Description
Most historians have hitherto assumed that militant Protestantism was nearly extinct during the Restoration -- that radical opponents of the government of Charles II, apart from a handful of fanatics, were thoroughly demoralized by their defeat at the hands of Royalists and Churchmen, and either shed their radicalism entirely or else turned their zeal inward toward quiteism. The author convincingly shows that this accepted view has greatly underestimated the extent to which organized opposition to the restored Stuart regime was present in the 1660's and 1670's.
Much of the material in this book, drawn almost exclusively from rarely used archival material in England, Scotland, and the Netherlands will be new to students of the period. But it was familiar enough to Charles II and his advisers, whose agents uncovered everything from assassination plots to seditious conspiracies and planned rebellions. The author's detailed account shows that radical dissent, far from dying out, simply went underground. The author also looks at the problem of toleration for nonconformists, and shows how this issue was directly related to the activities of radical militants.
The book covers radical activity in England, Scotland, and Ireland, was well as in exile communities in the Netherlands and Switzerland, seeking to determine not only what the radicals were doing but what connections existed among them. What emerges is a vivid account of the tangled web of conspiracy, idealism, frustration, resiliency, and ineptitude in the far flung radical community. We also gain insight into the place of that community in the broader world of nonconformity. The government had difficulty understanding this world, but it expended considerable effort to develop and implement policies to deal with the militants. To overlook this fact is to omit a fundamental aspect of Charles II's reign, and thus distort our understanding of it.
This is a reproduction edition from a scanned copy of the following original edition:
Title Enemies under his feet: radicals and nonconformists in Britain, 1664-1677
Author Richard L. Greaves
Publisher Stanford University Press, 1990
ISBN 0804717753, 9780804717755
Length 324 pages
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Contents
Dutch War I xiv
Radicals on the Eve of the Dutch War 3
The Exile 15
The Scots and the Galloway 49
Hot Fiery Young Teachers 86
Physical Assaults on Scottish Clergy 96
Radical Political 103
Irish Security 109 Nonconformists in Ireland 112
The Nonconformist Challenge 121
The Radical Press 5
Kidnappers and Crown Jewels 191
Kidnapping 204 The Theft of the Crown Jewels 215
Radicalism and the Policy of Indulgence 224
Notes 253
Index 307
Copyright
Tags:
stanford university press, nonconformists, Fifth Monarchists, Scotland, PRO SP, Quakers, Thomas Blood, Presbyterians, Covenanters, Netherlands, RPCS, dissidents, Conventicle Act, Congregationalists, Kirkcudbright, northern rebellion, Scottish, Carrickfergus, Orrery, John Desborough, deputy lieutenants 
