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The Devotional Landscape of the Royalist Exile, 1649–1660

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Mark R. F. Williams
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Abstract

This study aims both to build upon and to challenge recent historiographical interest in the cultural origins and religious associations of royalism in the midseventeenth century by examining the devotional character of the exiled royalist community of the 1650s. Focusing primarily upon those royalists closely affiliated with the court of Charles II, it assesses the impact of disillusionment, dislocation, penury, and forced mobility upon the subsequent framings and reframings of religious identities. It considers the multiple venues in which these articulations appeared and were negotiated—through personal correspondence, print, diplomacy, rumor, and conversion—in order to illuminate the challenges posed to the maintenance of clear confessional boundaries and community ideals. In doing so, this article argues for the incorporation of a much broader sense of the impact of the “English Revolution” that considers the full geographical, chronological, and cultural scope of these upheavals across Britain, Ireland, and Continental Europe.

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Articles
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , October 2014 , pp. 909 - 933
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2014 

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References

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50 Ibid., 14.

51 Ibid., 67–68.

52 Ibid., 7–8, 28, 33–39.

53 Ibid., 40. La Milletière clearly used the term “conversion” with respect to Charles. It is also clearly asserted on pages 22 and 24, among others, of La Milletière's Second Discours. Cf. Jackson, Nicholas D., Hobbes, Bramhall and the Politics of Liberty and Necessity (Cambridge, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 81.

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59 Bramhall to Ormond, 9 March 1652, Calais, HMC Ormonde NS, 1:262. Also quoted in Jackson, Hobbes, Bramhall and the Politics of Liberty and Necessity, 183.

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67 Ibid., 71.

68 Ibid., 54.

69 Ibid., 34–35.

70 Ibid., 35.

71 Ibid., 107; 115.

72 Ibid., 57.

73 “R. W.” [Richard Watson] to William Edgeman, 4 April 1652, ClSP, vol. 43, f. 51.

74 A Letter Farther and More Fully Evidencing the Kings Stedfastnesse in the Protestant Religion, (London, 1660)Google Scholar, Royal Irish Academy (hereafter RIA), Haliday Tracts, 13; Lettre de M. de L'Angle à un de ses amis touchant la religion du sérénissime roy d'Angleterre (Geneva, 1660).Google Scholar

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78 “Henrietta Maria to ‘Monsieur l'Archevéque d'Athenes Nonce de sa Santeté [sic],” 23 Oct 1649, Paris, Cambridge University Library (hereafter CUL) Add MSS 4878 (Acton Collection), fol. 533; “Henrietta Maria to Cardinal Mazarin, Paris, 11 May 1647” in Green, M. A. E., ed., Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria (London, 1857)Google Scholar, 343.

79 O'Connell, Patricia, “The Early-Modern Irish College Network in Iberia, 1590–1800,” in The Irish in Europe, 1580–1815, ed. O'Connor, Thomas (Dublin, 2001): 49–64Google Scholar; Cunningham, Bernadette, The World of Geoffrey Keating: History, Myth and Religion in Seventeenth-Century Ireland (Dublin, 2004).Google Scholar

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81 Talbot to Hyde, Cologne, 14 Dec. 1654, ClSP, vol. 49, f. 200; Williams, “Between King, Faith and Reason,” 1075–91.

82 Ormond to Dromore, “September 1656,” ClSP, vol. 52, f. 240–43. A printed copy of 11 June 1657 contained in BL Thomason Collection E. 912 (8) dates the letter to 20 September 1656.

83 Ormond to Nicholas, 8 June 1651, Caen, Carte, vol. 29, f. 530.

84 Williams, “Between King, Faith and Reason,” n. 151.

85 Hatton to Nicholas, 20/30 October 1654, Paris, NP, 1:109–14.

86 Ormond to the King, 27 November 1654, Paris, ClSP, vol. 49, f. 168.

87 Talbot to Charles II, Anvers, 24 Dec. 1655, ClSP, vol. 50, f. 234.

88 “Intercepted Letter sent to the Marquis of Ormond by Ro. Allen on 24th May, 1651, and Enclosing another Letter to the Same Marquis from his Agent in Ireland,” in Moran, P .F., ed., Spicilegium Ossoriense, 1st series, (Dublin, 1874), 369–72.Google Scholar

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90 The King to Inchiquin, 2 April 1651, “At the Louvre,” ClSP, vol. 43, f. 49.

91 “French to the Agents with the Duke of Lorraine,” 10/20 July 1651, Brussels, HMC Ormonde NS, 1:173.

92 Inchiquin to Ormond, 14 January 1656, Paris, Carte, vol. 113, f. 40.

93 Sir Edward Hyde to Richard Bellings, 12 June 1654, Paris, ClSP, vol. 48, f. 268.

94 Hyde to Ormond, 6 July 1657, Bruges, ClSP, vol. 55, f. 114.

95 “A letter of intelligence,” 29 June 1657, in Birch, Thomas, ed., A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, Esq (hereafter TSP), 7 vols. (London, 1742)Google Scholar, 6:374–75. This rumor was spread to Thurloe's agent by a “Father Quince.”

96 Lockhart to Thurloe, 19/29 July 1657, Sedan, TSP, 6:414.

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98 de Vechii to Chigi, 21 December 1658, Brussels, ASV.Segr.Fiandra, vol. 42, f. 487–88.

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101 O'Neill to Hyde, 13/23 November 1659, Bordeaux, ClSP. vol. 66, f. 263–64.

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105 Henrietta Maria to Alexander VII, 29 November 1657, “De Paris,” ASV.Segr.Principi, vol. 81, f. 349[r].

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107 Talbot to Ormond, 10 January 1660, Madrid, Carte, vol. 213, f. 504–05.

108 For conversion in its domestic contexts, see Fleming, David, “Conversion, Family, and Mentality,” in Converts and Conversion in Ireland, 1650–1850, ed. Brown, Michael, McGrath, Charles Ivar, and Power, Thomas (Dublin, 2005), 290–31Google Scholar; Questier, Michael, “Crypto-Catholicism, Anti-Calvinism and Conversion at the Jacobean Court: The Enigma of Benjamin Carier,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 47, no. 1 (1996): 45–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Questier, Michael , Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580–1625 (Cambridge, 1996).Google Scholar

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