CABAL, a private organization or party engaged in secret intrigues, and applied also to the intrigues themselves (through the Fr. cabale, from the Cabbala or Kabbalah, the theosophical inter pretation of the Hebrew scriptures). In England the word had been jealously used throughout the i 7th century, with the alter native junto or cabinet (q.v.), to describe any secret and extra legal council of the king, more particularly the foreign committee of the Privy Council. The invidious meaning attached to the term was stereotyped by the coincidence that the initial letters of the names of Charles II.'s ministers, Clifford, Arlington, Bucking ham, Ashley and Lauderdale, spelled cabal.