The history of religious dissent in early modern England is experiencing something of a ‘moment’, albeit on a modest scale. In the past two years, there have been several significant monographs and collections on this subject, including Michael Davies, Anne Dunan-Page and Joel Halcomb (eds), Church life: pastors, congregations, and the experience of Dissent in seventeenth-century England (Oxford 2019), Naomi Pullin's Female friends and the making of transatlantic Quakerism, 1650–1750 (Cambridge 2018) and, for a slightly later period, Isabel Rivers's Vanity fair and the celestial city: dissenting, Methodist and Evangelical literary culture in England, 1720–1800 (Oxford 2018). Alongside these works, the ongoing publication of the five-volume Oxford history of dissenting traditions (Oxford 2017–20) is demonstrating the importance of Dissent for histories from the Reformation onwards. Southcombe's work provides a valuable contribution to this expanding field.

The book is organised into four main chapters, each of them based on an analysis of the literary output of one or two little-studied dissenting ministers. Chapter i examines the work of the Presbyterian minister Robert Wild, chapter ii focuses on the Baptist Thomas Grantham, chapter iii on the Quaker John Whitehead and chapter iv on the Fifth Monarchist Vavasor Powell and the Particular Baptist Benjamin Keach. There is therefore an admirable coverage of a range of nonconforming perspectives (although the chapter on Wild is notably more extensive than the others), with some interesting comparisons between them. The politically radical Vavasor Powell, for instance, might not seem the most obvious bedfellow for Benjamin Keach, famous for his hymns and educational tracts. Nevertheless, as Southcombe shows, parallels in their balance of pastoral and political roles throw into relief how ‘the different roles that could be played by dissenters helps to explain the different attitudes that could be held towards them’ (p.162). Southcombe admits that a number of these men would have been ‘pretty horrified’ by being written about in the same book, but hopes that by studying them in detail he has ‘given them back their voices’ (p. 165).

In the vein of other recent histories of Dissent, however, this book's purpose is far from narrow or hagiographic. In fact, it puts forward several key points relevant not just to understanding nonconformity, but also to the broader religious and political history of the period concerned. The book emphasises, for instance, that challenges to the emerging Tory-Anglican position posed by Dissenters’ use of print were critical to the development of party politics in this period. It furthermore maps in detail the changing experiences of Dissent over the Restoration period in close relation to the contours of contemporary religious and political debate.

The book also makes a wider point about the nature of religious identity in Restoration England. Citing work that has stressed the mutability of religious identity, Southcombe argues that too much attention to the fluidity of religious labels and loyalties in this period ‘can obscure from our view the cores of religious identity that remained non-negotiable’ (p. 78). Quite reasonably, he points out that evidence of dialogues, partnerships and even friendships between Church and Dissent after the Restoration should not be mistaken as a sign of blurred religious identity. Rather, such relationships were founded on shared Christian principles of love for one's neighbour. The idea that ‘neighbourliness’ played an important role in mediating interpersonal relations among competing religious groups is not new – it has long been at the heart of studies of early modern interconfessional relations. Nevertheless, Southcombe places a very useful emphasis on the degree to which charity and neighbourliness allowed dissenters to sustain reasonably uncompromising political positions that matched distinctly inflexible religious stances. It might be suggested, however, that such inflexibility in religious identity would in fact be expected, given the ministerial professions of the historical actors that lie at the heart of Southcombe's work; it would be interesting to know whether he sees this perspective as equally applicable to the laity.

One particularly refreshing aspect of Southcombe's approach is his exploration of a range of literary genres through which his subjects expressed their religious and political positions. This included printed letters and sermons, but also satire and poetry. The result is a picture of nonconformity that deviates somewhat from stereotypes of sober ‘Puritanism’ constructed both by contemporary opponents of dissenters and by denominational histories. Robert Wild's poetry, for instance, included biting satire on his conforming opponents and a comic but distinctly partisan rewrite of a sermon by fellow Presbyterian Edmund Calamy (pp. 39–41). His verse also contained a smattering of potty humour. As Southcombe highlights, Wild was a ‘fat and jolly man’, nothing like the image of serious nonconformity constructed through later histories (pp. 74–5). Wild, the ‘Presbyterian's poet’ (p. 46), was evidently not alone in his willingness to laugh in the face of adversity. Baptists could, it seems, also chuckle: Thomas Grantham chose comic verse to demonstrate the futility of the Prayer Book service and the hypocrisy of Anglican anti-popery (pp. 84–5). By drawing researchers’ attention to these less-discussed dimensions of the literary culture of dissent, Southcombe effectively supports his broader point that these men were not ‘defeated survivors of a more radical age’ but rather ‘active agents in the political and religious controversies of Restoration England’ (p. 3).

This is a monograph which, despite its ostensibly narrow focus on the writings of five men, makes a helpful intervention into the history of Restoration England. Southcombe demonstrates convincingly that dissenters of all stripes were an active force in shaping contemporary religious and political culture, and that the varied contributions that they made must be an important consideration for historians of this period.