HISTORY 422: British History Circa 1500-1700

What holds these essays together is the rejection of the idea of 'the birth of the modern world'. England before the Civil War was not a country welcoming a brave new world but one clinging fearfully to an old one. Change, where it happened, was not the result of a deliberate striving for 'progress', and the polity of pre-Civil War England was not on the point of collapse. Parliaments were not dominated by two 'sides' in training for a Cup Final at Naseby, but were groups of people struggling with limited success to reach agreement.

Fully revised and updated, this second edition of the standard textbook on the causes of the English Civil War provides a comprehensive guide to the historiographical debates surrounding this crucial period of English history.

Covering the period from the accession of James I to the death of Queen Anne, this companion provides a magisterial overview of the 'long' seventeenth century in British history. Comprises original contributions by leading scholars of the period Gives a magisterial overview of the 'long' seventeenth century Provides a critical reference to historical debates about Stuart Britain Offers new insights into the major political, religious and economic changes that occurred during this period Includes bibliographical guidance for students and scholars

In this essential introduction to the writing of Stuart history, Ronald Hutton provides a clear and authoritative guide to both the current condition of the discipline and its historiography. Hutton helps students to understand some of the key recent debates and shows them how to set their reading in context. He also provides a new sense of why historians of the Stuart period, both collectively and individually, perceive the past in particular ways, and shows how these perceptions alter over time.

The execution of Charles I in 1649, followed by the proclamation of a Commonwealth, was an extraordinary political event. It followed a bitter Civil War between parliament and the king, and their total failure to negotiate a subsequent peace settlement. Why the king was defeated and executed has been a central question in English history, being traced back to the Reformation and forward to the triumph of parliament in the eighteenth century. The old answers, whether those of the Victorian narrative historian S.R. Gardiner or of Lawrence Stone's diagnosis of a fatal long-term rift in English society, however, no longer satisfy, while the newer ones of local historians and 'revisionists' often leave readers unclear as to why the Civil War happened at all. In Why Was Charles I Executed? Clive Holmes supplies clear answers to eight key questions about the period, ranging from why the king had to summon the Long Parliament to whether there was in fact an English Revolution.

The story of the reign of Charles I - through the lives of his people. Prize-winning historian David Cressy mines the widest range of archival and printed sources, including ballads, sermons, speeches, letters, diaries, petitions, proclamations, and the proceedings of secular and ecclesiastical courts, to explore the aspirations and expectations not only of the kingand his followers, but also the unruly energies of many of his subjects, showing how royal authority was constituted, in peace and in war - and how it began to fall apart. A blend of micro-historical analysis and constitutional theory, parish politics and ecclesiology, military, cultural, and social history, Charles I and the People of England is the first major attempt to connect the political, constitutional, and religious history of this crucial period in Englishhistory with the experience and aspirations of the rest of the population. From the king and his ministers to the everyday dealings and opinions of parishioners, petitioners, and taxpayers, David Cressy re-creates the broadest possible panorama of early Stuart England, as it slipped from complacencyto revolution.

The sequence of civil wars that ripped England apart in the 17th century was the single most traumatic event between the medieval Black Death and the two world wars. Braddick gives the reader a sense both of what it was like to live through events of uncontrollable violence and what really animated the different sides.

The Civil War fought between Charles I and his Parliament is one of the most momentous conflicts in English history. This book provides a wholly new perspective by revealing the extent to which the struggle possessed an "ethnic" dimension, and the impact of that on the forging of English national identity. Stoyle reveals the acute fear of foreign invasion that gripped England after 1640, when the insular English were placed on the brink of what they perceived as a national emergency. Stoyle sets the creation of the New Model Army within that context, arguing that its appearance represented the culmination of a campaign by Oliver Cromwell and others to forge a purely "English" military instrument, one purged of the foreign solders who had been so prominent in earlier Parliamentarian armies. This self-consciously "English" army eventually succeeded in wresting back control of the kingdom by defeating the king's forces, re-conquering Cornwall and Wales, and expelling all foreign agents.

This volume is a study of popular behaviour during the English Civil War. The book makes three claims. The first is that English counties did not behave as homogeneous units during the conflict of 1642-46, but that they divided instead along regional lines, certain areas supporting Parliament, others supporting the King. The second is that this general rule applied to cities too, and that in urban communities it is possible to discern both 'Royalist' and 'Parliamentarian' parishes. The third is that these internal divisions were not simply temporary alignments, conjured up by extraordinary circumstances, but that they reflected deep and enduring splits in local society, contrasting patterns of popular behaviour stretching back over very many years.

