Chapter 1 chronicles how the distractibility of a king, the agency of objects, the desires that cloud judgment, and the memories that haunt the present shape events perhaps even more than ideology. Prior to the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the Duke of Newcastle proposed returning to a Caroline-style theatrical marketplace, but he was outmaneuvered by courtier-playwrights long accustomed to deploying networks of access. Contingency also determined outcomes. The particular circumstances of Charles II’s upbringing certainly benefited William Davenant and Thomas Killigrew, the two successful patentees. Unlike his royal predecessors, the new monarch regarded the commercial theatre as a gift to be bestowed upon persistent clients who would enjoy monopolistic control going forward. No one foresaw, of course, the economic repercussions of that gift, namely, how the transformation of the theatre from a purely commercial to a hybrid enterprise would require substantial support beyond the box office. Additionally, the duopoly so sought by Killigrew and Davenant exerted its own unexpected agencies. As the following chapters explore, its resulting economic and cultural logic galvanized a host of decisions about repertories and performance practices that would prove both innovative and ruinous.

The execution of Charles I in 1649 risked emptying the British monarchy of its magical power, yet the republic that succeeded that event witnessed a flowering of popular interest in magic as government press censorship broke down in the 1650s. Magical ideas inspired several radical religious and political figures of the Interregnum, including many who advocated the return of the Jews to England. This would result in the informal re-establishment of a Jewish community in London in 1656, a hugely significant event that marked the beginnings of tolerance of non-Christian faiths in Britain. Restored to the throne in 1660, Charles II was perhaps more eager than any previous monarch to revive the magic of monarchy, and turned the ancient ceremony of touching for the king’s evil into a major effort to project royal power as magical, as well as reviving royal patronage of astrologers and alchemists. The crises associated with the Catholic James II’s accession to the throne and his overthrow in 1688 produced numerous rumours of the political use of magic. However, it was William and Mary who became the last British monarchs to receive counsel from a practising magician, the Whig politician Goodwin Wharton, who attempted unsuccessfully to reclaim the role of John Dee in the late seventeenth century. However, the excessive use of political accusations of magic during the Civil War ensured that discourse of this kind had become associated with instability and chaos, prompting many to see the decline of witchcraft (whether real or manufactured by an adjustment of judicial policy) as a sign of God’s approval for the restored Stuart monarchy and, later, the Revolution settlement. The political drift towards disparaging rather than embracing allegations of harmful magic prepared the way for the eventual decriminalisation of magic in the eighteenth century.

In The Second Treatise of Government, John Locke seems to support what Quentin Skinner identified as the neo-Roman theory of liberty. That is to say, according to Locke, in order to be free, it is not sufficient to be free from constraint or coercion. It also necessary for you to be free of dependency on the will of another person. The sheer fact of absolute monarchy, of ruling by will rather than law, constitutes an act of war, and the people have the right to take up arms against it. However – and here his story becomes strange – Locke also defends prerogative power. That is, he defends the right of the magistrate to exercise their will over and above the rule of law. This chapter will explore this apparent contradiction and try to make sense of it in Locke’s terms. It will conclude that Locke points to an irresolvable tension between the will and the good, and that while the languages of political thought cannot be historically disentangled, they can have distinct and rich philosophical lives.

Chapter 9 explores the period 1649-53 as a time when all religious groups were forced to rethink the Church of England and to contemplate significant changes to their religious lives. Beginning with the radical reform programmes of 1649-53, it argues that many of these reforms (such as attacks on lay impropriations and tithes) had been prefigured in pre-war debates or could command more mainstream support, and can be studied in continuity with earlier reforming initiatives rather than as a radical break with the past. The stymieing of the 1640s Presbyterian settlement, and the political troubles of presbyterian royalists, are examined. The chapter discusses the practical and ideological problems that both Presbyterians and episcopalian royalists faced over how far they should adapt their customary forms of worship and administration of communion in the face of the new settlement, and documents their failure to create agreed positions on conformity. The chapter also outlines the negotiations conducted by Charles II and his ministers with the Scottish Covenanters, delineating not a simple capitulation but a series of negotiations involving foreign divines, where forms of reduced episcopacy were still being discussed, but ending with an alliance which drove episcopalian royalists to question the royal supremacy.

Chapter 17 deals with the continuing development of the doctrine of justification in England during the reigns of Charles I and Charles II, as seen in the writings of the leading Anglican thinkers generally referred to as ‘the Caroline Divines’. Although Protestant approaches to justification stressed that this was to be seen as a graceful transformation effected by God, the English social and cultural context led to emphasis being placed on the link between justification and appropriate moral behaviour. Many later Caroline divines interpreted justification in an Augustinian sense as a ‘making righteous’, and hence as securing a theological framework for moral propriety. It is possible that the new directions within the Anglican theology of justification may have arisen as a conscious reaction against the Puritanism of the Westminster divines, which became the position of the Puritan religious establishment following the execution of Charles I, and the establishment of the Puritan commonwealth.