Great Scott! The Restoration in Turmoil, or, Restoration Crises and the Emergence of Party

Abstract

The contributions of James Rosenheim, Gary De Krey, and Tim Harris suggest the possibility of fashioning a fresh model of the Restoration by refining Lawrence Stone's seismographic typology, which posits three aftershocks of the mid-century revolution, namely the crises of 1678-83, 1688-89, and 171215. Jonathan Scott has recently revised this schema by underscoring the extent to which the roots of the crises of 1638-42, 1677-83, and 1687-89 were popery and arbitrary government. De Krey now asks us to recognize a prior in the period 1667-73, one which was intensely ideological and featured a struggle between those who sought to defend the security of the state and established church on the one hand and those who saw themselves as defenders of individual rights, Protestantism, and the English constitution on the other. In terms less suggestive of a whiggish perspective, the issues were not just arbitrary government and popery but also legitimate authority and order. So conceived, an appropriate model for the late Stuart period is not a time of stability, a tone poem to which is appended a turbulent double coda-the exclusion crisis and the tumultuous reign of James 11-but an epoch in which instability was the norm owing largely to the intemal tensions of the Restoration settlement, the legacy of the revolutionary decades, and the growing specter of a militant, Catholic France. De Krey's argument is generally persuasive, but the late Stuart period actually commenced with an earlier, no less critical crisis-that which extended from Cromwell's death in September 1658 to the passage of the Conventicle Act in 1664 and its aftermath, a period bifurcated by the restoration of the monarchy. The clear intent of the restoration was to settle the questions of legitimacy, authority, and religion-a task that took until 1664. Between 1660 and 1664 the authorities had to suppress a military revolt by John Lambert; Thomas Venner's Fifth Monarchist uprising, which lasted nearly seventy-two hours and left some forty dead; the republican Tong plot; the much more serious conspiracy of Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and eight members of the Irish Parliament to secure the interests of English landowners in Ireland and a state church loyal to the principles of the Solemn League and Covenant; and the 1663 northem rebellion, whose manifesto cited the need to protect lives, liberties, and estates and to extirpate popery. This period also witnessed a struggle at Westminster over comprehension, toleration, indemnity, and control of the corporations. The radical threat undoubtedly contributed to the failure of the Savoy Conference and the passage of the Corporation, Uniformity, Quaker, and