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Article: Politics and Opinion in Crisis: 1678-81.
- Article from:
- Canadian Journal of History
- Article date:
- August 1, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Canadian Journal of History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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This book which is based on the author's Blair Worden-supervised Oxford thesis revises a number of orthodoxies concerning the politics of the Exclusion period. Most notably, the view that Mark Knights most persistently challenges is that associated with James Jones and Richard Ashcraft. According to this view, the period 1678-81 saw a political crisis in which the "(Whig) party formed itself around the single issue of exclusion, and placed itself under the leadership of the Earl of Shaftesbury, who used an unprecedented degree of party management and organisation" (p. 7). The author is, however, almost as emphatic in rejecting what might be described as the continuity" ...