It is at this moment that the famous political names which were to rule England for the next century and a half come into sight. At first the opponents of the Exclusion Bill, the supporters of the divine right of hereditary succession, and the defenders of the Duke of York, were called "Abhorrers," from the numerous addresses which they sent to the king declaring their abhorrence of the Exclusion Bill. On the other hand, the supporters of Shaftesbury, and the believers in the Popish Plot, were called "Petitioners," from the petitions which they kept signing in favour of the bill. But soon two less cumbrous, if stranger, names were found for the two parties. The "Abhorrers" were nicknamed "Tories" by their enemies, from the appellation of a horde of banditti, who lurked in the bogs of Ireland. The Petitioners, on the other hand, were christened "Whigs" by their rivals, after the name of a fanatical sect of Scottish Covenanters. These titles, bestowed in ridicule at first, were finally accepted in earnest, and became the usual denomination of the two great parties.
The Exclusion Bill was passed by Shaftesbury and his majority of Whigs in the Commons, once in 1679, and once in 1680. But the House of Lords threw it out, and Charles dissolved the Parliament once and again, till in 1681 the fear of the Popish Plot began to blow over, and the violence of Shaftesbury to disgust the moderate members of his own party. The cruel execution, in December, 1680, of Lord Stafford, an old Romanist peer of blameless life, whose innocence was known to all, was the last and most damaging triumph of the Whigs. Its injustice caused many of Shaftesbury's supporters to fall away. His intrigues in favour of Monmouth, and the open support which he gave to the lying Oates, had ruined him.
Fall of Shaftesbury.—The Rye-House Plot.
In 1681 the king accused him of high treason for collecting armed followers to overawe Parliament. A London jury refused to convict him, and he plunged into still more desperate courses. Conspiring with Lord William Russell and Algernon Sydney to raise rebellion, he was detected and fled over-sea to escape punishment. Some of his more desperate followers went on with his plot, which they developed into a plan for assassinating Charles as he passed the Rye House in Hertfordshire, on his way to Newmarket. The disclosure of this reckless conspiracy ruined the Whigs; the whole party was believed to have been privy to it, though it was in truth the work of a very small clique, headed by one Colonel Rumbold, an old Cromwellian officer (1682).
Execution of Russell and Sydney.
The king, finding that public opinion was veering round to his side, was emboldened to strike a blow at the whole Whig faction. Mixing up the Rye-House Plot with Shaftesbury's abortive plans, he seized all their chief leaders, and had them tried for high treason. Subservient judges and a packed jury made their fall easy. Lord William Russell and Algernon Sydney were beheaded; Lord Essex committed suicide in prison. The evidence connecting Russell and Sydney with the assassination plot was trivial, and their execution little else than a judicial murder (1683).
Death of Charles.
Charles was now in a better position to carry out his long-concealed plan for the restoration of arbitrary government and the furthering of Romanism than at any previous time in his reign. He left Parliament unsummoned for more than two years, prepared to renew his alliance with France, endeavoured to collect a body of ministers who would second his views, and largely increased his standing army. He made several unconstitutional encroachments on the liberty of his subjects—such as forfeiting the charters of many cities, including London itself—and was cautiously feeling his way towards more decisive measures. But on February 6, 1685, his plans were suddenly interrupted by a fatal apoplectic stroke, which carried him off before he had attained the age of fifty-five. On his death-bed he had himself openly received into the Roman Catholic faith, of which he had so long been the secret partisan. It was fortunate that his schemes were brought to such an untimely end, for if a cautious foe to the liberties of England, he was a very clever and insidious one. Of the stubborn folly which ruined his successor, he would never have been guilty.