Into Another Mould

It is widely agreed that the period from 1625 to 1700 witnessed radical shifts in English life and thought. For historians of politics, science, religion, and philosophy, it is a time when the intellectual bases of modern thought and modern institutions were in the process of formation: divine monarchy gave way to contractual monarchy, the ‘truths’ of received authority gave way to those reached by inductive reasoning. Although the year 1660 to some extent marks a turning point, this comprehensi