Sir Matthew Hale (1609–76) was the greatest common lawyer of his age, and the most universally admired. Although he held office under Oliver Cromwell, this barely affected his standing in Restoration times. A study of Hale's life and thought necessarily illuminates the central role of the common law in Stuart politics. This book explains Hale's political ideas, and his subtle understanding of the peculiar character of an 'unwritten' law. It also covers his extensive writings on scientific and religious questions, writings which document a shift from puritan to liberal Protestantism. His acute but equivocal response to the science of Descartes and Boyle reveals a fascinating interplay between his 'latitudinarianism' and the new natural philosophy. The result is a unique case study, and a comprehensive portrait of a seventeenth-century mind.
This is an account of English politics in the 1660s, the years immediately following the Restoration of Charles II, after the Civil Wars and Interregnum in the course of which the monarchy had been abolished and Charles I executed. It is the first detailed study of Westminster politics in the 1660s for over twenty years, and the first ever in-depth study of the legislation of the 1660s. Dr Seaward shows how these drastic and dramatic events had changed perceptions and attitudes in British politics. He analyses the policies followed by the Restoration government (and in particular those of Charles II's chief minister, Clarendon) in attempting to restore royal power, and the effect of the Civil Wars' legacy of partisan bitterness on relations between government and parliament. The book also describes the breakdown in those relations, which occurred in 1666–7 and during the earlier crisis in 1663, and attempts to discover why relations were soured so quickly after the euphoria of the
This book provides an alternative approach to the history of social conflict, popular politics and plebeian culture in the early modern period. Based on a close study of the Peak Country of Derbyshire c.1520–1770, it has implications for understandings of class identity, popular culture, riot, custom and social relations. A detailed reconstruction of economic and social change within the region is followed by an in-depth examination of the changing cultural meanings of custom, gender, locality, skill, literacy, orality and magic. The local history of social conflict sheds light upon the nature of political engagement and the origins of early capitalism. Important insights are offered into early modern social and gender identities, civil war allegiances, the appeal of radical ideas and the making of the English working class. Above all, the book challenges the claim that early modern England was a hierarchical, 'pre-class' society.
This book provides a contextual account of the development of John Locke's political, religious, social and moral thought. It analyses many of Locke's unpublished manuscripts and relatively neglected works as well as the Two Treatises, the Letter Concerning Toleration and the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Professor Marshall studies the development of Locke's political thought from absolutism to resistance, and provides significant revisions to current explanations of the immediate contexts and purposes of composition of the Two Treatises. He also sets out major accounts of Locke's moral, social and religious thought both as extremely important subjects in their own right and in order to challenge many scholars' interpretations of their influences on Locke's political thought.
This study traces the transition of treason from a personal crime against the monarch to a modern crime against the impersonal state. It consists of four highly detailed case studies of major state treason trials in England beginning with that of Thomas Wentworth, first Earl of Strafford, in the spring of 1641 and ending with that of Charles Stuart, King of England, in January 1649. The book examines how these trials constituted practical contexts in which ideas of statehood and public authority legitimated courses of political action that might ordinarily be considered unlawful - or at least not within the compass of the foundational statute of Edward III. The ensuing narrative reveals how the events of the 1640s in England challenged existing conceptions of treason as a personal crime against the king, his family and his servants, and pushed the ascendant parliamentarian faction towards embracing an impersonal conception of the state that perceived public authority as completely
This book offers an interesting interpretation of the hidden culture of the early modern legal profession and its influence on the development of the English constitution. It locates an alternative site of political sovereignty in the legal communities at the Inns of Court in London, examining the signs of legitimacy by which they sought to validate the claim that common law represented sovereign constitutional authority. The role of symbols in the culture of English law is central to the book's analysis. Within the framework of a cultural history of the legal profession from 1558 to 1660, the book considers the social presence of the law, revealed in its various signs. It analyses how institutional existence at the Inns of Court presented the legal community as an emblematic template for the English nation-state, defending the sovereignty of the Ancient Constitution by reference to the immemorial provenance of common law.
This book explores popular support for the Church of England during a critical period, from the Stuart Restoration to the mid-eighteenth century, when Churchmen perceived themselves to be under attack from all sides. In many provincial parishes, the clergy also found themselves in dispute with their congregations. These incidents of dispute are the focus of a series of detailed case studies, drawn from the diocese of Salisbury, which help to bring the religion of the ordinary people to life, while placing local tensions in their broader national context. The period 1660–1740 provides important clues to the long-term decline in the popularity of the Church. Paradoxically, conflicts revealed not anticlericalism but a widely shared social consensus supporting the Anglican liturgy and clergy: the early eighteenth century witnessed a revival. Nevertheless, a defensive clergy turned inwards and proved too inflexible to respond to lay wishes for fuller participation in worship.
