f Ignoramus, Put Forth O ut o f Charity, for the Use o f Grand Inquests and Other Jurys, the Sworn Assertors o f Truth and Justice: In a Letter to a Friend (1682). 16. Observator, 3 Dec. 1681. See also Billa Vera, p. 26. 17. Observator, S Nov. 1681. 18. Remarques upon the N ew Project o f Association: In a Letter to a Friend (1682 [but published before 21 Dec. 1681, when L’Estrange referred to it in the Observator as already in print]), pp. 4—6. (Italics omitted.) 19. See The Two Associations: One Subscribed by 156 Members o f the House o f Commons in the Year 1643, the Other Seized in the Closet o f the Earl o f Shaftsbury (1681). (Advertised in the London Gazette, 19 Dec. 1681.) 20. [John Northleigh], The Parallel; or, The N ew Specious Association an Old Rebellious Covenant. Closing with a Disparity between a True Patriot, and a Factious Associator (6 Feb. 1682), p. 13. 21. Ibid., p. 18. 22. Remarques, p. 5. (Italics omitted.) 23. Northleigh, The Parallel, p. 19. 24. Proceedings at the Sessions House (n. I above), p. 34. 25. CJ, 9:680. 26. Ibid., p. 685. 27. For the debate of 15 December in the House, sitting as a committee of the whole, see Grey, 8:153-71.

28. Remarques, pp. 6-8. (Italics omitted.) For other catalogues listing the antitheses between the Elizabethan and W hig Associations, see Northleigh, The Parallel, pp. 2 5-26, and Observator, 4 M ar. 1682. 29. Remarques, p. 6. (Italics omitted.) 30. Northleigh, The Parallel, p. 19. 31. Ibid., pp. 24-25. See also pp. 16 and 19. 32. The Addresses Im porting an Abhorrence o f an Association, Pretended to Have Been Seized in the E. o f Sbaftsbury’s Closet, Laid Open and Detected: In a Letter to a Friend (1682), p. I. 33. M emoirs o f Sir John Reresby, ed. Andrew Browning (Glasgow: Jackson, 1936), p. 246. 34. The Addresses Im porting an Abhorrence, p. 3. 35. London Gazette, 6 Feb. 1682. (Italics reversed.) 36. Ibid., 20 Feb. 1682. (Italics reversed.) 37. Ibid., 6 M ar., and 16, 13, and 27 Feb. 1682. (Italics reversed.) For a Whig rejoinder to the abhorrences that draws a parallel between the Whig and Elizabethan Associations, see A Discourse Touching the Addresses or Present­ ments to the King against the Association, with an Account o f the Association M ade and Confirmed in the Reign o f Queen Elizabeth (1682). (Advertised in the Impartial Protestant Mercury, 3 M ar. 1682.) 38. Northleigh, The Parallel (n. 20 above), p. I. 39. Ibid. 40. London Gazette, 20 Feb. 1682. (Italics reversed.) See also the Whig reply to this abhorrence, The Earl o f Shaftsbury’s Grand-Jury Vindicated from the Aspersions Cast on Them in the Late Address from Some o f the Middle Temple, London (1682), which ignores the Association and takes the easier, but irrele­ vant, course of impugning the credibility of the witnesses. 41. See The Tw o Associations (n. 19 above), pp. 7-8. 42. Northleigh, The Parallel, p. 33. (Italics omitted.) 43. Ibid., p. 2. 44. Ibid., pp. 6, 8, 9. 45. Observator, 10 Dec. 1681. 46. Ibid., 11 Feb. 1682. 47. London Gazette, 9 and 6 M ar. 1682. (Italics reversed.) 48. See, for example, ibid., 16 and 19 Jan., and 9 Feb. 1682. 49. The Stuart Constitution, 1603—1688: Docum ents and Commentary, ed. J. P. Kenyon, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 240. 50. Observator, 10 Dec. 1681, and 28 Jan., 25 Feb., and 10 M ar. 1682. 51. Billa Vera (n. 15 above), pp. 1-2. 52. Northleigh, The Parallel (n. 20 above), p. 2. 53. In a valuable recent study, Gary S. De Krey argues th at it “ should occa­ sion linle surprise” that Tory propaganda regularly linked the City of London w ith religious dissent and political radicalism, since “the London Whig leadership was tightly interlocked with a London dissenting leadership of notew orthy social calibre,” while the “London Whigs were imbued with radical ideas [that] prob­ ably reflected the dissenting and puritan heritage of so many of their leaders”

(“The London Whigs and the Exclusion Crisis R econsidered,” in The First M o d ­ ern Society: Essays in English H istory in H onour o f Lawrence Stone, ed. A. L. Beier, D avid C annadine and Jam es M . Rosenheim [Cambridge: Cam bridge Uni­ versity Press, 1989], pp. 457-82). 54. Observator, 28 Jan. 1682. 55. [Robert Ferguson], The Third Part o f N o Protestant Plot, w ith O bserva­ tions on the Proceedings upon the Bill o f Indictm ent against the E. o f Shaftsbury (1682), pp. 1 8 -3 7 passim. (Described as “newly come o u t” in the O bservator o f 20 February 1682.) Ferguson identifies “the Three late Adventures and Essays which [the Papists] m ade tow ards the p roof o f a Protestant C onspiracy” as “the M eal-Tub Sham, in the year 1679,” the allegation “ in the year 1681 . . . of a Design to seize the King at O xford," and the Association (pp. 36-37). 56. Observator, 22 Feb. 1682. 57. See A Protestant Plot N o Paradox; or, Phanaticks under T hat N am e Plotting against the King and G overnment: Proved First, from Their Principles, Secondly, fro m Their Practices (1682), pp. 8-34. (Advertised in the L oyal Protes­ tant, 4 M ar. 1682.) 58. George Hickes, A Sermon Preached before the L ord Mayor, Aldermen, and Citizens o f London, at B ow Church, on the 30th o f January, 1681/2 (1682), pp. 17, 28—31. See also Thom as W ilson, A Sermon on the M artyrdom o f King Charles I, Preached January 30, 1681 [i.e., 1681/2J: W ith a Relation o f Som e Rebellious Practices and Principles o f Fanaticks (1682). This serm on argues the seamless continuity between past Puritans and present Dissenters by following an account of the Royal M arty r’s troubles w ith a history of “the Rebellious Practices of some of our Fanaticks since the R estauration of o ur present King,” from Venner’s Plot in 1661 down to the Scots Rebellion of 1679 (pp. 21-30). (Italics om it­ ted.) Like Hickes, W ilson quotes and condemns a form idable list of antiepiscopal writers (pp. 3 0 -3 7 ), but in this case w ithout paralleling them w ith contem porary Whigs. 59. Edw ard Pelling, A Sermon Preached on the Anniversary o f T hat M ost Execrable M urder o f K . Charles the First, R oyal M artyr (1682), p. 11. 60. Ibid., pp. 3 2-33. 61. Dustin Griffin, “ Dryden’s Charles: The Ending of Absalom and Achitop h el,” Philological Q uarterly 57 (1978): 375; Thom as H . Fujim ura, “D ryden’s Changing Political Views,” Restoration 10 (1986): 96. 62. Sanford Budick, Poetry o f Civilization: M ythopoeic Displacem ent in the Verse o f M ilton, Dryden, Pope, and Johnson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), pp. 105-6. 63. Dryden, “Epistle to the W higs,” The Medall. A Satyre against Sedition, W orks 2:38-39. 64. See A Letter from a Person o f Q uality to His Friend, about Abhorrers and Addressors, & c. (24 Feb. 1682). Its date of publication is supplied by L’Estrange in his answ er to it in the O bservator o f I M arch 1682. It was followed alm ost immediately by A Second Letter from a Person o f Q uality to His Friend, about Abhorrers and Addressors, &c. (1682). 65. See A Letter from a Friend, to a Person o f Quality, in Answ er to A Letter from a Person o f Quality, to H is Friend, about Abhorrers and Addressers (1682).

66. See T he Addresses Im p o rtin g an A bhorrence o f an A ssociation . . . D etected: In a L etter to a Friend (n. 32 above). 67. See A Second R etu rn to the L etter o f a N o b le Peer, concerning the Addresses (1682). T h ere is an o th er issue o f this p am phlet w ith a different title page th a t om its “Second.” 68. SeeA R ep ly to the Second R etu rn (1682). A n other edition w as published in the spring as A M o d est A c c o u n t o f the Present Posture o f A ffairs in E ngland, w ith Particular R eference to th e Earl o f S h a ftsb u ry’s Case, a n d a V indication o f H im fro m T w o P retended Letters o f a N o b le Peer. B y a Person o f Q u a lity (1682). In a lam e a tte m p t to tu rn the h o ax to the advantage o f the W higs, the au th o r professes to believe th a t the T ory letters are them selves w ritten by “a N oble Peer,” the earl o f H alifax (as he w as until created a m arquess the follow ing A ugust). H e borro w s his enem ies’ device o f identifying him by unm istakable allusions, and attack s him as an apo state from the W hig party. 69. See [C hristopher N esse], A K ey (with th e W hip) to O p en the M ystery o f In iq u ity o f the P oem Called, A bsa lo m a n d A chitophel: Shew ing Its Scurrilous Reflections u p o n B o th K ing a nd K in g d o m (13 Jan . 1682). The w hip, w ith o u t the key, h a d already appeared as A W hip fo r the Fools Back, W ho Styles H onorable M arriage a C urs’d C onfinem ent, in H is Profane Poem o f A b sa lo m a n d A ch ito p h el (24 Dec. 1681). 70. Ferguson w as one o f those W higs w h o had recourse to both “evasions.” See T h e T hird Part o f N o P rotestant P lot (n. 55 above), pp. 1 3 2 -3 8 . 71. W illiam M yers, D ryden (London; H u tch in so n , 1973), p. 98. 72. T he R ecovery [1681], T he d ate on A nthony W o o d ’s copy of the poem , now in the Bodleian, is D ecem ber 1681 o r Jan u ary 1682. 73. Cf., for exam ple, D a g o n ’s Fall; or, T h e C harm B roke (15 Aug. 1681), in w hich the Exclusion Crisis is described as a m agician’s charm , and w e are told th a t “the King by his ow n h an d lately rem o v ’d the Evil o f the C harm , by certain P rinted C h aracters called a D eclaration, or C o u n ter-ch arm ” (p. 2). 74. See O bservator, 22 Feb. 1682; N o rth leigh, T h e Parallel, p. 13; Hickes, A Serm on Preached before the L o rd M ayor, p. 3 1 . 75. See, for exam ple, th e follow ing W hig verse broadsides: A dvice to the Painter (n. 12 above); T he Popes E vidence to a Cardinal, O ne o f H is Privados, a b o u t the D eliverance o f th e Earl o f Shaftsb u ry O u t o f the T o w er (6 Dec. 1681); A N e w Ignoram us: B eing the Second N e w S o n g (16 Dec. 1681; an answ er to the T ories’ Ignoram us: A n E xcellent N e w Song [n. 14 above]); and J em m y and A n th o n y (1682). 76. H eraclitus R idens, 6 Dec. 1681. 77. Ibid., 10 Jan . 1682. 78. Ibid., 6 Dec. 1681. (Italics reversed.) 79. Ibid., 13 Dec. 1681. T he Polish joke at Shaftesbury’s expense had of course been m aking the ro u n d s in T ory circles for some tim e. See, for exam ple, th eir p am p h let o f the preceding au tu m n , A M o d est V indication o f the Earl o f S y: In a L etter to a Friend concerning H is B eing E lected K ing o f Poland (5 Sept. 1681). 80. H eraclitus R idens, 2 7 Dec. 1681. (Italics reversed in last phrase.) 81. See ibid., 20 Dec. 1681 and 24 Jan . 1682.

82. See ibid., 20 Dec. 1681 and 10 Jan. 1682. 83. Ibid., 31 Jan. 1682. 84. See ibid., 17 and 31 Jan. 1682. 85. The California editors (Dryden, W orks 2:286) report th at “the earliest reference to the medal seems to be in a newsletter from London dated 16 M arch 1682: cA m edal has been lately engraved for the Earl o f Shaftesbury. The author of Absalom and A chitophel m ade a very severe satire on it’” (CSPD 1682, p. 128). But o f course the author of the new sletter may have learned o f the event from reading D ryden’s poem, published th at day, to which he ties it. James Ander­ son W inn has recently draw n attention to a probable allusion to the medal by C hristopher Nesse in A Key (with the W hip), published on 13 January 1682 (see John D ryden and His W orld [New H aven, C onn.: Yale University Press, 1987], p. 601, n. 66) 86. O n the basis of the newsletter above, Charles E. W ard states categorically th at the medal was struck “ in February or early M arch ,” and th at “Dryden went to w ork at once, and in a very short time w rote The M edal” (The Life o f John Dryden [Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of N o rth C arolina Press, 1961], p. 179). Myers elaborates: “In late February a medal was struck to celebrate the acquittal and within three weeks Dryden replied” (D ryden [n. 71 above], p. 97). But the term “lately” in the new sletter is too vague to support any definite conjecture, least of all this im probable feat on D ryden’s part. 87. See A. E. W allace M aurer, “The Design of D ryden’s The M edall,” Papers on Language and Literature 2 (1966): 293-304. 88. An accurate and legible reproduction of Bower’s medal is supplied by the California editors in Dryden, W orks, 2:43. 89. The etching, entitled “A T rue and Exact Prospect of the Fam ous Citty of London from S. M arie Overs Steeple in Southw arke in Its Flourishing C ondition before the Fire,” is one of a pair published soon after the Fire. The other is entitled “A nother Prospect of the Sayd Citty Taken from the Same Place as It A ppeareth N ow after the Sad Calam itie and Destruction by Fire, in the Yeare M .DC.LXVI. ” They are reproduced and discussed by A rthur M . H ind, Wenceslaus Hollar and His Views o f L ondon and W indsor in the Seventeenth Century (London: John Lane, 1922). The vantage point and relevant details of the first etching are so similar to those of Bower’s m edal as to leave little d o u b t o f their relationship. (In both, for example, the north end of London Bridge, directly opposite St. M ary Overie, is exactly m idpoint between St. Paul’s and the Tower.) 90. Such anachronism s were no t unusual in late seventeenth-century pano­ ram as of London. H o llar’s earlier “Long Bird’s-Eye View o f London from Bankside,” published in 1647, continued to be issued long after the Fire. H ind (Wenceslaus Hollar, p. 45) records a later state o f this etching in which the M on­ um ent has been added near London Bridge, while W ren’s dome, com pleted in 1697, has replaced the square tow er on w hat is otherwise old St. Paul’s. 91. The scale of H ollar’s etching is suggested by its length, which is twentyseven inches. 92. H ollar’s “Long Bird’s-Eye View of L ondon,” for example, extends from beyond W hitehall on the west to beyond St. K atherine’s on the east. His pano­ ram a for Jam es H ow ell’s Londinopolis (1657) covers approxim ately the same area.

93. Bow er has o m itted m any interm ediate details fo u n d in H o lla r’s p a n o ­ ram a, o f course, b u t he h as retain ed the m o st pro m in en t topographical features o f the City w ith in the w alls, including (from left to right) St. Law rence Poultney, the R oyal Exchange, St. M ichael C ornhill, St. D unstan-in-the-E ast, and All H allow s Barking. 94. N eith er of J o n so n ’s poem s to Shakespeare a t the beginning o f the First Folio w as included in his collected W o rks (1640—41 j. D ryden show s a long­ standing fam iliarity w ith th e First Folio, how ever, and h ad the use o f a copy if he did n o t ow n one. H e alludes to the second o f the tw o Jo n so n poem s, “T o the M em ory of . . . M r. W illiam S hakespeare,” in A n Essay o f D ram atick Poesie [1668] an d in the “P reface” to A ll fo r L o v e [1678] (W orks 17:55, 13:18). In the “ Preface” to Troilus and Cressida [1679], he w rites o f the play: “ so lam ely is it left to us, th a t it is n o t divided into Acts: w hich fault I ascribe to the A ctors, w h o Printed it after S h a k e sp e a fs death; and th a t to o , so carelessly, th a t a m ore uncorrect C opy I never saw ” (W orks 13:226; italics reversed). 95. A b so lo n 1S I X W orthies appeared less th an a w eek before T he M edall, on 10 M arch . A b sa lo m Senior; or, A ch ito p h e l T ran spos’d w as n o t published u n til 6 April. 96. T he allegation w as repeated frequently in T ory accounts o f Shaftesbury’s career. In touching o n his service under th e P rotectorate, A n E xcellent N e w B al­ lad (18 Feb. 1681) describes him as “th e M o u th o f all Presbyter Peers,” w hile A M o d est V indication o f the Earl o f S y (n. 79 above) speaks ironically o f “his steady adherence to every R eligion th a t h ad but hopes to be established” (p. I). 97. T he ru m o rs of Shaftesbury’s lechery w ere particularly cu rren t a t the tim e The M edall appeared because o f the “N ick y -N acky” scenes in O tw a y ’s Venice Preserv'd, first p ro d u ced the previous m o n th on 9 February. 98. F or a discussion o f this passage fro m T h e M edall th a t explains the differ­ ence betw een the “private sp irit” used by the D issenters to interp ret Scripture and the “private ju d g m en t” or “ private re a so n ” upheld by the C hurch o f E ngland, see m y C on texts o f D ry d e n ’s T h o u g h t (Chicago: U niversity o f C hicago Press, 1968), pp. 2 3 2 -3 4 . 99. N o rth leig h , T he Parallel (n. 20 above), p. 4. 100. Pelling, A Serm on Preached on th e A nniversary (n. 59 above), “Epistle D ed icato ry ,” sigs. A 2 v -A 3. (Italics reversed.) 101. N o rth leig h , T h e Parallel, p. 22. 102. Cf. the sim ilar jeer in H eraclitus R idens (20 Dec. 1681), quoted earlier, d ou b tin g “w h eth er he w ere ever of any R eligion.” T his had long been a charge against Shaftesbury in T ory p ro p ag an d a. T he au th o r o f T he Character o f a D is­ ban d ed C ourtier (18 July 1681), for exam ple, declares: “Being a G entlem an of little o r n o R eligion himself, he seems fo r all th a t to espouse every D ivision and Sub-division o f it, every Faction a n d Person w h o are bold enough to stand stiff in o pp o sitio n against th e w ell setled G overn m en t” (p. 2). 103. D ryden, “T h e Life of P lu tarch ” [1683], W orks, 1 7 :2 7 0 -7 1 . 104. See the L o n d o n Stage, p. 310, w hich quotes a letter o f Sunday, 26 July 1682, from Jo h n D ru m m o n d , stating th a t T he D u k e o f Guise w as supposed “to be acted som etim e n ix t w e ik .” 105. D ryden, The Vindication; or, T he Parallel o f the French H oly-League, a n d th e English League a n d C ovenant, T u rn 'd into a Seditious L ibell against the

