Gender, Disguise, and Usurpation: "The Female Prelate" and the Popish Successor

Abstract

On the evening of November 17, 1679, as many as two hundred thousand Londoners witnessed a spectacle that reportedly cost its Whig sponsors ?2,500. torches carried by 150 hired porters illuminated a float bearing a pope in effigy, embraced and counseled by the devil and attended by cardinals, Jesuits, and friars. procession stopped at Temple Bar before the statue of Queen Elizabeth, decked for this occasion with a golden shield inscribed The Protestant Religion and Magna Charta [sic]. While singers performed a dialogue between Norfolk (Philip Cardinal Howard) and Protestant Plebeians, the papal effigy was prostrated before the Queen's statue and then tossed into a bonfire. A year later, the procession grew to nine floats, as Tory Abhorrers, poor deluded Nuns, and others joined the papal entourage. English taste for such pageants had revived in 1673 when rumors of a secret alliance between Charles II and Catholic