Rye House Plot
The Rye House Plot was a significant political conspiracy in 1683 that involved attempts to assassinate King Charles II and his brother, James, Duke of York. The plot emerged from fears among a faction known as the Whigs, who opposed the Catholic James's potential ascension to the throne, worrying he would shift England towards Catholicism. The conspiracy was driven by various political leaders, including the exiled Earl of Shaftesbury and Duke of Monmouth, who sought to instigate a general insurrection and possibly replace the monarchy with a more favorable regime.
Despite its ambitious goals, the plot failed largely due to unforeseen circumstances, including an accidental fire that led the royal brothers to return to London prematurely. As the conspiracy unraveled, several conspirators were arrested, leading to a series of trials with mixed outcomes, including executions and pardons. The fallout from the Rye House Plot ultimately solidified the succession of James II and highlighted the tensions between royalists and the emerging political factions. This incident is seen as the last major crisis of Charles II's reign and set the stage for future conflicts in English politics, particularly the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
Rye House Plot
Locale London and Hertfordshire, England
Date August, 1682-November, 1683
Beginning as early as the summer of 1682, two unrelated groups, one radical Whigs and the other disgruntled republicans, planned to prevent a Roman Catholic accession by assassinating Charles II and James, duke of York. Their conspiracies are known collectively as the Rye House Plot, and their failure led to the execution of a number of prominent Whigs and old Cromwellians.
Key Figures
Charles II (1630-1685), king of England, r. 1660-1685James, Duke of York and Albany (1633-1701), Roman Catholic brother of Charles, heir presumptive, and king of England as James II, r. 1685-1688Duke of Monmouth (James Scott; 1649-1685), the eldest of Charles II’s illegitimate sonsFirst Earl of Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper; 1621-1683), leader of the Exclusion effort in Parliament and founder of the WhigsLord Russell (William Russell; 1639-1683), a leader of the Parliamentary Whig factionAlgernon Sidney (1623-1683), political philosopher implicated in the Rye House PlotFirst Earl of Essex (Arthur Capel; 1632-1683), a leading Whig politician and conspiratorJohn Hampden (1653-1696), republican politician and participant in the plot
Summary of Event
Historians are still divided on the question of whether the Rye House Plot was actually an attempt to assassinate Charles II and his brother, James IIII2IIII , duke of York, or a cleverly contrived government effort to destroy the leadership of the exclusionary faction. This faction, which had acquired the nickname “Whigs” and would later evolve into a formal political party of that name, sought to remove the Catholic James from the line of succession. They feared that if he became Supreme Head of the Church of England, James would turn England into a Catholic nation. Charles, who had no desire to remove his brother from the succession, had motive to fabricate a false plot. However, the behavior of James Scott, duke of Monmouth, before and after the crisis supports those who contend that the plot was genuine.
There were actually two plots, and the link between them was Monmouth. Anthony Ashley Cooper, first earl of Shaftesbury, who had managed the failed Parliamentary attempt to exclude James, was living in exile. Before his death, like a skilled puppet master, Shaftesbury used Monmouth, Lord Russell, the first earl of Essex, Algernon Sidney, Lord Howard of Escrick, and John Hampden to formulate a plan for a general insurrection, which centered on kidnapping the king and his brother. The “Council of Six,” as they called themselves, could not agree what to do if they succeeded in this bold venture. Although they began discussing their insurgency as early as the summer of 1682, their plan never quite matured.
Meanwhile, a small group of republican fanatics led by a former Cromwellian soldier, Colonel John Rumsey, and including Richard Rumbold, who had stood guard at the execution of Charles I, began planning a much bolder solution to the possibility of a Roman Catholic succession. Beginning as early as February, 1683, Rumsey and his associates began to discuss the possibility of assassinating Charles II and the duke of York. Every year, the king attended the spring race meeting at Newmarket, in Hertfordshire. The republicans planned to ambush the royal brothers at Rye House, an isolated spot near the village of Ware on the road to London. Charles II enjoyed evading his bodyguard, so the attack could be made and the murders accomplished before the soldiers caught up with the royal coach. Monmouth, who could easily be controlled by the heirs of Shaftesbury, would then be proclaimed king, and the Whig faction would assume control of the government. Robert Ferguson, one of the conspirators, informed Monmouth of the assassination plot. He was one of Shaftesbury’s henchmen, and when the first arrest warrants were issued on June 23, he was able to flee abroad.
