Phanaticus: Hugh Peter, Antipuritanism and the Afterlife of the English Revolution

The Independent minister Hugh Peter, chaplain to the New Model Army and close associate of Oliver Cromwell during the Interregnum, was a controversial figure in the public affairs of mid-seventeenth-century England. His memory lingered long after his execution as a regicide in October 1660. Close investigation of how he was represented in print, manuscript, performance, and speech sheds fresh light on the reinvention of antipuritanism during the Civil War and after the Restoration and on its metamorphosis into a broader concern about ‘fanaticism’. It also illuminates the long and contested afterlife of the English Revolution.