The occasion of the poem was as follows: England in 1678 was suddenly plunged into fearful confusion by the Popish Plot. Titus Oates, the perjurer, warned the administration, and deposed on oath before a London magistrate, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, that the Roman Catholics were plotting to murder the King and establish the supremacy of their religion by force of foreign arms. Godfrey's murder, a few weeks after Oates's deposition, seemed to confirm the accusations and the country was thrown into a state of panic. The men arraigned by Oates were seized and tried, and fifteen of them were executed. Oates's collection of brazen lies was dashed with just enough truth to make it plausible to a bewildered and frightened people.

The Earl of Shaftesbury, the leader of the Whig party, quickly became Oates's patron. He shrewdly realized that the intense popular feeling roused against the Catholics by Oates's disclosures could be used to force the King to exclude his brother, James, Duke of York, an avowed Catholic, from the succession to the throne. He proposed to replace the Duke of York by the King's illegitimate but personable son, James, Duke of Monmouth. He attempted to secure his aim by introducing into Parliament in 1680 the Exclusion Bill. The Bill easily passed the Commons but was narrowly defeated in the Lords. Its defeat was primarily due to the eloquence of the Earl of Halifax--the Jotham of this poem--who had supported Shaftesbury until the danger of his extreme policy had become obvious. The Court, who knew that at bottom Halifax was an enemy of the Duke of York, was thankful but not grateful to him for his intervention, and Dryden, faithfully reflecting the Court's sentiments, gave him only cursory praise.

The King prorogued, and then dissolved, Parliament in January 1681, in order to save his brother, but he knew that as soon as he summoned a new Parliament, which he must do quickly were he to obtain supplies essential to government, the Exclusion Bill would be introduced again by the Whigs. He could only defend himself against this threatened attack by finding an alternative source of revenue; and, in March 1681, immediately before the meeting of the new Parliament, he concluded a secret agreement with Louis XIV by which he obtained a subsidy in return for his acquiescence in French foreign policy. Shaftesbury prepared for the new Parliament by stirring up popular agitation and even by plotting an armed rising, which, he hoped, would force the King's hand if he still proved recalcitrant. Parliament met at Oxford--a place chosen by the King to prevent Shaftesbury's London mobs from intimidating the members--but after it had sat for a few days, the King, freed from dependence on it by Louis's subsidy, and rightly judging that the Whigs' excesses had alienated every moderate sentiment in the country, dissolved it without warning on March 28.

This dextrous stroke destroyed Shaftesbury's ascendancy. The Whig leader was arrested and sent to the Tower on July 2, and while he lay there waiting trial on a charge of high treason, Dryden, it is said at the King's suggestion, wrote this poem. It appeared on about November 17 and its obvious intention was to prejudice the people against Shaftesbury. It was eagerly read but it did not affect the issue. The bill of indictment against Shaftesbury on a charge of high treason was brought before, and thrown out by, a London jury on November 24, 1681.

Dryden adapts for his poem the biblical story of David and Absalom (II Samuel 13-18), transposing English events and characters into biblical or pseudobiblical ones. The chief transcriptions are indicated in the following key. The use of a biblical Concordance will show the aptness of many of his parallels.

A Key to Absalom and Achitophel

• Aaron's Race, The Clergy.
• Abbethdin, Lord Chancellor.
• Absalom, James Scott, Duke of Monmouth and Buccleugh (1649-1685), the natural son of Charles II and Lucy Walters, who took the name of Scott upon his marriage with Annabel.
• Achitophel, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury (1621-1683).
• Adriel, John Sheffeld, Earl of Mulgrave (1648-1721).
• Agag, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey (1621-1678).
• Amiel, Edward Seymour (1633-1708).
• Annabel, Anne Scott, Countess of Buccleugh in her own right, and wife of Absalom.
• Balaam, Theophilus Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon (1650-1701).
• Barzillai, James Butler, Earl of Ormonde (1610-1688).
• Bathsheba, Louise Renée de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth and Aubigny (1649-1734), Charles II's mistress.
• Caleb, Forde, Lord Grey of Werke (d. 1701).
• Corah, Titus Oates (1649-1705).
• David, Charles II.
• Egypt, France.
• Ethnic Plot, Popish Plot.
• Gath, Brussels.
• Hebrew Priests, Church of England clergy.
• Hebron, Scotland.
• Hushai, Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester (1641-1711).
• Ishbosheth, Richard Cromwell (1626-1712).
• Israel, England.
• Issachar, Thomas Thynne of Longleat (1648-1682), known on account of his wealth as "Tom of Ten Thousand."
• Jebusites, Roman Catholics.
• Jerusalem, London.
• Jewish Rabbins, Doctors of the Church of England.
• Jonas, Sir William Jones (1631-1682).
• Jordan, The English seas or, as "Jordan's Flood," the Irish Channel.
• Jotham, George Savile, Marquis of Halifax (1633-1695).
• Levites, The Presbyterian ministers displaced by the Act of Uniformity.
• Michal, Catherine of Braganza (1638-1705), the childless Queen of Charles II.
• Nadab, William, Lord Howard of Escrick (1626?-1694).
• Pharaoh, Louis XIV of France.
• Sagan of Jerusalem, Bishop of London.
• Sanhedrin, Parliament.
• Saul, Oliver Cromwell.
• Shimei, Slingsby Bethel (1617-1697).
• Sion, London.
• Solymean rout, London mob.
• Tyre, Holland.
• Zadoc, William Sancroft (1617-1693), Archbishop of Canterbury.
• Zimri, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (1628-1687).