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Although the institutions and liturgies of the Church of England were formally abolished between 1642 and 1659, the Act of Uniformity in 1662 restored it to complete ascendancy as the national church. The triumph of the Royalist Anglican faction in parliament as well as the Church of England's return to dominance have been documented by historians. John Spurr and Blair Worden have indicated that whilst Cromwell's regime officially endorsed Presbyterian orders and a broad national Church, he exhibited considerable indulgence to Protestant sectarians as well as to Anglicans. Moreover, during the 1650s an older generation of Anglicans, lay and clerical, continued to conduct their religious and social lives according to the traditions of the pre-war Church. A number of bishops who were to gain prominence in later years were ordained in this surreptitious way. Additionally, this current of traditional Anglican practice gained increasing momentum in the country after 1660 despite the uncertain status of the religious settlement in London. In 1660 the Church of England was very far from moribund. This is only part of the story of the restored Church's institutional success. As early as 1659, when the fall of Richard Cromwell initiated a twelve-month long contest for power in London, Anglican polemicists, apologists, and theologians were developing a case for why the Church of England alone would resolve the nation's political and religious problems. Prior to the spring of 1660 neither the return of the Church of England nor