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Following the execution of his father Charles I in January 1649, the exiled king Charles II pursued various political, military, and diplomatic strategies to recover his kingdoms. Proclaimed king of Ireland and Scotland, Charles II adopted the traditional view of monarch–subject relations and expected the loyalty of his subjects and their devotion to his restoration. The recent experiences of war and regicide, however, had changed the ways in which Irish and Scottish subjects determined the nature and degree of allegiance owed to the king. In Ireland and Scotland, subjects placed their own interests above the royalist cause. Tensions in Ireland among Catholics and between Catholics and Protestants tested the bonds of loyalty to Charles II, and Scottish Covenanters circumscribed the king's authority and imposed strict conditions upon their political and military support. Moreover, Charles II's position of exile exacerbated existing tensions within his kingdoms. While Charles I experienced the withdrawal of his subjects' allegiance and strove to recover that loyalty, as an exiled king Charles II struggled to gain the allegiance of his kingdoms and to secure loyalty in the face of religious tension, geographic distance, failing war efforts, and conflicting interests among his subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The links between Presbyterians in Scotland and the north of Ireland are obvious but have been largely ignored by historians of the nineteenth century. This article addresses this gap by showing how Ulster Presbyterians considered their relationship with their Scottish co-religionists and how they used the interplay of religious and ethnic considerations this entailed to articulate an Ulster Scots identity. For Presbyterians in Ireland, their Scottish origins and identity represented a collection of ideas that could be deployed at certain times for specific reasons — theological orthodoxy, civil and religious liberty, and certain character traits such as hard work, courage, and soberness. Ideas about the Scottish identity of Presbyterianism were reawakened for a more general audience in the first half of the nineteenth century, during the campaign for religious reform and revival within the Irish church, and were expressed through a distinctive denominational historiography inaugurated by James Seaton Reid. The formulation of a coherent narrative of Presbyterian religion and the improvement of Ulster laid the religious foundations of a distinct Ulster Scots identity and its utilization by unionist opponents of Home Rule between 1885 and 1914. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]