The period from 1680 to about 1720 was one of the most complex and difficult in the history of British politics, to contemporaries as well as to posterity. The parameters of political obligation were decisively shifted by the Revolution of 1688; statesmen and politicians had now to accustom themselves to the novelty of a parliament in session every year; Britain was almost continuously engaged in the most ambitious and expensive wars in her history to date; political parties were slow to form, and of doubtful repute when they did. Professor Kenyon"s Ford Lectures, delivered in Oxford in 1976 and now published as a paperback for the first time, remain a standard account of the period. For this reissue, Professor Kenyon has written a new preface which discusses the book in the light of recent historiography.