Restoration Politics, Religion and Culture, by George Southcombe and Grant Tapsell

This is a delightful book. Deriving from lectures which the authors delivered in Oxford, it is structured as a series of interpretative essays which address key questions in the political, religious and cultural history of the period—what the Restoration solved, why the Dissenters were a problem, what was at stake in the Exclusion Crisis, the relative successes and failings of Charles II and James VII and II as royal politicians, the ‘British’ dimension, politics out-of-doors, Restoration culture, and change and continuity in the post-Revolutionary world. Drawing on their wide-ranging knowledge of the existing secondary literature and deep familiarity with the primary sources (printed and manuscript, literary and pictorial), George Southcombe and Grant Tapsell aim both to help newcomers navigate the terrain and to make their own scholarly contribution to existing debates. Erudite and engaged, the book is nevertheless written with a light touch and considerable wit. The fact that Charles touched 100,000 sufferers for the king's evil during his reign, they observe at one point, not only demonstrates ‘the way in which Charles was happy to manipulate his sacred role for political ends’, but also makes us ‘wonder about just how much scrofula there was in England at this point’ (pp. 62–3)—a remark that typifies the wry humour which pervades this study.

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