ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on Royalists in general, and one Royalist in particular, Thomas Fuller. It explains how retrospective historical accounts of the 1640s from the Royalist perspective maps on to the understanding of the English Revolution as a religious war. The chapter does not assert any general claim about the nature of the English Revolution, an event that was in any case too multifaceted to be encapsulated by any single label. It is possible in broader perspective to understand the English Revolution as contributing both positively and negatively to the formation of an early Enlightenment ideology characterised by a commitment to ending wars of religion. The chapter discusses how the war of religion hypothesis help the people to understand the patterns of Civil War polemic, in particular the pattern of Royalist polemic.