Catholicism and Revolution in the British World, 1630-1673

FAIN: FT-286382-22

Christopher Piers Gillett
University of Scranton (Scranton, PA 18510-2429)

Research and writing leading to a book examining the influence of Catholics on liberty of conscience during the seventeenth century.

Scholars often describe liberty of conscience as an enduring legacy of the revolutionary upheavals in the mid-seventeenth-century British world, situating its emergence in a puritan context. My book, Catholicism and Revolution in the British World, 1630–1673, expands our understanding of these developments, by arguing that Catholics of various ethnicities residing in the British world — British, Irish, European, indigenous American, and Kongolese — contributed to these debates. Utilizing new archival evidence, I examine how Catholics used both colonial experimentation and revisions of the explicitly anti-papal Oath of Allegiance to try to secure liberty of conscience. But I also analyze how these projects had the unintended consequence of inspiring a competing revolutionary program — one that viewed Catholic toleration as a serious threat. My work reveals how global Catholicism informed political discourse that have been understood as quintessentially English and Protestant.