Reformation in the Restoration Crisis, 1679–1682

Abstract

The Restoration Crisis was a crisis about reformation. In early 1679, Sir Robert Southwell recorded his perception that “there is now spread an universal demand of reformation.” Others who recorded their perceptions about the crisis of 1679–82 also believed it was a crisis about religion, a label that has recently been more strongly associated with 1640–2. Richard Baxter, for instance, beheld in 1679 a nation “distracted by Divisions; and much, if not most about Religion , … Teachers against Teachers, in Discourses, Sermons, Books, rendring each other despicable.” Or, as Bishop Gilbert Burnet lamented two years later: “To what has a contest that began at first about hood and Surplices risen amongst us?” Writing in retrospect, the Anglican controversialist Edmund Bohun complained about “how the Dissenters took the occasion of the Plot, and of the general hatred against Popery to ruine the Loyal and conformable clergy.” They had, he charged, “engrossed the Title of Protestant.” The concept of reformation is a familiar one to students of Stuart history and literature, and those who have recently written about the Restoration have stressed the importance of religion in political debate. Nevertheless, the scholarship about this crisis continues to be preoccupied with political and constitutional issues and ideology, even as the climactic crisis of Charles II's reign receives a remarkable facelift.

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