The Exclusion Crisis: The Popish Plot (AQA A-Level History): Revision Notes

The Exclusion Crisis: The Popish Plot

Understanding key terms

Before examining the Popish Plot, two important concepts need clarification:

Origins of the Popish Plot

The Popish Plot emerged from the fabrications of two unstable individuals: Titus Oates and Israel Tonge. Oates had failed at nearly everything he attempted. After briefly converting to Catholicism in 1677, he spent time in Jesuit colleges in Spain and France. Upon returning to London, disillusioned with Catholicism, Oates prepared to exploit his limited knowledge of Jesuit operations.

Israel Tonge complemented Oates's deception. His church had burned down in the Great Fire of 1666, leaving him mentally unbalanced. Like many who suffered losses in the fire, Tonge blamed London's misfortunes on Jesuit conspirators.

Development of the conspiracy allegations

Oates and Tonge claimed to have discovered a plot comparable to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. According to their account, the Pope had employed assassins to shoot, stab and poison King Charles before initiating a Catholic uprising throughout the three kingdoms. Tonge contacted Charles II through Christopher Kirby, a chemist with connections to the Royal Society. Kirby delivered a letter to the King detailing these allegations. Charles then interviewed both Kirby and Oates, who elaborated on the conspiracy.

The plot allegedly involved the Queen's physician, Sir George Wakeman, and Thomas Bedingfield, the Duke of York's Jesuit confessor. Fearing discovery of their scheme, Oates forged incriminating letters which he dispatched to Bedingfield, anticipating interception by Danby's intelligence network. Upon receiving the letters, Bedingfield presented them to the Duke of York, who grew concerned about exposing Oates and Tonge's fabrications.

Meanwhile, Oates had implicated Edward Coleman, the Duke of York's secretary. Coleman had indeed corresponded with Louis XIV's confessor, La Chaise. In this correspondence, Coleman had expressed fantasies about converting England to Catholicism. His letters provided inflammatory material, and Coleman faced arrest. Oates had already testified before the King, the Privy Council and the Committee of Foreign Affairs.

The murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey

An unforeseen incident transformed the Popish Plot from private accusations into a full-scale crisis. The murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey, a Middlesex magistrate, provided this catalyst. His body was discovered stabbed with his own sword just outside London. Oates had given a sworn deposition before Godfrey attesting to the accuracy of his accusations. Consequently, Godfrey was presumed to possess complete knowledge of the plot.

His murder was interpreted as an attempt to conceal the conspirators' identities. This unleashed an explosion of popular anti-Catholic hysteria unprecedented since the Civil War. Godfrey was immediately elevated to the status of a Protestant martyr. His funeral procession brought tens of thousands of Londoners onto the streets. Having suddenly become a celebrity, Titus Oates provided testimony before the House of Commons to MPs eager for sensational details.

The most notable victim proved to be Catholic Lord Strafford, a long-standing Royalist who had demonstrated nothing but loyalty to the King. Strafford refused to save himself by confessing fault and was sent to the block. Over the following two years, a further thirty-five men faced execution for treason. Throughout the provinces, many Catholics endured persecution.

Context of anti-Catholicism in seventeenth-century England

The false allegations by two failures might seem unlikely to trigger a full-scale political and religious crisis. Understanding why this occurred requires examining the context into which these allegations fell—a context shaped not only by immediate events but by the long-term history of religious conflict in the British Isles.

Conflict over Catholic influence at Court

Catholic influence at Court had been a recurring concern since Charles I's accession in 1625. The presence of Queen Henrietta Maria in Whitehall had caused substantial anxiety because of her presumed influence on royal policies. Protestant propaganda depicted Henrietta Maria as the power behind the throne, urging her husband to introduce Arminian practices into the Anglican Church.

During the 1630s she antagonised Protestant opinion by organising a weekly Catholic procession to mass in London, presided over by priests she maintained at Court. She was blamed for the attempt to arrest the Five Members in January 1642 and for trying to arrange French troops to support the Royalist cause in the Civil War. At the Restoration, Henrietta Maria returned to England as the Queen Mother and resided in Whitehall until 1665. Her continued advocacy for pro-Catholic policies was widely known.

James, Duke of York's conversion to Catholicism, followed by his public refusal to take the Anglican sacraments in 1673, brought Catholic influence at Court to the forefront of political discourse. Charles II's childless marriage to Catherine of Braganza had already resurrected fears of Catholic influence at Court. The influence of Clifford and Arlington in the Cabal and the King's relationship with his French mistress, Louise de Kéroualle, further intensified these concerns.

Why were English Protestants afraid of Catholicism?

Fear of Catholicism in England possessed deep roots, extending back to the reign of Mary I and the publication of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments (more commonly known as the Book of Martyrs), which recounted the stories of people who had died for the Protestant faith. By the 1670s, layer upon layer of murders, plots, massacres and atrocities had accumulated within the Protestant collective consciousness, some European, some distinctively English:

The core problem lay in the equation of Catholic religion with political absolutism. Just as the papacy admitted no spiritual limits to the Pope's authority, so Catholic monarchs were assumed to accept no legal constraints on their political power. During the seventeenth century, numerous continental political tracts expressed support for the divine right of kings and the growing authoritarianism of monarchy.

The Catholic view of power was that authority radiated downwards from anointed magistrates, whose word constituted law. This contrasted sharply with English common law. Magna Carta represented parliamentary privilege, Habeas Corpus and an independent judiciary—all of which owed their origin to the law of the land and to centuries of negotiation in which magistrates had themselves accepted limits to their power.

Key dates: The Popish Plot (1678)

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