Queen Elizabeth made Preston's governors “one body corporate and political.” Nearly a century later, the divided body struggled to heal itself after two decades of repeated political woundings. The worst strife came in the year or so after the King's return to his kingdom in 1660. Two groups within the corporation competed for local control, each directing at the other the most damaging charges they could contrive. The “honest party” momentarily gained the upper hand and then attempted to restore unity the only way they knew how: they purged their foes. Next, to prevent further dissensions and to tighten their grip on power, those remaining in the corporation made rules.

Following this opening blast against political schism came a detailed code of behavior, made to prevent these “mischiefs and evils.” For they were evils: “party” divided the social body created by God and the corporate body created by the monarch. If heresy were a crime against the lord in heaven, then party was a crime against the lord at Whitehall. Partisanship was the political kin of religious sectarian identity in an age in which such identity meant social and political exclusion as well as damnation.