‘A Child of Heathen Hobbs’:1 political prints of the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis – the revision of a republican mode

This chapter examines political prints that responded to the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis (1679–82). It compares the political prints of the “Tory” Sir Roger L’Estrange, Licenser to the Press, with that of the “Whig” Stephen College, a “Protestant Joiner”. College was executed for his political cartoon, “A Ra-ree Show”, in 1682. This chapter uses these satirical engravings in order to contextualize the so-called “Tory Reaction” of 1681. It argues that one of the reasons why the Tories were so successful, by most accounts, in their efforts to discredit the Whigs has to do with the concept of loyalism. As the Whig agenda became increasingly tied to republican and non-conformist aims, their connection to loyalism began to dissolve. This made the Whigs vulnerable to challenges to their beliefs and practices both from without (by Tories) and from within (by the mainline elements from inside the Whig party itself).