King and His R oyal Highness, by Thom as H u n t and the A uthors o f the Reflec­ tions upon the Pretended Parallel in the Play Called The D u ke o f Guise (1683), p. 3. All quotations are taken from this first edition. 106. W inn, John D ryden and His W orld (n. 85 above), p. 365. 107. In the printed quarto, act I consists of only one scene. If Dryden had w ritten the whole of act I, however, presum ably he w ould have said so, as he did in the case of act 4. I assume th a t by “the first scene” he means the m eeting of the Council of Sixteen, soon joined by the C urate of St. Eustace and a little later by Guise in the com pany of the Cardinal and Aumale. This m eeting ends on p. 5, where the entrance of M alicorne, shortly joined by a devil, begins w hat is actually a new scene, in spite o f the quarto. D ryden’s estimate of his share of act 5 suggests to me th at it ends w ith M elanax carrying M alicorne off to hell on p. 68, where the entrance of Guise, the Cardinal, and Aum ale introduces w hat is effectively a new scene, although it is not called such in the quarto. This is the earliest point “ some­ w hat m ore” than halfway through the last act where Lee could have replaced Dryden w ithout a noticeable break. I am grateful to Judith M ilhous and R obert D. H um e for valuable advice on this subject. 108. Evidence of how widespread the rum or had become by this date can be found in the L ondon Stage, p. 310, w hich quotes a private letter and tw o newslet­ ters repeating this allegation, all w ritten during the last week of July. 109. Thom as H unt, A D efence o f the Charter, and M unicipal Rights o f the C ity o f L ondon [1683], p. 25. See also [Thomas Shadwell], Some Reflections upon the Pretended Parallel in the Play Called The D uke o f Guise (1683), pp. 9, 13. Dryden believed th at Shadwell had a' collaborator in his pam phlet, w hich may have been the case. 110. See H unt, A D efence o f the Charter, pp. 26-27; Shadwell, Som e Reflec­ tions, pp. 2 1 -2 3 . 111. An English translation of Enrico D avila’s w ork, entitled The H istory o f the Civil Wars o f France, had been published in 1647, a second edition appearing in 1678. 112. See Charles H . H innant, “The Background of the Early Version of Dry­ den’s The D u ke o f Guise," English Language N otes 6 (1968): 102-10. 113. See [Sir W illiam Dugdale], A Short View o f the Late Troubles in England: Briefly Setting Forth Their Rise, Growth, and Tragical Conclusion, as also, Some Parallel T h ereof w ith the Barons-Wars in the Tim e o f K ing H enry III, but Chiefly w ith T h a t in France, Called the H oly League, in the Reign o f H enry H I and H enry IV , Late Kings o f T hat Realm (Oxford, 1681). 114. Laurence L. Bachorik, “The D uke o f Guise and D ryden’s Vindication: A N ew C onsideration,” English Language N otes 10 (1973): 2 0 8 -1 2 (quotation on p. 211). 115. L ondon Gazette, 16 and 27 Feb. 1682. (Italics reversed.) For examples of other abhorrences th at parallel the Association w ith the Holy League, see ibid., I and 12 June 1682. 116. N orthleigh, The Parallel (n. 20 above), pp. 26—27. 117. Dryden and Lee, The D uke o f Guise. A Tragedy (London, 1683), sig. A l . (Advertised in the Observator, 13 Feb. 1683.) All quotations are taken from this first edition.

118. Italics om itted. This epilogue w as w ritten for the delayed prem iere of the play on 28 N o vem ber 1682, and is the only one included in the printed q u arto . It replaced the original epilogue “ Intended to have been Spoken to the Play, before it w as forbidden, last Sum m er,” an d w as clearly a last-m inute effort to answ er the rum ors responsible for the p lay ’s p ostponem ent. Both epilogues w ere included in the separately printed Prologue to T he D u k e o f G uise (1683), actually published, according to L uttrell, on 30 N ovem ber 1682. 119. A G entle R eflection o n the M o d e st A ccount, an d a V indication o f the L o ya l Abhorrers, fro m the Calum nies o f a Factious Pen (30 M ay 1682), p. 7. 120. See D ryden, V indication, pp. 12, 16, 32. T he king o f N av arre does not appear in the play, b u t he is often m entioned by the dram atis personae. 121. W inn, J ohn D ryden a n d His W orld, pp. 3 8 3 -8 4 . This scene, as I in d i­ cated earlier, is p ro b ab ly by Lee. I see n o reason, how ever, w hy Lee should n o t have exploited echoes o f his frien d ’s p o p u la r p o em as readily as D ryden him self was doing. 122. D ryden, “The Life of P lu tarch ” [1683], W orks, 17:281. 123. D ryden, “ Epistle D ed icato ry ” to A ll fo r L ove, ibid., 1 3 :5 -6 . (Italics o m it­ ted.) 124. D ryden, “Prologue to H is R oyal H ighness, upon H is first appearance at the D u k e’s T heatre since his R etu rn from S cotland,” ibid., 2:194. 125. D ryden, “Preface” to Religio L a id , ibid., p. 107. (Italics reversed in D ry d en ’s q u o tatio n from H ooker.) A lthough m uch of this preface deals w ith the political corollaries o f recusancy and dissent, D ryden is for the m o st p a rt rehears­ ing attitu d es he had already expressed elsewhere. T hus he reiterates here (p. 103) the view of the Popish Plot as genuine b u t greatly exaggerated th a t he had p u t forw ard in A b sa lo m a nd A ch ito p h el (lines 1 0 8 -1 7 ). Likewise he repeats here (p. 108) the association o f D issenters w ith “the D octrines of K ing-killing and D eposing” th a t he had m ade in the “Epistle to the W higs” prefixed to T he M edall (p. 40). CHAPTER 5 A SECOND RESTORATION

1. Vive Ie Roy; or, L o n d o n ’s Joy: A N e w Song on the In sta lm en t o f the Present L o rd M a yo r o f L o n d o n (2 N ov. 1681). (Italics reversed.) 2. Iter Boreale; or, T y b u rn in M o u rn in g fo r the Loss o f a Saint (11 Aug. 1682). See also T he L oyal Sherifs o f L o n d o n and M iddlesex, upon Their Election (1682); A N e w Song: Being the Tories Im p lo ration fo r Protection against the W higgs (1682); L o ya lty T rium phant, on the C onfirm ation o f M r. N o rth an d Mr. Rich, Sheriffs o f L o n d o n a n d M idd lesex (7 O ct. 1682). 3. T ho m p so n briefly revived the L o ya l P rotestant on 20 February 1683, but ab an d o n ed the effort after a m o n th . F o u r m ore recent new spapers th a t had first appeared in the spring an d sum m er of 1682— T he L o n d o n M ercury, T h e L oyal Im partial M ercury, T he M oderate Intelligencer, and The L o y a l L o n d o n M er­ cury— all vanished in O cto b er o r N ovem ber 1682 w hen the governm ent w as m aking a clean sw eep o f the survivors. H enry C are, the indom itable W hig w hose W eekly R acquet o f A dvice fro m R o m e, a serial book rath e r th an a new spaper, had

survived the proclam ation against newspapers in M ay 1680, managed to carry on his publication until 13 July 1683, by which time he had become an inform er for the government. I am indebted for inform ation about the suppression of the news­ papers in 1682 to the excellent account by Jam es Sutherland, The Restoration N ew spaper and Its D evelopm ent (Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1986), pp. 19-20, 2 0 1 -4 . 4. The divided aims of the remaining Whigs had become a favorite topic of D ryden’s by this time. A m onth later, in M ay 1683, dedicating the translation of Plutarchs Lives to the duke of O rm ond, he declared the “tw o sorts [of which] they are principally com pos’d ” to be “zealous Sectaries” and “prophane R epubli­ cans,” w ho, “if ever this ill contriv’d and equivocal association shou’d get upper­ m ost, . . w ou’d infallibly contend for the supream right” (W orks, 17:231—32). 5. Observator, 15 Nov. 1682. Starting w ith the issue of 8 September 1682, O bservator had replaced Tory as L’Estrange’s spokesman; but the replacem ent of W hig by Trim m er did no t begin until the issue of 13 November. 6. Italics reversed. 7. London G azette, 14 June 1683. See L ondons Lamentation; or, A n Excel­ lent N ew Song on the Loss o f L o n d o n ’s Charter (14 June 1683), signaling w hat w ould have been, no doubt, the start o f a series of Tory broadsides celebrating the event, had not m ore exciting developments soon m onopolized public attention. 8. London Gazette, 25 June 1683. (Italics reversed.) The only one of the nine whose name w ould have been recognized by many of the public was Richard Goodenough, the under sheriff during the term of Slingsby Bethel and H enry C or­ nish w ho had been responsible for the Ignoramus juries in the M iddlesex sessions. 9. CSPD, Jan.-June 1683, pp. 339—40 (Jenkins to the lords-lieutenant, 23 June). 10. Ibid., p. 337 (William Jordan to Jenkins, 23 June). 11. Observator, 3 July 1683. 12. See, for example, The Last and Truest Discovery o f the Popish-Plot (30 June 1683); N o Protestant Plot; or, The Whigs Loyalty, w ith the D octor’s N ew Discovery (30 June 1683); M urder O u t a t Last, in a Ballad on the N e w Plot (30 June 1683); The O ld N ew True Blew Protestant Plot; or, Five Years Sham-Plots Discovered in O ne True O ne (7 July 1683); The Conspiracy; or, The Discovery o f the Fanatick Plot (11 July 1683). 13. L’Estrange m arked the appearance of the “Fourth Fit of Addressing” in as m any years by reviewing the history of all four addressing movements in the Observator of 18 July 1683. 14. See, for example, the L ondon Gazette of 19 July 1683, “G reat Sir, We cannot but be Jo y ’d even to a Ravishm ent, w hen we fall upon the consideration of Your M ajesty’s Gracious and Princely Regards tow ards u s” (Barbados); and th at of 5 Novem ber 1683, “ Great Sir, O ur obscure and private C ondition makes us Strangers to the M ajesty of Kings, and the Sacredness of their Persons, possesseth us with an awful Fear, to offend their G reatness;.but like the D um b Son of Croesus, when o u r Soveraign hath been in Danger of Assassination, we m ust cry out against the Horridness of the A ttem pt” (Kingston upon Hull). 15. See ibid., 2 July 1683.

16. For the exact chronology of the successive inform ers (some fifteen in all) and the tex ts of their individual depositions to Jenkins and the o th er officials, see Copies o f the Inform ations a n d O riginal Papers Relating to the P ro o f o f the H o r­ rid C onspiracy against the L ate King, H is Present M ajesty, and the G overnm ent, as T hey W ere O rder’d to Be P ublished by H is Late M ajesty (1685). This was published in late M ay 1685, according to A nthony W o o d ’s no tatio n on his copy, now in the Bodleian. 17. O n e o f the few public allusions to the new developm ents at this early date is T he L a sta n d Truest Discovery o f the Popish-Plot, b y R um sey, W est, an d O ther Great Patriots o f Their C ountrey, w hich attacks Shaftesbury as the principal cul­ prit responsible for the new plot. 18. F or a list o f th e nam es contained in the four indictm ents returned on 12 July, see N arcissus L uttrell, A B rief H istorical R elation o f State A ffairs fro m Sep­ tem ber 1678 to A pril 1714, 6 vols. (O xford, 1857), 1:267. 19. T he Tryals o f T hom as W alcot, W illiam H one, W illiam L o rd Russell, John R ous, a nd W illiam B la g g fo r H igh-Treason, fo r C onspiring the D eath o f the King, a nd Raising a Rebellion in This K ingdom , at the Sessions-H ouse in the OId-Baily, L o n d o n . . . on Thursday, Friday, a n d Saturday, July 12, 13, an d 14, 1683 (1683), pp. 2 -3 . 20. Ibid., p. 3. 21. Ibid., p. 37 (m isnum bered 35). 22. Ibid., p. 38. 23. Both Russell an d H am pden w ere p ro m inent W hig m em bers of the C om ­ m ons in all three Exclusion Parliam ents. A lgernon Sidney was elected to the sec­ ond and th ird Exclusion Parliam ents, b u t his election w as voided in both cases. 24. O bservator, 18 July 1683. 25. L o n d o n G azette, 16 July 1683. (Italics om itted.) 26. Tryals, pp. 43—45 (testim ony o f H ow ard a t Russell’s trial). 27. A recent “biographical survey” o f m any o f the Rye H ouse conspirators confirm s the differences in social and econom ic status betw een the tw o groups involved. See G ary S. De Krey, “L ondon Radicals and R evolutionary Politics, 1 6 7 5 -1 6 8 3 ,” in T he Politics o f R eligion in R estoration England, ed. Tim H arris, Paul Seaw ard, and M ark G oldie (O xford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp. 133—62, especially pp. 149—55. 28. Tryals, p. 4. 29. See ibid., p. 38. Ferguson was o f course a D issenter, b u t he was a social misfit am ong the “Lords an d G entlem en o f Q uality.” T w o m onths earlier, in his dedication o f Plutarchs Lives to the duke o f O rm o n d , D ryden had described the “pro p h an e R epublicans” w ho were the political bedfellows o f the “ zealous Sec­ taries” as “M en of A theistick principles, nom inal C hristians, w ho are beholding to the Font, only th a t they are so call’d ,” adding th a t “Lewdness, R ioting, C heat­ ing and D ebauchery, are their w ork-a-day p ractise” (W orks, 17:232). 30. O bservator, 14 Aug. 1683. 31. See T he L a st Speech a nd B ehaviour o f W illiam Late L o rd Russel, upon the Scaffold in LincolnsTnne-F ields, a L ittle before H is E xecution, on Saturday, July 21, 1683. . . . A lso the L ast Speeches, Behaviour, and Prayers o f Capt.

Thom as Walcot, John Rouse, Gent., and W illiam H one, Joyner, a L ittle before Their Execution at Tyburn, on Friday, the 20th o f July, 1683 (1683). 32. Ibid., p. I. 33. L ’Estrange exploited the T yburn confessions in the issues of the Observator of 25 and 28 July, and of I and 27 August 1683. He answered Russell’s paper in the issues of 11 and 23 August 1683. 34. See The Speech o f the Late L ord Russel, to the Sheriffs, Together w ith the Taper D eliver’d by H im to Them, at the Place o f Execution, on July 21, 1683 (21 July 1683). 35. See [Roger L’Estrange], Considerations upon a Printed Sheet Entituled, The Speech o f the Late L ord Russel to the Sheriffs, Together w ith the Paper D eliv­ ered by H im to Them, at the Place o f Execution, on July 21, 1683 (1683); A n A ntidote against Poison, C om posed o f Som e Rem arks upon the Paper Printed by the Direction o f the Lady Russel, and M entioned to Have Been Delivered by the Lord Russel to the Sheriffs at the Place o f His Execution (1683). 36. The Speech and Confession o f William Lord Russel, W ho Was E xecuted for High-Treason against His Majesty, and Conspiring the Death o f His R oyal Highness, James D uke o f York (1683), p. 3. 37. Besides the official transcripts o f the trials and the dying speeches of those convicted, a particularly effective means of publicizing the plot on a m ore popular level was A H istory o f the N ew Plot; or, A Prospect o f Conspirators, Their D e­ signs Dam nable, Ends Miserable, D eaths Exem plary (1683). This broadside con­ sists of a series of w oodcuts portraying the principal stages of the plot from Shaftesbury’s m achinations to the traitors’ executions, accom panied by a prose sum m ary of the plot. 38. See, for example, the following verse broadsides th at appeared during the weeks immediately following the trials: W hig upon Whig; or, A Pleasant Dismal Ballad on the O ld Plotters N ew ly Found O u t (20 July 1683); The Loyal C on­ quest; or, Destruction o f Treason: A Song (20 July 1683); lm m icus Patriae; or, A N e w Satyr against the Horrid Plot (26 July 1683); A Satyr, by W ay o f Dialogue between Lucifer, and the Ghosts o f Shaftsbury and Russell (6 Aug. 1683); A Lash to Disloyalty (13 Aug. 1683); A N ew Narrative o f the O ld Plot (26 Aug. 1683); A N ew W ay to Play an O ld G am e (20 Sept. 1683). 39. See The Arraignment, Tryal, and Condem nation o f Algernon Sidney, Esq., for High-Treason, for Conspiring the D eath o f the King, and Intending to Raise a Rebellion in This Kingdom (1684). 40. See The Very Copy o f a Paper Delivered to the Sheriffs, upon the Scaffold on Tower-hill, on Friday, Decemb. 7, 1683, by Algernoon Sidney, Esq., before His Execution There (1683). For examples of the gleeful Tory broadsides occa­ sioned by this event, see Algernoon Sidneys Farewel (8 Dec. 1683); Pluto, the Prince o f Darkness, His E ntertainm ent o f Coll. Algernoon Sidney, upon H is A rri­ val at the Infernal Palace, w ith the Congratulations o f the Fanatick Cabal for His Arrival There (10 Dec. 1683). 41. The reconciliation of father and son was celebrated by a Tory verse broadside th at notes the Old Testam ent parallel, G ood N ew s in Bad Times; or, Absalom s R eturn to D avid’s Bosom e (30 Nov. 1683). See also M o n m o u th ’s Return; or, The M istaken Whiggs (6 Dec. 1683).

