Sovereign Debt Default and Restoration Literature: Dryden's Exclusion Crisis Poems, Goldsmiths, and the Stop of the Exchequer of 1672

Abstract

Abstract:This essay explores the Stop of the Exchequer of 1672 (the only sovereign debt default in English history) not only as one possible cause of the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis of 1678-1681, but also as one explored in the print media culture war around that crisis. It does so by analyzing two poems by Poet Laureate and Historiographer Royal John Dryden (1631-1700), Absalom and Achitophel (1681) and The Medal (1682). Both poems contain references to the Stop, and both rebut Whig attacks on King Charles II by accusing Whig goldsmiths–the bankers who had lent Charles the money he defaulted on–of being criminals who had debased the King's coinage by clipping the edges off of it for profit. In this analysis, religious identity is viewed as a misleading surrogate discourse that was covering over late seventeenth-century disputes over fiscal matters; the 1688 Revolution that came a few years later, accordingly, was not about religion, but about money. This essay argues that John Dryden knew that and made use of Biblical allegory to parody the philosemitism of the goldsmiths, who were, in the main, Puritans and Dissenters of the Whig party.