This book completes the study of the life and political thought of Algernon Sidney (1623–1688), which began with Algernon Sidney and the English Republic, 1623–1677 (1988). In the process it offers a reinterpretation of the major political crisis of Charles II's reign, and of its European and seventeenth-century contexts. Like its predecessor, the book spans the disciplines of intellectual and political history. Its twin focus is the last six years of Sidney's life, which culminated in the famous public drama of his trial and execution for treason in 1683, and in his major political work, the Discourses Concerning Government, which was used as evidence against him at the trial. This intertwining of events and ideas calls for an examination of the relationship between the practical and intellectual aspects of the crisis of 1678–1683 in general.
This is a study of the political, religious, social and mental worlds of the Catholic aristocracy from 1550 to 1640. Michael Questier examines the familial and patronage networks of the English Catholic community and their relationship to the later Tudors and Stuarts. He shows how the local history of the Reformation can be used to rewrite mainstream accounts of national politics and religious conflict in this period. The book takes in the various crises of mid- and late Elizabeth politics, the accession of James VI, the Gunpowder Plot, religious toleration and the start of the Thirty Years War and finally the rise of Laudianism, leading up to the civil war. It challenges recent historical notions of Catholicism as fundamentally sectarian and demonstrates the extent to which sections of the Catholic community had come to an understanding with both the local and national State by the later 1620s and 1630s.
This book is a study of centre-local interaction, based upon the experience of the people of an English county, during a very turbulent period in their history. The work revolves around: the relationship between centre and locality, and the partisan use of local institutions and sentiment for 'national' ends. Dr Coleby combines administrative and political history, and establishes with unusual rigour and clarity the nature of the late-seventeenth-century English polity. Whilst there have been many county studies of the early Stuart and Civil War periods, few accounts hitherto have looked at the situation both before and after the restoration of Charles II in 1660. Dr Coleby argues for the continuity of governmental concerns throughout the later seventeenth century, and challenges received wisdom about the relative local efficiency of Interregnum and Restoration regimes.
This book was the first full account of one of the most famous quarrels of the seventeenth century, that between the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and the Anglican archbishop of Armagh, John Bramhall (1594–1663). This analytical narrative interprets that quarrel within its own immediate and complicated historical circumstances, the Civil Wars (1638–49) and Interregnum (1649–60). The personal clash of Hobbes and Bramhall is connected to the broader conflict, disorder, violence, dislocation and exile that characterised those periods. This monograph offered not only the first comprehensive narrative of their hostilities over two decades, but also an illuminating analysis of aspects of their private and public quarrel that have been neglected in previous accounts, with special attention devoted to their dispute over political and religious authority. This will be of interest to scholars of early modern British history, religious history and the history of ideas.
This is a study of the House of Lords in the reign of Charles II. It examines the House's institutional and political activities, and reveals the vital role played by the peerage in Caroline parliaments. Andrew Swatland draws on an extensive range of sources to analyse the membership and procedural developments of the House of Lords, relating these to legislative, judicial and political issues in Restoration England. He sheds light on the Lords' relations with the king and the Commons, and assesses the contribution made by peers and bishops to the Restoration church settlement. He also describes the emergence of political parties, reinterpreting 'Toryism' and 'Whiggism' during the succession crisis of 1679–81. This detailed and balanced study is both a major institutional history and an important contribution to the history of Restoration politics and political culture.
This book completes the study of the life and political thought of Algernon Sidney (1623–1688), which began with Algernon Sidney and the English Republic, 1623–1677 (1988). In the process it offers a reinterpretation of the major political crisis of Charles II's reign, and of its European and seventeenth-century contexts. Like its predecessor, the book spans the disciplines of intellectual and political history. Its twin focus is the last six years of Sidney's life, which culminated in the famous public drama of his trial and execution for treason in 1683, and in his major political work, the Discourses Concerning Government, which was used as evidence against him at the trial. This intertwining of events and ideas calls for an examination of the relationship between the practical and intellectual aspects of the crisis of 1678–1683 in general.
'Constitutional royalism' is one of the most familiar yet least often examined of all the political labels found in the historiography of the English Revolution. This book fills a gap by investigating the leading Constitutional royalists who rallied to King Charles I in 1642 while consistently urging him to reach an 'accommodation' with Parliament. These royalists' early careers reveal that a commitment to the rule of law and a relative lack of 'godly' zeal were the characteristic predictors of Constitutional royalism in the Civil War. Such attitudes explain why many of them criticised the policies of the King's personal rule, but also why they joined the King in 1642 and tried to achieve a negotiated settlement thereafter. The final part of the book traces the Constitutional royalists through the Interregnum - during which they consciously withdrew from public life - to the Restoration, when many of them returned to prominence and saw their ideas vindicated.
