Outrages

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OUTRAGES J. Kent Clark Abstract <strong>Outrages</strong> is Chapter XIV of my biography of Thomas Wharton, 5th Baron, 1st Earl, and 1st Marquess of Wharton (Tom Wharton to his friends, his present biographer, and the English political world of the Revolution period). The story covers the events between November 1681 and February 1683-between the trial of the Earl of Shaftesbury and the Rye House Plot. It covers the most forgettable episode in Wharton's personal life-one that may be charitably described as disgraceful; and it deals with the tortured, serio-comic romance between Wharton's wife Anne and his brother Goodwin. Politically, the story traces some of the stages in the decline of the Whig party before the disasters of 1683. I am sure that the scandalous episodes will be understandable to any literate adult; and I hope the political episodes will be understandable as well. In any event, they include some crucial developments in English history. For the benefit of specialists I have printed my lists of abbreviations and short titles; the lists pertain to the whole book, not merely to this chapter.
OUTRAGES J. Kent Clark On 17 November 1681 John Dryden published his famous poem "Absalom and Achitophel." A memorable attack upon Shaftesbury, Monmouth, and their abettors, it would presently become the voice of the Tory reaction; it would help to render the Plot obsolete and to bring loyalty into fashion. Immediately, however, Dryden's brilliance earned him the nickname of Towser the Secondl and a sharp reminder that he had begun his writing career with a poem in praise of Oliver Cromwell. 2 And if one of Dryden's objectives was to help the government behead Shaftesbury, who would go on trial for treason a week later, the poem was at least a partial failure. Also on 17 November came a blast of Whig propaganda-another pope-burning pageant sponsored by the Green Ribbon Club. This elaborate ritual, the third such production staged by the C1ub, was "celebrated with more than usual solemnity" and "attended with many thousands of people."3 Unfortunately for the Whigs, the intervening years had diminished the freshness and the passion of the event. Solemnity was a poor substitute for anti-popish hysteria. The pageant had become a thrice-told tale-a horror story that had lost its horror. Even without government interference, the parade was on its way off the political stage. The Whig pageant, nevertheless, proved to be a more accurate prologue to the Shaftesbury trial, set for 24 November, than the Tory poem. Among the marchers who followed the effigies of Sir Edmond Berry Godfrey and the Observator (alias Roger L'Estrange, alias Towser) was a knot of "suborned persons"-the effigies, that is, of the witnesses allegedly hired by the government to swear away the life of the Whig Earl. The false witnesses were placed immediately after a column of popish clerics and immediately before the splendid effigy of the pope. Their presence in the parade indicated clearly what London Whigs thought of the King's evidence; it also reminded knowledgeable viewers that as long as Whig sheriffs appointed London grand juries, there was little danger that the present jury would return an indictment against Shaftesbury. And so it proved. On 24 November at the Old Bailey,4 the London grand jury, which included Michael Godfrey (brother of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey), simply refused to believe that the wily Earl of Shaftesbury had communicated his treasonous plans to a motley collection of Irish papists, or that he had attempted to raise fifty men in London to kidnap the King at Oxford, or that a copy of a proposed association found among his papers (but not in his handwriting) was necessarily composed (or even read) by him or that it was any more treasonous than the proposed association for the exclusion of James that the Commons had debated in 1680. At the end of a hectic trial, then, to the dismay of the Crown's prosecutors and the delight of the spectators,5 the
Page 1: DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCI
Page 5 and 6: It was in this political context th
Page 7 and 8: Before Bishop Frampton could wind u
Page 9 and 10: temporarily lowered his high religi
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Page 13 and 14: Notes 1. See [Henry Care, attribute
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Page 21 and 22: Abbreviations 1. List of abbreviati
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