A collection of local history writings on the English Civil Wars showing how the conflicts between Royalists and Parliamentarians were superimposed on complex existing local and regional economic, social and political structures with the result that the Civil War was never the same in any two places.

During the 1640s, the kingdoms ruled by Charles I - England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland - were gripped by a series of civil wars and conflicts which were, in part, distinct to each kingdom, but which also overlapped and inter-related, leading some British historians to portray them as a single 'British' conflict. The British Wars by Peter Gaunt offers a concise history of these wars, from the beginning of Charles I's travails with the Scots to the conclusion of the wars at the Battle of Worcester and the English conquest of Ireland and Scotland. Providing a clear, concise and balanced account of events in England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland, this book * explores the relationship between the three kingdoms *looks at military, political and religious developments in each * assesses whether the wars can be seen as a single 'British' conflict or should be viewed as a series of inter-related but essentially separate wars.

This text caused a major stir when it was first published in 1976. Redirecting scholarly attention to the county communties, it reassessed their role in the events of the 1630s and 1640s, claiming they were far more independent of London and the national leadership than usually supposed, and that provincial opinion was itself a powerful actor in the countdown to civil war. Much work has since appeared to confirm or modify these findings. In this reset second edition the original survives largely untouched; but now includes entirely new histiorographic commentary on the text and supporting documents.

This is a critical re-evaluation of one of the best known episodes of crowd action in the English Revolution, in which crowds in their thousands invaded and plundered the houses of the landed classes. The so-called Stour Valley riots have become accepted as the paradigm of class hostility, determining plebeian behaviour within the Revolution. An excercise in micro-history, the book questions this dominant reading by trying to understand the inter-related contexts of local responses to the political and religious counter-revolution of the 1630s and the confessional politics of the early 1640s. It explains both the outbreak of popular 'violence' and its ultimate containment in terms of a popular (and parliamentary) political culture that legitimised attacks on the political, but not the social, order. The book also advances a series of general arguments for reading crowd actions, and questions how the history of the English Revolution has been written.

A new edition of this well-known book which reasserts the central importance of political and religious ideology in the origins of the Engish Civil War, rather than focusing narrowly on the social and economic roots of the conflict. It provides a clear account of the main political theories in c17th England - The Divine Right of Kings; Government by Consent; and The Ancient Constitution - and goes on to consider the significance of these ideas.

What were the causes of the English Civil War? The traditional explanations involving the struggle for sovereignty and the bourgeois revolution have been questioned in recent years. In this study, Conrad Russell offers a compelling new analysis, bringing into focus fundamental religious andconstitutional issues of vital importance to contemporaries but neglected by historians. Drawing heavily on research in printed and unpublished sources, Russell highlights the constitutional problem of multiple kingdoms within Britain; the religious problem of competing theologies within and outsidea state church; and the economic problem of the inadequacy of royal revenue to meet the needs of the monarchy. The most in-depth account to date of the origins of one of the most significant events in British history, this will be essential reading for all students of the seventeenthcentury.

The causes of war : a historiographical survey / Howard Tomlinson -- The Jacobean religious settlement : the Hampton Court Conference / Patrick Collinson -- The personal rule of Charles I / Kevin Sharpe -- Spain or the Netherlands? : the dilemmas of early Stuart foreign policy / Simon Adams --Financial and administrative developments / David Thomas -- The nature of a Parliament in early Stuart England / Conrad Russell -- National and local awareness in the county communities / Anthony Fletcher.

This important collection of essays, based on extensive original research, presents a vigorous critique of ` revisionist' analyses of the period, and reasserts the importance of long term ideological and social developments in causing the outbreak of the civil war.

The 1640s were one of the most exciting and bloody decades in British and Irish history. This book interweaves the narrative threads in each theatre of conflict to provide an holistic account and analysis of the wars in and between England, Scotland and Ireland, from the Covenanter Rebellion to the execution of Charles I. Politics and War in the Three Stuart Kingdoms, 1637-49 - stresses the need to examine the English Civil War within the context of the other conflicts in Scotland and Ireland, and vice versa - explores key themes, such as the relationship between armies and elites - assesses the extent to which the wars in and between the kingdoms were the product of religious and ethnic hatred Using a wide range of original and secondary sources, and incorporating the latest research, David Scott offers a challenging new interpretation of political structure and dynamics in the warring Stuart realms.

