This book has been a long time in the making. I was advised several years ago by my colleague Gordon Wood that I should take my time and write a big book. I took him at his word, and ended up producing something that was too big to be published as one, and so it has now become two (still quite big) books. What is on offer here is the first.
My original aim had been to write a book which picked up where my study of London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II (Cambridge, 1987) had left off (roughly towards the end of 1682) and carry the story through to the Glorious Revolution, but to make my account a national one rather than focused on just the capital. This would therefore have been a study of the Tory Reaction, the reign of James II and the Revolution of 1688–9, and would have combined high politics with low politics and attempted to answer the call I had made in the introduction to my Politics of Religion in Restoration England (Oxford, 1990 – co-edited with Paul Seaward and Mark Goldie) for a social history of politics for this period. My project, I believed, would cause us fundamentally to rethink the 1680s and the nature of the Glorious Revolution – an event which I felt had been mischaracterized as a mere dynastic coup imposed from above and outside, but which to me seemed more like a genuine revolution and one brought about from below. Several years ago one of my students at Brown, after recognizing the elitist bias in traditional secondary accounts of 1688–9, had poignantly raised the question in class: ‘Where was the crowd?’ My desire was to write an account which would put the crowd back in, which would be people-focused as much as it was politician-focused, and which would recognize the vital contribution which those below the level of the elite made to the political history of this period, through either their sufferings or their activism. However, the study became international rather than national, as it soon became apparent that the story of Scotland and Ireland would need to be told as well. It therefore also grew in scope – considerably so, as it turned out, since I was determined to do justice to the Scottish and Irish pasts for their own sakes, and not just bring them in for cameo appearances to help flesh out an Anglocentric narrative. In the process, the chronological boundaries of the book grew, to cover the years from 1660 to 1720, although with the focus remaining firmly on the 1680s.
It is important to be aware that the project has been conceived all along as an integrated whole. This influenced its organizational logic. The basic questions I sought to address were: how did a regime that had been so popular when it was restored in 1660 fall into crisis by 1680? how did it manage to recover from that crisis by 1685? and how did it sink back so dramatically into crisis by 1688 so that a reigning monarch could be toppled from his throne in England (Scotland and Ireland were very different stories) without being able to offer any significant resistance? The book, as originally conceived, was therefore divided into four parts: from Restoration to crisis, c. 1660–81; royal recovery under Charles II, c. 1681–85; the reign of James II, 1685–8; and the Revolutions and their outcomes, c. 1688–1720. Only after my editor at Penguin, Simon Winder, had read a complete draft of the whole was the decision taken to make it two books–with the first two parts (on the reign of Charles II) forming book one, and the last two book two. I might have thought about the structure somewhat differently had I started with the intention of writing two separate books. There is not a great deal, for example, on Restoration politics in England, in part because this is a story that has been told by others already, and in part because, given the conception of the project as a whole, an analytical discussion of the problems facing the Restoration polity in England seemed a more compelling way of guiding the reader about what was going wrong at this time and why the regime was to fall into crisis by the late 1670s. Moreover, there are certainly things that are explained at length in this first book because they provide a vital context for understanding developments traced in book two. I began writing this book from 1685 onward; only when I had finished the chapters on the Revolutions did I go back and draft the chapters for the years 1660–85, with the aim of setting the context for what was to come thereafter. Nevertheless, in splitting the project into two I have made every effort to produce two stand-alone books – ones which are self-sufficient in the sense that each can be read on its own and does not require familiarity with its companion volume to be intelligible.
Many will no doubt see this study as an exercise in the new British history. Problems nevertheless remain over the use of the adjective ‘British’ to describe an integrated history of the three constituent kingdoms of the Stuart monarchy. Ireland was not part of Britain, in the literal geographical sense, since Britain was the island which comprised England, Scotland and Wales. It is true that Ireland was occasionally called West Britain or Lesser Britain, but that in itself was an imperialist usage, a view from the British mainland rather than an accurate geographical designation or a term used by the inhabitants of Ireland themselves. Politically, the island of Ireland as a whole was to be part of the British state for only a little over a century, between 1801 and 1922. Ethnically, the indigenous Irish population were Gaelic rather than British, although there were also many British peoples (English, Welsh and Scots) living in Ireland. On the other hand, there were also many non-British peoples living in Scotland and Wales. Strictly speaking, this study deals not with Britain nor with the British (exclusively), but with the various peoples who inhabited the Britannic archipelago in the North Atlantic off the coast of north-west Europe and who happened to be ruled over by the same monarch. Indeed, the style ‘his Britannick majesty’ was frequently used by contemporaries to refer to either Charles II or James II in his capacity as king of England, Scotland and Ireland.
Care is clearly needed over terminology. However, it seems both undesirable and unnecessary to outlaw the term ‘British’ in the context of this particular study. Undesirable because we would be forced to employ some rather cumbersome language if we were determined to avoid it; my editor cringed at my references to ‘the Britannic archipelago’, which he asked me to excise from the final version – and, besides, how does one make an adjective from that term? Unnecessary because this study is about revolutions that affected three kingdoms which, whatever the complexion of their indigenous populations, were controlled and run by people who came from Britain. The monarchy itself was genuinely British: the Stewarts were originally a Scottish dynasty who inherited the English (and hence also Irish) crown in 1603 and subsequently anglicized their name. Those in positions of power under the British monarchy were invariably of British – English or Scottish – extraction themselves. Although there was a significant Gaelic culture in Scotland, it was the Lowland Scots, of Anglo-Saxon extraction themselves, who dominated the government of the country, whether under Charles II or James VII (as James II was styled in Scotland) or in the post-revolutionary regimes. Similarly, despite its sizeable Gaelic population, Ireland was under the suzerainty of a British monarch and was ruled at home by people who hailed (either immediately or ultimately) from the British mainland, and one can legitimately talk of it as being a British state at this time in the sense that it was ruled by people of British extraction – primarily English. Even the attempted Catholic revolution in Ireland under James II would have resulted in power being kept largely within the hands of the British, albeit Catholics of Old English (or Anglo-Norman) extraction. Moreover, Irish Catholics at the time used the term ‘the British Monarchy’ to describe the lands (including Ireland) over which the Stuarts ruled. This study, in other words, is a British history in the sense that it offers an examination of the fortunes of British rule across the three kingdoms that comprised the North Atlantic archipelago of Britain and Ireland. Having said that, this work makes every effort to do justice to the struggles, concerns and experiences of the non-British peoples who inhabited this Britannic archipelago, and to avoid terminology that might seem either misleading or unduly imperialistic.