On March 22, a disastrous fire in Newmarket destroyed a large portion of the town, including the royal lodging. As a result, Charles II and the duke of York returned to the capital ahead of schedule. The assassins did not have an alternative plan, and thus they were caught off guard by the conflagration and the royal escape. The failure of this conspiracy threw the aristocratic plotters into a quandary, and their plans had to be postponed. The whole affair might have been forgotten save for the fact that some of the participants began to talk too freely to individuals who were actually government agents.
Early in the summer of 1683, the accusations began. Terrified by the possibility of suffering the full penalty for treason, Josiah Keeling, a Baptist oil merchant, turned informer. William Carstares confessed under torture and implicated a number of individuals. Among those arrested were Russell, Essex, Howard, Sidney, Hampden, Captain Thomas Walcott, who was rumored to have been the executioner of Charles I, Nathaniel Wade and Robert West, who were lawyers, and James Holloway, a linen merchant from Bristol. The Tories (the Royalist faction in Parliament, which would evolve into the party opposed to the Whig Party) had been crippled by the witch-hunt conducted against Catholics during the Popish Plot (1678-1681). They now sought their revenge. The king personally questioned the Whig lords when they were brought before the Privy Council.
The state trials began in early July, 1683, but unlike the trials of the Catholic peers during the Popish Plot, the outcomes were not predictable. The grand jury handed down indictments against twenty-one persons including the duke of Monmouth. Lord Howard of Escrick, who had been a close associate of Shaftsbury, was pardoned, because he had given evidence against his fellow conspirators. Walcott was convicted and executed on July 20, but William Blague was acquitted. Lord Russell, John Rouse, William Hone, James Holloway, and Algernon Sidney were executed for treason, but John Hampden, the nephew of a famous Civil War Parliamentarian, was fined and sentenced to prison. The earl of Essex was not brought to trial; he committed suicide in his cell in the Tower of London. Charles II was particularly distressed at news of Essex’s death, because his father had been executed for his devotion to the Royalist cause, and the king would probably have commuted his sentence to imprisonment if he had been convicted of treason.
As the evidence was assembled during the investigation and the trials, it became apparent that there was no nationwide plot, despite the fact that the Whig lords had tried to involve a group of dissident Scots. This was a disappointment for the duke of York, who felt that his brother had exercised too much restraint in punishing the traitors who had sought to take his life. When he ascended the throne as James II on February 6, 1685, however, he would have the opportunity to complete the process begun in 1683 and in particular to punish his nephew, Monmouth.
When the arrests of the Rye House conspirators began, Monmouth went into hiding, fearing that he might be charged with treason for plotting the overthrow of the government as well as knowing of the plan to murder his father. Despite the fact that his eldest natural son was as guilty as many of those executed for their participation in the plots, Charles II forgave Monmouth. His uncle James was not so merciful. When Monmouth sought to seize the throne after his father’s death, James II did not hesitate to send him to the block. Thus, in 1685, the severed head of the so-called Protestant Hope would join what remained of his fellow traitors still rotting on the spikes above Tower Bridge.
Significance
The Rye House Plot was the last crisis in the reign of Charles II, and its resolution in favor of the Crown ensured the undisputed succession of the duke of York in 1685. James actually garnered some degree of popularity from the Rye House affair, and he mounted the throne with a great deal of public goodwill—which he soon squandered. The execution of a number of the more radical Whigs ensured the ascendancy of the moderate wing of the faction and its return to power after the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
Bibliography
Coote, Stephen. Royal Survivor: The Life of Charles II. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. A study of the political sagacity of Charles II as he faced and survived the various crises of his reign.
Fraser, Antonia. King Charles II. London: Phoenix Press, 2002. The most balanced biography of the king, it places the events of the Rye House Plot in their proper context.
Greaves, Richard L. Secrets of the Kingdom: British Radicals from the Popish Plot to the Revolution of 1688-1689. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992. It links the successive attempts to alter the nature of the English government, which finally ended with the Glorious Revolution. It is the most complete modern work on the Rye House Plot.
Harris, Tim. London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration Until the Exclusion Crisis. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1987. An in-depth study of the component that made the city of London unstable.
Jones, J. R. The First Whigs: The Politics of the Exclusion Crisis, 1678-1683. London: Oxford University Press, 1961. A thorough study of the men who failed to alter the legitimate succession.