The impact of the fighting / Charles Carlton -- The impact on government / David L. Smith -- The impact of Puritanism / John Morrill -- The impact on political thought : rhetorics for troubled times / Glenn Burgess -- The impact of the new model army / Ian Gentles -- The impact on society : a world turned upside down / John Walter -- The impact on literature / Peter W. Thomas.

What do maypoles, charivari processions, and stoolball matches have to do with the English civil war? A great deal, argues Underdown in this provocative reinterpretation of the English Revolution. Underdown uses case histories of three western countries to show that the war was, above all, the result of profound disagreements amond people of all social levels about the moral basis of their communities--that commoners as well as rulers held strong opinions about order and governance. Through an original synthesis of social history and popular culture, Underdown links these regionally diverse political opinions to cultural diversity and shows that local differences in popular allegiance in the civil war strikingly coincided with regional contrasts in the traditional festive culture. This pioneering study offers a new understanding of the relationship between society, politics, and culture in 17th-century England.

John Morrill has been at the forefront of modern attempts to explain the origins, nature and consequences of the English Revolution. These twenty essays -- seven either specially written or reproduced from generally inaccessible sources -- illustrate the main scholarly debates to which he has so richly contributed: the tension between national and provincial politics; the idea of the English Revolution as "the last of the European Wars of Religion''; its British dimension; and its political sociology. Taken together, they offer a remarkably coherent account of the period as a whole.

Riot, Rebellion and Popular Politics in Early Modern England reassesses the relationship between politics, social change and popular culture in the period c. 1520-1730. It argues that early modern politics needs to be understood in broad terms, to include not only states and elites, but also disputes over the control of resources and the distribution of power. Andy Wood assesses the history of riot and rebellion in the early modern period, concentrating upon: popular involvement in religious change and political conflict, especially the Reformation and the English Revolution; relations between ruler and ruled; seditious speech; popular politics and the early modern state; custom, the law and popular politics; the impact of literacy and print; and the role of ritual, gender and local identity in popular politics.

Turncoats and Renegadoes is the first dedicated study of the practice of changing sides during the English Civil Wars. It examines the extent and significance of side-changing in England and Wales but also includes comparative material from Scotland and Ireland. The first half identifies side-changers among peers, MPs, army officers, and common soldiers, before reconstructing the chronological and regional patterns to their defections. The second half delivers a cultural history of treachery, by adopting a thematic approach to explore the social andcultural implications of defections, and demonstrating how notions of what constituted a turncoat were culturally constructed. Side-changing came to dominate strategy on both sides at the highest levels. Both sides reviled, yet sought to take advantage of the practice, whilst allegations oftreachery came to dominate the internal politics of royalists and parliamentarians alike. The language applied to 'turncoats and renegadoes' in contemporary print is discussed and contrasted with the self-justifications of the side-changers themselves as they sought to shape an honourable self-imagefor their families and posterity. Andrew Hopper investigates the implementation of military justice, along with the theatre of retribution surrounding the trial and execution of turncoats. He concludes by arguing that, far from side-changing being the dubious practice of a handful of aberrant individuals, it became a necessarysurvival strategy for thousands as they navigated their way through such rapidly changing events. He reveals how side-changing shaped the course of the English Revolution, even contributing to the regicide itself, and remained an important political legacy to the English speaking peoplesthereafter.

Much ink has been spent on accounts of the English Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century, yet royalism has been largely neglected. This volume of essays by leading scholars in the field seeks to fill that significant gap in our understanding by focusing on those who took up arms for the king. The royalists described were not reactionary, absolutist extremists but pragmatic, moderate men who were not so different in temperament or background from the vast majority of those who decided to side with, or were forced by circumstances to side with, Parliament and its army. The essays force us to think beyond the simplistic dichotomy between royalist 'absolutists' and 'constitutionalists' and suggest instead that allegiances were much more fluid and contingent than has hitherto been recognized. This is a major contribution to the political and intellectual history of the Civil Wars and of early modern England more generally.

