Produced by Chris Curnow, Hazel Batey, Joseph Cooper and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net 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 célèbre_, 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