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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
On the eve of the 1689 Revolution in England, Gilbert Burnet was best known as an ecclesiastical historian. Although he had had a noteworthy career as a Whigleaning cleric, who had gone into exile at the start of James II’s reign and had entered the household of William of Orange in the Hague, Burnet’s reputation had been based on his magisterial History of the Reformation. This had appeared in its first two volumes in 1678 and 1683, and had rapidly become the standard work on the religious changes of the Tudor age. Soon after the Revolution, Burnet also became notable as the chief propagandist of the new regime. He produced a steady stream of works justifying William’s usurpation of James’s throne, and played a major part in organizing such pro-Orange events as the fast days marking William’s war with Louis XIV. This essay explores a key intersection of these two roles. It suggests that Burnet’s explicitly pro-Williamite understanding of church history gave rise to a new division of the past, and effectively invented the Restoration era as a distinct period of British history, running from 1660 to 1689.
1 We lack a modern biography of Burnet, but see the classic by Clarke, T. E. S. and Foxcroft, H. C., A Life of Gilbert Burnet (Cambridge, 1907)Google Scholar, and Martin Grieg’s article for the ODNB.
2 See Claydon, Tony, William III and the Godly Revolution (Cambridge, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 For such use of the past, see Woolfe, D. R., Reading History in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2003).Google Scholar
4 Claydon, William III, chs 1, 4.
5 For these examples, see Burnet, Gilbert, A Sermon Preached at the Coronation of William III and Mary II (London, 1689), 24–6 Google Scholar; idem, An Exhortation to Peace and Union (London, 1689), 9.
6 Burnet, Gilbert, The History of His Own Times, 2nd edn, 6 vols (Oxford, 1833), 3: 135 Google Scholar; Japikse, N., ed., Correspondentie van William III en van Hans W Ilem Bentinck, 5 vols (The Hague, 1927), 1: 33–4.Google Scholar
7 For pamphlets against James, see, e.g., [Burnet, Gilbert], Reasons against Repealing the Acts of Parliament Regarding the Tests ([Amsterdam, 1687])Google Scholar; [idem], Some Reflections on His Majesty’s Proclamation ([Amsterdam], 1687). For the manifesto and early propaganda pieces, see below.
8 There has been dispute about the timing of party emergence, but Harris, Tim, Politics under the Later Stuarts (Harlow, 1993), chs 3–4, gives a sensible account.Google Scholar
9 For the writing of the manifesto, see Schwoerer, Lois, ‘Propaganda in the Revolution of 1688–89’, AHR 82 (1977), 843–74, at 850–4.Google Scholar
10 The Declaration of His Highness William Henry, prince of Orange, of the Reasons Inducing Him to Appear in Arms in the Kingdom of England (The Hague, 1688).
11 [Burnet, Gilbert], An Enquiry into the Measures of Submission to the Supreme Authority (London, 1688)Google Scholar; [idem], An Enquiry into the Present State of Affairs (London, 1688), esp. 5–7. A similar short-term and law-based analysis can be found in Burnet, Gilbert, A Pastoral Letter Writ by … Gilbert, Lord Bishop of Sarum (London, 1689).Google Scholar
12 For more on the ‘two age’ theory, see Claydon, Tony, ‘Latitudinarianism and Apocalyptic History in the Worldview of Gilbert Burnet’, HistJ 51 (2008), 577–97.Google Scholar
13 Burnet, Gilbert, A Sermon Preached in the Chappel of St James … 23 December, 1688 (London, 1689), 5.Google Scholar For similar sentiments, see idem, A Sermon Preached before the House of Commons on 31 January, 1689 (London, 1689), 7.
14 For the general tone of these sermons, see Claydon, William III, chs 3–5.
15 Burnet, Gilbert, A Sermon Preached before the King and Queen … 19 October, 1690 (London, 1690), 26.Google Scholar
16 Claydon, ‘Latitudinarianism’, 584.
17 Burnet, Sermon … 23 December, 1688, 20–1; idem, Sermon … Coronation, 20.
18 Burnet, Gilbert, A Sermon Preached before the Queen … the 16th Day of July, 1690 (London, 1690), 24–9.Google Scholar
19 For example, Burnet, Sermon … 16th July 1690; idem, A Sermon Preached before His Majesty … 31 October (London, 1714), 8–27.
20 Claydon, William III, esp. chs 1, 3, 6.
21 See Burnet, , Sermon … 23 December, 1688, 22–3; idem, A Sermon Preached before the House of Peers … 5 November (London, 1689), 21–3.Google Scholar
22 For this, see Claydon, William III, ch. 3; and esp. Burnet, Gilbert, Charitable Reproof: A Sermon Preached … to the Societies for Reformation of Manners (London, 1700).Google Scholar
23 See, e.g., Burnet, Exhortation.
24 Burnet, Gilbert, A Discourse of the Pastoral Care (London, 1692), esp. ch. 8.Google Scholar
25 Burnet, Gilbert, Some Letters Concerning What Seemed Most Remarkable (Rotterdam, 1687), 227–30 Google Scholar; idem, A Sermon Preached … upon the Reading of the Brief for the Persecuted Exiles (London, 1704), 27–8.
26 Burnet, Exhortation, 4; idem, Sermon … Coronation, 29; idem, Sermon … 23 December, 1688, 8.
27 Burnet, Sermon … 31 January, 1689, 8.
28 This persistent historiographic mood is nicely summarized in the Introduction to Southcombe, George and Tapsell, Grant, eds, Restoration Politics, Religion and Culture (Basingstoke, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
29 This was, for example, the tenure of the main constitutional declaration to emerge from the constitutional convention of 1689, the ‘Declaration of Rights’, originally published as The Declaration of the Lords and Commons Assembled at Westminster (London, 1689).
30 Journal of the House of Commons 10: 15. Journal of the House of Lords 14: 110.
31 The liturgy for the 5 November thanksgiving was altered to include gratitude for the Revolution: see Additional Prayers to be Used together with those Appointed in the Service for the Fifth of November (London, 1689); for appeals to the medieval past, see Grey, Anchitell, Debates in the House of Commons from the Year 1667–1694, 10 vols (London, 1769), 9: 8, 14, 19, 23, 57.Google Scholar
32 Goldie, Mark. ‘The Revolution of 1689 and the Structure of Political Argument’, Bulletin of Research in the Humanities 83 (1980), 473–564 Google Scholar, stresses that the majority of post-Revolution pamphlets justified William’s rule on grounds of conquest, providence, the necessity of resistance in the face of James’s destructive tyranny, or a contract which James alone had broken – all short-term factors.
33 For Burnet’s Scottish origins and attitudes, see Claydon, ‘Latitudinarianism’. The tendency of Presbyterians to think in ‘Restoration era’ terms was pointed out by Kathleen Middleton in a paper, ‘Seeing off the Late Times: The Construction of the Revolution and the Preceding Decades in Scots Presbyterian Thought’, given at the Bangor Conference on the Restoration, 27 July 2011.
34 Claydon, William III, 65–70.
35 For example, Burnet’s coronation sermon in 1689 included classical analogy, implied apocalyptic, Reformation history and legal analysis of the period 1685–8, as well as a clear ‘Restoration’ sense.