The transition to comparatively peaceable ideological debate confined within emergent political institutions only arose following a sequence of climatic, economic, demographic, religious, and ideological change—change which is reviewed for its stage setting functions within the second and third sections of this chapter. England’s sovereign, King Charles I, asserted the traditional prerogatives of a divine-right-ruler. He had the will, but not the means. Charles I was then embroiled in a Civil War that, for him, would end by regicide in AD1649. That Civil War would then continue for another two years. Looking back on the dislocating hellscape that remained, Thomas Hobbes famously penned his Leviathan, invoking an iron-fisted ruler capable of suppressing faction. But Hobbes was looking to the past for a solution. England’s actual future would struggle forward toward a monarchical republic, even as it first vacillated between a failed republic, with Cromwell serving as Lord Protector, and a reactionary return to traditional monarchy, with the accession of Charles II who was succeeded by James II. In the struggle over succession, some attempted to prevent the Catholic James II from acceding to the throne, while others advanced his claim. These vying factions became respectively known as Whigs and Tories. These were not yet parties, and they did not yet contend civilly. The term Whig was an epithet—a Gaelic term hurled at horse thieves. The term Tory was likewise an epithet—an Irish label for a papal outlaw. After the so-called Glorious Revolution of AD1688, wherein William of Orange displaced James II, Whiggish constitutional constraints and parliamentary participation were legitimated over and above divine right absolutism. An inflection point was reached. Thenceforth, England had no more revolutions, even as it had eschewed despotic controls and began to tolerate opposition. England entered its metaphorical chrysalis in the 1640s and emerged in the 1680s something different in kind. It is this phase of Albion’s history that Chap. 12 scrutinizes; for in it, we see the proverbial missing link—the transitional society standing between early modern absolutism and late modern constitutionalism.