Religious controversy was central to political conflict in the years before the English Civil War. Where earlier historians have focused more narrowly on the doctrine of predestination, Dr Milton analyses the broader attitudes which underlay notions of religious orthodoxy. Through the first comprehensive analysis of how contemporaries viewed the Roman and foreign Reformed churches in the early Stuart period, Milton demonstrates the way in which an author's choice of a particular style of religious discourse could be used either to mediate or to provoke religious conflict. This study challenges many current historical orthodoxies. It identifies the theological novelty of Laudianism, but also exposes areas of ideological tension within the Jacobean Church. Its wide-ranging conclusions will be of vital concern to students of early Stuart religion and the origins of the English Civil War.
The aftermath of the Popish Plot and the subsequent succession crisis of the years 1678 to 1681 are the context for this new study. It asks two key questions: was there an exclusion crisis? and did these years witness the birth of modern political parties? The author argues that the unrest was not simply due to a centrally organized party machine based around the single issue of exclusion; but was a broad-based controversy about the succession, fears of popery and arbitrary government which produced ideological polarization and political sophistication. Part One examines central politics to explore the succession crisis within the context of the court and an emergent political structure. Part Two explores public opinion in the country as a whole, and argues that propaganda electioneering, religious conflict and petitions committed men to organized networks of belief.
This book examines the background to the English military intervention in the Thirty Years War. Blending accounts of diplomacy and factional in-fighting at Court with parliamentary and popular politics, it aims to illuminate the 'revolution' of 1624 when the Palatine crisis forced James I to abandon his long-held dream of an Anglo-Spanish dynastic alliance in favour of a more aggressive policy against the Habsburgs. In studying the English polity in a period of crisis, Professor Cogswell challenges many of the revisionist assumptions about early seventeenth-century England and highlights the dangers in confusing the history of Court faction with the broader political history of the period. In particular, the author stresses the vital importance of Parliament, an institution which in 1624 had no trouble delaying the passage of the subsidy bill until the government redressed a long list of grievances. Indeed, the 'blessed revolution' celebrated the evolution of Parliament into what many
This is a detailed 2002 study of the political significance of the seventeenth century's most notorious and sensational court scandal - the Overbury murder. The book challenges earlier approaches to the history of court scandal, rejecting both the assumption that it inevitably undermined royal authority and the tendency to dismiss scandal as politically insignificant. The book adopts a multi-layered, interdisciplinary approach to the Overbury affair and its complex political meanings. It explores the factional politics that made and destroyed Overbury and his murderers, reconstructs the news culture through which information about the scandal circulated, analyses the creation and composition of the early Stuart 'public', and decodes the representations of the affair that were produced and consumed during 1615–16 and in subsequent decades. By situating the Overbury case both in short- and long-term political contexts, the book offers a reading of court scandal's place in the cultural
This is a detailed 2002 study of the political significance of the seventeenth century's most notorious and sensational court scandal - the Overbury murder. The book challenges earlier approaches to the history of court scandal, rejecting both the assumption that it inevitably undermined royal authority and the tendency to dismiss scandal as politically insignificant. The book adopts a multi-layered, interdisciplinary approach to the Overbury affair and its complex political meanings. It explores the factional politics that made and destroyed Overbury and his murderers, reconstructs the news culture through which information about the scandal circulated, analyses the creation and composition of the early Stuart 'public', and decodes the representations of the affair that were produced and consumed during 1615–16 and in subsequent decades. By situating the Overbury case both in short- and long-term political contexts, the book offers a reading of court scandal's place in the cultural
Early modern historians have theorized about the nature of the new 'British' history for a generation. This study examines how British politics operated in practice during the age of Mary, Queen of Scots, and explains how the crises of the mid-sixteenth century moulded the future political shape of the British Isles. A central figure in these struggles was the fifth earl of Argyll, the most powerful magnate not only at the court of Queen Mary, his sister-in-law, but throughout the three kingdoms. His domination of the Western Highlands and Islands drew him into the complex politics of the north of Ireland, while his Protestant commitment involved him in Anglo-Scottish relations. His actions also helped determine the Protestant allegiance of the British mainland and the political and religious complexion of Ireland. Argyll's career therefore demonstrates both the possibilities and the limitations of British history throughout the early modern period.
