Politics, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain

This volume is the first collection of essays to focus specifically on how Reformed theology and ecclesiology related to one of the most consequential issues between the Elizabethan Settlement (1559) and the Hanoverian Succession (1714), namely conformity to the Church of England.

This book offers a new study of Hobbes’s reception among seventeenth- and eighteenth- century deists and freethinkers, showing how influential Hobbes was for anticlerical thinking through a close analysis of the works of a large number of writers, including Charles Blount, John Toland, Antony Collins, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Morgan, and many others.

This book examines John Donne’s theory of royal absolutism within a tradition of conformist thought.It argues that Donne displaced the conventional opposition between Catholics and Protestants and instead divided English subjects into two political categories: those who obey the law and those who break it.

This book examines the preaching and printing of sermons by royalists during the English Revolution. It shows how and why preaching became an indispensable tool for those who sought to resist the seismic changes in Church and state that England experienced between 1640 and 1662.

This book provides a rich survey of the early-modern ‘secret state’, intelligence gathering espionage, and the work of spies in the British late sixteenth to mid-seventeenth-centuries.

How and why do stereotypes continue affect public life and shape individual experience? This book tackles this question through case studies drawn from early modern England, a society shaken by divisive identity politics and increasingly commercial media. The book ends by exploring implications these case studies for the twenty-first century.

This book provides a full account of the life and career of the Elizabethan politician and courtier Sir Christopher Hatton. A loyal favourite and minister of a Protestant queen, he was also a patron and protector of Catholics. This account of Hatton opens a new window into the complex religious politics of Elizabeth’s reign.

The pastor in print is the first book-length analysis of the phenomenon of early modern pastors who intentionally pursued print authorship. With careful attention to audience, content, genre, and timing of publications, pastor-authors sought to complement parish work and achieve diverse religious goals through print.

This volume explores the theme of religious and political practices in early modern Britain.

This interdisciplinary collection explores new ways of assessing the impact of the English Revolution, focusing on its ‘public politics’. Contributors examine the debates and practices that transformed relations between elite culture and everyday life, as well as the possibilities for participation that emerged for men and women across society.

London presbyterians and the British revolutions is a case study in the politics of metropolitan religion and presbyterianism in the middle decades of the seventeenth-century.

London’s mobilisation proved crucial to parliament’s success in the English Civil War. Through a rigorous investigation of archival and print sources, this book shows how and why the City aligned its interests with parliament and how, ultimately, this alignment led to the establishment of an army that would defeat the king of England.

In a series of wide-ranging chapters on politics in thought, word and deed, twelve colleagues of the late Mark Kishlansky reconsider the history of the English Revolution, engaging and often challenging Kishlansky's own conclusions.

Focusing on Cheshire, this book makes a major contribution to understanding the dynamics of the English Revolution from a provincial perspective.

This collection offers bold reappraisals of the history of freedom of speech in the pre-modern Anglophone world. It addresses the aims and effectiveness of official policies, the thorny issues with which contemporaries grappled and the claims that were and were not made about freedom of expression.

This collection examines political communication in early modern Britain. Leading historians of the period scrutinise relations between centre and locality and how the state interacted with its citizens. They place communication at the heart of both political and social history to provide an impetus for further scholarship.

Analysing the lollard legacy in the post-Reformation era, this book identifies the significance of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments in shaping these medieval dissenters for early moderns. It shows that Foxe left much of their radical beliefs intact, inadvertently contributing to later contentions in the Church of England's struggle for identity.

This volume explores church polity and its relationship to politics in the British Atlantic world during the mid-seventeenth century. It addresses the conflicts between church and state, the ecclesial factions of episcopalianism, presbyterianism and congregationalism and the effects of these conflicts at the level of nations and localities.

This book makes an important contribution to the ongoing debate over the emergence of an early modern ‘public sphere’. Focusing on the petition-like form of the loyal address, it argues that these texts helped to foster a politically aware public by mapping shifts in the national ‘mood’.

