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The Religion of Restoration England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Clyde L. Grose
Clyde L. Grose
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
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Extract

The Restoration of 1660 restored not only the Stuart dynasty but the Anglican church. Both were mistakes of the first magnitude, partiqilarly the restoration of the Established church because it lasted longer. James II's unparalleled Unwisdom brought the Revolution of 1688 quickly and unanimously. No archbishop has to date so conducted himself as to bring a 1688 to Anglicanism. Recent discussion relating to the role of the church in the unusual abdication of 1936, and the no less unusual coronation of 1937, testifies to both its strength and its insecurity two hundred and fifty years after the Stuart dynasty, its curious restorer, had descended to pretenders and romance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , September 1937 , pp. 223 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1937

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References

1 Supplementing and largely supplanting the older works of Cardwell (1839), Stoughton (1867–1874), and Overton (1885), are the following more recent treatments of the periods: Henson, H. Hensley, Studies in English Religion in the Seventeenth Century (St. Margaret's Lectures. London, 1903)Google Scholar; Bate, Frank, The Declaration of Indulgence (London, 1908)Google Scholar; Nightingale, Benjamin, The Ejected of 1662 in Cumberland and Westmorland (Publications of the University of Manchester, Historical Series, XII. 2 vols., Manchester, 1911)Google Scholar; Hutton, Wm. H., English Church from the Accession of Charles I to the Death of Anne (London, 1913)Google Scholar; Mathews, A. G., Calamy Revised (Oxford, 1934)Google Scholar, which is a va1uable supplement rather than a revision; More, Paul E. and Cross, Frank L. (eds.), Anglicanism: the Thought and Practise of the Church of England Illustrated from the Religious Literature of the Seventeenth Century (S. P. C. K. London, 1935)Google Scholar, a vast source book; Sykes, Norman, Church and State in England in the Eighteenth Century (Birkbeck Lectures, Cambridge, 1934)Google Scholar, which has a good introductory chapter; and among denominational histories: Dale, Robert W., History of English Congregationalism (ed. by Dale, A. W. W., London, 1907)Google Scholar; Colligan, J. Hay, The Arian Movement in England (Publications of the University of Manchester, Theological Series, II, Manchester, 1913)Google Scholar; Braithwaite, William C., Second Period of Quakerism (London, 1919)Google Scholar; Whitley, Wm. T., History of British Baptists (London, 1923; 2 ed., 1932).Google Scholar

The general history of the period, which is the best key to its religious history, has found no Samuel Rawson Gardiner and perhaps never will. But the last fifteen years have produced an unusual number of scholarly monographs, and several good histories, particularly Ogg, David, England in the Reign of Charles II (2 vols., Oxford, 1934)Google Scholar, and Clark, C. N., Later Stuarts (Oxford, 1934)Google Scholar in the promising Oxford History of England series. Feiling's, Keith G. History of the Tory Party, 1640–1714 (Oxford, 1924)Google Scholar is also illuminating on every aspect of the period.

2 It is estimated that of the nine thousand odd church livings in England in 1660, over two thousand were held by Presbyterians and over four hundred by Congregationalists, neither group being capable of sharp definition. See Clark, Later Stuarts, 17, and the works referred to in note 3.

3 It is always difficult to fix numbers of church membership except in the ease of those like the Roman Catholic here a definite act of conformity (mass), participated in even at infrequent intervals, constitutes unquestioned membership. Most others, and particularly Protestant groups, have a small definite core and a larger periphery of less frequent participants and sympathizers. In 1660 estimates are particularly difficult because of the state of flux preceding, and because persecution had caused many seetarians to lie low in quiescence. The Quakers, being perhaps the bravest and most distinguishable as a group, might naturally yield the most accurate figure: 30–40,000 in 1661 (Braithwaite, Wm. C., Beginnings of Quakerism [London, 1912], 512Google Scholar. The numbers most used for the whole body of dissenters come from Archbishop Sheldon in 1676 when with Danby's co-operation he compiled elaborate figures, undependable but, in the absence of others, useful. Their purpose was to show how few nonconformists there were, thereby justifying further suppression. Louis XIV was at the same time being shown similarly-purposed figures about French Huguenots in preparation for the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The fullest statement of Sheldon's figures are in Turner, G. Lyon, Original Records of Larty Nonconformity (3 vols., London, 1911–1914)Google Scholar, and this gives the ratio of conformists to nonconformists as 22 to 1, and to papists as 178 to 1. It is a mere guess to state that the number of dissenters decreased slightly during the period of the Restoration and increased slightly during the two succeeding reigns. One must beware of overestimating the effect of the Toleration Act of 1689, realizing the fortifying qualities of persecution and the enervating aspects of freedom. There are other population estimates in Stoughton, II, 207–8, and Ogg, I, 212–3.

4 Feiling, Keith G., “Clarendon and the Act of Uniformity' in English Historical Review, XLIV (1929), 289–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar But when the acts were once passed, Clarendon believed in enforcing them, perhaps somewhat because he constantly identified dissent and sedition.

5 Cardwell, E., History of Conferences and Other Proceedings Connected with the Revision of the Book of Common Prayer (London, 1840)Google Scholar; Procter, F. and Frere, W. H., A New History of the Book of Common Prayer (London, 1902).Google Scholar

6 Ogg, I, 202.

7 The writer's “Charles the Second of England” will appear in an early number of the American Historical Review.

8 Powicke, Frederick J., The Cambridge.Plaionists (London, 1926)Google Scholar, is the best recent treatment.

9 Ogg, I, 202.