Exclusion Crisis

Members of the Anglican English establishment could see that, in France, a Roman 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...

[2]The impeachment of Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby, for use as a scapegoat for a scandal by which Louis XIV bought the neutrality of Charles's government with an outright bribe, caused anti-Catholic sentiments in parliament to boil over, resulting in a parliamentary push to exclude James from the throne.

Though Danby had, for many years, been using his power as Lord Treasurer to attempt to divert the King away from a pro-France foreign policy, his effort to gain funds for the crown achieved the opposite, while bringing the ire of the parliament down upon him.

However, when news of the French victory against the Dutch at Ghent reached the Commons in February 1678, a motion was passed to address the King for an immediate war with France, despite the fact that parliament had granted no supply and had stopped the lucrative trade across the Channel.

[6] The nature of politics in this period is illustrated by the fact that Shaftesbury, who opposed James due to his similarities to the absolutist Catholic French regime, was supported financially by Louis XIV of France, who saw benefit in deepening English internal divisions.

[7] The Popish Plot was used by the Whigs to mobilise support, but moderates grew increasingly concerned by the hysteria that it generated, including causing the execution of 22 'conspirators' and accusing the Queen of conspiring to poison her husband.

Sir Harry Burnaby is a staunch Royalist who had been knighted for having helped Charles II's Restoration; his neighbour and fellow MP is Richard Gibson, an ex-Colonel in Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army, and an outspoken member of the Green Ribbon Club and of the emerging Whig party.

Portrait of the Duke of York as Lord High Admiral of England . In 1673, the Duke of York, who had converted to the Church of Rome, resigned as Lord High Admiral rather than take the anti-Catholic oath prescribed by the Test Act .
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 the City of London and then burned in a large bonfire.
The Earl of Shaftesbury, the leader of the Whigs who introduced the Exclusion Bill in the House of Commons on 15 May 1679.