The Later Stuarts spanned the reigns of monarchs James II, William and Mary and Queen Anne. It was a period in which Britain was newly established as a major European power, and which encompassed outstanding military, naval, ecclesiastical and intellectual figures. Sitters who are featured in this comprehensive catalogue of portraits from the premier collections of the National Portrait Gallery, London, include the Duke of Marlborough, Admirals Benbow and Shovell, Archbishop Sancroft (who led the Seven Bishops against James II), John Locke, Isaac Newton, John Vanbrugh and Christopher Wren. Also catalogued are the fearsome Judge Jeffreys, the composer Henry Purcell and diarists Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn. The writers include John Dryden, Mathew Prior, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele and the painters Godfrey Kneller and Michael Dahl. This volume revises and updates the second half of the Catalogue of the Seventeenth Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, published in 1963. Academic research since then has resulted in both several changes of identity and attribution. It has also facilitated more comprehensive surveys of each sitter's portraiture.

In presenting this research, the author John Ingamells offers new discoveries, insights and observations to create an invaluable historical resource.