Remembering the Reformation. Historical polemic and political behavior in late Stuart England

Christopher Ross Petrakos, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation examines the significance of Protestant Reformation history to late Stuart politics and political culture, 1678–1714. From the Exclusion Crisis to the Hanoverian succession, Protestant Reformation history informed political debate and shaped the attitudes and assumptions of political actors. The late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century struggle over the "popish successor" and the concomitant fears over "Popery and Arbitrary government" forced English parliamentarians and polemicists to examine their sixteenth-century past for solutions to their contemporary crisis. This dissertation argues that histories of the Protestant Reformation were not simply arcane and irrelevant academic exercises that had little significance for English politics but rather were central to the debate of the highest importance to English subjects living at the time. What is the role of Parliament in determining the succession? How far does political obligation extend to the state? Is Parliament a sovereign body capable of making laws that constrain the succession of the monarchy? In looking back to the sixteenth-century past, English politicians and writers interpreted sixteenth century history as a way to legitimize new ways of thinking about the state and justify political resistance.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Zook, Purdue University.

Subject Area

European history

COinS