ABSTRACT
Aphra Behn and Mary Astell contributed to the political culture of the Restoration, but rarely do we find their work treated in the scholarship devoted to the Exclusion Crisis, or to the approach of the Revolution of 1688/89, or to the crisis in the Church during the 1690s and early 1700s. Aphra Behn and Mary Astell may have expressed themselves in wholly different literary genres, but their Tory politics similarly revolved around the image of the hypocritical, ambitious, dissembling, canting, and often lustful Dissenters. Behn's and Astell's vision of dissent had much in common with that of other Tories. They propagated the Tory slogans, whether it was 'playing the old game over again' for Behn or 'the Church in danger' for Astell. The series of political and religious crises that began with the Popish Plot in 1678 and continued through the controversy over the royal succession, commonly known today as the Exclusion Crisis, produced a highly volatile political culture.
