Thomas Fuller as Royalist Country Parson During the Interregnum

Abstract

Although Thomas Fuller, the church historian, spent the first year of the civil war in London, where he articulated from the pulpit a political point of view consonant with that of the parliamentary peace party, there can be little doubt that his allegiance was with the king in that struggle. In the late summer of 1643 Fuller left London for the royalist capital at Oxford and before the end of the year entered the service of Lord Hopton as a chaplain in the royal army. During the latter stages of the civil war he resided in Exeter, where he served as chaplain to the infant princess Henrietta Anne, and where he enjoyed close relations with members of the court circle there. Fuller left the royalist community in Exeter only when the city itself surrendered in 1646, two months before the fall of Oxford. Because of these activities and because of a series of plainspoken books and pamphlets during the years of religious and political conflict, Fuller was widely known as an adherent of the royalist cause, albeit never as militant or as uncritical a partisan as many others in the king’s camp.