The later Stuart period has never been particularly sure of its own identity. Does it belong with the revolutionary upheavals of the first part of the seventeenth century; is it a distinct period in its own right; or is it the beginning of the long eighteenth century? Never quite certain, it tends to fall through the historiographical gaps. We see this confusion when we turn to the whole question of national identities and the writing of British history. There has been great interest in recent years in taking a ‘three kingdoms’ approach to the political upheavals under the early Stuarts. It has even been suggested that we can detect a ‘briticisation’ of the nobility at this time. Moving forward in time, the issue of protestantism and the emergence of a British national identity under the Hanoverians has attracted considerable attention. Yet restoration his-torians have been slow to follow these trends. On the surface there are grounds for suspecting that a British approach might be worth pursuing for the reign of Charles II. After all, the words that came to be adopted during the exclusion crisis of c. 1678–83 to describe the partisan divide that emerged in England under the later Stuarts strongly suggest the importance of the British dimension to English political identities: whig meant Scottish presbyterian, tory an Irish-catholic cattle thief.