This book is about the political and religious controversies that beset the small English city of Chichester between 1678 and 1685, which intersected with wider political turbulence at the heart of government and in the nation at large. This period of seventeenth-century English history has been overshadowed by the more dramatic events of the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution, but these years were marked by repeated political crises, assassination plots, religious persecution, and fears of a new civil war. Telling this story through the lives of the inhabitants of one city offers an intimate view of how these events played out in a particular locality.
As much a work of social history as it is of political history, this book has the lives of individual men and women at its core. The story that unfolds includes a strong cast of characters and has multiple points of high drama: it is the individuals and the events they were caught up in that propel the narrative forwards.
Factionalism and Dissent in an English City makes a significant contribution to the historiography of late Restoration England. Its plot-and character-driven narrative structure also makes the book accessible to a non-specialist reader who wants to find out what it might have been like to live through these challenging years.