A plague of informers, conspiracy and political trust in William Ⅲ's England

摘要

This impressive study of the plots and sham plots that dogged the reign of William Ⅲ sheds important light onto the nature of politics in the final decade of the seventeenth century. In fact, Weil spreads her net wider than the period 1689-1702 because she draws deeply on the plots that affected the reign of Charles Ⅱ, the Popish Plot and the Rye House Plot. The book pursues two avenues: firstly the ways in which the regime responded to such plots and conspiracies. In the case of William Ⅲ this principally involved suspension of habeas corpus and the imposition of oaths and subscriptions. But it developed new bureaucratic systems to enable it to respond to threats. Among these was the use of the Post Office and interception of mail, the encouragement of sham plots and the use of informers and agents provocateur. Secondly Weil explores the nature of a regime which was all too aware of the fragile nature of its validity in the eyes of some, and therefore sought to assert a stronger claim to legitimacy. William's ministers, like those of Charles Ⅱ in dealing with Titus Oates, had to try to establish the wheat of genuine threats against the king from the chaff of rumour and invention. What constituted evidence in such a world is one of the central themes of Weil's book. What motivated informers and conspirators? And, perhaps most significantly what constituted trust in both the ministers and the people? What Weil concludes is that William was caught in the trap of needing to establish a bond of trust and commitment to liberty with his new subjects, but doing so through the use of repressive and illiberal means. Time and again William delayed the reform of treason trial procedures because it served him to maintain the oppressive character of these trials against his enemies. What such measures achieved was to endorse Tory anxieties about their role in the Revolution of 1688: for them it might have been better to keep James than live under a repressive Whig. Certainly in political terms the regressive nature of William's regime broke the flimsy consensus of 1688. But even resort to the suspension of habeas corpus and reissuing of oaths could not persuade the people that a Catholic tyranny was better than a parliamentary monarchy which had granted religious toleration. Fundamentally England was never going to see William as other than a means of dispensing with James. However his survival of the Lancashire Plot of 1694 and the assassination plot of 1696 enabled the Revolutionary regime to survive until Anne's succession in 1702 which brought an unassailable Stuart monarch to the throne and one who did not have to face plots and assassination attempts at home. This book is a significant contribution to our understanding of the post-Revolutionary regime.