The Licensing of the Press Act lapsed at a dangerous time for the Restoration regime, which now contended with the twin crises of the
Exclusion Crisis and the hysteria generated by the fabricated
Popish Plot. With no official post to censor 'libels' or attack critics of the Court, L'Estrange returned to polemic. Writers such as
Andrew Marvell attacked what they saw as growing Catholic and tyrannical tendencies at Court. Marvell coined the phrase 'Popery and Arbitrary Government' in a 1677 polemic which argued that excessive Catholic influence at court would lead to a 'Catholic' system of government based on superstition and tyrannical repression. This played on contemporary Anglo-Scottish worldviews which relied on a construction of Catholicism as essentially foreign, tyrannical, and irrational or superstitious. The failure of Charles II's foreign policy in the
Third Anglo-Dutch War and the ensuing
rapprochement with the Netherlands aligned English politics against France, while figures like Marvell feared Charles II saw
Louis XIV of France as a role model for absolutist rule. Marvell and like-minded figures coalesced into the Whig faction during the Exclusion Crisis and advocated the removal of
James, Duke of York, an open Catholic, from the royal succession in favour of the Protestant illegitimate son of Charles II,
James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth. L'Estrange inverted the language of Whiggish opposition to the Court. In
An Account of the Growth of Knavery he accused Marvell and other figures of playing to popular fears in order to sow social disorder and advance their own causes. In
Citt and Bumpkin he directly appealed to provincial English patriotism, accusing London-based Whigs of using sophistry to attack the Crown to which loyal Englishmen owed their allegiance. It was during this, the period of the Exclusion Crisis that L'Estrange is first credited with being the man who introduced and firmly established the terms
Whig and
Tory in the English political dictionary. The Popish Plot presented greater dangers to L'Estrange. From 1680 his attacks on
Titus Oates's confederates took up an increasing amount of his time. A rare concession to public feeling saw L'Estrange not attack Oates openly during the time of greatest hysteria in 1680–81, but attacks on related figures such as
Miles Prance and
Israel Tonge became a heavy part of his work. Prance's accusation that L'Estrange was a Catholic led to a genuine fear for his safety and contributed towards his brief exile in
Edinburgh and
The Hague during 1680. An anonymous woodcut of the time mocked L'Estrange as 'Towzer', the Court's attack dog fleeing to his master the Pope. This episode damaged his reputation at Court, as did his increasingly vitriolic 'bantering' towards Oates's allies which ultimately inflamed the public mood. L'Estrange had damaged his case with works such as
Citt and Bumpkin which employed the language of anti-Court rhetoric for his own ends, and ultimately a 1680 Council of State hearing focused more on his reputation than on the substance of the Popish Plot. Oates's increasingly deranged accusations discredited his plots by the end of 1681 while attempts to replace the Duke of York as heir with the Duke of Monmouth likewise failed. This period represented a major victory for the pro-Court faction, becoming known as 'Tories', but L'Estrange found himself increasingly out of favour. In 1681 L'Estrange founded
The Observator, a single sheet printed in double columns on both sides. It was written in the form of a dialogue between a Whig and a Tory (later Trimmer and Observator), with the bias on the side of the latter. During the six years of its existence, L'Estrange wrote with a consistent fierceness, meeting his enemies with personal attacks characterised by sharp wit. One of his main targets was Titus Oates, whose false allegations eventually brought about his conviction for perjury in 1685. The
Observator was no longer a mouthpiece for the Court, but represented a provincial Toryism appealing to staunch former Cavaliers like L'Estrange who felt embittered by the Court's pandering to Oates, equivocation towards Whigs, and failure to reward their loyalty. After years dedicated to suppressing the press, L'Estrange began writing a periodical aimed at a mass audience. He maintained an educational and paternalistic stance, arguing the paper was necessary to 'set the masses right' after seditious printings had turned them against their natural superiors. The dialogue format lent itself to being read aloud in public spaces, while the aggressive diatribes amused an audience who above all revelled in the drama and vitriol of Restoration politics. The execution in 1681 of the hardline Whig pamphleteer
Stephen College filled L'Estrange with ill-concealed glee and emboldened him to settle old scores as Titus Oates was increasingly the prime subject of his attacks. Throughout this period L'Estrange argued that there was no Popish Plot, with the only conspiracy being a Nonconformist one of the sort depicted in
Popery in Masquerade. The discovery of the
Rye House Plot in 1683 filled L'Estrange with a powerful sense of vindication as several leading Whigs were implicated in an assassination plot against Charles II. His obsession with detecting subliminal messages in print between plotters and earlier assertions of a 'Presbyterian Plot' directed by shadowy cliques finally seemed proven correct. With the Whig faction broken by the Plot's discovery and execution of several prominent Whigs such as
William Russell, L'Estrange replaced the ''Observator's'' Whig interlocuter with the Trimmer, a moderate figure such as
George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax who 'trimmed' between the Tory and Whig factions. This represented the culmination of a career-long tendency to attack moderates who craved respectability but were not wholly loyal to the Court and Tory cause. L'Estrange had long feared 'moderate' Presbyterians who enabled extremists and this represented a natural culmination of them. == Later career ==