Re-reading the Exclusion Crisis

Abstract

The reading of pamphlets in the period 1678-1683 has recently been acknowledged as having enormous significance for its volatile politics. Joad Raymond claims that 'The Popish Plot was shaped by the internal logic and the genres of the pamphlet form'.1 The special issue of Albion for 1993 was devoted to Jonathan Scott's argument in Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis, 1677-1683, based on his study of Cambridge University Library's collection of pamphlets.2 Scott claimed that that this period did not see the development of parties in any meaningful sense: '1678's whigs were 1681's tories'. He identified this shift in popular belief as a result of events in 1681-82 when Parliament and the City of London became too radical for most of what Scott calls 'the political nation'.3 Scott is right to identify a consensus in these pamphlets over the desirability of parliaments and Protestantism, and a widely-expressed dread of any recurrence of the upheavals of the Civil War.4 In many of the pamphlets from apparently opposing contexts, then, the terminology, and content, is similar. Scott concludes that this is because in many cases the same people are behind pamphlets labelled 'Whig' in 1678 and 'Tory' in 1681.5 In the political climate of Restoration London, when, as Gary de Krey has shown, allegiances formed during the Civil War were still operating to produce various politically-committed factions, that is a rather surprising conclusion.6 Tim Harris argues that Whigs and Tories use what looks like a similar discourse very differently, and this article is a contribution to his argument.7 Of course, as he points out, scholars should have nothing to do with 'any notion that the first Whigs were a monolithic party'. What united different groups, he claims, was the concern 'to rid England of the threat of popery and arbitrary government', and he demonstrates the wide reach of Whig propaganda.8 Issues of religion were central to politics in this period. I shall demonstrate a rhetorical struggle over the word 'loyal' and the word 'protestant', necessary appellations for any political activist in this period hoping for influence: he had to represent himself as both genuinely protestant and loyal to the throne. The argument is based on the fact that what Jonathan Scott calls 'the political nation', and what Stephen Pincus calls 'the political English', includes a widening class of those with an interest in politics: there is a parallel increase in the number of literary genres which could be considered to be politicised. A survey of pamphlet literature in the period is not attempted here. Rather, this article takes examples from disparate genres - individual sermons, poems, schoolbooks and even one party invitation - which were widely read between 1679 and 1683: Joad Raymond acknowledges that by this period the pamphlet form had become 'diffuse or disunified' and, in any case, always contained many different genres.9 I want to demonstrate the rhetorical strategies involved when groups with very different political allegiances and aims claim ownership of beliefs and values which they know to have wide popular support.The Lord Mayor's Shows written by Thomas Jordan for Lord Mayor's day, 29 October, 1678-82, have been described by Sue Owen as displaying Whig allegiance, as opposed to the plays of the London stage which were associated with the Tories.10 It is to the drama that was staged outside of the theatres, in the fairs, at the Lord Mayor's Show and at the Pope-burning processions, that she looks for authentic Whig language and values, which she sees as rooted in an English nationalism defined by religious allegiance. Procession through the streets, into which the spectators were often incorporated in true carnivalesque style, was followed by pageant, during the 1679 version of which Lord Mayor Clayton was exhorted to defend the City against the Popish Plot, as 'y' have declar'd for a True Protestant'.11 This polarisation, between Catholicism and True Protestantism, is a classic popular Whig opposition. …