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GROUP HUNTING: RELIGION, POLITICS, AND IDEOLOGY IN LATER STUART BRITAIN*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2015

SCOTT SOWERBY
SCOTT SOWERBY*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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Extract

Early modern groups did not necessarily proclaim themselves. When they did, they were not necessarily groups. The historian must decide when to analyse people as separate individuals and when their commonalities were great enough that they should be considered together. These judgements have been the source of frequent debate. At times, the disagreement has been over the proper label for a group – whether, for instance, ‘puritans’ should instead be called ‘the godly’. In other cases, the very existence of a group has been called into question, with some doubting whether there was a ‘Ranter’ movement in the 1650s. Often, historians debate the coherence of a group, with one prominent scholar questioning whether the first whigs in the late 1670s were organized enough to deserve the appellation of a ‘party’. The vigour of these debates suggests that some of our most important intellectual labours are done when we assign people to groups.

Type
Review Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 58 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 1191 - 1204
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Mark Kishlansky for commenting on an earlier draft of this essay.

References

1 Collinson, Patrick, ‘A comment: concerning the name Puritan’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 31 (1980), pp. 483–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; John Spurr, English Puritanism, 1603–1689 (Basingstoke, 1998), pp. 18–27.

2 J. C. Davis, Fear, myth and history: the Ranters and the historians (Cambridge, 1986); Aylmer, G. E., ‘Review article: did the Ranters exist?’, Past and Present, 117 (1987), pp. 208–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davis, J. C., ‘Fear, myth and furore: reappraising the “Ranters”’, Past and Present, 129 (1990), pp. 79–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McGregor, J. F., Capp, Bernard, Smith, Nigel, and Gibbons, B. J., ‘Debate: fear, myth and furore: reappraising the “Ranters”’, Past and Present, 140 (1993), pp. 155–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davis, J. C., ‘Reply’, Past and Present, 140 (1993), pp. 194–210CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Jonathan Scott, Algernon Sidney and the Restoration crisis, 1677–1683 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 10–14, 47–8, 81; idem, ‘Restoration process: or, if this isn't a party, we're not having a good time’, Albion, 25 (1993), pp. 630–1Google Scholar; idem, England's troubles: seventeenth-century English political instability in European context (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 490–3.

4 J. H. Hexter, ‘The burden of proof’, Times Literary Supplement, 24 Oct. 1975, pp. 1251–2, reprinted in On historians: reappraisals of some of the makers of modern history (London, 1979), pp. 241–3.

5 Tapsell, Grant, ‘Royalism revisited’, Historical Journal, 54 (2011), pp. 881–906CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 The designation was originated by Jones, J. R. in his ‘James II's whig collaborators’, Historical Journal, 3 (1960), pp. 65–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for critiques of the term, see Goldie, Mark, ‘John Locke's circle and James II’, Historical Journal, 35 (1992), p. 559CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘James II and the dissenters' revenge: the commission of enquiry of 1688’, Historical Research, 66 (1993), pp. 54–5Google Scholar; W. A. Speck, ‘1688: a political revolution’, in David Parker, ed., Revolutions and the revolutionary tradition in the West, 1560–1991 (London, 2000), pp. 60–1; and my own Making toleration: the repealers and the Glorious Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 2013), pp. 28–30.

7 B. R. White, The English Baptists of the seventeenth century (rev. edn, Didcot, 1996); Stephen Wright, The early English Baptists, 1603–1649 (Woodbridge, 2006).

8 David R. Como, Blown by the spirit: Puritanism and the emergence of an antinomian underground in pre-Civil-War England (Stanford, CA, 2004).

9 Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: the rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590–1640 (Oxford, 1987).

10 Spurr, John, ‘“Latitudinarianism” and the Restoration church’, Historical Journal, 31 (1988), pp. 61–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Ibid., pp. 62–3, 68.

12 Ibid., pp. 61–2, 75; see also Michael Hunter, Science and the shape of orthodoxy: intellectual change in late seventeenth-century Britain (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 110–11.

13 Thomas Babington Macaulay, The history of England from the accession of James the second, ed. Charles Harding Firth (6 vols., London, 1913–15), ii, pp. 957–8, iii, pp. 1041–3.

14 Collins, Jeffrey R., ‘The Restoration bishops and the royal supremacy’, Church History, 68 (1999), pp. 549–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mark Goldie, ‘The political thought of the Anglican Revolution’, in Robert Beddard, ed., The revolutions of 1688 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 113, 121–32.

15 Rose, Godly kingship, pp. 268–9; for the pamphlet, see Herbert Croft, A short discourse (London, 1688, Wing C6976). Croft wrote to Sir Edward Harley indicating that he had offered his tract to be published but that it had not been printed exactly as he desired it to be: British Library, Add. MS 70113, Herbert Croft to [Sir Edward Harley], 20 June 1688. According to Anthony Wood, the pamphlet was Croft's but the published version omitted a passage that the bishop had written arguing against the repeal of the penal laws and Test Acts: see Wood, Athenae oxonienses, ed. Philip Bliss (4 vols., London, 1813–20), iv, col. 316. While he evidently regretted the unauthorized cuts, there is no indication in his letters that Croft retracted the views on the supremacy expressed in the pamphlet.

16 National Library of Wales, Ottley correspondence no. 1725, Herbert Croft to James II, 6 June 1688; Ottley correspondence no. 1723, Herbert Croft to Adam Ottley, 8 Aug. 1688; Ottley correspondence no. 1726, same to same, 22 Aug. 1688.

17 Compare with Clare Jackson, Restoration Scotland, 1660–1690: royalist politics, religion and ideas (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 12, 163–75.

18 Geoffrey Holmes, The trial of Doctor Sacheverell (London, 1973), pp. 59–75, 89–94, 128, 156–7, 161–74, 233–5, 243–8, 254–5.