‘Laudianism’ was not simply a different perspective on the Church of England’s identity from that held by other English Protestants, but a systematic attempt to impose a particular reading of the English Church on all parishes, and to privilege and prioritize certain facets and formularies over others. This chapter focuses on how the Laudians chose to situate their reforms vis-à-vis the earlier history and formularies of the Church of England. Like the Protestant Reformation itself, the Laudian Reformation framed itself as the repudiation of an impure present, and as a return to a more pure or ‘primitive church’ that had existed before the current abuses had taken hold. However, the chapter argues that the identity of that ‘primitive church’ was subject to constant change. It demonstrates how different Laudian authors found elements of the Jacobean church and Elizabethan settlement wanting, and instead selectively appropriated and sampled elements from earlier reformations, and from the medieval and patristic churches. For all their often conservative rhetoric, the chapter also explores the Laudian readiness to promote a language of progressive reformation and revelation, and to seek to change existing structures and formularies where possible.

Chapter 13 analyses the different forces that worked against the comprehensive religious settlement that was attempted in 1660-61. It begins with a study of conservative elements hostile to any compromise with Presbyterianism, noting their emphasis on the evils of sacrilege, and how the language of ‘restoration’ was often expressed in prophetic rather than conservative terms. It then discusses the Presbyterian opposition to a range of aspects of the new settlement – from the threat of reordination to the repudiation of the Solemn League and Covenant and the stricter imposition of liturgical conformity. While these problems were not insuperable, most puritans could find at least one feature of the new settlement that they considered non-negotiable. The chapter then analyses the settlement itself, and argues that it was not a simple restoration of the pre-war church, or of the Laudian church, but constituted a rather eclectic hybrid of different elements of the Church of England’s earlier identities. Its features could be glossed in different ways, and both the Clarendon Code and the 1667 agitation for a comprehension bill presented themselves as further rationalizations of the intended settlement. It is argued that the principles of the abortive reformation were not conclusively defeated in 1662.