In a project of this size, one inevitably accumulates numerous debts over the years. It was John Morrill who first encouraged me in my plans to write a book on the 1680s and suggested that I should also look at Scotland and Ireland; once I started to look at Scotland and Ireland, however, I realized that the book could not be just about the 1680s, but would have to start much earlier and finish much later. It was an invitation from Mark Goldie to become involved in editing the Roger Morrice Ent'ring Book, a political journal covering the years 1677–91, which confirmed me in my idea that the project was worthwhile, especially when it became apparent that Morrice, like myself, thought in three-kingdoms terms. Mark Kishlansky and David Underdown contributed more to the conceptualization of this project than they perhaps realize, not least through various critical remarks the two of them made to me about the value of British history. The end result might not convince them, but their observations certainly made this a better piece of scholarship than it would otherwise have been. It seemed too much of an imposition to burden friends and colleagues with endless drafts of what seemed to be an endlessly growing manuscript; rather, I sought the necessary critical feedback by delivering discrete sections of what I was working on at conferences, lectures and colloquia across Britain and North America over the last decade or so. For their invaluable input, I would like to thank everyone who has attended whatever presentations I have given about different aspects of this work; they have had a much greater influence on shaping the final outcome than they would ever have realized. Certain individuals who have offered constructive advice, criticism, support and guidance over the years, in addition to those mentioned above, include Charles Carlton, Tom Cogswell, Brian Cowan, Adam Fox, Peter Lake, Allan Macinnes, Steve Pincus, Bill Speck, Stephen Taylor and the participants in a seminar I taught at the Folger Shakespeare Library in the autumn of 2003: Bill Carpenter, D'Maris Coffman, John Cramsie, Erin Kidwell and Joanne Tetlow. As ever, my students at Brown, many of whom have taken classes which in various ways have explored many of the themes explored here, have been a constant source of inspiration. One particular Brown student, Victoria Harris, a budding historian in her own right, conducted research for me on the loyal addresses of 1683, in the process learning the true meaning of the old methodological adage il faut compter. Above all, I have to express my immense debt to Simon Winder, who encouraged this project from the beginning, who patiently awaited the fruits of my labour amid my repeated complaints of disc problems (of the spinal rather than the computer kind), and who read everything in draft and offered a tremendous amount of constructive critical feedback. The project has taken a shape that it would not otherwise have done without Simon's influence. I would also like to thank Helen Dewen, who read the penultimate draft and gave me a valuable independent critical perspective while also encouraging me to believe that what I had to say was worthwhile; Alison Hennessy for help with the illustrations; and Caroline Wilding for compiling the index. I am extremely fortunate to have worked with a very thorough and highly efficient copyeditor, Bob Davenport, who did his best to rescue me from stylistic infelicities, grammatical mistakes, internal inconsistencies, and various other errors. It goes without saying that any mistakes that remain are mine. Special thanks must also go to my agent, Clare Alexander, whom I initially approached with the idea of her helping me place my next project, but who proved of immeasurable assistance once it became apparent that the present one would need to be split into two.
Neither my wife (Beth) nor my children (Victoria and James) read any of this book in draft, but they supported me in innumerable ways during the lengthy time it took to complete it, helping to sustain my sanity in the process. Words cannot convey how much I owe to them – for their forbearance and for their love. For a British historian based in the States, relatives and friends who are prepared to host one's trips to the archives are an invaluable resource. My parents, Audrey and Ron, whose home is conveniently located just off the M25 somewhere between Heathrow and Gatwick airports, made possible much of the research for this book by providing me with a home away from home when I needed to visit the English archives. My brother and his wife, Kevin and Tina, housed me when I undertook research in the Leicestershire Record Office, as did my parents-in-law, John and Grace, when I did research in the West Country, while my sister and her husband, Sarah and Matt, also provided support on my trips to England. Christine Macleod let me and my family stay in her flat overlooking Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, while Adam Fox and his wife, Carolyn, hosted me on another trip to the Scottish capital. I am indebted to them all, and I hope I never outstayed my welcome.
Research for this project would not have been possible without the financial support of a number of institutions. In particular, I would like to record my gratitude for the receipt of fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Huntington Library, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well as research support and leave time from Brown University.
This book is dedicated to Mark Goldie, who first taught me in the late 1970s, who inspired me to become a later-Stuart historian and nurtured whatever talent he saw in me as an undergraduate and graduate student, and who has been a valued mentor, collaborator and friend for many years. I promised him this book a long time ago. Now it has finally arrived, I hope it does not disappoint.
In quoting from original sources, I have extended contemporary contractions but have otherwise adhered to the original spelling and capitalization, though I have very occasionally provided modern punctuation to assist in readability. Dates are in old style, although with the new year taken as having started on 1 January (rather than 25 March, as at the time).