Rye House Plot
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The Rye House Plot of 1683 was a plan to assassinate King Charles II of England and his brother (and heir to the throne) James, Duke of York.
After the Restoration of the monarchy under Charles in 1660 there was a concern among many members of Parliament, former republicans and the general Protestant population of England that the King's relationship with France under Louis XIV and the other Catholic rulers of Europe was a little too close. Anti-Catholic sentiment, associated with absolutism, was widespread, and in particular focused on the succession to the throne. While Charles was publicly Anglican, he and his brother were known to have Catholic sympathies. These suspicions were confirmed in 1673 when James was discovered to have converted to Catholicism.
In 1681 the Exclusion Bill was introduced in the House of Commons, an attempt to pass an Act of Parliament excluding James from the succession. Charles outmaneuvered his opponents and dissolved Parliament for the final time. This left his opponents with no legal method of preventing James's succession, and rumours of plots and conspiracies abounded.
Rye House, a manor house in Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire, was owned by a well known Republican, Richard Rumbold. The plan was to conceal a force of 100 men in the grounds of the house and ambush the King and the Duke on their way back to London from the horse races at Newmarket.
They were expected to make the journey on April 1, 1683, but there was a great fire in Newmarket on March 22, which destroyed half the town. The races were cancelled, and the King and the Duke returned to London early. As a result, the planned attack never took place.
News of the plot leaked out, and Charles and his supporters were quick to act. Many well-known members of Parliament and noblemen of the "country party", which opposed the Court party and would soon be known as Whigs, were arrested. Although the actual conspirators were minor figures, the great leaders Lord William Russell, a son of the Earl of Bedford, and Algernon Sidney were convicted on flimsy evidence of guilt by association by Judge George Jeffreys— who was to preside over the "Bloody Assizes" in the West Country after the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685— and were executed. Lord Shaftesbury, leader of the opposition to Charles's rule, fled into exile. The Duke of Monmouth, Charles' favored but illegitimate son, was implicated and obliged to retire to the United Provinces.
Historians have suggested the story of the plot may have been largely manufactured by Charles or his supporters to allow the removal of most of his strongest political opponents.
