In the reign of Charles II, over a century after the Protestant Reformation, England was faced with the prospect of a Catholic king when the King's brother, the future James II became a Catholic. The reaction to his conversion, the fears it aroused and their background form the main theme of this book.

Dr Bliss's pamphlet discusses in detail the Restoration settlement as both an expedient solution to the problems facing Charles II and the political nation in 1660 and as a basis for a long term solution to the problems of relations between crown and parliament, public, finance and religion. These are the principle recurring themes of this, but explicit attention is also given to foreign policy, to relations between central and local government, and to the structure of central government itself. The book combines a broadly narrative approach with concentration on certain problems, e.g. finance, which the author has identified as particularly significant.

In the reign of Charles II, over a century after the Protestant Reformation, England was faced with the prospect of a Catholic king when the King's brother, the future James II became a Catholic. The reaction to his conversion, the fears it aroused and their background form the main theme of this book.

What did people in Restoration England think the correct relationship between church state should be? And how did this thinking evolve? Based on the author's published essays, revised and updated with a new overarching introduction, this book explores the debates in Restoration England about "godly rule". The book assesses some of the crucial transitions in English history: how the late Reformation gave way to the early Enlightenment; how Royalism became Toryism and Puritanism became Whiggism; how the power of churchmen was challenged by virulent anticlericalism; how the verities of "divine right" theory revived and collapsed. Providing a distinctive account of English thought in the era between the two revolutions of the Stuart century, "Contesting the English Polity, 1660-1688" discusses the ideological foundations of emerging party politics, and the deep intellectual roots of competing visions for the commonwealth, placing the power of religion, and the taming of religion, squarely alongside constitutional battles within secular politics.

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.