This volume offers a variety of fresh and exciting perspectives on Royalist politics, religion and culture during the Interregnum. Between them, these essays are an important milestone in the recovery of the Royalist experience of the 1650s.

PrefaceList of abbreviationsList of illustrationsNotes on contributors1. Introduction: Rethinking Royalists and Royalism during the Interregnum, Jason McElligott and David L. Smith2. Episcopalian conformity and nonconformity, 1646-1660, Kenneth Fincham and Stephen Taylor3. Seditious speech and popular Royalism, Lloyd Bowen4. Artful Ambivalence? Picturing Charles I during the Interregnum, Helen Pierce5. ‘Vailing his Crown’: Royalist criticism of Charles I’s kingship in the 1650s, Anthony Milton6. Royalists in Exile: the experience of Daniel O’Neill, Geoffrey Smith7. Gender, Geography and Exile: Royalists and the Low Countries in the 1650s, Ann Hughes and Julie Sanders8. Dramatis Personae: Royalism, theatre and the political ontology of the person in post-regicide writing, James Loxley 9. Shakespeare for Royalists: John Quarles and The Rape of Lucrece (1655), Marcus Nevitt10. ‘The honour of this Nation’: William Dugdale and the history of St Paul’s (1658), Jan Broadway 11. Atlantic Royalism? Polemic, censorship and the ‘Declaration and Protestation of the Governour and Inhabitants of Virginia’, Jason McElligott12. The Earl of Southampton and the lessons of interregnum finance, D’Maris CoffmanIndex

What was it like to live under the English Republic and, later, Cromwell’s Protectorate, if one supported the defeated Stuarts and yearned for the day when Charles II would once again set foot in England? This book tells the story of the traumatic decade of the 1650s (or, ‘the Interregnum’, from the Latin meaning ‘between the reign of the kings’) from the vantage point of those who lost the Civil Wars. It describes how these men and women negotiated the difficult choices they faced: to compromise, collaborate, or resist.It brings together essays by established and emerging historians and literary scholars in Britain, Europe, the United States and Australia. The essays sketch the difficulties, complexities, and nuances of the Royalist experience during the Commonwealth and Protectorate, looking at women, religion, print-culture, literature, the politics of exile, and the nature and extent of royalist networks in England.