Exclusion Bill crisis, 1678-81. During the reign of →Charles II of England, the initiative to exclude the king’s Roman Catholic brother, →James, the Duke of York (later King James II and VII) from the thrones of England and Ireland. The →Tories opposed the exclusion, while the "Country party", soon to be the →Whigs, supported it. Despite two failed attempts to reestablish Parliment and pass the bill, the Crown was sucessfully able to label the Whigs as subversives and closet →nonconformists. By 1681, the mass movement that had temporarily supported the initiative had died down, and the bill was dropped. →Wikipedia