ABSTRACT
Political sovereignty was a keenly-contested issue throughout the seventeenth century and then into the eighteenth, with English society experiencing two full-scale revolutions (the Civil War of 1640-49, and the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688-9), as well as several rebellions (the Monmouth, and the two Jacobite) over that period. Religious sectarianism was a critical factor in such political conflict, ensuring that sovereignty became an issue right down to the level of the personal. The nature of the relationship between the individual and authority (political and theological), and the very nature of the state itself, altered quite radically between 1640 and the Hanoverian succession, generating a wide range of responses from thinkers across the political spectrum.
