This book explores the social, economic, religious and political history of Carlisle between the restoration of King Charles II in 1660 and the deposition of his successor King James II in 1688-9.

In the background to this account is the border city’s economic underdevelopment, which left it prey to political domination by local squires and nobles, notably the Musgraves, Sir Philip and Sir Christopher, father and son, and the successive Howard earls of Carlisle. With no significant Protestant Nonconformist presence, the religious life of the city was dominated by the cathedral – with the royalist and Tory politics of its clerical leaders and associated High Church forms of worship. Proximity to Scotland, in a period of religious repression and discontent north of the border, added a further note of insecurity. The army’s residence in this frontier garrison city created a smouldering sense of citizens’ grievance, to be exploited by the lawyer John Aglionby in his bitter dispute with the military governor Sir Philip Musgrave.

Carlisle’s well-documented story over the course of the restoration decades open up a treasury of human interest and drama, including the details of a murderous duel. In terms of the national politics of the period, Carlisle spring into sudden prominence in the reign of the Catholic James II, when in 1687-8 the king opened up a bold initiative to extend toleration to the country’s Nonconformist and Catholic minorities. In other town and cities, the king relied on a coalition of Nonconformists and Catholics to support his programme, but in Carlisle, as has been said, the former group were lacking, so that James fell back on an alliance with recusant country gentry, making this city an exceptional case of a briefly successful Catholic local political ascendancy in late Stuart England.

Based on intensive research into Cumbrian archives, this engagingly written book also brings to bear fruits of decades of study, teaching and writing on the tense and convoluted politics of the Britain of Charles II and James II.

Michael Mullett is Emeritus Professor of Cultural and Religious History at the University of Lancaster and is active on various levels of the Cumbrian history scene; he has recently completed a six-volume history of Penrith.

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