The emergence of a sustained opposition to monarchical structures of authority during the 1640s necessitated a wholesale redefinition of self and the nation, and this period is therefore of paramount importance in the study of early modern identity. The civil war marks a decisive shift in the discourse of self and the notion of the subject within nation. As this innovative study shows, the Parliamentary enemy was seen by Royalists to have transgressed existing definitions of the law, social identity, religion, and models of authority. Royalist Identities analyzes the reaction of the centre and mainstream to these subversive challenges, illustrating how orthodoxy attempts to legitimate itself once under stress and perceived serious threat. The book examines several modes of identity, from simplistic representational notions of 'difference' and otherness, through institutional and state-led constructions of legal subjectivity, towards more complex and normative notions of the relationship between self, text and state, concluding with an examination of dissident and different identities within Royalism.