42. See The Tryal and Conviction o f John Ham bden1 Esq., upon an Indict­ m ent o f Htgh-M isdemeanour1 for Contriving and Practising to Disturb the Peace o f Our Soveraign Lord the King, and Stirring up Sedition in This Kingdom (1684). 43. See [Thomas Sprat], A True Account and Declaration o f the Horrid Conspiracy against the Late King, His Present Majesty, and the Government, as It Was Order’d to Be Published by His Late Majesty (1685). This was published in late M ay 1685, according to Anthony W ood’s notation on his copy, now in the Bodleian. 44. See Burnet’s detailed account of the friendly offices he and Tillotson per­ formed for Russell, beginning with his trial, and of their interview with the king and the duke of York in Burnet’s History o f M y O w n Time, ed. Osm und Airy, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897-1900), 2:372-86. Burnet acknowledges here having given Russell “a scheme of the heads fit to be spoken to, and of the order in which they should be laid” in his paper (p. 379). He also provides the inform ation (pp. 379, 384) about Lady Russell’s arranging the publication and sale of the paper, within an hour of her husband’s death, as The Speech o f the Late Lord Russel (n. 34 above). 45. See the London Gazette, 6 Aug. 1683. 46. His Majesties Declaration to All His Loving Subjects, concerning the Treasonable Conspiracy against His Sacred Person and Government, Lately Dis­ covered: Appointed to be Read in All Churches and Chappels w ithin This King­ dom. By His Majesties Special Command (1683), pp. 1-6. (Printed by order in council of 27 July 1683.) 47. Ibid., p. 7. 48. Ibid., pp. 12—13. 49. Ibid., p. 19. 50. London Gazette, 20 Aug. 1683. 51. Besides those sermons cited in subsequent notes, there were separately published thanksgiving sermons for 9 September by Jonathan Clapham, John FitzWilliam, E. Foreness, Henry Hesketh, Luke M ilbourne, William Payne, Thom as Pomfret, John Price, William Smith, John Turner, and Thomas Wagstaffe, as well as the anonym ous A Sermon o f Thanksgiving for the H appy Delivery o f Charles the Second . . . from the Conspiracy o f 1683 (Dublin, [1683]). 52. William Sherlock, Some Seasonable Reflections on the Discovery o f the Late Plot: Being a Sermon Preacht on That Occasion (1683), pp. 4 -8 . (Advertised in the Observator, 28 July 1683.) 53. See A Form o f Prayer with Thanksgiving, to Be Used on Sunday, Septem­ ber the 9th, Being the Day o f Thanksgiving Appointed by the Kings Declaration (1683). 54. See William Hughes, Tw o Sermons Preach’d on the N inth o f September 1683 (Being the Thanksgiving-Day) (1684), pp. 20-30; Benjamin Calamy, A Ser­ m on Preached at St. Lawrence-Jury, London, upon the 9th o f September, Being the Day o f Thanksgiving (1683), pp. 16-17; John Cave, King D avid’s Deliver­ ance, and Thanksgiving, Applied to the Case o f O ur King and N ation in Tw o Sermons, the One Preached on the Second, the O ther on the N inth o f September, 1683 (1683), pp. 28-31.

55. D uring the height of the excitement over the Popish Plot, its “ discovery,” like th at of the G unpow der Plot, had com m only been described as providential, and since the king had found it expedient at the time to profess belief in the plot, it was now too late to disown the role of Providence in bringing it to light. “For is not the R oyal Word·, and often repeated, pass’d upon it?” one preacher re­ m inded his congregation at the thanksgiving service on 9 September. “Is not the Publick Justice o f the N ation, in several Tryals, Sentences, and Executions, a voucher for it? . . . W ho, on the disbelief of such a Plot, shall atone for so much innocent blood-shed in the case?” (Hughes, T w o Sermons, p. 24). 56. The role of Providence in the discovery of the Popish Plot had never been acknowledged by a day of solemn thanksgiving, in p art because the king would have been reticent to order such an observance, but also because those w ho ex­ ploited the Popish Plot were never willing to concede th at it had been fully discov­ ered and was now ready to be considered a com pleted event. The actual religious observance connected with the Popish Plot, ordered by the king on three occa­ sions in response to joint addresses from the Lords and Com mons, was no t a public thanksgiving but a “Solemn Day of Fasting and H um iliation” (13 N ovem ­ ber 1678, 11 April 1679, and 22 December 1680) in w hich the nation might “Im plore the Mercy and Protection of Almighty G od” in the face of new and constantly emerging inform ation about the plot. For the texts of the royal procla­ m ations, see the L ondon Gazette, 31 Oct. 1678, 31 M ar. 1679, and 6 Dec. 1680. 57. Cave, King D avid’s Deliverance, pp. 28, 30; Richard Pearson, Provi­ dence Bringing G ood O u t o f Evil, in a Sermon Preached on the N inth o f Septem ­ ber, Being the D ay o f Thanksgiving for the Discovery o f the Late Treasonable Conspiracy (1684), p. 27. 58. Sherlock, Some Seasonable Reflections, p. 5; W illiam Bolton, Core Redivivus, in a Sermon Preached at Christ-Church Tabernacle in London, upon Sun­ day, Septem ber 9, 1683, Being a D ay o f Publick Thanksgiving for the Deliverance o f His Sacred Majesties Person and G overnm ent from the Late Treasonable R e­ bellion and Fanatick Conspiracy (1684), p. 27. (Italics reversed.) 59. Francis Turner, A Sermon Preach’d before the King in the Cathedral Church o f Winchester, upon Sunday, Septem b. 9, 1683, Being the D ay o f Publick Thanksgiving for the Deliverance o f H is Sacred Majesties Person and G overn­ m ent from the Late Treasonable Conspiracy (1683), p. 22, 60. Samuel Scattergood, A Sermon Preached at Blockley in Worcestershire upon the Thanksgiving-day, Sept. 9th, 1683 (1683), pp. 17-18. 61. Observator, 14 Aug. 1683. 62. Thom as Long, King D avid’s Danger and Deliverance; or, The Conspir­ acy o f A bsolon and A chitophel Defeated, in a Sermon Preached in the Cathedral Church o f E xon, on the N inth o f September, 1683, Being the D ay o f Thanksgiv­ ing A ppointed fo r the Discovery o f the Late Fanatical Plot (1683), p. I . This serm on deserves the attention of anyone interested in R estoration parallelism. D avid’s and C harles’s experiences are related sim ultaneously and assimilated so closely th at they are practically indistinguishable from each other. 63. John H arrison, A Thanksgiving Sermon fo r D iscovery o f the Late Phanatick Plot, September 9, 1683 (1683), pp. 2, 4. For other sermons besides those of Long and H arrison th at run a parallel between Absalom ’s rebellion and the Rye

House Conspiracy, see John Chapman, A Sermon Preached September 9th, 1683, Being the Day o f Thanksgiving for G od’s W onderful Providence and Mercy in Discovering and Defeating the Late Treasonable Conspiracy against His Sacred M ajesty’s Person and Government (1684, but advertised in the Observator, 12 Dec. 1683), and the anonymous Ahitophel’s Policy Defeated: A Sermon Preached on the 9th o f September, Being the Day Appointed by His Majesty for a Publick Thanksgiving for His and the Kingdoms Great Deliverance from the Late Trea­ sonable Conspiracy against His Sacred Person and Government (1683). Ever since the witnesses at the trials in July had assigned central im portance in the conspiracy to Shaftesbury and M onm outh, the abhorrences had been alluding to Absalom and Achitophel with increasing frequency. See, for example, the London Gazette, 2, 9, and 30 Aug., and 20 Sept. 1683. 64. Miles Barne, A Sermon Preach’d before the University o f Cambridge on the N inth o f September, Being the Day o f Publick Thanksgiving for the Deliver­ ance o f His Majesties Sacred Person (Cambridge, 1683), pp. 30-31. 65. See Alan Roper, “Dryden’s The History o f the League and the Early Edi­ tions of M aim bourg’s Histoire de la Ligtie,” Papers o f the Bibliographical Society o f America 66 (1972): 245-75. 66. Dryden, “Dedication to the King,” The History o f the League. Written in French by Monsieur Maimbourg. Translated into English According to His M aj­ esty’s Command, Works, 18:3. 67. Alan Roper, Headnote to The History o f the League, pp. 463-64. 68. Edward L. Saslow also argues that Dryden did not receive the royal com­ mands until M arch 1684, but on different grounds. Accepting R oper’s premise that Charles issued his commands as soon as he had finished reading the original, Saslow interprets Dryden’s statem ent that the king had read the Histoire de la Ligue “when it first was publish’d ” as referring to its publication in the pirated Dutch edition, in which case Charles could not have read M aim bourg before M arch 1684. I find it hard to reconcile this interpretation with Dryden’s words. See “Dryden in 1684,” Modern Philology 72 (1975): 248-55. 69. See Roper, Headnote to The H istory o f the League, pp. 423-24, 70. Ibid., p. 426. 71. My views on this subject differ considerably from those expressed by Roper, who argues that “litigious history” (to which Dryden’s “Postscript” be­ longs) had discredited itself by this time through its partiality; hence the king’s need for “prudential history” (which Charles mistakenly believed M aim bourg’s Histoire de la Ligue to be) “in order to make his propaganda appear im partial.” See ibid., pp. 428-39, 456. 72. My hypothesis concerning the king’s motives rests on totally different assumptions from those of George M cFadden, who believes that Charles com­ manded Dryden’s translation at the instigation of the duke of York, intent on strengthening his own position at court. See Dryden: The Public Writer, 1660168S (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 266-68. 73. His Majesties Declaration to AU His Loving Subjects, Touching the Causes and Reasons That M oved Him to Dissolve the Tw o Last Parliaments (1681), p. 9. 74. Observator, 18 July 1683.

75. See Jo h n H a rrin g to n Sm ith, “ Some Sources o f D ry d en ’s T o ryism , 1 6 8 2 1 6 8 4 ,” H u n tin g to n Lib ra ry Q u a rterly 2 0 (1 9 5 6 -5 7 ): 2 3 3 -4 3 . R o p er, w h o d o c u ­ m ents D ry d e n ’s d e b t even m o re precisely in his valuable notes to T h e H isto ry o f the League, p o in ts o u t th a t in this p a rt o f the “P o stsc rip t” “ every h istorical detail and p o litical m ax im an d m any o f th e w o rd s are copied from the first nineteen pages o f D u g d ale’s A Sho rt V iew o f the L a te T ro u b les" (p. 529). 76. O bservator, 19 July 1683. 77. Ibid., 11 Ju n e 1684. 78. Sir W alter S cott, “Life o f Jo h n D ry d e n ,” T h e W o rks o f J o h n D ryd en (1808 ), 1 :2 9 0 -9 1 . 79. Ibid., 17:82. 80. Justice T riu m p h a n t: A n E xcellen t N e w Song in C o m m e n d a tio n o f Sir G eorge Jeffreys, L o rd-C hief-Justice o f E n g la n d (3 N ov. 1683). 81. C harles E. W a rd , T he L ife o f J o h n D ryden (C hapel H ill: U niversity of N o rth C a ro lin a Press, 19 6 1 ), p. 2 0 4 . 82. See A L ist o f A ll th e C onspirators T h a t H a v e B een Seiz'd, (and W here C o m m itte d ) since th e D iscovery o f th e H o rrid a n d B lo o d y Plot, C o n triv ’d b y th e P hanaticks against th e L ives o f H is M a jesty a n d H is R o ya l H ighness. T o W hich Is A n n e x e d , th e N a m es o f the L a te M o s t F am ous Ignoram us Juries [1683]. 83. B arne, A Serm on P reach’d before th e U niversity o f C am bridge (n. 64 above), pp. 2 8 -2 9 . 84. See, fo r exam p le, T h e P lo t a n d P lotters C o n fo u n d ed ; or, T h e D o w n -fa ll o f W higgism (24 N ov. 1683) a n d T h e W higs E levation, fo r H is Grace the D u k e o f M o n m o u th ’s H a p p y R etu rn to C o u rt (29 N ov. 1683), b o th of w hich express hopes th a t th e rem ain in g co n sp irato rs will be “ b ro u g h t to D eath a n d S ham e” a t T y b u rn . 85. L uttrell records the various ap p earan ces o f Rye H o u se prisoners before the C o u rt o f K ing’s Bench betw een 23 O c to b e r an d 28 N o v em b er in o rd e r to be bailed o r discharged, as w ell as th e in d ictm en ts o f Sidney and H am p d en , in his B r ie f H istorical R ela tio n (n. 18 above), p p . 2 8 6 —88, 2 9 2 -9 3 . 86. F o r the allegations ag ain st H o llo w ay m ade to governm ent officials in Ju n e an d July 1683 by W est, R um sey, a n d a th ird inform er, Z a ch ary B ourne, see Copies o f the In fo rm a tio n s (n. 16 above), p p . 13, 18, 35, 38, and 51. 87. CSPD , O ct. 1 6 8 3 -A p r. 16 8 4 , p. 2 38 (Stapleton to Jen kins, 25 Ja n . 1684). A sum m ary o f this p a p e r o n p p . 2 3 9 ^ 1 0 fully justifies S ta p le to n ’s descrip­ tion o f it. 88. Ibid., p. 2 5 5 (Stapleton to Jen k in s, I Feb. 1684). H o llo w a y ’s lette r to Stapleton offering to confess an d im plicate o thers is p rin ted on pp. 2 4 0 —41. 89. Ibid., pp. 3 6 4 (L’E strange to Jenkins, 7 A pr. 1684), 373 (Sunderland to Jenkin s, 9 A pr. 1684). 90. Ibid., p. 3 76 (Jenkins to S u n d erlan d , 10 A pr. 1684). 91. F or th e te x t of H o llo w ay ’s confession or “ n a rra tiv e ,” see T h e Free a n d V olun ta ry C onfession a n d N a rra tive o f Jam es H o llo w a y (A ddressed to H is M a j­ esty) W ritten w ith H is O w n hand, a n d D elivered b y H im s e lf to M r. Secretary Jen kin s, as also th e Proceedings against the Said Jam es H o llo w a y in H is M ajesties Kings-B ench C ourt, W estm inster, a n d H is P etitio n to H is M ajesty, T o gether w ith

a Particular A c c o u n t o f the D iscourse as Passed betw een the Sheriffs o f L o n d o n and the Said Jam es H o llo w a y a t the T tm e o f H is E xecution fo r H igh-Treason at T yburn, A p ril 30, 1684. W ith H is Prayer Im m ed iately Before, an d the True C opy o f the Paper D elivered T h em a t the Sam e Tim e and Place (1684), pp. 1—8. 92. CSPD, O ct. 16 8 3 -A p r. 1684, pp . 3 9 5 -9 6 (H ollow ay to Sidney G odolphin, 25 A pr. 1684). 93. Free a n d V oluntary C onfession an d N arrative, pp. 9—10 (text of the co u rt proceedings). 94. For th e te x t of th e petition, see Free a nd V oluntary C onfession and N a r­ rative, p. 11. For the dates, see CSPD , O ct. 16 8 3-A pr. 1684, pp. 393, 395. 95. See ibid., pp. 366 (H ollow ay to W illiam C larke, 7 A pr. 1684), 370 (H ol­ low ay to Samuel T ucker, 7 A pr. 1684). 96. See ibid., pp. 379—80. T u ck er’s copy w as already in Jenkins’s possession by the tim e of H o llo w ay ’s first exam ination before the Privy C ouncil on 10 A pril, alth o u g h the p risoner was kept in ignorance of this fact until the next day (see p. 376). C lark e’s copy reached Jenkins on the eleventh. 97. See ibid., p. 379. 98. Ibid., pp. 3 8 0 -8 1 (H ollow ay to Jenkins, 14 A pr. 1684). 99. F or the tex t of this docum ent, see ibid., pp. 3 6 6 -7 0 . 100. For the tex t o f the p ap er to the sheriffs, see Free a n d V oluntary C onfes­ sion a n d N arrative, pp. 1 4 -1 6 . 101. O bservator, 21 M ay 1684. 102. Free and V oluntary Confession a nd N arrative, pp. 1 1 -1 4 . 103. The L ast Speech and B ehaviour (n. 31 above), pp. I, 3 (separate pagina­ tion for “T he Speeches o f C ap tain W alcot, Jo . Rouse, and W ill. H o n e ” ). 104. The R ecanting Whigg·, or, Jo h n T h u m b ’s Confession: Being His Senti­ m ents on the Present Tim es, in a L etter fro m A m sterdam , to the Fragm ent o f T hat H ypocritical, D iabolical, Fanatical A ssociation (7 Jan . 1684). 105. See the issues o f the O bservator of 1 7 -2 4 M ay 1684. 106. Ibid., 22 M ay 1684. 107. See ibid., 7 and 9 Ju n e, and 19 and 21 July 1684. F or an o th er T ory response to H ollow ay, see Som e Reflections on the Paper D elivered u n to the Sher­ iffs o f L o n d o n , b y Jam es H o llo w a y a t the T im e o f H is E xecution (1684). 108. The m inutes c*f W alco t’s oral confession before the king on 8 July 1683 are prin ted in Copies o f the In fo rm a tio n s (n. 16 above), p. 87. For H o n e’s deposi­ tion before a justice of the peace on 4 July, see Copies o f the In fo rm a tio n s, pp. 6 3 -6 4 . F o r R o u se’s deposition on 5 July, see CSPD , July—Sept. 1683, pp. 47—48. 109. The m ost liberal applications of this policy were tw o royal proclam ations of 31 O cto b er 1679 and 30 O cto b er 1680 “Prom ising and A ssuring O ur Free and G racious P ard o n to all and every Person and Persons, w ho . . . shall com e in and give furth er In fo rm atio n and Evidence concerning the said Popish P lo t” w ithin the next four m onths in the first case, an d tw o in the second. (Italics om itted.) T he proclam ations are printed in the issues o f the L o n d o n G azette o f 3 N ovem ber 1679 an d I N ovem ber 1680. H O . See CSPD, July-S ept. 1683, pp. 182 and 208. 111. See R oger N o rth , E xa m en (1740), p. 380.

