University 201, March-April 2016 Andrea McKenzie, Plots, Papists and Puritans A Short History of Anti-Catholicism in England, c. 1527-1829
Lecture Outline 4, 29 March 2016: Restoration Crisis: Fire, Plague, Plot and Exclusion
1. The Restoration Settlement --Restoration of the monarchy, Charles II in spring 1660 greeted with jubilation, relief and an apparent consensus that the republican experiment/godly rule had been a failure, but papered over deeper divisions, fissures from the English Civil Wars --political and esp religious settlement remained problematic: Charles II, like his father (and Cromwell) had problems working with Parliament, obtaining money/grants/taxes --Protestant dissenters (former Puritans), opt out of C of E after 1661 as insufficiently reformed; antipopery only real common ground between “high Church” & “low Church”
2. The End of the Restoration Honeymoon –divine judgement? The disastrous mid-60s: Dutch-English War (1665-7) –Black Death (1665); c. 100,000 casualties in London; Great Fire of London (1666) –mounting “antipopery”: fear of “crypto-Catholics” at court; unpopularity of Charles II’s Catholic mistresses; unpopularity of Catholic Queen, Catherine of Braganza (1638-1705), married Charles II in 1662 –James, Duke of York, marries Catholic princess, Mary of Modena, in 1672; James resigns from public office with Test Act of 1673 –secret diplomacy: in the Treaty of Dover (1670), Louis XIV grants Charles subsidies in return for support in war against Dutch; Charles secretly promises to relax laws against Catholics and to convert to Catholicism
3. The Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis (1678-81) –mounting public hysteria as Titus Oates claims English Catholics are conspiring with pope, Jesuits to assassinate the King, invade England and to restore Catholicism --Titus Oates and other witnesses; the dying declarations of innocence of Jesuits, other Catholics dismissed as equivocations; belief in papal dispensations for lying --mass demonstrations, pope-burning processions, in London, esp. 5 & 17 Nov 1679 --during Popish Plot, rash of reports of Catholic arson, prosecutions of servant maids supposedly seduced into firing their masters’ houses by Jesuits –Exclusion Crisis (1679-81): Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury (1621- 83) and his followers attempt to exclude James, Duke of York, from the succession –“Whig” and “Tory” parties begin to take shape –First Exclusion Bill (May 1679); Second Exclusion Bill (October 1680); Third Exclusion Parliament (March 1681), held in Oxford, dissolved by Charles II
4. The Royalist Reaction or the “Tory Revenge” (1681-85) --sharp reaction (“Tory Revenge”) after Exclusion Crisis ends in royalist victory (1681); Whigs branded as radical sectarians, regicides, likened to “men of ’41” who had started the English Civil War --From 1681, Tory burnings of “Jack Presbyter” at Guy Fawkes’ Day celebrations equate Presbyterians (Whigs) with radical Civil War republicans, regicides –loyalist paegantry: Charles II and “touching” for the “King’s Evil” (scrofula) –Rye House (or “Protestant”) Plot (1683); suspension of Charter of London (1683) –Charles II dies February 1685; peaceful and uncontested accession of James II
KINGS AND QUEENS OF ENGLAND/BRITAIN THE LATER STUARTS (1660-1714) Charles II (eldest son of Charles I): 1660-1685; when Charles dies without (legitimate) heirs in 1685, he is succeeded by his younger brother, the former Duke of York, James II: 1685-1688; James II’s policies and, in particular, his religion (he is openly Catholic) are increasingly unpopular. While he weathers the Monmouth rebellion (1685), led by Charles II’s illegitimate son, James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, his reign comes to a crisis shortly after the birth of a male heir (“James III”, or “the Old Pretender”) to his Catholic Queen, Mary Beatrice of Modena. In late 1688 James flees to France, leaving the throne vacant. James II’s son-in-law and nephew (i.e., son of Charles II and James II’s sister Mary), the Dutch (and staunchly Protestant) William of Orange ascends the throne, ruling jointly with his wife Mary, James II’s eldest (and Protestant) daughter by his first wife, Anne Hyde. Their accession is known as the Glorious Revolution, or Bloodless Revolution (1688-9). William III: 1689-1702; and Mary II: 1689-1694 Anne I: 1702-1714 (daughter of James II and Anne Hyde; younger sister of Mary II) Anne dies without surviving issue in 1714, and is succeeded by her distant cousin, George of Hanover, the grandson of Elizabeth, daughter of James I and sister to Charles I).
THE HANOVERIANS (1714-1837) George I: 1714-1727; defeats 1715 Jacobite rebellion, based in Scotland, led by Stuart supporters hoping to restore “James III”, the “Old Pretender” (“Jacobite”, from Latin for James) George II: 1727-1760; defeats last Jacobite uprising in 1745, led by “Bonny Prince Charlie”, Charles James Stuart, son of James III. George III 1760-1820 (son of Frederick, and grandson of George II)