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In 1670 James had declared openly that he was a Roman Catholic. His secretary, Edward Coleman, had been named by Titus Oates during the Popish Plot as a conspirator to subvert the kingdom. The English establishment could see that in France a Catholic king was ruling in an absolutist way, and a movement gathered strength to avoid the scenario recreating itself in England, as it would, if James were to succeed his brother Charles, who had no legitimate heir. In 1679, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of ShaftesburyAnthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury ( 1621- 1683) was a prominent English politician of the Interregnum and during the reign of King Charles II. Cooper, born in Dorset County, suffered the death of both his parents at a young age and was raised introduced a bill into the Commons with the intention of excluding James from the successionSuccession to the British Throne has generally been according to the rules of male primogeniture. In other words, an individual's male children are preferred over his or her female children, and an older child is preferred over a younger child of the same. As it was likely that the bill would become law, Charles exercised his prerogative power to dissolve Parliament. Successive Parliaments attempted to pass a bill, and were similarly dissolved. Shaftesbury's party (beginning to be known as the “Whigs”) involved the whole country in a mass movement, primarily by keeping the fears raised by the Popish Plot alive. Every November on the anniversary of Elizabeth I'sElizabeth I ( September 7, 1533 March 24, 1603) was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from November 17, 1558 until her death. Sometimes referred to as The Virgin Queen or Good Queen Bess Elizabeth I was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty, accession, they organised huge processions in London in which the PopeThis article is about the Catholic pope. See Pope (disambiguation) for other meanings of the word pope. The Pope is the Catholic bishop and patriarch of Rome, and ex officio supreme spiritual leader of what might be called the Catholic Communion (that is, was burnt in effigy. The King's supporters (the “Tories”) were able to muster their own progaganda in the form of memories of the equally tyrannous regime of the Commonwealth government and its austerities. Above all, the Crown was always able to label the Whigs as subversives and closet nonconformists. By 1681, the mass movement had died down, and the bill was dropped.