When Did the Restoration End?

Abstract

Once upon a time, we knew when the Restoration ended—in 1688, when the ‘Glorious’ Revolution swept away the revanchist phase of the later Stuart monarchy in an epochal moment of emancipation and enlightenment—but now that ‘Whig history’ is bunk we’re not so sure. 1667, 1681, 1685, 1700, 1714, and 1746 have all been proposed as alternatives to 1688 in recent scholarship. Weighing their rival claims, this chapter argues that our present uncertainties in this area have their roots in the volatile periodicity of the Restoration itself, an age born out of assertions of closure (with the republican past) but whose signature cultural practices and products evince a deeply problematic sense of ending. If the question ‘When did the Restoration end?’ cannot be definitively answered, it is a question anyone interested in the period needs to go on asking.