Throughout the twentieth century, the wish to explain the English civil wars skewed historical writing about the Stuart monarchy. While the decades leading to the 1640s were scrutinized minutely, those after 1660 attracted mainly orthodox surveys. The latter were assured and illuminating, and could range far beyond conventional high politics. The turmoil between 1678 and 1681 has gradually excited the interest of accomplished investigators. Also, James VII and II's reign began to be interpreted as a possible bid for absolutism on the continental model. Yet, it is only recently that the later period has been approached with the intensity of the earlier one. Localities, notably London, but also Norwich, Bristol, Great Yarmouth, and the generality of municipal boroughs, have been analysed closely. Furthermore, the historiographical trend that turned the upheavals of the 1640s into the War of the Three Kingdoms has now engulfed Charles II's and James II's reigns. In addition, awareness of the stimulating and sometimes subversive effects of print has encompassed the controversies over the Popish Plot and Exclusion. These contests have been linked with episodes of popular political activity and with the supposed development of a public sphere. Above all, continuities with the controversies in earlier decades of the century have been emphasized together with the scars left by civil war, regicide, and the interregnum.
All these factors are incorporated into Grant Tapsell's measured reconsideration of the final four years of Charles II's reign. Tapsell's principal explanatory tool is partisanship. It arose from unresolved problems over the functions and functioning of monarch, council, parliament, the law courts, local agencies, and the churches. All were complicated by the experience of war and a republic. These recent events were remembered affectionately by some, but with detestation by more. Tapsell argues that hectic political activity continued notwithstanding the absence of a parliament after 1681. On the basis of a formidable body of documentation found in local archives across Britain and Ireland, he details communities increasingly polarized around Tories and Whigs. The middle ground occupied by trimmers or politiques, striving for reconciliation, shrank, largely as a result of the Whigs' extravagance over the Popish Plot and Exclusion. The immediate result was to benefit the Tories and facilitate Charles's personal rule.
As he piles up voluminous evidence from across the three kingdoms, Tapsell often implies a virtually homogeneous political culture in England and Wales. Certainly he is sensitive to the distinctiveness of Scotland and Ireland, but identifies forces that drew them into English – or Britannic – political culture and controversies. The lengthening reach of the press and propaganda, the preaching and teaching of the several religious denominations and memories of fighting, revolution, and exile could all overcome local traditions and idiosyncrasies. Yet, in allowing that there were reasons why Ireland and Scotland resisted this homogenization, Grant Tapsell raises the suspicion that a more confused patchwork of localism survived in Wales and England.
How far this swing towards an ideological loyalism, rooted in divine right and non-resistance theories, flourished in and was promoted by those courtiers ensconced around the king himself, or perhaps more importantly, by the officials in the queen's and York's entourages might merit more attention. Those seeking to construct the ideological foundations and administrative superstructures for a Stuart autarky constituted a group in which differences in confession or geographical origin mattered less than their shared outlook. In turn, the existence of such a group generated understandable apprehensions among those wishing to limit royal power. Sometimes it would be helpful to have these groupings brought into a sharper focus, in order then to explain their effect on the provincial polarities which Tapsell describes so fully. Nor, despite acknowledgement of the popularity in some quarters of Monmouth, is the group of his intimates described. Also, in sustaining the Whigs, the attractions of William of Orange and his wife and service in the United Provinces might yield valuable clues.
The author, while keen to adopt a three-kingdoms perspective, offers an oddly insular view. Ireland, whatever superficial assimilation to English habits may have occurred, remained an overwhelmingly Catholic country. The confessional composition need not have hampered Stuart ambitions. Indeed, the revival of Old English loyalism was thought to favour moves towards absolutism and consequently alarmed constitutionalists and fervent Protestants. Catholics – not just in Ireland – belonged to a larger European world, in which some sought temporary refuge during the furore raised by the Popish Plot. Moreover, the apparent confidence of the Catholics worried Protestants throughout the Stuarts' monarchies. It reminded Protestants of their vulnerability at a time when their co-religionists were in retreat elsewhere. Soon Huguenots would stream into England and Ireland. In particular, Ireland was a source of acute anxieties. Tapsell uses Sir William Petty's observation that the Catholic elite constituted ‘the internal and mystical government of Ireland’. Even allowing for the edginess of the Protestant minority in Ireland, the insight helps to explain why the Catholics moved so smoothly back into control of government, army, and localities during James's reign. However, the structures and dynamics of this government in waiting remain shadowy. The pivotal role of Richard Talbot, with his intermittent access to York and the English court, is appreciated, even if much of the detail has to be inferred. Less explored is the significance of figures like Sir Richard Bellings, a Catholic Old Englishman from the Pale of Ireland, raised in the cosmopolitan culture of the Stuart exiles during the 1650s and then major-domo of Catherine of Braganza's household. Moreover, Irish Catholic priests staffed the consort's court.
Undoubtedly Tapsell has supplied the most thorough account of the last phase of Charles II's reign. His very thoroughness prompts reflections of what still remains hazy, either through poor documentation or lack of scholarly interest. The 1680s, notwithstanding this heroic endeavour, still contain many unexplored tracts.
