Those who dissented from communion with the Church of England often exploited the historical record during their polemical battles with intolerant Churchmen and Tories in Restoration England.  Despite a recent growth of interest in the development of historical writing, the contribution of dissenters has been largely overlooked.  Through an examination of a wide range of printed and manuscript dissenting literature this work will recover the various uses to which nonconformists put the past, and the ways in which their enemies responded.  It will discuss the rewriting of medieval history by nonconformists, as well as the appropriation of the martyrology and history of the English church.  This will be an exercise in intellectual history, recovering the conceptual bases of Restoration religious debates, but it will also be a contribution to the study of historiography itself, emphasising a largely ignored body of evidence that points to a dissenting heritage for later developments.

Dr George Southcombe is undertaking this project funded by a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship.