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REVELATION AND THE REVOLUTION OF 1688–1689

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2005

WARREN JOHNSTON
WARREN JOHNSTON
Affiliation:
University of Saskatchewan
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Abstract

The tendency to draw a sharp line of demarcation between pre- and post-1660 England has long been standard historical practice. This separation is especially evident in the study of apocalyptic thought, which is accepted as important to understanding the history of early and mid-seventeenth-century England: despite the efforts of some scholars to trace its subsequent developments, the presence of eschatological language and belief in the later seventeenth century is most often relegated to the radical margins and lunatic fringes of English society. This article demonstrates that apocalyptic convictions were not dismissed from mainstream relevance after 1660. Using the Revolution of 1688–9 as a case-study, it demonstrates that hopes and predictions of eschatological fulfilment were present among nonconformists and Church of England proponents alike. In their works are found apocalyptic celebrations of the events of 1688 and 1689, and also the continued concern with issues that had dominated domestic religious and political discourse for the previous three decades.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , June 2005 , pp. 351 - 389
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I wish to thank Mark Goldie, Lisa Smith, Susan Blake, and Larry Stewart for reading and commenting on previous drafts of this article. An earlier version of this piece was presented as a work in progress to the Department of History Faculty Workshop at the University of Saskatchewan in March 2003, and comments from my colleagues in that forum have been incorporated here. I also want to thank the two anonymous reviewers for the Historical Journal whose suggestions for revision have been included. My research was aided by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship, and by a travel grant awarded by the Managers of the Lightfoot Fund from the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge.