433 9.1 Restoration, Revolution and the English Enlightenment

The History of England

David Crowther

Royal, Queen, Europe, Modern, Parliament, History, Monarchy, Early Modern, Medieval, English, England, King, Politics

4.8 • 5.9K Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this first episode of Series 9, a a chance to talk about some of the themes which will drive our period of 1660 to 1715. The continuing role of religion in politics, the Rage of Parties, the varying fortunes and influences of the Three Kingdoms, the growing involvement of Britain in European conflict. But most of all a growing transformation of society, the age of improvement, the 'crucible of modernity' - the English Enlightenment.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello everyone and welcome back to the history of England, episode 433, Restoration Revolution and the English Enlightenment.
0:30.3	This episode is not just the next one in line, it is the first in a new series.
0:35.7	Welcome to series nine, which will cover the period
0:38.6	from 1660 to 1714. I had to give this a name, a title, and thinking of snappy, energising and
0:46.5	illuminating titles has never been a personal strength. As a commissioning editor back in the dim
0:52.1	and distant, I published a book called Integral Logistics Structures,
0:55.9	the meaning of which is still hidden from me, and I had been mulling it over for 40 years.
1:01.1	There are so many constraints for titles.
1:03.3	So, I throw it open for discussion on the Facebook group, which is very helpful indeed,
1:07.8	and I have gone for restoration, revolution and enlightenment,
1:12.1	which is a little bit long, and not what many people voted for, sorry about that,
1:15.6	but look, I have prejudices and bigoters which need to be oiled, watered and nourished.
1:22.9	So that's what I've chosen.
1:25.3	So today's episode will mainly be a scene setter and I'm going to do
1:29.9	three things. Firstly, I'm going to give you a pretty brief survey of the headline events of our
1:35.5	period, split into three bits. Then in the bulk of the episode, we're going to talk about
1:40.8	historiography of the period. Then I'm going to talk more about
1:44.7	some of the themes of our story. Don't expect it to be too comprehensive, but just a few big things,
1:51.4	capital B, capital T to look out for. Okay, first part, I'm going to split our general period from
1:59.5	1660 to 1714 into three bits of very unequal length.
2:05.9	Firstly, we're going to focus on the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in all three kingdoms,
2:10.6	which looks pretty darned solid to start off with. Everyone's pleased to see the king back and
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 10 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from David Crowther, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of David Crowther and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.