This book examines ‘seditious memories’ in the Restoration period. It reveals the social depth of opposition to the Stuarts and the Church of England, and asks why people were prepared to take the risk of voicing their resistance in public.

Battle-scarred examines mortality, medical care and military welfare during the British Civil Wars. Its focus on the victims of war and their means of survival provides a series of case studies to demonstrate how these visceral conflicts drove developments in medical care and military welfare for servicemen and their families.

Reformation without end conceives of eighteenth-century English history as a late chapter in the nation’s long Reformation. Contemporaries thought that the Reformation had caused two bloody seventeenth-century English revolutions.

Historians and literary scholars explore the rise of parliament in the historical imagination of Tudor and early Stuart England. Collectively the essays demonstrate that the evolution of historical conceptions of parliament was central to the ecclesiological and political thinking and culture of the period before the English Revolution.

A highly original and detailed study of an individual single woman in early modern England, based on a recently discovered spiritual autobiography authored by a never-married gentlewoman, Elizabeth Isham. Provides new perspective on women's writing, identity and status in the early modern period.

Concentrates on the fascinating life and work of Giles Fletcher, the elder (1546–1611) and his analysis of government and commonwealth, through the image of Russia. His account of Russia remains the most comprehensive early modern western European account of the 'barbaric' land on Christendom’s borders.

This book provides a careful and systematic analysis of Anthony Ascham’s career and writings for the first time in English.

During the crucial period between the Second Civil War and the establishment of the English Republic, when he served as official pamphleteer of the Parliament and the republican government, Ascham put forward a complex argument in support of Parliament’s claims for obedience which drew on the political thought of Grotius, Hobbes, Selden, Filmer and Machiavelli. He combined ideas taken from these authors and turned them into a powerful instrument of propaganda to be deployed in the service of the political agenda of his Independent patrons in Parliament. This investigation of Ascham’s works brings together an intellectual analysis of his political thought and an exploration of the interaction between politics, propaganda and political ideas.

Using newly discovered sources from the French and Scottish archives this exciting new book challenges our fundamental assumptions regarding the emergence of the fully British state in the early eighteenth century.

Examines the pivotal influence of the succession question on the politics, religion and culture of the post-Armada years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign

Examines how political news was concealed, manipulated and distorted during the tumultuous later years of James I’s reign

A pioneering collaboration between leading early modern historians and literary scholars. Chapters by Kenneth Fincham, David Crankshaw and Mary Morrissey analyse the legal structures governing the appointment and remit of chaplains and map their roles and functions within early modern England.

Offers a fresh analysis of the originality and character of Leveller thought. Foxley challenges received ideas about the Levellers as social contract theorists and Leveller thought as a mere radicalization of parliamentarian thought.

Explores the history of the royal city during the civil war and interregnum

A study of five remarkable sixteenth-century women. Part of the select group of Tudor women allowed access to formal humanist education, the Cooke sisters were also well-connected through their marriages to influential Elizabethan politicians.

Reassesses the national war effort during the Elizabethan wars against Spain (1585–1603). Drawing on a mass of hitherto neglected sources, it finds a political system in much better health than has been thought, revising many existing assumptions about the weaknesses of the state in the face of military change.

This book features nine essays written by leading scholars in the field to offer new insights into the place of the Church of England within the volatile Restoration era. Sections on ideas and people include essays covering the royal supremacy, the theology of the later Stuart Church and clerical and lay interests.

Looks at one of the most unpopular and criticised thinkers in the history of political thought, to provide an illuminating and innovative picture of Sir Robert Filmer (1588–1653) and patriarchalism. This thoroughly researched work will appeal to all those interested in early modern politics and ideas.