This Handbook brings together leading historians of the events surrounding the English revolution, exploring how the events of the revolution grew out of, and resonated, in the politics and interactions of the each of the Three Kingdoms - England, Scotland, and Ireland. It captures a sharedBritish and Irish history, comparing the significance of events and outcomes across the Three Kingdoms. In doing so, the Handbook offers a broader context for the history of the Scottish Covenanters, the Irish Rising of 1641, and the government of Confederate Ireland, as well as the British andIrish perspective on the English civil wars, the English revolution, the Regicide, and Cromwellian period.The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution explores the significance of these events on a much broader front than conventional studies. The events are approached not simply as political, economic, and social crises, but as challenges to the predominant forms of religious and political thought,social relations, and standard forms of cultural expression. The contributors provide up-to-date analysis of the political happenings, considering the structures of social and political life that shaped and were re-shaped by the crisis. The Handbook goes on to explore the long-term legacies of thecrisis in the Three Kingdoms and their impact in a wider European context.

Covenanting Citizens throws new light on the origins of the English civil war and on the radical nature of the English Revolution. An exercise in writing the "new political history", the volume challenges the discrete categories of high and popular politics and the presumed boundaries betweennational and local history. It offers the first full study of the Protestation, the first state oath to be issued under parliamentary authority. The politics behind its introduction into Parliament, it argues, challenges the idea that the drift to civil war was unintended or accidental. Used as aloyalty oath to swear the nation, it required those who took it to defend king, church, parliament, and England's liberties. Despite these political commonplaces, the Protestation had radical intentions and radical consequences. It envisaged armed resistance against the king, and possibly more. Itbecame a charter by which parliament felt able to fight a civil war and it was used to raise men, money, and political support. Requiring resistance against enemies that might include a king himself contemplating the use of political violence, the Protestation offered a radical extension of membership of the political nation to those hitherto excluded by class, age, or gender. In envisaging new forms of politicalmobilisation, the Protestation promoted the development of a parliamentary popular political culture and ideas of active citizenry. Covenanting Citizens demonstrates how the Protestation was popularly appropriated to legitimise an agency expressed in street politics, new forms of mass petitioning,and popular political violence.

Following the execution of the king in 1649, the new Commonwealth and then Oliver Cromwell set out to drive forward a puritan reformation of manners. They wanted to reform the church and its services, enforce the Sabbath, suppress Christmas, and spread the gospel. They sought to impose a sternmoral discipline to regulate and reform sexual behaviour, drinking practices, language, dress, and leisure activities ranging from music and plays to football. England's Culture Wars explores how far this agenda could be enforced, especially in urban communities which offered the greatest potential to build a godly civic commonwealth. How far were local magistrates and ministers willing to cooperate, and what coercive powers did the regime possess tosilence or remove dissidents? How far did the reformers themselves wish to go, and how did they reconcile godly reformation with the demands of decency and civility? Music and dancing lived on, in genteel contexts, early opera replaced the plays now forbidden, and puritans themselves were often fondof hunting and hawking. Bernard Capp explores the propaganda wars waged in press and pulpit, how energetically reformation was pursued, and how much or little was achieved. Many recent historians have dismissed interregnum reformation as a failure. He demonstrates that while the reforming drivevaried enormously from place to place, its impact could be powerful. The book is therefore structured in three parts: setting out the reform agenda and challenges, surveying general issues and patterns, and finally offering a number of representative case-studies. It draws on a wide range of sources, including local and central government records, judicial records,pamphlets, sermons, newspapers, diaries, letters, and memoirs; and demonstrates how court records by themselves give us only a very limited picture of what was happening on the ground.

Between 1513 and 1525 Niccolo Machiavelli wrote a series of works dealing with political, military, and historical matters. One of these (the 'Arte della guerra') was published in 1521, but the rest of his major writings were not published until 1531-2, nearly five years after his death. Theycontinued to be reissued regularly, well into the early seventeenth century. The popularity of Machiavelli's books, the variety of his themes, the different contexts within which he was studied, the range of readers' interests, and the fact that his name entered the vocabulary of every Europeanlanguage - all make his early reception a fruitful field of enquiry. Historians of ideas have tended to tidy up the past in order to make it comprehensible but Sydney Anglo is concerned with heterogeneity, and with the often irrational and emotional aspects of sixteenth-century thought. Basing hisresearch entirely upon primary sources he quotes extensively in the conviction that, in a battle of words, the words themselves and their tone convey more than summaries of intellectual abstractions. Authors - hostile, enthusiastic, and indifferent - are closely examined; and many different contexts, political and intellectual, are considered. Sometimes Machiavelli was influential, sometimes not, but in this history of his reception, silences often prove significant. Written in a lively andtrenchant style, this new interpretation of the impact of Machievalli is an original contribution of high quality by a leading expert in the field of Renaissance studies.