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  THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY

      SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE

        CITT AND BUMPKIN
             (1680)

         _INTRODUCTION_
               BY
           B. J. RAHN

         [Illustration]

      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_




INTRODUCTION


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 celebre_, 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. Under the guise of
counteracting the Plot, they hoped to enact legislation to: 1) increase
parliamentary power, 2) limit the prerogatives of the King, 3) control
the succession, and 4) curtail the influence of the prelacy. Published
in 1680 when the Plot crisis was at its peak, _Citt and Bumpkin_ is one
of a series of pamphlets by Sir Roger L'Estrange written to support the
policies of Charles II and to defend the government from attacks by the
Whig Opposition.

Since James, Duke of York, had given the Whigs every reason to believe
that he would oppose their policies vehemently after he came to the
throne, they decided to take advantage of the public resentment against
him as a Roman Catholic to try to pass a bill in Parliament to exclude