112. See th e m inutes o f the council m eetings for 4—12 Ju ly 1683 in C SPD , Ju ly-S ep t. 1683, p p . 3 2 -3 3 , 3 8 -4 1 , 5 2 -5 7 , 6 3 -6 4 , 7 0 -7 2 , 7 8 -8 1 , 8 9 -9 2 , 9 8 101, and 1 0 6 -7 ; also the m em o ra n d u m in N o r th ’s E xa m en , pp. 3 7 8 -9 1 , w ritten by his b ro th e r F rancis, w h o , as lord keeper, w as a m em ber o f the Privy C ouncil d u rin g th is tim e, an d an active p a rtic ip a n t in its m eetings d u ring the w eek before the trials. 113. See C SPD , Ju ly -S ep t. 1683, pp. 26 , 3 4 -3 5 , 8 5 -8 6 (W est’s letters o f 4, 5 an d 10 Ju ly 1683 to Jenkins) a n d 91 (the co u n cil’s decision on 10 July to use W est as a w itness). A ccording to L ord K eeper N o rth , som e m em bers o f the council w ished to p u t W est o n trial, b u t th e king declared “th a t if the L ords w ere satisfied th a t W est h a d to ld all he knew , th ere w as n o R eason to han g him , because he knew n o m o re ” (N o rth , E x a m e n , p. 381 [italics reversed]). 114. See CSPD , Ju ly -S ep t. 1683, p. 79 (the co uncil’s decision o n 9 July 1683 to try R ouse). 115. See ibid., pp . 2 2 4 , 3 3 1 ; ibid., O ct. 1 6 8 3 -A p r. 1684, pp. 2 5 6 , 2 67. 116. W illiam S ancroft, A Serm on P reach’d to the H ouse o f Peers, N o ve m b . 13th, 1678, B eing th e F ast-D ay A p p o in te d b y th e K ing to Im p lo re the M ercies o f A lm ig h ty G o d in the P rotection o f H is M ajesties Sacred Person, an d H is K in g ­ dom s (1678), pp. 2 5—28. 117. Cave, K ing D a v id ’s D eliverance (n. 5 4 above), pp. 32—33. 118. D ryden, “P rologue to th e D utchess, o n H e r R eturn from S co tla n d ,” W o rks, 2 :1 9 6 . 119. O b serva to r, 2 6 June 1684. 120. T h e Proceedings against Str T h o m a s A rm stro n g , in H is M ajesties C ourt o f K ings-Bench, a t W estm inster, u p o n an O u tla w ry fo r H igh-T reason, & c., as also an A c c o u n t o f W h a t Passed a t H is E xe c u tio n a t T yb u rn , the 2 0 th o f June, 1684, T og eth er w ith the Paper H e D elivered to the Sheriffs o f L o n d o n a t the Sam e T im e a n d Place (1684), p. 4. 121. It w as advertised in th e O b serva to r o f 3 July 1684. 122. See B u rn e t’s H isto ry o f M y O w n T im e (n. 44 above), 2 :4 1 4 —15. 123. M y in te rp re ta tio n o f th e “D ed icatio n to the K in g ” differs com pletely from th a t o f M cF ad d en in D ryden: T he P ublic W riter (n. 72 above), w h o argues th a t D ryden designed it as an answ er to H a lifa x ’s T h e C haracter o f a T rim m er, w hich w as w ritten a n d circulated in m an u scrip t in Ju n e 1684, he suggests, and occasioned, in his view, by th e A rm stro n g case (see pp. 268—76). B ut the issues o f individual p a rd o n s an d a general am nesty th a t D ryden considers in his “D edica­ tio n ” w ere never raised in th e A rm stro n g case, an d in his recen t edition of H a l­ ifax, M a rk N . B row n infers th e d ate of co m p o sition o f T h e Character o f a T rim ­ m er, from internal evidence, to be D ecem ber 1684 (see T he W o rks o f G eorge Savile M arquis o f H a lifa x, 3 vols. [O xford: C laren d o n Press, 1989], 1:46). B row n thus confirm s the d ate assigned to this w o rk by H a lifa x ’s earlier editors, H . C. F oxcro ft a n d J. P. K enyon. Finally, I d o n o t find convincing the sim ilarities in language M cF ad d en detects betw een D ry d en ’s “D ed ica tio n ” a n d H a lifa x ’s C har­ acter o f a T rim m e r, 124. D ryden, “T h e P reface,” A lb io n a nd A lbanius: A n O pera, W o rks, 15: 10 - 1 1 .

125. See D ryden, “T h e E pistle D e d ic a to ry ,” K ing A rthur: or, T h e British

W orthy. A D ram atick O pera (1691), sigs. A l, A3. K ing A rth u r was very likely an o th er o f D ryden’s w orks of propaganda for Charles, since he was w orking on it at a b o u t the same tim e as A lb io n and A lbanius and his translation of The H is­ tory o f the League. But he revised it extensively after the R evolution for its p ro ­ duction in 1691, an d the original version has not survived. 126. T he Letters o f John D ryden, ed. Charles E. W ard (D urham , N .C .: Duke University Press, 1942), p. 23. Saslow, in “D ryden in 1684 ” (n. 68 above), was the first to identify correctly D ryden’s references to his tw o operas in this letter and to draw the p ro p er inferences a b o u t their dates of com position, w hich are now widely accepted. 127. D ryden, Postscript to “The Preface,” A lbion and A lbanius, p. 12. (Italics om itted.) 128. See the L o n d o n Stage, pp. 3 3 5 —36. 129. D ryden, Postscript to “T he Preface,” pp. 12—13. (Italics reversed.) 130. Scott, H ead n o te to A lb io n a n d A lbanius, The W orks o f John D ryden (n. 78 above), 7:211. For m ore recent expressions of this view, see Jo h n Loftis, The Politics o f D ram a in A u gustan England (O xford: C larendon Press, 1963), p. 7; R o b ert D. H um e, T he D evelo p m en t o f English D ram a in the L ate Seventeenth Century (O xford: C larendon Press, 1976), p. 363. 131. For a convenient and u p-to-date sum m ary of the evidence, see Jam es A n­ derson W inn, John D ryden and His W orld (New H aven, C onn.: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 3 9 3 -9 4 . 132. See Eugene M . W aith, “Spectacles o f S tate,” Studies in English Literature 13 (1973): 3 1 7 -3 0 ; and, in g reater detail, Paul H am m ond, “D ryden’s A lbion and Albanius·. T he A potheosis o f C harles II,” in T he Court M asque, ed. D avid Lindley (M anchester: M anchesterU niversity Press, 1984), pp. 1 6 9-83. 133. Stephen O rgel, “In tro d u c tio n ” to Ben Jonson: T he C om plete M asques (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969), pp. I, 3. 134. W aith, “Spectacles o f S tate,” pp. 324, 326, 328—29. 135. H am m o n d , “D ryden’s A lbion and A lbanius, ” pp. 178, 1 8 0-81. 136. G eorge H ickes, A Serm on Preached a t the Cathedral Church o f W orces­ ter, on the 29th o f M ay, 1684, Being the Anniversary D ay o f H is M ajesty’s Birth, and H a p p y Restauration (1684), pp. 17, 2 9 -3 0 . M y attention was draw n to this serm on in reading Aubrey L. W illiam s, A n A pproach to Congreve (New H aven, Conn.; Yale University Press, 1979), pp . 2 2 -3 2 , w here it is cited frequently, and the last sentence above is quoted. 137. See ibid., pp. 2 2 -2 4 , for a discussion of this older tradition. But as my argum ent above indicates, I disagree w ith W illiam s’s view th at H ickes’s imagery belongs to this trad itio n , since the chief purpose of H ickes’s serm on is to show the ways of distinguishing special Providence from “ com m on Providence, or C hance” (p. 29). 138. T he nam es “Z e a l” and “ Z e lo ta ” are used interchangeably throughout the play for the sam e character, identified in the D ram atis Personae as “ Zelota. Feign’d Z e a l.” 139. H ickes, A Serm on Preached a t the Cathedral Church o f W orcester, pp. 17, 2 0 -2 1 . 140. G ilbert Sheldon, D avids D eliverance and Thanksgiving: A Serm on

P reached before the K ing a t W hitehall u p o n ]u n e 28, 1660, B eing the D a y o f Solem n T h a n ksg ivin g fo r the H a p p y R e tu rn o f H is M a jesty (1660), p. 18. 141. E d w ard Pelling, A Serm o n P reached before the L o rd M a y o r an d C o u rt o f A ld erm en a t St. M a ry Ie B o w , on N ov. S, 1683, B eing th e C o m m em o ra tio n -D a y o f O u r D eliverance fro m a Popish C onspiracy (1683), p. 16. 142. Isaac B arrow , A Serm on P reached o n the Fifth o f N o v em b er, 1673 (1679), pp. 11, 15, 1 6 -1 7 . M y a tte n tio n w as d raw n to this serm on in read in g W illiam s, A n A p p ro a ch to C ongreve, pp. 2 7 -2 9 , w here it is discussed, an d several o f the above sentences are q u o ted . 143. B arro w , A Serm o n Preached on th e F ifth o f N o v e m b e r, pp. 1 7 -1 8 . F or A rchb ish o p S an cro ft’s use o f the sam e d ra m a tu rg ic phrase, a p o m ekh a n es (ex m achina), fo r a sim ilar p urpose, see A Serm o n P reach'd to the H o u se o f Peers (n. 116 above), p. 25. 144. H o race, D e A rte Poetica, lines 1 9 1 -9 2 . I q u o te the Loeb tran slatio n above. M y a tte n tio n w as d ra w n to B arro w ’s use of d ram atu rg ic im agery here, an d to the source o f his q u o ta tio n , in reading D erek H ughes, “ Providential Justice and English C om edy, 1 6 6 0 -1 7 0 0 : A R eview of th e E x tern al E vidence,” M o d ern L a n ­ guage R eview 81 (1986): 2 7 3 —92 (especially pp . 2 7 8 -7 9 ), a perceptive criticism of W illiam s’s A n A p p ro a ch to C ongreve. H ughes argues convincingly th a t since the in freq u en t interventions of special Providence w ere reserved fo r occasions o f great public m o m en t, they w o u ld scarcely have been in tro d u ced by C ongreve and oth er R e sto ra tio n d ram atists into th e ir dom estic com edies, o r, fo r th a t m atter, into tragedies o r tragicom edies represen tin g p riv ate life. 145. F o r a very different view , w hich sees A lb io n a n d A lb a n iu s as designed by D ryden to p ro m o te the interests o f the d uke o f Y o rk w ith the king, see M cF adden, D ryden: the Public W riter (n. 72 above), pp . 2 8 0 -8 4 . 146. F or an acco u n t o f the cerem ony o n 20 A pril, see the L o n d o n G a ze tte , 24 A pr. 1682. For a sam pling o f th e m assive press cam paign in su p p o rt of all this fanfare, see H is R o y a l H ighness th e D u k e o f Y o rk's W elcom to L o n d o n : A C on­ gratula to ry P oem (8 A pr. 1682); A C ongratulatory P oem u p o n the H a p p y A rrival o f H is R o y a l H ighness Jam es, D u k e o f Y o rk, a t L o n d o n , A p ril 8, 1682 (8 A pr. 1682); A P anegyrick o n T h eir R o y a l H ighnesses, and C ongratulating H is R eturn fro m Sco tla n d (13 A pr. 1682); A C ongratulatory P oem , on H is R o y a l H ighness Jam es, D u k e o f Y o rk (14 A pr. 1682); A W elcom to H is R o y a l H ighness in to the C ity, A p ril the T w en tieth , 1682 (20 A pr. 1682); P rologue to H is R o y a l H ighness, u p o n H is First A ppearance a t the D u k e 's Theatre since H is R etu rn fro m Scotland. W ritten b y M r. D ryd en (21 A pr. 1682); T h e E pilogue, W ritten by M r. O tw a y to H is Play C all’d Venice P reserv’d, or A P lo t D isco ver’d: S p o ke n u p o n H is R o y a l H ighness th e D u k e o f Y o r k ’s C o m in g to th e Theatre, Friday, A p ril 21, 1682 (21 A pr. 1682). 147. See D ryden, “ A straea R e d u x ,” W o rks, 1:23, describing C harles as “ to ss’d by F ate,” the p hrase (fato p ro fu g u s) V irgil applies to A eneas a t the begin­ ning o f his epic; D ryden, “T o M y L ord C h a n c e llo r,” ibid., p. 38. 148. As w e noticed in the last ch a p te r, T h e M edall also co n tain s a n in tern al parallel betw een th e R o u n d h ead s of S haftesbury’s y o u th an d the W higs o f his old age, b u t o f course the p o em as a w hole is n o t a parallel. 149. S cattergood, A Serm o n Preached a t B lo ckley (n. 60 above), p . 18. 150. C ave, K ing D a vid 's D eliverance (n. 54 above), p. 32.

EPILOGUE

1. F or a valuable recent study of W hig and T ory p ro p ag an d a during the Exclusion Crisis w ith a different em phasis from mine, see Tim H arris, L o n d o n C row ds in the Reign o f Charles II: Propaganda and Politics fro m the R estoration until the E xclusion Crisis (Cam bridge: C am bridge University Press, 1987), chaps. 5, 6, and 7. H arris focuses principally, though n o t exclusively, on the m an ip u la ­ tion o f cro w d psychology by both p arties through the “ theatre of the street” such as pope-burning processions and lord m ay o r’s show s, “form s of visual sym bol­ ism ” such as graphic prints, illustrated tracts, playing cards, and alm anacs, and other kinds o f p ro p ag an d a designed to appeal directly to a m ass audience. 2. For a careful assessm ent o f the actual state o f public opinion at this time, see Tim H a rris, “W as the T o ry R eaction Popular? A ttitudes of L ondoners to ­ w ards the Persecution of D issent, 1 6 8 1 -6 ,” L o n d o n Journal 13 (1988): 1 0 6 -2 0 . H e finds “ a large degree o f p o p u la r acquiescence in the to ry reaction, and perhaps even pop u lar su p p o rt for it” (p. 114). F or evidence o f surviving W hig dissent, based o n indictm ents by assizes for seditious w ords, see Buchanan Sharp, “P o p u ­ lar Political O pinion in England 1 6 6 0 -1 6 8 5 ,” H istory o f E uropean Ideas 10 (1989): 1 3 -2 9 (especially pp. 19-2 4 ). 3. B urnet's H istory o f M y O w n T im e, ed. O sm und Airy, 2 vols. (O xford: C larendon Press, 1 8 9 7 -1 9 0 0 ), 2:388.

INDEX

A bhorrence M ovem ent: (1680), 3 1 -3 2 ; (1682), 1 4 9 -5 3 ; (1683), 2 1 3 -1 4 abhorrences: (1682), 150; q uoted, 1 5 1 -5 3 , 154, 157, 192; (1683), 3 2 1 n .6 3; quoted, 218, 223, 3 1 6 n .l4 A b sa lo m ’s C onspiracy, 36, 3 7 ,1 0 8 ; quoted, 3 8 -4 0 A bsalom Senior (Settle), 60, 3 1 3n .9 5 A b so lo n ’s IX W orthies, 3 13n.95 A ct for a Perpetual A nniversary T hanksgiv­ ing (1660): quoted, 4 Act of O blivion (1660), 116, 2 4 4 Act o f Settlem ent (1701), 30 addresses. See abhorrences; electoral ad ­ dresses; loyal addresses; Petitioning M ovem ent Addresses Im p o rtin g an A bhorrence, The, 311n,66; quoted, 150 A dvice to the Painter, 3 1 1 n .7 5 ; q uoted, 142 A lgernoon Sidneys Farewel, 3 1 8n .4 0 A llington, John, 289n.2 9 A nderson, H enry: q uoted , 85 anniversary serm ons and services: G u n p o w ­ der Plot (5 N ovem ber), 7, 15, 159, 262, 2 67, 292n.47; m arty rd o m of C harles I (30 January), 4 -6 , 7 -8 , 1 0 -1 1 , 1 2 -1 3 , 14, 50, 159-60; political role of, 5 -6 , 7 -8 , 1 0 -1 1 , 17, 50, 71; resto ratio n of Charles Il (29 20M ay), 4, 6, 7 -8 , 1 3 -1 4 , 1 5 -1 7 , 50, 85, 2 5 8 -6 0 , 2 6 7 A n n otations u p o n AU the B o o ks, 2 93nn. 48 and 49; quoted, 109, 1 1 0 -1 1 , 3 0 5 n .l2 3 A nother L etter fro m Legorn, 292n.38 A nsw er R eturned to the L etter fro m L e­ g orn, A n , 291n.36 A nsw ers C o m m anded b y H is M ajesty, The·. quoted, 74 A nsw er to a Late P am phlet, An·, quoted, 129, 130 A n sw er to A n o th er L ette r fro m Legorn, A n , 292n.38 A n sw er to the A ppeal fro m the C ountry, A n (L’Estrange): q u oted , 1 2 8 -2 9 A nsw er to the Letter fro m Legorn A n ­ swered, The, 292n.38 A n sw er to the M erchants Letter, A n , 29 1 n .3 7

