Behn by Mary Beale
Behn was born shortly before the English Civil War (1642), during which Charles I was beheaded on the orders of Puritanical Parliamentarians. The conflict arose because of Charles's belief in the Divine Right of kings to reign without interference, a philosophy that England's representative body, Parliament, found unpalatable. At the same time, the Protestantization of England under Henry VIII (he of the many wives) had not gone far enough to please many far-right Protestants. Some of these malcontents departed for the New World - those who remained behind continued to criticize the English Church under Elizabeth I and James I, and were eager to join Parliamentary dissent in the reign of Charles I.
Parliament tried to curb Charles's absolutist ambitions by forcing him to
sign the Petition of Rights in 1628. He did so, but his heart
evidently wasn't in it, since he subsequently tried to rule without Parliament
by never allowing them to meet. Since his money was disbursed by
Parliament, he had to resort to extreme taxation, making himself quite
unpopular. When he was eventually compelled to call Parliament in response
to a war in Scotland, the so-called Long Parliament passed a flurry of
anti-monarchial legislation. Royalists responded by 
withdrawing,
and the two sides were formed. After much internecine warfare, the King,
captured by the Scots, was turned over to Oliver Cromwell and his "Rump"
Parliament (that is, the remnant of Parliament after it had been purged of
non-Cromwellians). The King was tried for treason and beheaded in
1649, initiating the Interregnum or Commonwealth (depending on your
political leanings).
Cromwell, now promoted to the newly minted office of Lord Protector
(hence another synonym for this period, the Protectorate) was an effective
leader skilled at foreign policy, though his repressive theocratic measures at
home did not conduce to his popularity. After his death
(1658), the Commonwealth crumbled, and Parliament invited Charles I's son, Charles
II, to assume the throne in 1660. This period, called the Restoration,
was characterized by political moderation - everyone wanted to avoid the
excesses of both Cromwell and Charles I - and moral laxity. In this more
permissive era, transgressive career women like Aphra Behn and Nell Gwyn
flourished.
Upon
the death of Charles II, who had been a more or less moderate Protestant
(although he had passed laws prohibiting Catholics from holding office in
England), his Catholic brother James II succeeded to the throne. James not
only nettled his countrymen by being openly Catholic and passing laws to
liberalize the treatment of religious nonconformists (those did not conform to
the beliefs and practices of the state Anglican Church), but also by producing a
Catholic male heir, suggesting thereby a long line of Catholic monarchs, and by
his general heavy-handedness.
These sources of discontent led Parliament to invite James II's daughter Mary and her husband and kinsman, William of Orange, to assume sovereignty jointly (an arrangement unique within English history). In 1689 James II fled as William approached, and the transfer of power was thus bloodless, earning it the name "The Glorious Revolution." The incoming royals signed a bill of rights, which has become an important part of that amorphous entity known as the British Constitution. They also confirmed their committment to religious (or at least Protestant) toleration. The crown thus bypassed the traditional heir, James II's son, also named James. This irregularity provided several generations of scheming and sedition, as the would-be James III (a.k.a. "The Old Pretender") and his younger, presumably sexier, son "Bonnie Prince Charlie" schemed unsuccessfully for their line's return to power; their supporters were called Jacobites.
