ABSTRACT
King Charles II died in 1685. By then, the Cavalier theatre had run its course, though politically the Stuart dynasty would not be eliminated from British politics for another sixty years. But the sudden irrelevance of the Cavaliers was demonstrated by their inability to decide what to do four years later, when Charles’s heir was threatened with forcible expulsion from the throne. Should they support the Stuart monarch, for whom they had made such sacrifices and to whom they had sworn allegiance? Or should they help to expel him, because he was a Catholic?
