Exclusion Bill
From Free net encyclopedia
During the reign of Charles II of England, the Exclusion Bill crisis ran from 1678 till 1681. Its purpose was the exclusion of the king's brother, James, the Duke of York (later King James II and VII) from the thrones of England and Ireland, because he was a Roman Catholic. The Tories were those who opposed this exclusion, while the "Country party", soon to be the Whigs, supported it.
In 1670 James had declared openly that he was a Roman Catholic. His secretary, Edward Coleman, had been named by Titus Oates during the Popish Plot as a conspirator to subvert the kingdom. Members of the Protestant English establishment could see that in France a Catholic king was ruling in an absolutist way, and a movement gathered strength to avoid the scenario recreating itself in England, as many feared it would, if James were to succeed his brother Charles, who had no legitimate heir.
The occasion that brought these sentiments to a head was the impeachment of Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby as a scapegoat for the scandal by which Louis XIV bought the neutrality of Charles' government with an outright bribe. Charles dissolved the Parliament of England, but the new Parliament returned in March 1679 was more hostile to the king and his unfortunate minister than ever. Danby was committed to the Tower.
On May 15, 1679, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury introduced a bill into the Commons with the intention of excluding James from the succession. A fringe group even backed Charles' illegitimate but Protestant heir, Monmouth. The Court party, the "Abhorrers" in the political cant of the hour, meaning those who found the Exclusion Bill abhorrent, would develop into the Tories, whilst the "Petitioners", those who backed the Petition in Parliament that was the Exclusion Bill, became the Whigs. As it was likely that the bill would become law, Charles exercised his Royal prerogative to dissolve Parliament. Successive Parliaments attempted to pass a bill, and were similarly dissolved.
Shaftesbury's party (beginning to be known as the “Whigs”) involved the whole country in a mass movement, primarily by keeping alive the fears raised by the Popish Plot. Every November on the anniversary of Elizabeth I's accession, they organised huge processions in London in which the Pope was burnt in effigy. The King's supporters (the “Tories”) were able to muster their own propaganda in the form of memories of the equally tyrannical regime of the Commonwealth government and its austerities. Despite two failed attempts to reestablish Parliament and pass the bill, the Crown was successfully able to label the Whigs as subversives and closet nonconformists. By 1681, the mass movement had died down, and the bill was dropped.