Laudian and Royalist Polemic in Seventeenth-Century England

Milton's book is neither a conventional biography nor simply a study of printed works, but instead constructs an integrated account of Peter Heylyn's career and writings in order to provide the key to understanding a profoundly polemical author. Early chapters trace Heylyn's career in the 1620s when his Laudian credentials were far from evident, and his years as the main official spokesman for the religious policies of Charles I's personal rule. Further chapters trace his actions in the 1640s as the target of a vengeful parliament, editor of the main royalist newsbook and an increasingly disillusioned pamphleteer; his remarkable attempted rapprochement with Cromwell in the 1650s; and his attempts to shape the Restoration settlement and his posthumous celebrity as a spokesman of the Anglican royalist position. Throughout the book, Heylyn's shifting views and fortunes prompt an important reassessment of the relative coherence and stability of royalism and Laudianism.

Historians of early modern English politics and religion and literary scholars will find this book essential reading.