‘The Wretched Subject the Whole Town Talks of’: Representing Elizabeth Cellier (London, 1680)

  • Frances E. Dolan
Chapter
Part of the Early Modern Literature in History book series (EMLH)

Abstract

The crisis known as the ‘Popish Plot’ was about the power of stories — testimony in court, rumors in the street and narratives in print — to persuade the English populace, and especially judges and juries, that Catholics were conspiring to reclaim the kingdom by force and by stealth. The power of stories to confirm, inflame or create anti-Catholicism was certainly not without precedent. Yet, the Popish Plot depended almost exclusively on one witness, Titus Oates, and his claim that Catholics, particularly Jesuits, were conspiring to kill Charles II and his councillors, massacre Protestants and set up a Catholic government under the Duke of York (the future James II). The rumor of yet another popish plot had legs because it served political needs. By discrediting Catholics, it fuelled the Exclusion Crisis, a Whig attempt to bar James’s succession.1

Keywords

Double Jeopardy Woman Writer Female Protagonist Catholic Woman Early Modem 
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Notes

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© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 1999

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  • Frances E. Dolan

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