POLICY AND POWER: IDEAS, POLICYMAKING AND PRACTICE IN 1670S ENGLAND

Abstract

This thesis is about how and why Restoration-period political culture changed in England in the run up to the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament in March 1681. It argues that it was the tension between Charles II’s desire and attempts to rule personally and his opponents’ desire and attempts to prevent him from doing so, which drove politics and change during the 1670s. It suggests that while people in the Restoration period were concerned with developing, representing and debating issues, ideas and identities, that intellectual process was only one part of political culture. The other was a much broader practical concern with how those ideas could be turned into reality through policymaking and practice. This thesis aims to explore these more practical concerns and to show that it was the contest for the power to turn ideas into policy and then to turn that policy into practice which proved decisive in the gradual breakdown of relations between the king and his opponents throughout the 1670s and in the final dissolution of parliament in 1681. In order to explore this other practical side of political culture, which has not yet received a great deal of scholarly attention, the thesis will draw upon methods and source material outside of those traditionally used by political historians and in doing so will try to make a meaningful contribution to an emerging historiographical trend, perhaps best described as the ‘process turn’.