INTRODUCTION: UNSETTLING THE STATE IN THE ERA OF DANBY'S ANGLICAN POLITY

The future of the church establishment remained the most critical domestic issue confronting the Restoration regime in the 1670s. If the Conventicle Act of 1670 and the rejection of coercion by London dissenters left the church unsettled, the inability of Charles's governments to achieve religious accommodation thereafter left the state vulnerable to unsettlement as well. Recognizing this vulnerability, the ministry of the Cabal sponsored a royal indulgence for dissenters in 1672 that provoked both a parliamentary reaction and a strong parliamentary effort to find new grounds for Protestant accommodation. But parliament left the work of Protestant accommodation unfinished in 1673. Some historians have assumed that the Anglican settlement was impregnable in 1672–3, but urban dissenters and their parliamentary friends remained determined to free conscience from its cavalier shackles.

Unfortunately for these advocates of conscience, however, the dominant ministerial agenda of the 1670s was not the search for accommodation but rather a strengthening of the confessional exclusivity of the Restoration state. After the Cabal dissolved in 1673, the political dynamics of the early 1660s reappeared. Thomas Osborne, who was soon made Earl of Danby, emerged as the king's principal minister. The new lord treasurer and his associates encouraged another Anglican reaction, claiming that the Protestant establishment was imperiled by papists and sectarians alike. By the spring 1675 parliamentary session, the ministry was, however, more focused upon reviving the sectarian alarms of 1659–60 than upon any perceived Catholic threat.