John Owen and the Plotters: Conspiracies to Save Protestant England, 1679–81

The former revolutionary John Owen (1616–83) did not abandon his political radicalism after the Restoration. Focusing primarily on evidence from 1679 to 1681, this article draws together governmental depositions, election reports, published and unpublished sermons, and new manuscript evidence concerning Owen’s associates. It argues that Owen was more closely connected to anti-Catholic conspiracy networks and that his willingness to contemplate forms of active resistance developed earlier than previously recognised. Read together, these sources reveal how Owen’s interpretation of providence, judgement, reformation and a Catholic succession informed his response to one of late Stuart England’s most volatile political crises.