4 - Struggling over Settlements in Civil-War Historical Writing, 1696–1714

Summary

The Parliament that assembled to construct a settlement around the revolution of 1688 took a new approach to the question of remembering and forgetting the conflicted past. Several laws enacted by the Convention Parliament had profound implications for the cultural memory of the civil wars and Interregnum. Most significantly, under the Toleration Act of 1689, Trinitarian Protestant Dissenters could worship freely, subject to the granting of licences by local magistrates. This meant that for the first time since the Reformation, the crown legally relinquished its role as promoter and enforcer of religious conformity. Moreover, religious toleration implied that the spiritual communities of Dissenters did not pose a threat to the civil polity or the national Church. However, the Convention Parliament did not sever the link made by the Cavalier Parliament between the legally established religion and the polity. Only communicant members of the Church of England were permitted to serve in civil and military offices. Thus, while the Convention Parliament was prepared to jettison a key component of the Elizabethan Reformation – uniformity of public worship –it left untouched the crux of the Restoration settlement – the unity of the English State and the Church by law established. Underlying this peculiar compromise was the conviction that Dissenters were not necessarily dangerous to the national Church, the State and their symbiotic connection (instantiated in the monarch's role as Supreme Governor of the Church), but also not fully trustworthy. After all, their puritan forebears were to blame for the civil war.