ABSTRACT
Gilbert Burnet, historian, polemicist and, following the Revolution of 1688-89, Bishop of Salisbury, sought to influence the way English Church and society thought about itself. He aimed to do this not least through his History of the Reformation of the Church of England, published in three volumes, in 1679, 1681 and 1715. Burnet’s claim (made in the ‘Preface’ to the first volume) that his work was an impartial defence of the Church of England has not been sufficiently questioned. More specifically, Burnet’s work has been portrayed as characteristic of a consensual Anglicanism, united against Dissent and popery, which thrived in the Restoration era, but which was disrupted by the upheavals of the Revolution of 1688-89. An examination of Burnet’s endeavours in the context of the religious and political strife of the late 1670s and early 1680s suggests that this assessment should be questioned. In particular, the notion that the Church of England was united against popery does not take sufficient account of the semantic ambiguity which such a word or idea could bear in this period. A reappraisal of the content and reception of Burnet’s work which is sensitive to this linguistic scheming has implications for an understanding of the character of Church and society in England during the tumultuous last quarter of the seventeenth century.1