A n sw er to the Seco n d L etter from Legorn, A n , 2 9 1n .3 6 A n tid o te against Poison, A n , 3 18n.35 A p p ea l fro m the C ountry to the City, A n , 33 A rm strong, Sir T hom as: involved in Rye H ouse Plot, 2 1 5 -1 7 , 219; q uoted, 253; seized and executed, 2 5 3 -5 4 , 3 2 4 n .l2 3 A rraignm ent a n d Plea o f Edw. Fttz-Harris, The, 2 9 9 n .4 7 Arraignm ent, Tryal, a n d C ondem nation o f A lgernon Sidney, T he, 318n.39 A rraignm ent, Tryal, a n d C ondem nation o f Stephen Colledge, The: q u o ted , 92, 97, 140 Arundell of W ard o u r, H en ry A rundell, third b aro n , 46 A ssociation, Act o f (Elizabethan), 1 4 8 -4 9 , 309nn. 28 an d 37; in “ Epistle to the W higs,” 165 A ssociation, proposed Bill o f (1680), 1 4 7 49 A ssociation, The: in A lb io n and Albanius, 264; alluded to, in T h e D u k e o f Guise, 1 9 1 -9 2 , 196; discussed, 143, 1 4 5 -4 6 ; in “ Epistle to the W h ig s,” 16 5 -6 6 ; m The M edall, 1 8 2 -8 3 ; in po stscrip t to The H isto ry o f th e League, 2 3 3 , 235; T ory attack s on, 1 4 4 -4 7 , 1 4 8 -5 3 , 1 6 6 -6 8 , 192, 218; in Vindication o f “T he D u ke o f G u ise,” 208; W hig defenses of, 1 4 7 48 Azaria a n d H ushai (Pordage), 60 B achorik, Laurence L.: q uoted, 191 Badger in the F ox-Trap, The, 3 0 5 n .l3 1 Baldw in, R ichard, 4 8 , 74, 3 07n.4 Ballad: The T h ird Part, A , 29 3 n .5 6 ; q uoted, 41 Ballad u p o n the Popish Plot, A: quoted, 42 B arnardiston, Sir Samuel, 147 Barne, M iles: q uoted, 2 2 8 , 238 B arrillon, Paul, 63 B arrow , Isaac: q uoted, 8, 2 6 2 -6 3 , 266 Bedloe, W illiam , 1 8 -1 9 , 4 2 , 4 3 , 77, 139 Belasyse, Jo h n Belasyse, first baron, 24 Bell, R obert, 2 95n.93

B enskin, T h o m as, 78. See also D o m estick Intelligence; Im partia l L o n d o n In telli­ gence·; P rotestant O x fo r d Intelligence Bethel, Slingsby, 3 4 -3 5 , 7 2 , 9 0 , 91, 98 B etterton5T h o m as, 256 biblical com m entaries: on I 2 0 C h ro n icles, 2 9 3 n .5 0 ; on 2 Sam uel, 3 9 -4 0 , 108—9, 1 1 0 -1 1 , 3 0 5 n .l2 3 biblical exam ples an d parallels. See O ld T estam ent Billa Vera; or, T h e A rra ig n m en t o f Ig n o ra ­ m u s, 3 0 8 n .l5 ; q u o ted , 158 Blague, W illiam , 2 1 6 , 2 1 9 , 246 B olton, W illiam : q u o ted , 2 2 5 Book o f C om m on Prayer: lessons fo r a n n i­ versary services in, 1 4 -1 5 B ook o f H om ilies. See H om ilies, B ook o f B ooth, H enry: q u o ted , 4 6 B ooth, Jo h n , 1 0 0 -1 0 1 , 138 B ow er, G eorge, 1 7 3 -7 4 , 3 1 2 n n . 88 a n d 89, 3 1 3 n .9 3 Box, R alph, 98, 206 B redvold, L ouis I., 53 B r ie f H istorical R elatio n o f S tate A ffairs, A (L uttrell), 3 1 7 n .l8 , 3 2 2 n .8 5 B row n, M ark N ., 3 2 4 n .l2 3 B row ning, A ndrew , 2 9 6 n .l0 7 B uckingham , G eorge V illiers, second duke of, 142 Budick, Sanford: q u o ted , 162 B urner, G ilberr, 2 2 1 , 3 2 4 n .l2 2 ; q u o ted , 14, 2 6 9 , 3 1 9 n .4 4 Bury, A rth u r, 2 9 0 n .3 8 Cabal, The: q u o ted , 59 C alam y, B enjam in, 3 1 9 n .5 4 C are, H enry, 33, 3 1 5 n .3 ; T h e H isto ry o f the D am nable P opish P lot, 60. See also P o o r R o b in ’s Intelligence; W eekly P acquet o f A dvice fr o m R o m e C arew , Sir N icholas: q u o ted , 44 C ar-m an's P oem , T h e : q u o ted , 35 C arr, Sam uel, 88 C aryll, John; N a b o th ’s V inyard, 3 6 -3 7 , 107, 194; q u o ted , 37 C atherine (queen), 29, 90 C atherine de M edici (queen o f F rance), 190, 2 0 2 -3 C atholic peers, five im peached, 2 0 -2 1 , 22, 2 3 -2 6 , 30, 4 2 -4 3 , 45 C ave5Jo h n , 3 1 9 n .5 4 ; q u o te d , 2 2 5 , 2 5 0 , 267

Cellier, E lizabeth, 33 Certain S erm o n s or H om ilies. See H om ilies, B ook o f C ham bers, A. B., 3 0 6 n .l3 3 C h a p m a n , Jo h n , 3 2 1 n .6 3 C haracter o f a D isb a n d ed C ourtier, The: q u o te d , 3 1 3 n .l0 2 C h a r a c te r o fa P opish Successor, T h e (Set­ tle): q u o ted , 5 0 C harles I: in ann iv ersary serm ons, 11, 1 2 1 3 ,1 4 ,1 5 9 ; “ fatal m ercy ” of, 1 1 6 -1 7 ; re ­ lations of, w ith L ong P arliam en t, 71 , 145 C harles II, 3; in A b sa lo m a n d A c h ito p h el, 1 1 1 -1 6 , 1 2 1 -2 4 , 1 3 2 -3 7 ; a d o p ts new policy, 6 2 -6 5 ; in A lb io n a n d A lb a n iu s, 2 5 5 -5 6 , 2 5 8 , 2 6 1 , 2 6 4 , 2 6 5 -6 7 ; co m ­ m an d s D ryden to tra n slate T h e H isto ry o f th e League, 2 2 9 -3 1 , 3 2 1 n .6 8 ; co n traste d w ith H en ri III of F rance, 2 0 1 -2 , 2 0 4 -5 , 206; in d ed ica tio n o f T h e H isto ry o f the L eague, 2 4 5 -4 6 , 2 4 8 -4 9 , 254; delays m eeting o f second E xclusion P arliam en t, 30; issues H is M ajesties D eclaration, 6 7 72; as m ythologized in T o ry p ro p a g a n d a , 84—86, 2 2 6 ; q u o te d , 8 0 -8 1 , 9 2 , 150, 3 2 4 n .ll 3 ; relations of, w ith C av alier P a r­ liam ent (sixteenth session), 2 0 -2 1 ; rela­ tions of, w ith first E xclusion P arliam en t, 2 2 -2 6 ; relatio n s of, w ith O x fo rd P arlia ­ m ent, 6 5 -6 7 ; relatio n s of, w ith second E xclusion P arliam en t, 4 2 -4 5 , 4 6 -4 7 , 1 0 2 -3 ; as ta rg e t o f Rye H o u se Plot, 2 1 2 , 2 1 6 -1 7 . See also H is M ajesties D eclara­ tio n (1681); H is M ajesties D eclaration (1683); H is M ajesties G racious Speech (1680); H is M ajesties M o s t G racious Speech . . . a t O x fo r d (1681) C h ristie, W . D ., 2 9 5 n .9 3 C ivil C orrection o f a Saw cy Im p u d e n t P a m ­ p h let, A: q u o ted , 96 C lap h am , J o n a th a n , 3 1 9 n .5 1 C lare, G ilb ert H olies, th ird earl of, 5 9 , 2 9 6 n ,1 0 9 C larges, Sir T h o m as: q u o te d , 21 C lark e, W illiam , 3 2 3 n .96 Cleave, W illiam , 3 0 0 n .4 9 C olem an, E d w ard , 20 C ollege, Stephen: 93, 22 0 ; a rrest of, 89, 90; in d ictm en t a n d tria l of, 9 1 -9 2 , 9 5 , 97, 3 0 1 n .63; q u o te d , 92, 9 7 , 3 0 1 n .6 6 C onfession o f E d w a rd Fitz-harys, T h e, 89, 2 7 0 ; q u o te d , 90

confessions. See dying speeches and con­ fessions C ongratulation on the H appy Discovery, A , 300n.60, 301n.76, 302n.82 Congratulatory Poem, on His R oyal H igh­ ness, A , 3 2 6 n .l4 6 C ongratulatory Poem upon the H appy Arrival o f His R oyal Highness, A, 3 2 6 n .l4 6 Considerations upon a Printed Sheet (L’Estrange), 318n.35 Conspiracy, The, 3 1 6 n .l2 C ooke, Sarah, 193, 209 Copies o f the Inform ations, 317n,16, 322n.86, 3 2 3 n .l0 8 C oppy o f the Journal-Book o f the H ouse o f C om m ons, A , 29 4 n .7 4 Cornish, H enry, 34 -3 5 , 72, 90, 91, 98 C ountry-m ans C omplaint, The, 179; quoted, 64 -6 5 , 74, 124, 133 C oventry, Sir William: quoted, 23 Crist, T im othy, 292n.40; quoted, 32 C rossm an, Samuel, 289n.29; quoted, 50 Currant Intelligence (John Smith), 78, 208 Curtis, Jane, 207 C urtis, Langley, 66, 207. See also True Protestant Mercury D agon’s Fall; or, The Charm Broke: quoted, 31 In .7 3 D anby, T hom as O sborne, first earl of, 68; as cause of friction in first Exclusion P ar­ liament, 2 2 -2 6 ; D ryden dedicates AU for L ove to, 57, 60, 2 0 3 -4 ; im peached, 21; as lord treasurer, 20, 62; quoted, 18 D aniel, Peter, 242 D ashw ood, Samuel, 242 David (in O ld Testam ent), 1 0 8 -1 1 , 115, 134, 136 Davies, Godfrey, 134 D avila, Enrico, 189, 190, 194, 3 1 4 n . l l l Dearing, V inton A., 284 Debates in the House o f C om m ons A ssem ­ bled at O xford, The, 298n. 19 de Beer, E. S., 2 9 6 n .ll0 D eclaration of Breda (1660), 116 De Krey, G ary S., 309n.53, 317n.27 D eliquium , The: quoted, 76, 124 Dialogue betw een Mrs. Celier and the L. S[haftesbur]y, A: quoted, 96 “ Dialogue between N ath an and Absolome, A ,” 292n,46

D ialogue betw een the E. o f Shlaftesburyj and L, Bellfasysej, A: quoted, 97 D ialogue, between Toney, and the G host, A , 3 0 5 n .l3 1 D iodati, John (Giovanni D iodate), 293n.49 D isbandm ent Bill: first (1678), 21, 62; sec­ ond (1679), 23, 25 D iscourse Touching the Addresses, A, 309n.37 D isloyal Forty an d Forty O ne, T h e: quoted, 71 D isputation on H oly Scripture, A (W hitaker): quoted, 9, 10 Dissenters: alluded to, m The D uke o f Guise, 1 9 9 -2 0 0 , 205; in The Medall, 180—8 1 ,1 8 2 ; in postscript to The H istory o f the League, 2 3 5 -3 6 ; in preface to Religio L a id , 205; in T ory propaganda, 15 6 -6 1 , 16 7 -6 8 D om estick Intelligence (Benskin), 78, 79— 80, 151, 156, 208; quoted, 81, 82, 85 D onnelly, Jerom e, 304n,116 D orset G arden, 5 5 -5 6 , 255, 269 D ove, H enry: quoted, 2 9 2n.47 D roeshout, M artin, 174 D rury Lane, 55, 269 D ryden, John: attitude of, tow ard the T rim ­ mers, 2 0 9 -1 1 ; changing public stance of, in 1681, 10 2 -6 ; public neutrality of, be­ tween 1678 and 1681, 51 -6 1 — A bsalom a n d A chitophel, 229, 232, 304nn. 109, 110, and 116, 305nn. 126 and 130, 3 0 6 n .l4 1 , 3 0 7 n .l5 3 , 3 1 5 n .l2 5 ; com pared w ith A lbion and Albanius, 258, 2 6 5 -6 6 ; com pared w ith The D uke o f Guise, 195-96, 19 7 -9 9 , 201; com ­ pared w ith The Medall, 1 6 1 -6 2 , 168-69, 1 7 5 -7 9 , 183-85, 187; discussed, 1 0 6 37; preface to, 107-8; preface to, com ­ pared with “Epistle to the W higs,” 163; preface to, quoted, 107-8; quoted, 11 1 15, 1 1 7 -2 3 , 1 2 5 -2 8 , 13 1 -3 2 , 13 3 -3 6 , 166, 176, 177-78, 183, 184, 185, 1 9 7 9 9 ,2 0 1 ,2 4 8 ; responses to, 164, 313n.95; textual anomalies in, 2 7 9 -8 4 . See also C harles II; Exclusion Crisis; Jam es, duke of York; M onm outh, Jam es Scott, duke of; Popish Plot; prerogative, royal; P rot­ estant Plot (1681); Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley C ooper, first earl of — A lbion and Albanius, 2 2 8 -2 9 , 3 2 6 n .l4 5 ; com pared w ith A bsalom and Achitophel,

(D ryden, A lb to n a n d A lb a n iu s, cont.) 2 5 8 , 2 6 5 -6 6 ; discussed, 2 5 4 —68; preface to , q u o ted , 2 5 4 -5 8 ; q u o te d , 2 6 0 -6 3 , 2 6 3 -6 6 . See also A ssociation, T h e; C harles II; E xclusion C risis; Jam es, duke o f Y o rk ; P opish Plot; Providence, special; Rye H o u se P lot — A l! fo r L ove: d edicatio n of, 5 7 , 60; dedi­ catio n of, q u o ted , 20 4 ; preface to, 3 1 3 n .9 4 — A n n u s M irabilis, 224 — A straea R e d u x , 194, 3 2 6 n .l4 7 ; q u o ted , 1 1 6 -1 7 , 1 9 0 -9 1 ,2 0 9 — B ritannia R ediviva, 271 — C o n q u est o f G ranadaj T h e, 2 9 8 n .2 3 — O u k e o f G uise, T h e (w ith Lee), 6 0 , 208, 2 2 8 , 2 2 9 , 2 3 2 -3 4 , 2 5 0 , 2 6 6 , 3 1 4 n n . 107 and 108, 3 1 5 n .l2 1 ; co m p ared w ith A b sa lo m a n d A ch ito p h el, 1 9 5 -9 6 ; d ed i­ catio n of, q u o ted , 193, 2 0 8 ; discussed, 1 8 8 -2 0 5 ; epilogue to , 3 1 5 n .ll 8 ; ep i­ logue to, q u o ted , 193, 2 0 9 —10; pro lo g u e to , q u o ted , 191; q u o te d , 1 9 6 -2 0 4 ; verbal echoes o f A b sa lo m a n d A ch ito p h e l in, 196, 1 9 7 -9 9 , 201. See also A ssociation, T he; C harles II; D issenters; E xclusion Crisis; H o ly League; L on d o n , C ity of; M o n m o u th , Jam es Scott, d u k e of; P rotes­ ta n t Plot — “ E pilogue Spoken to th e King at O x ­ fo rd ,” 3 0 3 n .9 9 ; q u o ted , 1 0 2 -3 — “ E pilogue to M ith rid a tes,” 106 — “ E pilogue to T h e U nha p p y F avourite,” 2 7 3 -7 4 ; q u o ted , 1 0 3 -4 — “ Epistle to the W higs.” See M edall, T h e — Essay o f O ram atick Poesie, A n , 3 1 3 n .9 4 — E x a m e n P oeticum , 2 7 6 — H in d a n d the Panther, T h e, 271 — H isto ry o f th e League, T h e, 2 3 8 , 2 4 5 , 2 5 4 -5 5 , 2 6 6 , 3 2 1 n n . 6 8 , 71, a n d 72; dedication of, 2 3 0 , 2 6 7 , 3 2 4 n .l2 3 ; dedi­ c atio n of, discussed, 2 3 6 -3 8 , 2 4 5 -5 4 ; d edication of, q uoted , 2 2 9 , 2 3 7 , 2 4 5 , 2 4 6 , 2 4 8 -4 9 , 2 5 1 ; discussed, 2 2 9 —31; p o stscrip t to , 2 3 0 -3 1 , 2 5 2 , 2 5 4 ; p o st­ script to , discussed, 2 3 2 -3 6 ; p o stsc rip t to , q u o ted , 5, 2 3 1 -3 6 , 2 5 1 . See also A ssociation, T he; C harles II; D issenters; E xclusion C risis; H oly League; P ro testan t Plot (1681); Rye H ou se Plot; S haftesbury, A nth o n y A shley C o o p er, first earl of; Solem n League an d C o v en an t

