INTRODUCTION: THE CITY WITHOUT PARLIAMENT, 1681–1682

The Oxford Parliament was over on 28 March 1681, but the Restoration Crisis was not. Too many historical accounts have depicted Oxford as a climax to the crisis in which the opposition was decisively out-maneuvred by the crown. Still other writers have moved quickly from Oxford to the Whig conspiracies of 1682–3, leaping over the evidence for a party confrontation in London and elsewhere in 1681–2. In fact, however, the parliamentary opponents of a Catholic succession were even more determined after Oxford to ensure a Protestant succession and to promote a church resettlement for the benefit of Reformed Protestants. For their part, Charles II and Anglican royalists resolved, after Oxford, to resecure the existing settlement in church and state by all means necessary. The result of these political positions was an eighteen-month extra-parliamentary confrontation between the crown and loyalists, on the one hand, and the opposition, on the other. Contemporaries did not prejudge the outcome of this confrontation, and historians need to be more faithful in capturing the political uncertainty of 1681–2.

John Dryden and other loyalist authors drew attention to the king's newfound resolution when they proclaimed the beginning of a “second restoration” after Oxford. Rhetorical strategies employed by the crown and by loyalists in 1681–2 to redirect public opinion have been the subject of recent study.