London and the Restoration, 1659–1683

Gary S. De Krey

Feb 2005 · Cambridge University Press

About this eBook

Articulate and restless London citizens were at the heart of political and religious confrontation in England from the Interregnum through the great crisis of Church and state that marked the last years of Charles II's reign. The same Reformed Protestant citizens who took the lead in toppling in toppling the Rump in 1659–60 took the lead in demanding a new Protestant settlement after 1678. In the interval, their demands for liberty of conscience challenged the Anglican order, whilst their arguments about consensual government in the city challenged loyalist political assumptions. Dissenting and Anglican identities developed in specific locales within the city, rooting the Whig and Tory parties of 1679–83 in neighbourhoods with different traditions and cultures. London and the Restoration integrates the history of the kingdom with that of its premier locality in the era of Dryden and Locke, analysing the ideas and the movements that unsettled the Restoration regime.

About the author

Gary De Krey is Professor of British History at St Olaf College, Minnesota. His previous publications include A Fractured Society: The Politics of Society in the First Age of Party (1990).