ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the bitter, publicly contested, conflict between Whig and Tory in the later Stuart period, rather than the Country ideology pursued by Pocock and others. It argues that a language of conspiracy can be found inherent in party political contest, in civic conflict as much as civic humanism and in party polemic as much as republican theory. The backdrop against which all discussion of conspiracy took place in the later Stuart period was the Civil War. Those hostile to party therefore warned of the consequence of division by invoking the memory of intestine war. A printed exchange that took place in the wake of the trial of the High Church cleric Dr Henry Sacheverell reveals this abuse of language more fully and shows how polemic was conceived to work as part of the conspiracy of party. The language of conspiracy and the conspiracy of language helped shape public policy and had important consequences for the structure of politics.
