ABSTRACT
Cavalier polices entailed unqualified support for the restored Anglican Church, the suppression of all nonconformity as seditious by the enforcement of the Clarendon Code, and a Protestant foreign policy. Catholic policies, on the other hand, combined toleration for Protestant and Catholic nonconformists at home with alliance with France abroad. Charles and his ministers sometimes followed both policies simultaneously. In the parliamentary recess the decision was taken to revert to the Cavalier policies which had been so successful in gaining supply from 1661 to 1665. Charles tried to gain every political advantage he could from his apparent reversion to Cavalier policies in England. His attempt to dissociate the French alliance from its damaging Catholic and absolutist associations was, however, foiled by two factors in the summer of 1673: the spread of effective Dutch propaganda and the public admission of James's conversion to Catholicism. The hysterical anti-Catholicism seen in the parliamentary debates of February and March 1673 is not surprising.
