II. The Whig Exclusionists: Pamphlet Literature in the Exclusion Campaign, 1679–81

Abstract

The Exclusion Controversy of 1679–81 echoes many of the constitutional issues debated before and during the Civil War, just as it anticipates many of the arguments used to support the 1688 Revolution. If the attempt to exclude James, Duke of York, from the succession to the throne was abortive, it still provides an important key to contemporary opinion about the vital political problems of the century; and at this time when the structure, indeed the very existence of the early Whig and Tory parties is being questioned, the Exclusion Controversy can be shown in one respect at least to have had a markedly unifying effect on the former party, as demonstrated in its literature. The attempt at Exclusion was the supreme effort of Shaftesbury to rally the early Whig party, and it was accompanied by an intensive propaganda campaign, issuing forth a steady stream of pamphlets, most of which are still extant. Some of the best of these have been printed in Somer's Tracts, The Harleian Miscellany and State Tracts: A Collection of Treatises relating to the Government, Privately Printed in the Reign of Charles II, 1693; while others are now very rare, and single copies may be found only in the British Museum or Bodleian Library, or in such repositories as the City Guildhall Library, London. Together with the Tory replies, they form a list of nearly two hundred titles, not as vast a collection as the Civil War produced, but one to compare favourably with the volume of pamphlets occasioned by the Restoration and the Revolution.