"A tale so plausible, so boldly uttered": Reading the Popish Plot in Nahum Tate's The History of King Lear

Abstract

On March 21, 1681, King Charles II appeared before the British House of Lords to deliver a speech regarding allegations of a Catholic plot against him, which had enveloped England in yet another storm of religious furor. An Anglican clergyman named Titus Oates had initially brought the charges of this “Popish Plot” forward, accusing at least 81 Jesuits or Jesuit sympathizers of having knowledge of or involvement in a conspiracy to assassinate Charles and install his Catholic brother, James. In his address to the Lords, Charles attempted to assure them that the crown would remain in Protestant hands: . . . to remove all reasonable Fears that may arise from the Possibility of a Popish Successor coming to the crown, if Means can be found that in such a Case the Administration of the Government may remain in Protestant Hands, I shall be ready to hearken to any such Expedient, by which the Religion might be preserved, and the Monarchy not destroyed. (“House”)

As the king's speech and other parliamentary documents—not to mention diaries, pamphlets, broadsheets, newspaper editorials, sermons, marches, rallies, and other forms of political and religious speech—show, there was a great deal of tension and fear in regards to the monarchy and the religious practices of the man or woman who held English religious laws in the palm of his or her hand. Such a tension was, to an extent, nothing new: since the time of Henry VIII a century and a half earlier, England's official religion had switched numerous times between Protestantism and Catholicism, with severe punishments for those who refused to follow the religious lead of the throne.