Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- List of illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Royal Actor
- 2 Habeas Corpus: the Foundations of the Cult before 1649
- 3 By the Rivers of Babylon: the Cult in Exile
- 4 In Verbo Tuo Spes Mea: Fashioning the Royal Martyr
- 5 The Return to Zion: the Cult and the Restored Monarchy
- 6 Irreligious Rants and Civil Seditions: the Cult in ‘the Age of Party’
- 7 A Pattern of Religion and Virtue: the Conservative Martyr
- 8 Our Own, Our Royal Saint
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - The Return to Zion: the Cult and the Restored Monarchy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- List of illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Royal Actor
- 2 Habeas Corpus: the Foundations of the Cult before 1649
- 3 By the Rivers of Babylon: the Cult in Exile
- 4 In Verbo Tuo Spes Mea: Fashioning the Royal Martyr
- 5 The Return to Zion: the Cult and the Restored Monarchy
- 6 Irreligious Rants and Civil Seditions: the Cult in ‘the Age of Party’
- 7 A Pattern of Religion and Virtue: the Conservative Martyr
- 8 Our Own, Our Royal Saint
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
30th January 1663: A solemn fast for the king's murder. And we were forced to keep it more than we would have done, having forgot to take any victuals into the house.
(Pepys: Diary, vol. 4, p. 29)When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue with singing.
(Psalm 126:1–2)The providential return of Charles II and the establishment of an episcopal and Arminian Church of England must indeed have seemed like a return to Zion after eleven years in the wilderness. Everything that the royal martyr had died for and Anglican Royalists had worked and prayed for in exile seemed to have been accomplished by 1662, and we enter the heyday of the cult, when each 30 January Anglican pulpits resounded with praise of the martyr and curses against those who had brought such a virtuous prince to his death. Yet the period also witnessed the first public attacks upon the cult during the Exclusion Crisis, and the events of 1688 were to have profound repercussions for the future of the Fast Day. The changes and controversies surrounding the cult merely illustrate the fact that Restoration society was struggling to cope with competing memories of the Civil Wars. The establishment of the cult in the liturgy of the church represented the triumph of one memory of Charles and the wars.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cult of King Charles the Martyr , pp. 129 - 171Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2003