The Restoration

This cultural history challenges the standard depiction of the 1660s as the beginning of a new age of stability, demonstrating that the decade following the Restoration was just as complex and exciting as the revolutionary years that preceded it.

Auteur
N. H. Keeble is Professor of English Studies and Deputy Principal at the University of Stirling. He is the author of Richard Baxter: Puritan Man of Letters (1982) and The Literary Culture of Nonconformity in Later Seventeenth-Century England (1987). He has compiled a two-volume Calendar of the Correspondence of Richard Baxter (1991, with Geoffrey F. Nuttall) and has edited texts by Baxter, John Bunyan and Lucy Hutchinson, as well as collections of essays on Bunyan and an anthology illustrating The Cultural Identity of Seventeenth-Century Woman (1994).

Texte du rabat
The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the return of Charles II to his throne have often been depicted as a watershed in English history, inaugurating a period of stability following the upheavals and radicalism of the Civil War, the Republic and the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. N. H. Keeble's study challenges this portrayal of events, arguing that the Restoration was in fact tentative and insecure, unsure either of its popular support or its future.

Keeble's cultural history of the 1660s offers a multi-faceted and dynamic model of the decade. Drawing extensively on contemporary accounts, the author reveals that for those who lived through them, the events of 1660 carried no sense of finality or assurance of a new age. By representing the voices of the time, his account restores contingency, instability and insecurity to the Restoration and demonstrates that the 1660s were no less complex or exciting than the revolutionary years that preceded them.

Contenu
Preface. List of Abbreviations.

A Note on Conventions, Procedures and Dates.

Introduction.

1. The Return of the King (165860):.

The Fall of the Protectorate (September 1658 April 1659).

The Rump Restored (May September 1659).

Don Juan Lamberto(October December 1659).

The Long Parliament Restored (January March 1660).

Monarchy Restored (April May 1660).

2. The Restoration Year (1660-61):.

'Past all humane policy'.

The Royal Martyr.

'A time of universal festivity & joy'.

Restoration or Revolution?.

Executions and Exhumations.

3. Great Zerubbabel: Charles and the Convention (1660):.

Images of the King.

'Our good old Form'.

The Declaration of Breda.

The Act of Oblivion.

The Convention Settlement.

4. Royal Servants: Clarendon and the Cavalier Parliament (166167):.

Court and Country.

The Cavalier Settlement.

'The fat Scriv'ner'.

The Costs of War.

'The old man's going away'.

5. Fathers in God: the Church of England:.

The Worcester House Declaration.

The Act of Uniformity.

Comprehension, Indulgence and the Clarendon Code.

Laudians and Latitude-men.

Giant Pope.

6. 'The patience of heroic fortitude': nonconformity, sedition and.

dissent:.

'Fall'n on evil days': Milton and Bunyan.

The experience of persecution.

Nonconformist culture.

The Licensing Act and the press.

Radicals, republicans and plotters.

7. 'Luxury with Charles restor'?: the temper of the times:.

'A yeare of prodigies'166566).

'Things going to wrack'.

The Cabal (166770).

Porno-politics.

A la mode.

8. 'Male and female created he them':.

Men and Women.

The Weaker Vessel.

'An honourable estate'.

A Woman's Place.

Men of the World.

Afterword.

Notes.

Index.