page_title: Exclusion Crisis
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Exclusion Crisis / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: An engraved broadside on the Popish Plot showing a Whig mock procession held in London on 17 November 1680 during the height of the Exclusion Crisis. An Exclusion Bill was introduced in the House of Commons with the aim of excluding James, Duke of York, the brother and heir presumptive of Charles II of England from the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland because he was Roman Catholic. The Tories opposed exclusion while the "Country Party", who were soon to be named the Whigs, supported it. Every November, on the anniversary of Elizabeth I's accession, the Whigs organised huge processions in London in which the Pope was burnt in effigy. The three bottom sections of the engraving show effigies of the Pope, cardinals, Jesuits, priests and nuns being carried in a mock procession. The top section shows the effigies being thrown on to a large bonfire outside Temple Bar while a crowd observes the proceedings.
context_page_description: The Exclusion Crisis ran from 1679 through 1681 in the reign of King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland. Three Exclusion bills sought to exclude the King's brother and heir presumptive, James, Duke of York, from the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland because he was Roman Catholic. None became law. Two new parties formed. The Tories were opposed to this exclusion while the "Country Party", who were soon to be called the Whigs, supported it. While the matter of James's exclusion was not decided in Parliament during Charles's reign, it would come to a head only three years after he took the throne, when he was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Finally, the Act of Settlement 1701 decided definitively that Catholics were to be excluded from the English throne.
context_section_description: In 1673, when he refused to take the oath prescribed by the new Test Act, it became publicly known that the Duke of York was a Roman Catholic. His secretary, Edward Colman, had been named by Titus Oates during the Popish Plot (1678) as a conspirator to subvert the kingdom. Members of the Anglican English establishment could see that in France a Catholic king was ruling in an absolutist way, and a movement gathered strength to avoid such a form of monarchy from developing in England, as many feared it would if James were to succeed his brother Charles, who had no legitimate children. Sir Henry Capel summarised the general feeling of the country when he said in a parliamentary debate in the House of Commons of England on 27 April 1679:
  From popery came the notion of a standing army and arbitrary power... Formerly the crown of Spain, and now France, supports this root of popery amongst us; but lay popery flat, and there's an end of arbitrary government and power. It is a mere chimera, or notion, without popery.
caption: Engraving showing "A Solemn Mock Procession of the Pope" held in London on 17 November 1680.  The Whigs arranged to have effigies of the Pope, cardinals, friars, and nuns paraded through the streets of London and then burned in a large bonfire.
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