The Military and Edinburgh Society, 1660–1760

Abstract

The most terrible words in all writing used to be ‘There they crucified Him’, but there is a sadder sentence now—‘I know not where they have laid Him’…Surely ‘missing’ is the cruelest word in the language. (Anonymous, To My Unknown Warrior, 1920.)     

Re-fighting the English Revolution: John Nalson (1637–1686) and the Frustrations of Late Seventeenth-Century English Historiography

The English Revolution of the mid-seventeenth century went on being re-fought and reinterpreted long after the original events were over. In the later part of the reign of Charles II, fuelled by the Exclusion Crisis and the Popish Plot and the early strivings of Whigs and Tories, histories of the Civil Wars, Interregnum and Restoration took on a new lease of life and gained added purpose and relevance. John Nalson (1637–1686) is firmly anchored in this period and took up his pen in the re-drawn political and religious battle-lines. This article offers a reassessment of this neglected polemicist and historian, placing him within the context of his times and the intense rhetoric and rivalries to which it gave rise. It examines Nalson's output in relation to other writers of the age—Hobbes, Filmer and Rushworth among them—and takes stock of his changing reputation.