Telling a tale with the names changed: Contemporary comparisons of the rye house plot to the 1696 assassination plot

Abstract

When a Jacobite plot to assassinate William III was discovered in 1696, supporters of William and his whig-dominated ministry pointed out similarities between this Assassination Plot and the 1683 Rye House Plot against Charles II. Embodying the links between the plots in these accounts was Robert Ferguson, a notorious radical whig who had become a Jacobite active in writing and plotting against King William. Representing the 1683 and 1696 plots as equivalent allowed establishment whigs to distance themselves from pre-revoutionary whig plotting, while portraying the Jacobites as representing a radicalism willing to use rebellion and regicide to achieve its goals.