Dr Grant Tapsell
My interests lie primarily in the political and religious history of the early modern British Isles. My research has been focused on Restoration Britain and Ireland, particularly early Whig and Tory ‘party’ politics in the wake of the Exclusion Crisis. Recently I have worked on the Church of England across the seventeenth century more broadly, and I am currently engaged on a study of William Sancroft (1617-93), Archbishop of Canterbury from 1677/8 to 1690, examining his developing role within the religious disputes that complicated English politics from the 1630s to the 1690s. As a step towards an eventual biography I am editing a book-length collection of Sancroft's letters for the Church of England Record Society.
My publications include The Personal Rule of Charles II, 1681-85 (2007), and, as editor, The Later Stuart Church, 1660-1714 (2012). I enjoy collaborating with colleagues, not least by developing ideas generated whilst teaching into published projects. Restoration Politics, Religion and Culture: Britain and Ireland, 1660-1714 (2010), written with George Southcombe, began life as a series of undergraduate lectures at Oxford; The Nature of the English Revolution Revisited: Essays in Honour of John Morrill (2013) is co-edited with Stephen Taylor.
