Godly Kingship in Restoration England
Godly Kingship in Restoration England
The position of English monarchs as supreme governors of the Church of England profoundly affected early modern politics and religion. This innovative book explores how tensions in church-state relations created by Henry VIII's Reformation continued to influence relationships between the crown, parliament and common law during the Restoration, a distinct phase in England's 'long Reformation'. Debates about the powers of kings and parliaments, the treatment of Dissenters and emerging concepts of toleration were viewed through a Reformation prism where legitimacy depended on godly status. This book discusses how the institutional, legal and ideological framework of supremacy perpetuated the language of godly kingship after 1660 and how supremacy was complicated by the ambivalent Tudor legacy. It was manipulated by not only Anglicans, but also tolerant kings and intolerant parliaments, Catholics, Dissenters and radicals like Thomas Hobbes. Invented to uphold the religious and political establishments, supremacy paradoxically ended up subverting them.
- Reconfigures the chronology of the early modern period, drawing on recent historiography to position the Restoration as part of a 'long Reformation'
- Brings the history of political thought into discussion of political and religious history
- Develops an understanding of the complexities in the emerging concept of toleration
Reviews & endorsements
"… a major achievement. Thanks to its ambitious scope, and thoughtful dissection of the works of so many thinkers, it will become an indispensable guide to some of the most important questions about church and state in the 16th and 17th centuries."
Christopher Brooks, Reviews in History
"This is an excellent book."
Grant Tapsell, Renaissance Quarterly
"This book is to be thoroughly recommended to all students of the later seventeenth century."
John Spurr, Journal of British Studies
"Godly Kingship is likely to prove enduringly useful to scholars of the Restoration."
Joel Swann, The Seventeenth Century
Product details
August 2011Hardback
9781107011427
336 pages
235 × 160 × 23 mm
0.66kg
1 b/w illus.
Available
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Table of Contents
- Introduction: the Restoration, the Reformation, and the royal supremacy
- 1. Foundations and legacies: the Reformation and the royal supremacies, 1530–1660
- 2. The Crown and the Cavalier Anglicans: prerogative, Parliament, and ecclesiastical law
- 3. Spiritual authority and royal jurisdiction: the question of bishops
- 4. Dissenters and the supremacy: the question of toleration
- 5. Anticlericals and 'Erastians': the spectre of Hobbes
- 6. Catholics and Anglicans: James II and Catholic supremacy
- Conclusion.
