Absalom and Achitophel

Mock-epic poem by John Dryden first published in 1681 and representing the Exclusion Crisis with a Tory bias.

Using the Biblical story of Absalom, the illegitimate son of King David, who - goaded on by the evil Achitophel - rebels against his father. Thus, the Exclusion Crisis and the debates between Tories (divine right) and Whigs (control of prerogatives) as evil plot against the legitimate power of the monarch. Only thinly disguised parallels between divinely promiscuous King David and Charles II, Absalom and James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, and, last but by no means least, Achitophel and Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury.