What Do Historians Think?
Part of Religious Settlement — GCSE History
This interpretations covers What Do Historians Think? within Religious Settlement for GCSE History. Revise Religious Settlement in Restoration England 1660-1685 for GCSE History with 8 exam-style questions and 4 flashcards. This topic appears regularly enough that it should still be part of a steady revision cycle. It is section 9 of 15 in this topic. Use this interpretations to connect the idea to the wider topic before moving on to questions and flashcards.
Topic position
Section 9 of 15
Practice
8 questions
Recall
4 flashcards
🔎 What Do Historians Think?
Interpretation 1: Some historians argue that Charles II bears significant personal responsibility for the religious settlement's failure. He signed the Clarendon Code into law while privately sympathising with Catholics and Dissenters, and his Declaration of Indulgence (1672) — intended partly to benefit Catholics — gave Parliament legitimate grounds to distrust his motives. On this view, Charles's duplicity made genuine toleration politically impossible.
Interpretation 2: Other historians, including Tim Harris, point to the Cavalier Parliament as the primary agent of religious persecution. MPs were responding to genuine fears rooted in the Civil War experience — religious nonconformity had been associated with political revolution. Charles could not have delivered religious tolerance even had he genuinely tried, because Parliament controlled the money he needed to govern. The Clarendon Code reflects Parliament's priorities, not only the king's failures.
Why do they disagree? The key evidential question is whether Charles's 1672 Declaration of Indulgence represented a sincere attempt at toleration that Parliament blocked, or a calculated move to benefit Catholics that Parliament rightly resisted. Both readings are supported by the evidence, and historians divide on how to weight Charles's public actions against his secret intentions.