The Augustan Reprint Society
SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE
CITT
AND BUMPKIN
(1680)
INTRODUCTION
BY
B. J. RAHN
PUBLICATION NUMBER 117
WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY
University of California, Los Angeles
1965
GENERAL EDITORS
Earl Miner, University of California, Angeles
Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles
Lawrence Clark Powell, Wm. Andrews Clark Memorial Library
ADVISORY EDITORS
Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan
John Butt, University of Edinburgh
James L. Clifford, Columbia University
Ralph Cohen, University of California, Los Angeles
Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles
Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago
Louis A. Landa, Princeton University
Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota
Everett T. Moore, University of California, Los Angeles
James Sutherland, University College, London
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
Edna C. Davis, Wm. Andrews Clark Memorial Library
[Pg i]
INTRODUCTION
According to discoveries made by Titus Oates in the autumnof 1678, England was threatened by a Roman Catholic conspiracyheaded by the Pope and the King of France, whose objectiveswere: 1) to murder the King, 2) to overthrow the government, and3) to destroy the Protestant religion. Although Oates was subsequentlyexposed as a charlatan, in 1678-81 a panic held thenation in an iron grip, and belief in the Plot fostered irrationaland reprehensible excesses. The Popish Plot was not so mucha religious fraud as a political cause célèbre, the significance ofwhich can be assessed only in the context of the republican movementof the seventeenth century to redistribute power within thestate. The conflict which developed between Charles II and theParliament during the 1670's reflects the struggle for ascendanceof two opposing theories of government: absolute versus limitedmonarchy. Charles, supported by the Tories and the Anglicanclergy, was determined to maintain all the hereditary privilegesand powers of an English monarch, while the Whig coalition inParliament, led by the Earl of Shaftesbury, was intent upon subordinatingthe power of the Crown to the will of Parliament. TheOpposition realized almost immediately that in the Popish Plotlay means for furthering their schemes of political reform. Underthe guise of counteracting the Plot, they hoped to enact legislationto: 1) increase parliamentary power, 2) limit the prerogativesof the King, 3) control the succession, and 4) curtail the influenceof the prelacy. Published in 1680 when the Plot crisis was atits peak, Citt and Bumpkin is one of a series of pamphlets by SirRoger L'Estrange written to