ABSTRACT
Explaining the French Revolution was as much of a challenge to contemporaries as it has been to historians subsequently. Edmund Burke's discovery of a plot against Christianity and monarchy, actual in France, latent in England, was not original to him, but appropriated many of the politico-theological commonplaces of contemporary Anglican controversialists. His diagnostic and rhetorical revelation will only be adequately contextualised once Anglican anticipations of the 1790s obsession with the conspiratorial origins of the French Revolution are properly charted. Burke found it impossible to understand the genesis of the French Revolution except in terms of successful conspiracy and plotting by alienated groups. From his correspondence and his reading, Burke was quite aware that both noble and non-noble French politicians believed in the existence of plots in 1789 and 1790 to bring about the Revolution in the first place or, subsequendy, to destroy it and return to something approximating to the monarchical status quo ante.
