This is John Batcher. This is an excerpt from a conversation, a long conversation, with Jonathan

Healy of Oxford University. His new book is The Blazing World. The story of the transformation

of an understanding of the relationship between the king,

the sovereign, and the parliament in Great Britain in the 17th century, the predicate for what

we understand to be the revolutions of the 18th century.

Here Jonathan describes the transformation from Cromwell who had established

order of Presbyterian order but after Cromwell, who had established order, a Presbyterian order, but after Cromwell's death there

is chaos, and hence the restoration of the king, this time Charles II and why Charles II is important here is that he gives

ground to the Church of England the official church that church becomes all powerful and shoves all the dissenters, shoves all

the dissenters aside.

One of those groups, we know is the pilgrims eventually coming to America.

Another of those groups, this is in the 1660s, is the Quakers and it's a revelation to me because I am the ninth generation of

bachelors here in the colonies the original Richard Bachelor, emigrated from Buckinghamshire, a Quaker in

1661, exactly in this period driving the Quakers to the colonies. Here's Jonathan Healy to describe.

I think what had happened basically was that the after Cromwell died as you say there is this sort of period of a year and a half of political chaos where you have one, you know, the army, your parliament, you have different factions within parliament,

you have different types of parliament, and then eventually it's a faction within the army,

led by a guy called George Monk, who marches down from Scotland, from Coldstream on the Scottish borders, to

London.

And even when he gets to London, nobody quite knows which way he's going to go.

And eventually, it becomes almost as like a last

resort really is to say to the exiled Prince Charles or you know Charles

Charles come over and form a government.

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