(DOWNLOAD) "Citt and Bumpkin (1680)" by Sir Roger L'Estrange; B. J. Rahn * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Citt and Bumpkin (1680)
- Author : Sir Roger L'Estrange; B. J. Rahn
- Release Date : January 23, 1989
- Genre: Philosophy,Books,Nonfiction,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 247 KB
Description
According to discoveries made by Titus Oates in the autumn of 1678, England was threatened by a Roman Catholic conspiracy headed by the Pope and the King of France, whose objectives were: 1) to murder the King, 2) to overthrow the government, and 3) to destroy the Protestant religion. Although Oates was subsequently exposed as a charlatan, in 1678-81 a panic held the nation in an iron grip, and belief in the Plot fostered irrational and reprehensible excesses. The Popish Plot was not so much a religious fraud as a political cause célèbre, the significance of which can be assessed only in the context of the republican movement of the seventeenth century to redistribute power within the state. The conflict which developed between Charles II and the Parliament during the 1670's reflects the struggle for ascendance of two opposing theories of government: absolute versus limited monarchy. Charles, supported by the Tories and the Anglican clergy, was determined to maintain all the hereditary privileges and powers of an English monarch, while the Whig coalition in Parliament, led by the Earl of Shaftesbury, was intent upon subordinating the power of the Crown to the will of Parliament. The Opposition realized almost immediately that in the Popish Plot lay means for furthering their schemes of political reform.