London and the Restoration, 1659–1683

Articulate and restless London citizens were at the heart of political and religious confrontation in England from the Interregnum through the great crisis of Church and state that marked the last years of Charles II's reign. The same Reformed Protestant citizens who took the lead in toppling in toppling the Rump in 1659–60 took the lead in demanding a new Protestant settlement after 1678. In the interval, their demands for liberty of conscience challenged the Anglican order, whilst their arguments about consensual government in the city challenged loyalist political assumptions. Dissenting and Anglican identities developed in specific locales within the city, rooting the Whig and Tory parties of 1679–83 in neighbourhoods with different traditions and cultures. London and the Restoration integrates the history of the kingdom with that of its premier locality in the era of Dryden and Locke, analysing the ideas and the movements that unsettled the Restoration regime.

"Good things are worth waiting for…Gary De Krey's new study certainly proves that old adage…De Krey writes lucidly, deftly combining narrative with analysis to produce both clarity of exposition and depth of interpretive insight." -H-Albion, "Much of the work consists of a rich and lively narrative of civic politics and its interaction with national poitics throughout the period. Its account of the events of the winter of 1659-60, focused on the actions of London's civic leaders, provides a welcome new perspective which helps to suggest how the actions of General Monck, so often regarded as the skillfully enigmatic architect of the Restoration of Charles II, are perhaps more accurately to be seen as an uncertain response to the changing balance of power in the capital." -Paul Seawadr, History of Parliament, London, The Catholic Historical Review, "De Krey's book is a timely reminder of the insights to be gained from placing the capital under the microscope: it emphasizes the impact of the metropolis on the wider polity, and it allows sharper definition of the issues that led to conflict...Historians of the Restoration...will be profoundly grateful for the careful presentation of topographical and prosopographical data on the first Whigs and Tories and over two hundred early dissenting leaders." -George Southcombe, University of Oxford, Journal of Modern History, "This book provides the essential details necessary to a clear understanding of precisely how much a dynamic functioned, and it does so with extraordinary focus, precision, and lucidity of organization and style...it offers a number of new insights into the larger political currents that marked the history of the period. De Krey's groundbreaking work marks an important step forward for Restoration historiography, and it will no doubt take its place among the leading scholarly investigations of this fascinating phase in England's political development." --Renaissance Quarterly

Gary De Krey is Professor of British History at St Olaf College, Minnesota. His previous publications include A Fractured Society: The Politics of Society in the First Age of Party (1990).