This thesis examines the ways that English royalists negotiated the challenges of defeat in the Interregnum. It explores how royalists living in England accommodated to the demands imposed by successive Interregnum governments, how far and in what ways they were able to maintain their loyalty to the Stuarts, and how they responded to the practicalities of living with a proscribed political identity. It reassesses existing views of defeated royalists and their experiences during this time, and offers significant evidence to prove that many of these long-established understandings have been based on preconceived notions about forms of royalist behaviour which are the product of misleading bifurcations in the ways royalism has been traditionally defined. Using both traditional historical sources as well as literary materials, this thesis reveals that much can be gained from comparing the different ways that royalists represented themselves both privately and publically, and to different audiences. It offers essential re-examinations of a series of prominent royalist experiences that have either received limited study or distorted analysis, including oath-taking in defeat, the process of compounding for sequestered estates, the interpretation of royalist 'retirement', and the ways that royalists fostered politicised connections using correspondence and the assistance of intermediaries. In all, it documents a series of hitherto unrecognised strategies that English royalists employed to accept degrees of partial reintegration with Interregnum governance, which simultaneously protected their royalist identity and reputation. By revealing the ways that royalists achieved this, both in the approaches they took, and the level of success that they found, this thesis adds significantly to current understandings of Interregnum royalism and the contours of post-Civil War reintegration.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:754210 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Rudge, Robert John |
| Publisher | University of Nottingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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