Introduction

Summary

The historiography of seventeenth-century English republicanism has focused largely on the Civil War and Interregnum period in the British Isles. Much less is known about the survival of republican ideas beyond the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, even though historians widely acknowledge the legacy of Civil War political thought in the debates of the Exclusion Crisis during the late 1670s and 1680s. It is also acknowledged that seventeenth-century English republicanism had a significant impact on the ideas of the American Founding Fathers, while its legacy in Europe is much less well understood. The Introduction to this book argues that a study of the English republican exiles and their political and religious networks on the Continent provides a key to the understanding of this legacy, while also acknowledging contemporary European influences on England.