The Act of Uniformity of 1662 which restored the established Church of England with worship according to the revised Book of Common Prayer also had the effect of unchurching some 2000 ministers. Unable to conform to the stringent requirements of the Act, these were ‘ejected’ from their livings on what has subsequently been termed ‘Black Bartholomew’s Day’. This collection of nine essays (and a substantial historical introduction), edited by N.H. Keeble, originated in papers delivered at the Dr Williams’s Centre for Dissenting Studies in 2012, at a conference marking the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Act of Uniformity. The volume is broad in both geographical scope (Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, and New England are considered alongside England) and disciplinary approach (literary, theological, and historical perspectives are brought to bear), resulting in a rich and multi-vocal treatment of the events of 1662 and their consequences.
The editor’s excellent Introduction explores the events of 1660–62, and considers how the conciliatory tone of the Declaration of Breda and subsequent Worcester House Declaration gave way to the exclusive conditions of the 1662 Act. Setting the context for the rest of the book, Keeble argues that 1662 ultimately represented the failure of uniformity, establishing ‘diversity in the religious life of the nation’ (p. 28). In this regard, 1662 is presented as a decisive watershed in English religious and political history. Jacqueline Rose, in the first substantive essay of the volume, places this watershed moment in broader historical context: in a typically insightful and closely argued piece, Rose considers the debate over authority against the background of its Tudor and early Stuart antecedents. As with those earlier controversies, much of the debate in 1660–62 centred on the question of what should and should not be deemed adiaphora. High politics is likewise the focus of Paul Seaward’s contribution, which offers a subtle reading of Clarendon’s own political and religious position and motivations, and particularly of his understandings of compromise. As in Rose’s essay, questions of authority and the legitimacy of varied practice recur, especially when applied to the national church (pp. 80-81).
One of the most interesting aspects of this volume is the geographical breadth of its scope, and the fact that England is viewed within the perspective of British history. This is particularly important given the complex and intertwining histories of the Three Kingdoms in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. Robert Armstrong explores the course of religious restoration in Ireland, paying close attention to the challenge posed by Scottish Presbyterianism in Ireland. His essay offers a useful reminder of the chronological diversity of the Restoration: ‘If Ireland had a “1662”, he argues, then it occurred in 1661’ (p. 116). The crisis point occurred earlier, but the degree of fracture among Ireland’s Protestants was no less for the fact that there was not one single watershed date as there was in England. Relationships with Presbyterian politics are also central to Alasdair Raffe’s discussion of the restoration of the Scottish episcopacy, which he describes as ‘an enduring historical puzzle’ (p. 145). Again, the question of how to reconcile the ‘moderate and inclusive policy of 1660 with the narrow, divisive outcomes of 1662’ (ibid.) is addressed. Raffe offers a detailed historical analysis of the course of events in Scotland, leading to the conclusion that ‘[t]he re-establishment of Scottish episcopacy was the outcome of a multi-faceted attack on Presbyterian politics’ (p. 166). This signals helpfully the ways in which Restoration was complex, and driven by a variety of factors and considerations.
The following two essays broaden the geographical scope yet further, with Cory Cotter’s discussion of the English Reformed Church at Leiden, and then Owen Stanwood’s consideration of the consequences of the Restoration in New England. Cotter observes that ‘[f]ew attempts have been made to explore the intellectual geography of the Restoration diaspora’ (p. 174); his essay traces the richness of the resulting cultural and intellectual exchange, and particularly the significance of the University of Leiden, notably in the fields of medicine and scientific enquiry. If the factors which shaped Restoration were complex and varied, so too were its consequences. Stanwood’s essay traces a different set of connections and cultural exchanges – between Old and New England. Just as other essays considered England in the context of Britain, Stanwood suggests the Restoration is a good place to begin in rejecting ‘the idea of isolated New England communities, and [restoring] the region to its larger British and Atlantic context’ (p. 191).
The remaining three essays of the volume explore some very different reactions to the Restoration. Michael Davies considers John Bunyan’s 1662 work I Will Pray with the Spirit in the very particular and local context of the Bedford congregation’s ongoing debates from the 1650s. This is the one essay in the book where there is serious treatment of the controversial question of how the church should worship – an otherwise odd omission considering the importance of the prescribed Prayer Book liturgy in the Restoration Settlement. Finally, Keeble and Mark Burden study two contrasting ways of remembering the Restoration – Keeble through his discussion of the Nonconformist narrative of the Bartholomeans, and Burden with his study of John Walker’s Sufferings of the Clergy (which, Burden notes, is a remarkably neglected voice in the historiography of the period). As the final two essays in the volume, these represent very well the complexity of the events of 1660–62: that there were competing narratives of suffering, competing accounts of loyalty and betrayal, and of the limits of both conscience and moderation.
This is a wide-ranging volume, which does much more than simply ‘revisit’ 1662: rather, it opens up questions surrounding the Restoration in rich and varied ways, balancing both close textual reading with broad historical, geographical, and conceptual perspectives. In such a volume as this, there are always other topics that could have been included, but the strength of this collection is the way in which it visits 1662 from so many directions, before beginning to trace how it was that the Restoration constituted ‘the first step towards today’s pluralist and multicultural society’ (p. 28).
