HIS MAJESTIES DECLARATION DEFENDED ***
Produced by David Starner, J. David Pearce and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
The Augustan Reprint Society
John Dryden His Majesties Declaration Defended (1681)
With an Introduction by Godfrey Davies
Publication Number 23 (Series IV, No. 4)
Los Angeles William Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of California 1950
GENERAL EDITORS H. Richard Archer, Clark Memorial Library Richard C. Boys, University Of Michigan Edward Niles Hooker, University Of California, Los Angeles H.T. Swedenberg, Jr., University Of California, Los Angeles
ASSISTANT EDITORS W. Earl Britton, University of Michigan John Loftis, University of California, Los Angeles
ADVISORY EDITORS Emmett L. Avery, State College of Washington Benjamin Boyce, University of Nebraska Louis I. Bredvold, University of Michigan Cleanth Brooks, Yale University James L. Clifford, Columbia University Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota Ernest Mossner, University of Texas James Sutherland, Queen Mary College, London
INTRODUCTION
Wherever English literature is studied, John Dryden is recognized as the author of some of the greatest political satires in the language. Until recently the fact has been overlooked that before he wrote the first of these satires, _Absalom and Achitophel_, he had entered the political arena with the prose tract here reproduced. The proof that the Historiographer Royal contributed to the anti-Whig propaganda of the spring of 1681 depends partly on contemporary or near-contemporary statements but principally on internal evidence. An article by Professor Roswell G. Ham (_The Review of English Studies_, XI (1935), 284-98; Hugh Macdonald, _John Dryden, A Bibliography_, p. 167) demonstrated Dryden's authorship so satisfactorily that it is unnecessary to set forth here the arguments that established this thesis. The time when Dryden was composing his defence of the royal _Declaration_ is approximately fixed from the reference to it on June 22, 1681, in _The Observator_, which had noted the Whig pamphlet Dryden was answering under the date of May 26.
The bitter controversy into which Dryden thrust himself was the culmination of eleven years' political strife. In 1670, by the secret Treaty of Dover, Charles II and Louis XIV agreed that the English king should declare himself a Roman Catholic, and receive from his brother of France the equivalent of 80,000 pounds sterling and, in case of a Protestant rebellion, 6000 French soldiers. In addition, the two kings were pledged to undertake a war for the partition of the United Provinces. In the words of the late Lord Acton this treaty is "the solid substance of the phantom which is called the Popish Plot." (_Lectures on Modern History_ (1930), p. 211) The attempt to carry out the second part of the treaty was made in 1672, when England and France attacked the United Provinces which made a successful defence, aided by a coalition including the Emperor, Elector of Brandenburg, and King of Spain. The unpopularity of the war compelled Charles II to make peace in 1674. Meanwhile the King had taken a step to put into operation the first part of the Treaty of Dover by issuing a Declaration of Indulgence relieving Catholics and Dissenters alike from the penal laws. He was forced, however, to withdraw it and to give his assent to the Test Act which excluded from all public offices those unwilling to take the sacraments according to the rites of the Church of England. Henceforth Charles II abandoned all hope of restoring Catholicism, though his brother and heir, James, Duke of York, already a convert, remained resolute to secure at least toleration for his co-religionists. But many Englishmen continued to suspect the royal policy.
Roman Catholicism was feared and hated by many Englishmen for two distinct reasons. The first was based on bigotry, nourished by memories of the Marian persecution, the papal bull dethroning Elizabeth, Guy Fawkes' Plot, and by apprehensions that a Catholic could not be a loyal subject so long as he recognized the temporal power of the Pope. The second was political and assumed that Catholicism was the natural support of absolutism. As Shaftesbury, the leader of the opposition, stated, popery and slavery went hand in hand. Such fears were deepened as the general purport of the Treaty of Dover became known.
