Image: The Solemn Mock Procession of the Pope (1829)

Description: A 19th-century copy of a 17th-century engraved broadside on the Popish Plot showing a Whig mock procession held in London on 17 November 1680 during the height of the Exclusion Crisis. An Exclusion Bill was introduced in the House of Commons with the aim of excluding James, Duke of York, the brother and heir presumptive of Charles II of England from the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland because he was Roman Catholic. The Tories opposed exclusion while the "Country Party", who were soon to be named the Whigs, supported it. Every November, on the anniversary of Elizabeth I's accession, the Whigs organised huge processions in London in which the Pope was burnt in effigy. The engraving has three lines of effigies of the Pope, cardinals, Jesuits and other Roman Catholics being carried in a mock procession. The top left section shows the effigies being thrown on to a large bonfire outside Temple Bar while a crowd observes the proceedings.
Title: The Solemn Mock Procession of the Pope, Cardinals, Jesuits, Friars, &c. through the City of London, November, 17th, 1679.
Credit: John Dryden; Walter Scott, comp. (1808) The Works of John Dryden, Now First Collected in Eighteen Volumes. Illustrated with Notes, Historical, Critical, and Explanatory, and a Life of the Author [Project Gutenburg EBook #16456], 6, London: Printed for William Miller, Albemarle Street, by James Ballantyne and Co., Edinburgh, p. 223 OCLC: 832579044.
Author: Francis Barlow
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No