ABSTRACT
W. K. Jordan's assessment fits neatly with a popular image of the Restoration as the era of the Royal Society, the Merrie Monarch, the Commercial Revolution and bawdy theatre. In May 1661, when the Cavalier Parliament assembled, hardline Anglicans were in the ascendancy, and during the months that followed, these conservatives set about 'framing their measures to extirpate Puritanism'. The Cavalier Parliament's laws against Dissent became known in the nineteenth century as the Clarendon Code. Persecution also varied considerably depending on the attitudes of local officials. Craig Horle has argued that even the persecution of the Quakers was 'sporadic and capricious'. Ashley Cooper and Locke were trying to fashion a society which would stand as a rebuke to England and offer an alternative model for its future. Between 1678 and 1681, at the height of the 'Popish Plot' scare and the Exclusion Crisis, Catholic priests were subjected to persecution as savage as that of the 1580s or the 1640s.