— K in d Keeper, The: d ed ica tio n of, 2 9 6 n .l l 2 — K in g A rth u r, 2 5 4 -5 5 , 3 2 4 n .l2 5 — “ Life o f P lu ta rc h .” See P lutarchs Lives — M edall, T h e, 2 0 0 , 2 0 5 , 2 0 8 , 2 2 8 , 2 2 9 , 23 5 , 2 5 0 , 3 1 3 n .9 8 , 3 1 5 n ,1 2 5 , 3 2 6 n ,1 4 8 ; c o m p ared w ith A b sa lo m a n d A ch ito p h el, 1 6 1 -6 2 , 1 6 8 -6 9 , 1 7 5 -7 9 , 1 8 3 -8 5 , 187; discussed, 1 6 1 -6 3 , 1 6 6 -8 9 ; ’’Epistle to the W h ig s,” co m p ared w ith preface to A b sa lo m a n d A c h ito p h e l, 163; ’’Epistle to th e W h igs,” discussed, 1 6 3 -6 6 ; ’’E pis­ tle to th e W h ig s,” q u o ted , 163, 165—66, 172, 195, 2 7 0 ; q u o ted , 1 7 2 -7 3 , 174, 1 7 6 -8 8 , 2 0 6 . See also A ssociation, A ct o f (E lizabethan); A sso ciatio n , T he; D is­ senters; F erguson, R o b ert; H o ly League; L o n d o n , C ity of; Shaftesbury, A n th o n y Ashley C o o p er, first earl of; Solem n League a n d C o v en an t — M iscellany P oem s (1684), 2 7 4 , 2 7 5 , 2 7 6 — O ed ip u s (w ith Lee), 188, 2 9 5 n .8 9 — P lutarchs Lives: d ed icatio n of, q u o te d , 3 1 6 n .4 , 3 1 7 n ,2 9 ; "Life o f P lu ta rc h ,” q u o te d , 108, 1 8 6 -8 7 , 201 — “ P rologue a t O x fo rd , 1 6 8 0 ,” 2 7 4 -7 5 ; q u o te d , 56 — “ P rologue to Caesar B o r g i a q u o te d , 5 7 — “ P rologue to H is R oyal H ig h n ess,” 3 2 6 n .l4 6 ; q u o ted , 2 0 4 — “ P rologue to M ith rid a tes”: q u o ted , 105 — “P ro lo g u e to th e D u tch ess” : q u o te d , 251 — “ P rologue to T h e L o ya l G eneral”: q u o te d , 2 9 6 n .l0 1 -—“P ro lo g u e to T h e U nha p p y F a vo u rite,” 2 7 3 -7 4 ; q u o te d , 1 0 4 -5 — “P ro lo g u e to th e U niversity o f O x fo rd ,” 2 7 5 -7 6 ; q u o te d , 2 7 5 — “P ro lo g u e to th e U niversity o f O x fo rd , 1 6 8 1 ” : q u o te d , 104 — R eligio L a id : preface to , 3 1 5 n .l2 5 ; p ref­ ace to , q u o te d , 2 0 5 — Secret L ove: second p ro lo g u e to , q u o ted , 56 — Spanish Fryar, T he, 52—54, 60; ded ica­ tio n of, 6 0 ; d ed ica tio n of, q u o ted , 58; p ro lo g u e to , q u o ted , 5 6 —5 7 — T hren o d ia A ugustalis, 2 7 1 ; q u o te d , 115 — “T o M y F riend M r. J. N o rth le ig h ,” 146 — T o M y L o rd C hancellor, 3 2 6 n .l4 7 ; q u o te d , 117

— Troilus and Cressida, 5 2 , 2 9 5 n .96; dedication of, q u o ted , 5 7 -5 8 ; epilogue to, 55; preface to, q u o ted , 3 1 3 n .9 4 — V indication o f "T he D u k e o f G u ise ,” 230, 2 3 3 ; discussed, 1 8 8 -9 5 ; q u o te d , 1 8 8 -9 5 , 2 0 0 , 2 0 1 , 2 0 6 , 2 0 7 , 2 0 8 -9 , 2 1 0 -1 1 , 2 1 8 , 251. S eea lso A ssociation, T he; E xclusion Crisis; H o ly League; Sol­ em n L eague a n d C o v en a n t D ubois, Jo h n , 206 D ugdale, Stephen, 1 8 -1 9 , 4 3 , 1 3 9 ^1 1 ; q u o ted , 9 2 , 94 D ugdale, Sir W illiam , 191, 233 D u p o rt, Jam es, 2 8 9 n .2 9 D urfey, T hom as: T he Progress o f H o n esty, q u o ted , 41 dying speeches an d confessions: 89—91, 92, 2 1 9 -2 2 , 2 4 2 -4 5 , 2 5 3 -5 4 E arl o f E ssex H is Speech a t th e D elivery o f the P etition, The·, q u o te d , 59 E. o f S h a ftsb u ry‘s E xp e d ie n t fo r Setting th e N a tio n , The·, q u o ted , 7 5 -7 6 Earl o f S h a ftsb u ry ’s G rand-Jury V in d i­ cated, T h e , 3 0 9 n .4 0 Edie, C arolyn A ., 2 8 7 n .l0 E hrenpreis, Irvin: q u o te d , 5 2 elections. See p arliam e n ta ry elections; shrieval elections electoral addresses (1681), 4 9 , 74, 8 0 -8 1 E legy on th e D ea th o f th e Plot, A n , 305n,131 E lizabeth (queen o f E ngland), 148 E nglands C oncern m th e Case o f H is R . H.·. q u o ted , 130 E n g la n d ’s M o u r n fu l E legy fo r th e D isso lv­ ing the Parliament·, q u o te d , 4 8 —49 E ssex, A rth u r C apel, first earl of, 29, 71,

217 , 220 Evelyn, Jo h n , 7 , 173; q u o te d , 3 , 4 , 32 E verard, E dm un d, 87, 139 E veringham , R o b ert. See M ercurius C ivicus E x a c t C ollection o f the M o st C onsiderable D ebates, A n , 2 9 4 n .7 8 E xa m en (N o rth ), 2 9 2 n .39, 3 2 3 n . l l l , 3 2 4 n .ll 2 E xcellen t N e w Ballad, An·, q u o ted , 3 1 3 n .96 E xcellen t N e w Ballad o f th e P lo ttin g H ead, A n , 3 0 1 n .76; q u o ted , 96, 98 E xcellen t N e w Song o f the U n fo rtu n a te W higs, A n , 3 0 8 n .l4

Exclusion Bills: first (1 679), 2 4 -2 5 , 5 9 , 130, 3 0 7 n .l4 9 ; second (1 680), 4 3 , 4 8 , 5 9 , 130, 3 0 7 n .l5 0 ; th ird (1681), 6 7 , 94, 130 E xclusion Crisis: in A b sa lo m a n d A ch ito p h el, 1 0 6 -7 , 1 1 8 -3 7 ; in A lb io n a n d Albanius, 2 6 4 -6 6 ; alluded to , in T h e D u k e o f G uise, 1 9 3 -2 0 5 ; discussed, 2 6 -5 1 , 6 2 6 7 , 8 5 -8 6 ; in p o stscrip t to T h e H isto ry o f th e League, 23 1, 233—35; in V indication o f "T h e D u k e o f G u ise,” 208 Ferguson, R obert: answ ered in ’’Epistle to the W h igs,” 165; involved in Rye H o u se Plot, 2 1 5 -1 7 , 2 4 4 , 3 1 7 n .2 9 ; N o Protesta n t-P lo t, 101; N o P ro testant-P lot, q u o ted , 1 0 0 , 139; The S eco n d P art o f N o P ro testa n t P lot, q u o ted , 101, 1 0 1 -2 ; T h e T h ird P art o f N o P ro testa n t P lo t, q u o ted , 1 5 8 -5 9 , 3 1 0 n .5 5 , 3 1 1 n .7 0 Finch, H eneage, 67 F itzharris, A nne: allegations of, concerning P ro te s ta n tP lo t (1 681), 88—9 0 , 9 3 , 96; re­ tra c ts h er testim o n y , 9 1 -9 2 , 101, 142 F itzharris, E d w ard , 9 3 , 2 3 9 ; arraig n m en t, tria l, a n d conviction of, 8 7 -8 9 , 136, 139; as cause o f friction in O x fo rd P arliam ent, 6 6 -6 7 , 6 9 , 87; confession of, 8 9 -9 1 , 9 5 96, 101, 142, 2 2 0 F itz-H arys’s L a st Sham D etected , 3 0 0 n .5 7 Fitz-W illiam j Jo h n , 3 1 9 n .5 1 F ord, Sim on, 12; q u o te d , 14, 15 Foreness, E., 3 1 9 n .5 1 F o xcroft, H . C., 3 2 4 n .l2 3 Free a n d V o lu n ta ry C onfessio n a n d N arra­ tive, T he, 3 2 2 n .9 1 , 3 2 3 n n . 94 an d 100; q u o ted , 2 4 0 , 2 4 2 -4 3 From a b o a rd the V an-H erring, 2 9 2 n .3 8 F ujim ura, T h o m as H .: q u o te d , 161 G a rto w a y , W illiam : q u o ted , 2 3 , 25 G enius o f T rue E nglish-m en, The·, q u o te d , 73 G entle R eflectio n o n th e M o d e st A cco u n t, A: q u o ted , 193 G h o st o f the L a te H o u se o f C o m m o n s, The·. q u o ted , 124 G hosts o f E d w a rd Fits H arris a n d O liver P lu n ket, T h e, 30 0 n .5 8 G lover, H en ry , 2 8 9 n n . 2 9 an d 33; q u o ted , 13 G odfrey, M ich ael, 87

Godfrey, Sir Edmund Berry, 18, 2 0 G oodenough, Francis: behavior of, as under sheriff, 98; involved in Rye House Plot, 244 G oodenough, Richard: behavior of, as under sheriff, 35, 98; involved in Rye H ouse Plot, 244, 316n .8 G o o d N ew s in B ad Tim es, 318n.41 G o o d O ld Cause Revived, The: quoted, 35, 71, 124 Gould, Robert: The Laureat, quoted, 5 2 -5 3 Grabu, Louis, 256 Grand Remonstrance (1641), 5 9 , 71 Greaves, Richard L., 287n.7; quoted, 5 Grey o f Warke, Ford Grey, third baron, 2 1 5 -1 7 , 219, 244 Griffm, Dustin, 303n.99; quoted, 161, 3 0 5 n .l3 0 , 3 0 7 n .l5 3 Grim alkin; or, The Rebel-Cat: quoted, 77 Grimston, Sir Harbotrle: The Speech o f Sir H arbottle G rim ston , quoted, 3 Guise, Henri de Lorraine, third due de, 1 8 9 -9 0 , 1 9 2 -9 4 , 197, 2 0 0 -2 0 4 , 2 0 6 , 2 3 2 , 234 Habeas Corpus Act (1679), 9 9 , 238 Haines, Bryan, 89, 90, 99, 139, 142; quoted, 92, 97 Haley, K. H . D ., 2 9 3 n .6 8 , 2 9 6 n .l0 3 H alifax, George Savile, first earl of, 4 3 , 31 In.68; quoted, 99; The Character o f a Trim m er, 3 2 4 n .l2 3 Ham , Roswell G., 3 0 3 n .l0 8 H am m ond, Paul, 3 2 5 n .l3 2 ; quoted, 2 5 7 Hampden, John, 2 1 7 , 2 2 0 -2 1 , 238, 317n.2 3 Ham pden, Richard: quoted, 2 4 , 43 Harford, Robert. See Mercurius Anglicus Harris, Benjamin, 32—33, 4 9 , 7 3 -7 4 , 207. See also P rotestant D om estick Intelli­ gence Harris, Tim, 3 2 7 n .l; quoted, 2 8 7 n .l, 327n.2 Harrison, John: quoted, 2 2 7 -2 8 H aughton, John H olies, Lord, 5 8 , 60 H ave You A n y W ork fo r a C o o p erl 301n.76 Hawkins, Francis, 8 9 -9 0 , 92, 220 H ayw ood, William: quoted, 10 Henri (king o f Navarre, later Henri IV o f France), 1 9 0 -9 1 , 194, 198, 2 0 0 , 2 1 8 , 2 3 2 , 2 4 8 , 3 1 5 n ,1 2 0

Henri III (king o f France), 1 8 9 -9 0 , 194, 1 9 6 -9 7 , 198, 2 0 0 -2 0 5 , 2 0 6 , 232 Heraclitus Ridens, 7 8 -7 9 , 172, 2 0 8 , 2 1 8 , 251; quoted, 84, 100, 1 6 9 -7 1 , 3 1 3 n .l0 2 Hesketh, Henry, 29 0 n .3 8 , 319n.51 Hetherington, W illiam, 45 Heylyn, Peter, 15; quoted, 1 3 -1 4 H ickes, George: quoted, 160, 168, 2 5 8 —59, 2 6 0 -6 1 H ind, Arthur M ., 312nn. 89 and 90 Hinnant, Charles H ., 191 H is M ajesties D eclaration (1 6 8 1 ), 79, 80, 8 2 -8 4 , 89, 9 3 -9 5 , 106, 136, 145, 1 4 8 4 9 , 151, 2 5 2 , 270; discussed, 68—72; quoted, 6 8 -7 0 , 130, 1 3 4 -3 5 , 231; W hig responses to, 7 2 -7 3 , 7 4 , 231 H is M ajesties D eclaration (1683), 2 2 7 , 270; discussed, 2 2 2 -2 4 ; quoted, 2 2 2 -2 3 H is M ajesties D eclaration D efended, 3 0 3 n .l0 8 H is M ajesties Gracious Speech to B oth H ouses o f Parliam ent (1680): quoted, 1 0 2 -3 H is M ajesties M ost G racious Speech . . . a t O x fo rd (1681): quoted, 6 5 -6 6 His R o y a l Highness the D u ke o f York's W elcom to London, 3 2 6 n .l4 6 H istory o f the D am nable P opish Plot, The (Care), 60 H istory o f th e N e w P lot, A, 31 8 n .3 7 H istory o f the Plot, The (L’Estrange), 60 H istory o f th e R oyal-Society, The (Sprat), quoted, 5, 8 H ollar, W enceslaus, 173, 312nn, 89, 90, 91, and 9 2 , 31 3 n .9 3 H olies, Denzil H olies, first baron, 5 8 -5 9 H olies, Sir Francis, 59 H ollow ay, James, 239^ 15, 2 4 6 , 2 4 8 , 253; quoted, 2 4 0 -4 3 H oly League (French): in The D u ke o f G uise, 1 9 1 -9 2 , 1 9 3 -9 4 , 195, 1 9 6 -2 0 0 , 229; in “Epistle to the W higs,” 165, 199; in postscript to The H istory o f the League, 2 2 9 -3 0 , 2 3 2 -3 4 ; in Tory propa­ ganda, 192, 195, 2 2 9 -3 0 , 232 Hom ilies, Book of, 9 -1 0 , 224; quoted, 7, 9, 10, 1 3 2 -3 3 H one, W illiam, 2 1 6 , 2 1 9 , 2 3 7 , 2 4 6 H ooker, Richard: L aw s, quoted, 2 0 5 Horace: D e A rte Poetica, quoted, 263 H ow ard of Escrick, W illiam H ow ard, third baron: accused in Protestant Plot (1681),

INDEX

8 8 -9 0 , 93, 96, 98, 9 9 , 142, 144, 23 8 ; in ­ volved in Rye H o u se Plot, 2 1 5 -1 6 , 2 1 7 2 1 , 247; q u o te d , 89, 96, 2 1 9 H ughes, D erek, 3 2 6 n .l4 4 H ughes, W illiam , 3 1 9 n .5 4 ; q u o te d , 3 2 0 n .5 5 H u m b le A ddress a n d A d v ic e o f Several o f the Peeres, T h e, 2 9 1 n .2 8 , 2 9 6 n .l0 8 H um e, R o b ert D ., 53—54, 2 9 5 n .9 4 , 3 1 4 n .l0 7 , 3 2 5 n .l3 0 ; q u o ted , 5 3 , 273 H u n t, T h o m as, 193, 2 1 0 ; q u o te d , 190 H u tto n , R onald: q u o te d , 2 8 7 n .7 , 2 9 7 n .8 H yde, L aw rence. See R o ch ester, L aw rence H yde, first earl o f Ignoram us: A n E xcellen t N e w Song, 3 0 8 n .l4 , 3 1 1 n .7 5 Igno ra m u s Ballad, The·, q u o ted , 94 Igno ra m u s juries, 35, 88, 91, 9 7 -1 0 1 , 2 0 6 7, 2 9 2 n .4 0 Im partial L o n d o n Intelligence (Benskin), 78 Im p a rtia l P rotestant M ercu ry (Janew ay), 74, 88, 207; q u o ted , 88, 1 0 5 -6 In fo rm a tio n o f Capt. H e n ry W ilkin so n , The·, q u o te d , 1 0 0 -1 0 1 In im icu s Patriae, 3 l8 n .3 8 inquests. See trials and inquests Irish P lot, 4 5 -4 6 Iter Boreale: q u o te d , 2 0 7 Jack so n , A rth u r, 2 9 2 n .4 8 , 2 9 3 n .4 9 , 3 0 5 n .l l 8 Jam es (duke o f Y o rk , later Jam es II), 2 0 , 90, 271; in A b sa lo m a n d A c h ito p h e l, 123, 131; in A lb io n a n d A lb a n tu s, 2 6 1 , 2 6 4 -6 5 ; alluded to , in T h e D u k e o f G uise, 194, 1 9 8 -9 9 ; exiled d u rin g E x clu ­ sion C risis, 2 8 , 4 2 , 44 ; as ta rg e t o f Rye H o u se Plot, 2 1 2 , 2 1 6 -1 7 ; a n d th re a t o f civil w ar, 1 2 8 -3 0 , 147. See also E x­ clusion Bills Jan ew ay , R ichard, 105, 2 0 7 . See also Im ­ partial P rotestant M ercu ry Jeffreys, Sir G eorge: q u o te d , 1 4 0 , 219 ]e m m y a n d A n th o n y , 3 1 1 n .7 5 Jenkins, Sir L eoline, 71, 9 1 -9 2 , 141, 2 1 1 -1 3 , 2 1 5 , 2 2 3 , 2 3 9 -4 0 ; q u o te d , 2 1 2 -1 3 Jenner, D avid, 2 8 9 n .2 9 Jones, J. R ., 2 9 1 n .l0 , 2 9 6 n .l0 6 , 2 9 7 n .8 Jonsoti, Ben, 175; q u o ted , 174

