The Exclusion Bill crisis ran from 1678 through 1681 in the reign of Charles II of England. The Exclusion Bill sought to exclude the king's brother and heir presumptive, James, Duke of York from the throne of England because he was Catholic. The Tories were opposed to this exclusion, while the "Country party", who were soon to become known as the Whigs, supported it.

In 1673, when he refused to take the oath prescribed by the new Test Act, it became publicly known that James was a Roman Catholic. His secretary, Edward Coleman, had been named by Titus Oates during the Popish Plot (1678) 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 child. Sir Henry Capel summarised the general feeling when he said in a parliamentary debate of 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.^[1]

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's 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 the Exclusion bill into the Commons with the intention of excluding James from the succession. A fringe group even backed Charles's illegitimate — but Protestant — son, the Duke of Monmouth. The Court party, or 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 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 defeated when it passed to the House of Lords.

Notes

See also

• Religion in the United Kingdom
• British monarchy
• Popery