This volume of twelve essays, selected from papers read at a conference at Cambridge University in July 2003 and edited by Jason McElligott, celebrates the publication of the edited text of the “Entring Book, Being an Historical Register of Occurrences from April, Anno 1677 to April 1691,” compiled by Roger Morrice (1628–1702), a London Dissenter and Whig sympathizer. In this user-friendly edition, the “Entring Book” is a long overdue gift to scholars of late seventeenth-century England. It is a gold mine of notes, news, and reflections on the political, religious, cultural, and social events, as well as on individuals, during fourteen critically important years. The numerous passages in shorthand, long a stumbling block for readers, were transcribed by Frances Henderson. Superbly edited by a team of historians headed by Mark Goldie, the “Entring Book” is well worth celebrating.

Fear, Exclusion and Revolution does just that. Prefaced by McElligott's able introduction surveying the international and domestic context of the 1680s, the essays, written variously by well-established scholars and promising younger researchers, treat diverse topics, which can be organized loosely under three overlapping categories. Four essays deal mostly with religious issues. Gary De Krey, the master of London's history in this period, charts the changing attitude of Dissenters toward King James II's offer of toleration. In 1687, more of them than is usually credited were willing to cooperate with the king but changed their minds in 1688 in the face of James's efforts to repeal the Test Act and moved to the Anglican fold. Robin Gwynn focuses on the Huguenot refugees who fled France in the wake of Louis XIV's brutal persecution, bringing with them religious practices and painful memories. Using the “Entring Book” more than does any other contributor, Gwynn argues that their presence and their memories reinforced English people's fear of Catholicism and France and their anxiety over what a Catholic king on their throne would mean. Clare Haynes examines religious imagery as exemplified in a statue of St. Michael in All Hallows Church in London, thereby highlighting the power of images to divide a congregation as late as 1681. Arguments in the press enlarged and spread disagreements over whether images were idolatrous or ornamental, and also further reinforced divisions within the Church of England. Andrew Starkie reinterprets the nature and purpose of Gilbert Burnet's History of the Reformation of the Church of England. Arguing that the History was an answer to Peter Heylyn's Ecclesia Restaurata, not, as Burnet himself disingenuously claimed, to a Roman Catholic treatise, Starkie insists that the History was essentially a propaganda instrument aimed at promoting the authority of latitudinarian divines within the Church of England, influencing royal church policy, and supporting Exclusionist aims.

Three essays focus on the political dimensions of the decade. Charles-Edouard Levillain examines the fear that gripped London in December 1688, when the City faced both the imaginary Irish Fright and the real presence of Dutch troops. Levillain argues that rumor, memories of the Civil War, the stories of cruelty visited on French Huguenots, events in France, and the effectiveness of anti-Stuart propaganda fueled the fear of an Irish massacre. But William of Orange's skill in handling London sensitivities, controlling his soldiers, presenting his army as a force of liberation, not occupation, and restoring order to the City allayed anxieties. Levillain might have noted that the City government under the guidance of Sir George Treby significantly helped to that end, and that the counterefforts of James II's propaganda machine were important, but to no avail. Newton Key suggests a new descriptor for the years prior to the Rye House Plot—“the Association Crisis”—this, to contest the views of Jonathan Scott and J. R. Jones regarding Exclusion. According to Key, Exclusion “redefined English politics between 1678 and 1683” (157). In support of this assertion, he identifies the “Hedge-Lane Lords” (Hedge Lane was the Duke of Monmouth's address) and links them with the Protestant Oath of Association and partisan feasting in London, which he minutely records. This essay is tightly packed with information and interpretation, but the overarching thesis is persuasive. Melinda Zook adds another dimension to Restoration studies of both politics and women's history by discussing a “gang” of Whig women known as “nursing mothers” who actively supported Whig radicals in England and the Netherlands. Spotlighting Elizabeth Gaunt, who was burned alive at the stake for harboring a known traitor, Zook shows that far from being just pious charity workers, as Burnet, Morrice, and later historians would have it, Gaunt and other women were engaged in political actions that “amounted to sedition, rebellion and treason” (203). The government recognized that and treated them accordingly.

Various aspects of the press take center stage in the remaining five articles. Geoff Kemp dissects the role of Sir Roger L’Estrange, the Stuart kings’ censor and propagandist, and argues that his career was contradictory: he inflated the sphere of public discussion by his enormous output but then deflated it by warning of the leveling consequences of public printed discussion. Testing Jürgen Habermas's concept of the public sphere, Kemp concludes that it cannot be applied to the years before the Revolution of 1688–89. Kate Loveman examines popular “rogue narratives” in the Exclusion Crisis, looking closely at the anonymous biographies of the Popish Plot informers William Bedloe and Thomas Dangerfield. Mixing serious accounts of admirable behavior with outlandish stories of crimes and tricks committed by these men and sensational tales of how they uncovered the Popish Plot and helped save England, these bizarre biographies challenged the reader to separate truth from fiction in deciding whether to believe and praise Bedloe and Dangerfield for their services or dismiss them as crooks. These fictive accounts, with their coarse humor and ambivalence, had a political purpose exploited by both parties, Tories more than Whigs. Michael Mendle, dubbing shorthand the “information technology of the seventeenth century” (125), deals with its development, major practitioners, limitations, and contributions. He identifies Robert Blaney as the most skilled stenographer of the period. Focusing on the “prints,” the accounts of the proceedings of the great treason trials taken down in shorthand and therefore generally accepted as accurate, Mendle shows that they served as the basis for the later State Trials, which so many historians have used with confidence. David Wykes draws attention to Dissenters’ interest in antiquarianism and history writing. Concentrating on Ralph Thoresby, Wykes meticulously unfolds the development of Thoresby's interest, and methods used, in writing history. Although granting the influence of his father's collection of coins and medals, the encouragement of Dr. Nathaniel Johnston, and the sermons of the Reverend Thomas Sharp in developing Thoresby's interest in antiquarianism and history writing, Wykes believes that the most important thing was religion—to recover and recount God's providence. Mark Knights shows how news writers collected and interpreted the news and identified false news. He discerns a shift in making such judgments from conscience (with its religious and moral implications) to “interest” (meaning secular self-interest and self-serving concerns). Morrice drew upon “interest” more than conscience, thereby exposing the selfish motivations of his enemies, as exampled in his view of the “Hierarchists.” Knights suggests that the “Entring Book” provides a case study in the emergence and operation of self-interest.

This collection of wide-ranging essays effectively brings fresh questions and perspectives to understanding the decade of the 1680s. It will be of value to graduate students as well as their mentors, and to others interested in innovative approaches to Restoration England.