335

J u st a n d M o d e st V indica tio n o f th e P ro­ ceedings, A : q u o te d , 73 Justice T riu m p h a n t, 2 3 8 ; q u o te d , 2 3 7 Ju x o n , W illiam , 11 K eeling5Jo siah , 2 1 1 -1 2 , 2 1 6 , 2 1 7 , 2 4 7 K enyon5Jo h n , 2 8 7 n .8 , 3 2 4 n .l2 3 ; q u o ted , 19, 139 K ey (w ith th e W hip) to O p e n the M ystery o f In iq u ity , A (N esse), 164, 3 1 2 n .8 5 K ing, Bruce, 2 9 5 n .9 0 La C haise, Pere F ranqois, 2 0 L am b ert, T h o m a s, 2 8 9 n .2 8 L a n g h o rn , R ich ard , 19 L a sh to D islo ya lty, A , 31 Sn.38 L a st a n d T ru est D iscovery o f th e P opishP lot, T h e, 2 1 3 , 3 1 7 n ,1 7 L a st Speech a n d B eh a vio u r o f W illiam L a te L o r d R ussel, T h e, 3 1 7 n .3 1 ; q u o te d , 2 2 0 , 243 L a st Speech a n d C onfessio n o f M r. Stephen Colledge, T h e, 3 0 1 n .6 5 L a st Speech o f E d w a rd F itz-harris, T he, 3 0 0 n .5 4 L aureat, T h e (G ould): q u o te d , 5 2 -5 3 Lee, N ath a n ie l: T h e D u k e o f G uise (w ith D ry den), 1 8 8 -9 2 , 1 9 5 -9 6 , 3 1 5 n .l2 1 ; Sop h o m sb a , 2 7 4 —75 Lee, Sir C h arles, 88 L eg o rn L etters, 3 4 , 85, 164; q u o te d , 85 L’E strange, R oger, 1 5 0 , 2 5 4 , 2 7 0 ; A n A n ­ sw er to th e A p p e a l fro m the C o u n try, q u o te d , 1 2 8 -2 9 ; C onsiderations u p o n a P rin ted Sheet, 3 1 8 n .3 5 ; T h e H isto ry o f th e P lot, 60; letters of, q u o te d , 9 1 , 2 3 9 ; N o te s u p o n Stephen C ollege, q u o ted , 101. See also O b serva to r L etter fro m a C itizen o f O x fo rd , A : q u o ted , 51 L e tte r fr o m a Friend, to a Person o f Q u a lity, A , 164 L etter fr o m a P erson o f Q u a lity to H is Friend, a b o u t A b h o rrers a n d A d d ressers, A , 163 L etter fro m a Person o f Q u a lity to H is F riend concerning H is M ajesties L a te D eclaration, A: q u o te d , 73 L etter fro m L egorn, A , 2 9 1 n .3 5 L etter fro m M y L o r d H o w a rd , A , 3 0 0 n .5 7 L etter fr o m S cotland, A: q u o te d , 51

L etter to H is G race th e D. o f M o n m o u th , A , 4 0 —41, 77; q u o ted , 41 L etter to the E arl o f S h a ftsb u ry, A: q u o ted , 71 Leveson G ow er, W illiam : q u o te d , 4 4 L icensing A ct (1662), 32 L ist o f AU the C onspirators T h a t H ave Been S e iz’d, A , 3 2 2 n .8 2 L oftis, John, 3 2 5 n .l3 0 L o ndon, City of: alluded to , in T h e D u k e o f G uise, 1 9 9 -2 0 0 , 205; erosion o f W h ig in­ fluence in, 2 0 6 -7 , 2 1 1 ; in T h e M edall, 1 7 3 -7 4 , 1 8 1 -8 2 , 187; in T o ry p ro p a ­ g anda, 155—56, 1 6 7 -6 8 L o n d o n G azette, 32, 33 , 6 0 , 78, 81, 151, 2 0 8 , 2 1 3 -1 4 , 2 2 2 ; q u o te d , 2 1 1 , 2 1 2 L o n d o n M ercury, 3 1 5 n .3 L o n d o n s L a m en ta tio n , 3 1 6 n .7 L ong, T h o m as, 3 2 0 n .6 2 ; q u o ted , 5 0 , 2 2 7 L ongford, Francis A ungier, first earl of: q u o ted , 99 Louis X IV (king o f France), 6 2 -6 3 loyal addresses: q u o ted , 8 3 -8 4 , 93 Loyal A ddress M ovem en t (1681), 8 0 -8 4 , 1 4 9 -5 0 , 151, 167, 2 1 3 -1 4 L o y a l C onquest, T he, 3 1 8 n ,3 8 L o ya l Im p a rtia l M ercury, 3 1 5 n .3 L o y a l L o n d o n M ercury, 3 1 5 n .3 L o ya l P rotestant a n d T ru e D o m e stic k In te l­ ligence (T hom pson), 7 8 -8 0 , 144, 151, 2 0 8 , 3 1 5 n .3 ; q u o ted , 79, 82, 87, 9 1 -9 2 , 106, 151 L o ya l Sherifs o f L o n d o n a n d M iddlesex, T he, 3 1 5 n .2 L o ya l Tories D elight, T h e, 2 9 3 n .5 6 L o y a lty T riu m p h a n t, 3 1 5 n .2 L uttrell, N arcissus, 108; A B r ie f H istorical R elation o f State A ffa irs, 3 1 7 n .l8 , 322 n .8 5 M cF ad d en , G eorge, 3 0 4 n .l0 9 , 3 2 1 n .7 2 , 3 2 4 n ,1 2 3 , 3 2 6 n .l4 5 ; q u o ted , 3 0 4 n . l l 0 M cK eon, M ichael, 3 0 6 n .l4 2 M aim b o u rg , Louis, 2 2 9 —30, 2 3 5 M alo n e, E d m on d, 53 M ary , Q ueen of Scots, 148 M a u re r, A. E. W allace, 3 1 2 n .8 7 M ayer, Jo h n , 2 9 2 n .4 8 , 2 9 3 n .4 9 ; q u o ted , 111

M ay n ard , Joh n: q u o ted , 2 1 , 2 4 , 25 M eal T u b P lot, 33 M edal R evers’d, T he (Pordage), 60

M eg g o tt, R ichard: q u o te d , 10 M e rc u n u s A n g licu s (H arfo rd ), 33 M ercurius Civicus (E veringham ), 33 M ilb o u rn e , Luke, 3 1 9 n .5 1 M ilh o u s, Ju d ith , 5 3 -5 4 , 2 9 5 n .9 4 , 3 1 4 n .l0 7 ; q u o te d , 53, 273 M ilitia Bill (1678), 21 M ilne, D o teen J., 2 9 6 n .l0 7 M ilto n , Jo h n : Paradise L o s t, 1 1 9 -2 0 ; Para­ dise R egained, 1 2 0 -2 1 ; q u o ted , 121 M o d era te Intelligencer, 3 1 5 n .3 M o d e st A c c o u n t o f th e P resent P osture o f A ffairs, A , 31 In .6 8 M o d e st V in dication o f the E arl o f SjhaftesburJy, A , 3 1 1 n .7 9 ; q u o ted , 3 1 3 n .9 6 M o n ck , G eorge (later first d u k e o f A lbe­ m arle), 3 , 2 6 0 M o n m o u th , Jam es Scott, d u k e of, 2 8 -2 9 , 7 1 , 8 9 , 107, 2 3 4 , 25 5; in A b sa lo m a n d A c h ito p h el, 1 1 2 -1 5 , 1 1 9 -2 7 ; becom es publicly associated w ith Shaftesbury, 7 5 7 8 ,1 0 7 ; D ry d en ch arg ed w ith libelling, m T h e D u k e o f G uise, 1 8 9 -9 0 , 1 9 2 -9 5 ; in early T o ry p ro p a g a n d a , 38—42; involved in Rye H o u se Plot, 2 1 5 —17, 2 1 9 , 2 2 0 , 2 2 1 ; in later T o ry p ro p a g a n d a , 7 5 -7 8 ; possible involvem ent of, in P ro te sta n t P lo t (1681), 9 6 -9 7 , 127; in preface to A b sa lo m a n d A ch ito p h el, 1 0 7 -8 ; q u o ted , 219 M o n m o u th ’s R e tu rn , 3 l8 n .4 1 M o n tag u , R alp h , 21 ; q u o ted , 43 M o n taig n e , M ichel de: D efen ce d e Seneque e t de P lutarque, 3 0 4 n . l l 3 M o o re, Sir Jo h n , 2 0 6 , 2 0 7 M u rd er O u t a t L a st, 3 1 6 n .l2 M yers, W illiam : q u o ted , 1 6 5 , 3 1 2 n .8 6 N a b o th ’s V in ya rd (C aryll), 3 6 , 3 7 , 107, 194; discussed, 3 6 -3 7 ; q u o ted , 37 N arrative, A , 89; q u o te d , 90 N a rra tive o f M r. J o h n S m ith o f W a lw o rth , The, 3 0 8 n .5 N esse, C h risto p h er: A K ey (w ith the W hip) to O p en th e M y stery o f In iq u ity , 1 6 4 , 3 1 2 n .85; A W hip fo r th e Fools B ack, 3 1 1 n .6 9 N e w A d vice to a Painter: q u o te d , 3 5 -3 6 , 124 N e w B allad o f J o c k y ’s Journey, A : q u o ted , 3 0 2 n .8 0

N ew Ballad o f Londons Loyalty, A, 302n.82 N ew Ignoramus, A , 31 In .7 5 N ew Letter from Leghorn, A: quoted, 85 N ew Narrative o f the O ld Plot, A , 318n.38 N e w Song: Being the Tories Im ploration, A, 315n.2 newspapers; development and suppression of Tory, 33-34, 78-80, 2 0 7 -8 , 315n.3; development and suppression of Whig, 3 2 -33, 49, 73-74, 2 0 7 -8 , 315n,3 N ew W ay to Play an O ld Cam e, A , 318n.38 N icholson, H um phrey, 98 N onconform ists. See Dissenters N o Protestant-Plot (Ferguson), 101; quoted, 100, 139 N o Protestant Plot; or, The Whigs Loyalty, 213 Norm andsell, Richard, 35 N orth, Dudley, 206 N orth, Francis, 68, 324nn. 112 and 113; quoted, 92 N orth, Roger: Exam en, 292n.39, 3 2 3 n . l l l , 3 2 4 n .ll2 N o rth leigh, John, 146, 153, 166; The Paral­ lel, quoted, 146-47, 149, 153, 154, 1 5 5 56, 158, 168, 181, 184, 192 N otes o f the Evidence Given against the Lord H ow ard o f Escrick, 88—89; quoted, 89, 96 N otes upon Stephen College (L’Estrange): quoted, 101 Oates, Titus, 18-19, 20, 27, 36—37, 45, 89, 105-6, 139-40, 264, 295n.89 Observator (L’Estrange), 78-79, 144, 208, 215, 220, 224, 244 -4 5 , 251, 254, 270, 316nn. 5 and 13, 318n.33; quoted, 79, 91, 95, 144, 145, 147, 156, 157, 158, 159, 168, 209, 213, 218, 219, 220, 222, 227, 233, 236, 242, 245, 252 Ogg, David, 2 9 7 n .l O ld N e w True Blew Protestant Plot, The, 3 1 6 n .l2 Old Testament: use of cautionary examples from, 8 -11, 50, 84-85; use of parallels from , 13-17, 36-41, 77-78, 107-15, 117-18, 134, 136, 224 -2 5 , 227-28, 230, 292nn. 46 and 47, 3 0 4 n .ll6 , 305nn. 123 and 132, 318n.41, 320nn. 62 and 63 Orgel, Stephen: quoted, 257 O rm ond, James Butler, first duke of, 99

O tw ay, Thomas: Venice Preserv’d, 313n.97; epilogue to, 3 2 6 n .l4 6 O xfords Lam entation in a Dialogue: quoted, 73 Panegyrick on Their Royal Highnesses, A, 3 2 6 n .l4 6 Papillon, T hom as, 206 Parallel, The (Northleigh): quoted, 146-47, 149, 153, 154, 155-56, 158, 168, 181, 184, 192 parallels: homiletic use of, 11-17. See also Old Testament Parker, John, 15—16; quoted, 16 Parliam ent, Cavalier (1661-79), 62; six­ teenth session of (1678), 2 0 -2 2 , 47 Parliam ent, Convention (1660), 4 -5 , 62 Parliam ent, Convention (1689-90), 5 Parliam ent, first Exclusion (1679), 2 2 -2 6 , 47, 130 Parliament, Long (1640-53), 7 0-71, 145, 146 Parliam ent, O xford (1681), 6 3 -6 4 , 6 5 -6 7 , 69, 75 -7 6 , 130, 136, 166 Parliament, second Exclusion (1680-81), 4 2 -4 8 , 68-69, 102-3, 130, 147; in Absa­ lom and Achitophel, 125, 135 parliam entary elections, 23, 27, 30, 49, 74 parliam entary reporting: development of, 4 7 -4 8 , 66, 74 Particular A ccount o f the Proceedings at the O ld Bayly, A , 302n.85 Payne, William, 319n.51 Peacock5Theresa, 8 8 -9 0 , 92, 93, 96 Pearson, Richard: quoted, 225 Pelling, Edward: quoted, 160, 183-84, 262 Pem berton, SirFrancis: quoted, 138, 1 4 1 42 Pepys, Samuel, 16 Petitioning M ovem ent: (1679-80), 31, 33, 38, 59, 80, 81-82; (1681), 73-75 Pilkington, Thom as, 9 8 -9 9 , 206 Player, Sir T hom as, 87 Plot and Plotters Confounded, The, 322n.84 Plutarch: Lives, 12, 13, 16, 108, 201, 289n.32; quoted, 12 Pluto, the Prince o f Darkness, 318n.40 Pomfret, Thom as, 319n.51 Poole, M atthew , 3 0 5 n .ll8 ; quoted, 40 Poor Robins Dream: quoted, 77 Poor R o b in ’s Intelligence (Care), 33

P opes E vidence to a C ardinal, T he, 31 In .7 5 Popish Plot, 1 8 -2 0 , 27, 2 4 7 , 3 2 0 n n . 55 an d 56, 3 2 3 n .l0 9 ; in A b sa lo m a n d A c h ito phel, 1 1 8 -1 9 , 2 7 9 -8 4 ; in A lb io n a n d A lb a n iu s, 264; alluded to , in H a b o th ’s V m ya rd , 3 6 -3 7 ; co n strain ts of, on royal policy, 21, 29—3 0; discredited in T o ry p ro p a g a n d a , 4 2 , 5 3 -5 4 , 2 9 3 n .5 6 ; effect of, on P arliam ent, 22 , 2 9 , 4 5 —46 P ordage, Sam uel: A zaria a n d H ushai, 60; T h e M ed a l R evers’d, 60 Pow le, H enry: q u o ted , 19 Prance, M iles, 1 8 -1 9 , 139—40 prerogative, royal, 18, 2 1 , 2 2 , 2 9 -3 0 , 66; in A b sa lo m a n d A ch ito p h el, 125, 131, 1 3 4 -3 5 ; in T o ry p ro p a g a n d a , 2 6 , 5 1 , 72, 7 5 -7 6 ; in W hig p ro p a g a n d a , 2 6 , 4 9 -5 0 P re se n tm e n t. . . o f the G ra n d Ju ry . . . o f M iddlesex, T h e : q u o te d , 72 Price, Jo h n , 319n.51 P ritch ard , Sir W illiam , 2 0 7 P roceedings against Sir T h o m a s A rm stro n g , The·, q u o ted , 253 P roceedings a t the Sessions H ouse, The, 144, 149, 270; q u o te d , 1 3 8 , 1 4 1 -4 2 , 1 4 3 ,1 4 7 P ro clam atio n o f W illiam a n d M ary : q u o ted , 5 Progress o f H o n esty, T h e (D urfey): q u o ted , 41 p ro p a g a n d a m achinery, Tory. See A b h o r­ rence M ovem ent; abh o rren ces; a n n i­ versary serm ons and services; dying speeches a n d confessions; loyal addresses; L oyal A ddress M ovem en t; new spapers; thanksgiving serm ons an d services, spe­ cial; trials an d inquests p ro p a g a n d a m achinery, W hig. See electoral addresses; new spapers; p arlia m e n ta ry re ­ p orting; Petitioning M o v em en t P rotestant D o m estick Intelligence (H arris), 3 2 -3 3 , 4 9 , 7 3 -7 4 P rotestant O x fo r d Intelligence (Benskin), 78 P ro testan t P lo t (1681), 8 6 -1 0 2 , 1 3 8 —43, 145; m A b sa lo m a n d A c h ito p h e l, 1 2 5 2 7 , 1 3 5 -3 6 ; alluded to, in T h e D u k e o f G uise, 1 9 6 -9 7 ; in p o stsc rip t to T h e H is­ to ry o f th e League, 2 3 4 -3 5 P rotestant P lo t N o P aradox, A , 159 Providence, com m on, 8, 2 5 9

