The universality of discipline: restoration of the English episcopacy 1660-1688

Abstract

This paper interprets an under-explored aspect of seventeenth-century English episcopal thought, in which the degradation and violence members of the episcopate experienced in the Civil Wars provided the substance of later arguments for episcopal power. During the Restoration elements of the Church of England embarked upon a set of policies which scholars have since characterised as 'High Tory' and as intending the rigorous persecution of dissent; but these policies were accompanied by episcopally-authored tracts showing how bishops themselves had suffered. Systematic reading of tracts and sermons by and about bishops, especially consecration sermons, permit insights to the episcopate’s self-conception during the Restoration and reveals a body of clergy set upon persecution also insisting on its own persecution.