1679–1715: Revolution and Religion

Abstract

The first parties emerged in a period of strong contrasts. It was the Age of Reason but religion still permeated every aspect of life; Isaac Newton, doyen of scientific revolution, was devout to a degree that would now be described as fundamentalist. Toleration was a key watchword, promulgated in Locke’s Letter on Toleration in 1689, but intolerance was still much in evidence at George I’s accession in 1714. In continental Europe the bloody conflicts of the Counter Reformation continued little abated in Louis XIV’s treatment of his Protestant neighbours in Holland and the Palatinate; yet the nations which hemmed in France included fellow-Catholic ones more interested in territorial or commercial considerations than religious matters.