Black Bartholomew's Day is the first comprehensive study of the politicised preaching and polemical literature surrounding the mass ejection of Puritan ministers from the Church of England in 1662 - a pivotal event in the history of religion in Britain

A celebration of Englishness in the sixteenth century. Appeals equally to students of early modern history and its literary culture, presenting a view of 'Tudor England' and offering a firmer historical background to evaluating the English Renaissance.

Tobias B. Hug examines a wide range of sources, from judicial archives and other official records to chronicles, newspapers, ballads, pamphlets and autobiographical writings.

This book examines the activities of William Blundell, a seventeenth-century Catholic gentleman, and using the approaches of the history of reading provides a detailed analysis of his mindset. The findings of the study challenge a historical determinism which removes Catholics from the mainstream of early-modern society.

This is the first complete study of English deists as a group in several decades and it argues for a new interpretation of deism in the English Enlightenment.

Looks at one of the most prolific and controversial polemical authors of the seventeenth century, whose writings lie at the heart of the rule of Charles I, the Civil War, and the restoration of Charles II. In the process, the author presents an important new interpretation of the origins and nature of Anglicanism and royalism.

This collection of essays offers a radical re-evaluation of the nature of crowds and popular protest in the early modern period

A full-length modern study of the Diggers, among the most remarkable of the radical groups to emerge during the English Revolution of 1640-60. Provides a reassessment of the Digger leader Gerrard Winstanley, a figure who has attracted great interest in recent years amongst historians, literary scholars, theologians and environmental activists.

This book explores the importance of history to Elizabethan and early Stuart gentry and how this led to a vibrant antiquarian culture. The family, town and county histories written by the community, which form the core of the study, had an influence on the development of local history in England which lasted into the twentieth century.

This is the first synthetic narrative of the origins of the Scottish Reformation of 1560; the narrative covers the period 1525-60. It brings together religious history with the political history of Mary, Queen of Scots’ reign, paying particular attention to the role of warfare and violence. It is aimed principally at students and general readers

Early modern Westminster is familiar as the location of the Royal Court at Whitehall, parliament, the law courts and the emerging West End, yet it has never been studied in its own right. This book is the first study to provide an integrated picture of the town during this crucial period in its history. It reveals the often problematic relations between the diverse groups of people who constituted local society – the Court, the aristocracy, the Abbey, the middling sort and the poor – and the competing visions of Westminster’s identity which their presence engendered.

Different chapters study the impact of the Reformation and of the building of Whitehall Palace; the problem of poverty and the politics of communal responsibility; the character and significance of the increasing gentry presence in the town; the nature and ideology of local governing elites; the struggles over the emerging townscape; and the changing religious culture of the area, including the problematic role of the post-Reformation Abbey.

A comprehensive study of one of the most populous and influential towns in early modern England, this book covers the entire period from the Reformation to the Civil War. It will make fascinating reading for historians of English society, literature and religion in this period, as well as enthusiasts of London’s rich history.

An innovative book revealing the impact of print on social change in early modern Ireland

This is a study of the English Reformation as a political and literary event. Focusing on an eclectic group of texts, unified by their explication of the key elements of the cultural history of the period 1510-1580 the book unravels the political, poetic and religious themes of the era.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Discusses the transition from a largely oral to a fundamentally literate society in the early modern period. During this period the spoken word remained of the utmost importance but development of printing and the spread of popular literacy combined to transform the nature of communication. Examines English, Scottish and Welsh Oral culture to provide the first pan-British study of the subject. Covers several aspects of oral culture ranging from tradition, to memories of the civil war, to changing mechanics for the settling of debts. The time-span concentrates on the period 1500-1800 but includes material from outside this time frame, covering a longer chronolgical span than most other studies to show the link between early modern and modern oral and literate cultures.

Argues that far from being a marginal and insignificant figure, Toland counted queens, princes and government ministers as his friends and political associates

This book looks at the genesis of British national identity in the reign of King James I and VI. It does this by studying two things: the political language of the King's project to replace England, Scotland and Wales with a single kingdom of Great Britain; and cultural representations of empire on the public and private stages.