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16 - Radical restoration (2): the old cause

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 December 2009

Jonathan Scott
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

And when the Protestants of the Low-Countries were so grievously oppressed by the power of Spain … why should they not make use of all the means that God had put into their hands for their deliverance? … by resisting they laid the foundation of a most glorious and happy Commonwealth, that hath been, since its first beginning, the strongest pillar of the Protestant Cause now in the world.

Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government (1683)

INTRODUCTION

Throughout the restoration period, as earlier, the struggles against religious and political oppression were intertwined. The period 1662–72 was dominated by the imposition of, and then struggle against, the parliamentary religious settlement. This culminated in what Gary de Krey and others have called ‘the first restoration crisis’ 1667–73. Its precursor was the crisis of 1667 giving rise to a new phase of politics which culminated in an attempt by the king himself to unhinge the religious settlement.

The accompanying debate took its force from these practical issues. At the same time it had a polemical focus in Samuel Parker's defence of the religious settlement (Discourse of Ecclesiastical Polity (1669)) which played a role comparable to that of Filmer in the later crisis. Radical opposition to the restoration settlement before 1667 necessarily took a more muted form. The persistence of domestic plotting and seditious utterance in this period has been documented by Richard Greaves. This was accompanied by the activities of a republican community in exile, particularly during the Anglo-Dutch war (1665–7).

THE EXILES 1662–7

The most important remains from the assault upon restoration from exile are Ludlow's Voyce from the Watchtower and Sidney's Court Maxims.

Type
Chapter
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England's Troubles
Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context
, pp. 365 - 388
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

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