P rovidence, special, 8, 2 2 4 , 2 5 8 -6 6 ; in d is­ covery o f G u n p o w d e r Plot, 7, 2 6 2 -6 3 ; in discovery o f P opish Plot, 2 2 4 -2 5 , 3 2 0 n n . 55 an d 56; in discovery o f Rye H o u se P lot, 2 2 3 —2 8 ; m ark s o f, 4 , 2 5 8 -5 9 , 2 6 0 61, 2 6 2 -6 3 ; po litical im p o rtan ce of, 5 -6 , 2 2 5 -2 8 ; in re sto ra tio n o f C harles II, 3 -6 , 17, 2 2 4 -2 7 , 2 6 0 —6 1 ; in R ev o lu tio n o f 1688, 5; as subject o f A lb io n a n d A lbanius, 2 5 6 -5 8 , 2 6 0 -6 2 , 2 6 3 -6 7 ; use o f d ram atu rg ic im agery for, 2 5 8 -6 0 , 2 6 1 63, 2 6 7 q u o w a rra n to p ro ceedin g s, 155, 2 0 7 , 2 1 1 , 252 R an d all, H elen W ., 2 8 7 n .l0 R a-ree S h o w , A , 3 0 1 n .6 6 R easons fo r the In d ic tm e n t o f the D . o f Y o rk, 2 9 6 n .l0 9 R eca n tin g W higg, The: q u o ted , 2 4 4 R eco very, T h e : q u o te d , 1 6 6 -6 7 , 168 R eligion a n d L o y a lty S u p p o rtin g Each O ther: q u o ted , 82 R em a rq u es u p o n th e N e w P roject o f A sso c i­ atio n , 1 4 4 -4 5 ; q u o te d , 145—46, 1 4 6 —47, 1 4 8 , 149 R ep ly to the S eco n d R etu rn , A , 31 ln .6 8 R eresby, Sir Jo h n , 80; q u o te d , 150 R ich, Peter, 2 0 7 R ich ard so n , C apt. W illiam , 242 R id d le o f th e R o u n d h e a d , T h e, 3 0 1 n .7 6 ; q u o ted , 94, 9 7 R o b in so n , K. E., 3 0 4 n . l l 6 R o ch ester, L aw rence H yde, first ea rl o f, 7 1 , 193, 208 R o p er, A lan: q u o te d , 2 2 9 , 2 3 0 , 2 8 9 n .3 2 , 3 2 1 n .7 1 , 3 2 2 n .7 5 R ouse, Jo h n , 87; accused in P ro te sta n t P lo t (1 6 8 1 ), 8 9 , 90, 99; involved in Rye H o u se P lot, 2 1 6 , 2 1 9 , 2 3 7 , 2 4 6 , 2 4 7 ro y al prero g ativ e. See p rero g ativ e, ro y al R u m b o ld , R ic h ard , 2 1 2 , 2 6 4 R um sey, C ol. Jo h n , 2 1 5 —16, 2 1 7 , 2 2 1 , 2 3 2 , 239, 240, 242, 247, 248 R ussell, L ady R achel, 2 2 0 R ussell, W illiam R ussell, L o rd , 3 1 7 n .2 3 ; accused in Rye H o u se P lo t, 2 1 5 -1 7 ; q u o te d , 220; tria l a n d execu tio n of, 2 2 0 21, 237, 246 Rye H o u se c o n sp irato rs: trials an d convic­ tions of, 2 1 5 -2 1

Rye H o u se Plot: in A lb io n a n d A lb a n iu s, 264 ; in d ed icatio n o f T h e H isto ry o f the League, 2 3 6 -3 7 , 2 4 5 -4 6 , 2 4 8 -5 4 ; d is­ cussed, 2 1 1 -2 8 , 2 3 7 -4 5 , 2 4 6 -4 8 ; in po stscrip t to T h e H isto ry o f the L eague, 2 3 2 -3 5 Sacheverell, W illiam : q u o te d , 2 5 S ancroft, W illiam , 2 6 3 , 3 2 6 n ,1 4 3 ; q u o ted , 1 0 -1 1 , 2 4 9 -5 0 Saslow , E d w ard L., 2 8 4 , 3 0 3 n .l0 8 , 3 2 1 n .6 8 , 3 2 5 n .l2 6 Satyr, by W ay o f D ialogue, A , 3 1 8 n .3 8 Saund ers, C harles: Tam erlane the G reat,

102 Saw yer, Sir R obert: q u o te d , 2 1 6 - 1 7 Scattergood, Sam uel: q u o te d , 2 2 6 , 2 6 7 Schless, H o w a rd H ., 2 9 2 n .4 6 Sclater, E dw ard: q u o te d , 8 4 -8 5 Scott, Sir W alter, 53; q u o te d , 2 3 7 , 2 5 5 scrip tu ral com m entaries: on I C hronicles, 2 9 3 n .5 0 ; on 2 Sam uel, 39—4 0 , 108—9, 1 1 0 -1 1 , 305Π .123 scrip tu ral exam ples an d p arallels. See O ld T estam ent Scroggs, Sir W illiam , 2 7 , 3 7 , 4 4 , 48 Seasonable A ddress to B o th H o u ses o f P arliam ent, A: q u o ted , 4 1 , 123, 129 Seasonable In v ita tio n fo r M o n m o u th to R e tu rn to C ourt, A , 108; q u o te d , 77—78, 3 0 5 n .l3 2 S econd L e tte r fro m a Person o f Q u a lity, A , 163 S econd L e tte r fro m L egorn, A , 2 9 1 n ,3 6 S econd P art o f N o P ro te sta n t P lot, T h e (Ferguson): q u o te d , 1 0 1, 1 0 1 -2 S eco n d R e tu rn to th e L e tte r o f a N o b le Peer, A , 164 serm ons: political role of, 6 -7 , 17, 5 4 . See also an niversary serm o n s a n d services; thanksgiving serm ons and services, special Settle, E lkanah: A b sa lo m Senior, 6 0 , 3 1 3 n .9 5 ; T h e C haracter o f a P opish Suc­ cessor, q u o te d , 50; T h e F em ale Prelate, 2 7 4 -7 5 Seym our, E d w ard , 4 4 , 4 8 , 71 Shadw ell, T h o m as, 190, 193 Shaftesbury, A n th o n y A shley C o o p e r, first earl of, 2 6 , 2 8 , 5 8 -5 9 , 7 1 , 2 0 7 , 2 3 8 , 2 6 5 , 31 3 n n . 96, 97, and 102; in A b sa lo m a n d A ch ito p h el, 1 1 8 -2 7 ; accused in P ro tes­ ta n t Plot (1681), 89, 9 2 -9 3 , 9 7 -1 0 1 ,

3 0 7n.3; becom es publicly associated w ith M o n m o u th , 7 5 -7 6 ; in early T o ry p ro p a ­ g a n d a, 4 1 -4 2 , 2 9 3 n .5 6 ; in “ Epistle to the W h ig s,” 172; im plicated in th e A ssocia­ tio n , 143; involved in Rye H o u se Plot, 2 1 5 , 2 1 6 -1 9 ; an d Irish P lot, 4 5 ; in later T o ry p ro p a g a n d a , 7 6 -7 8 , 96, 9 9 -1 0 0 , 107, 1 5 3 -5 4 , 1 6 3 -6 4 , 1 6 9 -7 0 ; in T h e M ed a ll, 1 7 5 -7 9 , 1 8 4 -8 6 , 187; in p o st­ scrip t to T h e H isto ry o f th e L eague, 2 3 4 35; q u o te d , 2 1 8 -1 9 ; A Speech L a tely M a d e b y a N o b le Peer o f the R ea lm , 4 4 , 4 6 , 51, 125; Speech q u o te d , 4 4 - 4 5 , 64; testim o n y ag ain st, a t g ran d in q u est, 138— 39 , 1 4 1 -4 3 Shakespeare, W illiam , 1 7 4 -7 5 Sharp, B u ch an an , 3 2 7 n .2 Sheldon, G ilbert, 9, 2 8 8 n .2 2 ; q u o te d , 3—4, 6 ,2 6 1 Shepherd, T h o m as, 2 1 5 -1 6 , 2 4 7 Sherlock, W illiam : Som e Seasonable R eflec­ tio n s, q u o te d , 2 2 4 -2 5 shrieval elections, 34—35 , 9 8 , 2 0 6 - 7 Shute, Sam uel, 9 8 -9 9 , 2 0 6 Sidney, A lgernon, 2 1 9 , 3 1 7 n .2 3 ; accused in Rye H o u se P lo t, 2 1 7 , 2 1 9 , 2 3 8 ; trial an d ex ecu tio n of, 2 2 0 -2 1 , 2 4 4 , 2 4 6 Sm ith, F rancis “ E le p h a n t,” 4 9 , 74, 2 0 7 . See also S m ith 's P ro testa n t Intelligence Sm ith, J o h n (p rin ter), 78. See also C urrant Intelligence Sm ith, J o h n H a rrin g to n , 233 S m ith5Jo h n “ N a rra tiv e ” (inform er), 99, 1 3 9 -4 2 ; q u o te d , 9 2 , 9 5 , 141, 142 Sm ith, W illiam , 3 1 9 n .5 1 S m ith ’s P ro testa n t Intelligence (Francis Sm ith), 4 9 , 7 3 -7 4 Solem n L eague a n d C o v en a n t (1643): in ’’Epistle to th e W h ig s,1” 165; in p o st­ scrip t to T h e H isto ry o f th e L eague, 2 3 3 ; q u o te d , 157; in T o ry p ro p a g a n d a , 1 4 5 4 6 , 152, 162, 1 9 1 -9 2 , 218 S o m e M o d e st R e flectio n s: q u o te d , 9 5 , 96 S o m e R eflectio n s o n th e P aper D elive red . . . b y Ja m es H o llo w a y , 3 2 3 n .l0 7 Som e Seasonable R eflectio n s (Sherlock): q u o ted , 2 2 4 -2 5 Som e S h o rt b u t N ecessary A n a m a d versio n s, 3 0 0 n .5 7 Song o f the N e w P lot, A , 3 0 0 n .6 0 , 3 0 1 n n . 67 an d 76 S outh, R o b ert: q u o te d , 6

Speech a n d Carriage o f S tep h en C olledge a t O x fo r d , The: q u o ted , 92 Speech a n d C onfession o f W illiam L o rd Russel, The: q u o ted , 2 2 0 speeches. See dying speeches an d confes­ sions Speech L ately M ade by a N o b le Peer o f the R ealm , A (Shaftesbury), 4 4 , 4 6 , 5 1 , 125; q u o ted , 4 4 —45, 64 Speech o f Sir H a rb o ttle G rim sto n , T h e : q u o ted , 3 Speech o f the L a te L o r d R ussel, T h e, 3 1 8 n .3 4 , 3 1 9 n .4 4 Spencer, John: q u o ted , 10 Sprat, T hom as: T h e H isto ry o f th e R oyalSociety, q u o ted , 5, 8; A T ru e A c c o u n t a n d D eclaration o f the H o rrid C onspiracy, 31 9 n .4 3 Spurr, Jo h n : q u o ted , 2 8 7 n .l0 S tafford, W illiam H o w a rd , first v iscount, 4 3 , 45; q uoted, 140 S tapleton, Sir W illiam : q u o te d , 2 3 9 Staves, Susan: q u o ted , 54 Stephen C olledge’s G h o st, 3 0 1 n .7 6 S tradling, G eorge, 2 8 9 n .2 8 ; q u o te d , 10 S trafford, T h o m as W en tw o rth , first ear! of, 23, 71 S trak a, G erald, 2 8 7 n .8 S u nderland, R o b e rt Spencer, second earl of, 5 7 -5 8 , 60; q u o ted , 2 3 9 S utherland, Jam es, 316 n .3 Test A ct ¢1678), 2 0 , 2 1 , 29 thanksgiving serm ons a n d services, special: (28 Ju n e 1660), 3, 2 2 5 , 2 6 1 ; (9 Septem ­ b er 1683), 2 2 3 -2 8 , 2 5 5 -5 6 T h ird P art o f N o P rotesta n t Plot, T h e (Ferguson): q u o ted , 1 5 8 -5 9 , 3 1 0 n ,5 5 , 31 In .7 0 T h irty -n in e A rticles, 7 T h o m as, W . K., 3 0 6 n .l3 3 T h o m p so n , N a th a n ie l, 33, 106. See also L o y a l P rotestant and T rue D o m estic k In ­ telligence·, T rue D o m estic k Intelligence T illo tso n , Jo h n , 221; q u o te d , 6 -7 T itu s, Silas: q u o ted , 2 7 T onge, Israel, 18, 37, 77, 89, 139, 2 9 5 n .8 9 T o n so n , Jaco b , 60, 2 2 9 , 255 T o o k e, B enjam in. See W eekly D iscovery o f the M ystery o f In iq u ity T ra p p , Jo h n , 3 0 5 n n . 121 an d 122; q u o ted , 110, 115

T reason in G raine, 2 9 9 n .4 6 T reason U nm asqued, 3 0 1 n .7 6 T ren ch ard , Jo h n , 2 1 9 trials an d inquests: o f E d w ard F itzharris, 8 7 -8 8 ; in P opish P lot, 19, 4 5 ; in P ro tes­ ta n t Plot (1681), 8 8 -8 9 , 9 1 -9 2 , 9 5 , 97, 9 8 -9 9 , 1 3 8 -4 4 ; in Rye H o u se Plot, 2 1 5 19, 2 2 0 -2 1 , 238 T rien n ial A ct (1664), 3 0 , 2 3 1 , 2 4 3 T rim m ers, 2 0 9 —11 T ro tm a n (prison official), 35 T ru e A c c o u n t a n d D eclaration o f th e H o r­ rid C onspiracy, A (Sprat), 3 1 9 n .4 3 T rue C opy o f the Jo u rn a l-B o o k o f th e L a st P arliam ent, A , 2 9 4 n .7 5 T ru e D o m e stic k Intelligence (T h o m p so n ), 3 3 -3 4 , 78; q u o te d , 31 T ru e E nglishm an, The: q u o te d , 1 2 4 -2 5 , 1 3 6 -3 7 T rue N a rra tive o f th e D u k e o f M o n m o u th 's L a te Jo u rn ey, A , 2 9 1 n .2 7 T ru e P ro testan t D o m estick Intelligence, 33 T ru e P ro testa n t M ercury (C u rtis), 4 9 , 60, 74, 2 0 7 T ru th V indicated, 3 0 0 n .5 7 ; q u o te d , 95 T ry a l a n d C o n d e m n a tio n o f E dw. FitzH arris, T h e, 2 9 9 n .4 9 T ry a l a n d C o n d em n a tio n o f Several N o to r i­ ous M alefactors, The: q u o te d , 91 T rya l a n d C o n victio n o f Jo h n H a m b d e n , T h e, 3 1 9 n .4 2 T rya l o f W illiam V isco u n t Sta ffo rd , The: q u o te d , 140 T ryals o f T h o m a s W a lc o t. . . , The: q u o ted , 2 1 6 -1 9 , 2 7 0 T u ck er, Sam uel, 3 2 3 n .96 T u rb erv ille, E d w ard , 4 3 , 9 9 , 139—4 2 ; q u o ted , 92 T u rn e r, Francis: q u o te d , 5 0 , 2 2 6 T u rn e r, Jo h n , 3 1 9 n .5 1 T w isse, R o b e rt, 2 8 9 n n . 29 a n d 33; q u o te d , 7 -8 T u jo A ssociations, T h e, 146, 155 T y ro n e, R ich ard P ow er, first earl o f, 4 6 U nderhill, C ave, 55 V enice P reserv’d (O tw ay), 3 1 3 n .9 7 ; epi­ logue to , 3 2 6 n .l4 6 V ery C o p y o f a P aper D elivered to the Sher­ iffs, T he, 3 1 8 n .4 0

IN D E X V indication o f A ddresses in G eneral, A: q u o ted , 82 V indication o f the H o n o u ra b le the Sher­ iffs, A , 3 0 0 n .5 7 V ision in th e T o w er, A , 3 0 5 n .l3 1 Vive Ie R o y; or, L o n d o n 's Joy: q u o te d , 206 V otes o f the H ouse o f C o m m o n s, at O x fo rd , 2 9 7 n .5 V otes o f the H o u se o f C o m m o n s, Pe­ rused a n d Signed, 2 9 4 n .7 7 V o x A ngliae, 81, 83 V o x Patriae, 7 4 , 80, 81 V o x Populi: q u o ted , 5 0 W agstaffc, T h o m as, 31 9 n .5 1 W aith, E ugene M ., 3 2 5 n .l3 2 ; q u o ted , 257 W ak em an , Sir G eorge, 19 W aking V ision, The, 2 9 8 n .2 5 ; q u o ted , 77, 124 W alco t, T h o m as, 2 1 6 , 2 1 9 , 2 3 7 , 2 4 6 ; q u o ted , 243 W allacej Jo h n M ., 3 0 7 n .l4 9 W aller, Sir W illiam , 139 W alter, Lucy, 28 W ard , C harles E., 253 ; q u o te d , 2 3 7 , 3 0 4 n .l0 9 , 3 1 2 n .8 6 W eekly D iscovery o f the M y ste ry o f In iq ­ u ity (T ooke), 78

341

W eekly P a cq u et o f A d v ice fr o m R o m e (C are), 33, 7 8 , 3 1 5 n .3 W e in b ro t, H o w a rd D ., 3 0 4 n . l l 6 W elcom to H is R o y a l H ighness, A , 3 2 6 n .l4 6 W est, R o b e rt, 2 1 5 , 2 1 6 , 2 2 1 , 2 3 2 , 2 3 9 , 2 4 0 , 2 4 2 , 2 4 7 , 248 W higgs L a m e n ta tio n , The: q u o ted , 100 W higs E leva tio n , T h e , 3 2 2 n .8 4 W h ig u p o n W h ig, 3 1 8 n .3 8 W h ip fo r the Pools B ack, A (N esse), 3 1 1 n . 69 W h ita k e r, E d w ard , 88 W h ita k e r, W illiam : A D isp u ta tio n o n H o ly Scripture, q u o te d , 8 -9 , 10 W ilk in so n , H en ry , 138 W illiam L a te V isco u n t o f Sta ffo rd , H is L a st Speech, 2 9 3 n .6 7 W illiam s, A u b rey L ., 3 2 5 n n . 136 a n d 137, 3 2 6 n n . 142 and 144 W illiam s, W illiam : q u o te d , 21 W ilson, Jo h n H a ro ld , 2 7 3 W ilson, T h o m as: q u o ted , 3 1 0 η .58 W in n , Jam es A n d erso n , 3 0 4 n .l0 8 , 3 1 2 n .8 5 , 3 2 5 n .l3 1 ; q u o te d , 189, 197 W in n in g to n , Sir Francis: q u o ted , 4 6 W o o d , A n th o n y , 3 6 , 2 9 2 n .4 4 Z w ick er, Steven N ., 3 0 4 n n . 1 1 4 an d 116; q u o te d , 134, 3 0 5 n .l2 6