James II (Penguin Monarchs)
James II (Penguin Monarchs)

Author: David Womersley

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2015-04-30

Total Pages: 105

ISBN-13: 0141977078

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'James was a king tragically trapped by principle. Yet was it wise to attempt to change the national religion?' The short reign of James II is generally seen as one of the most catastrophic in British history, ending in his exile after he unsuccessfully tried to convert England to Catholicism, a crisis that would haunt the monarchy for generations. Ultimately, David Womersley's biography shows, James was a man whose blindness to subtlety and political reality brought about his ruinous downfall.

Sovereignty: Seventeenth-Century England and the Making of the Modern Political Imaginary
Sovereignty: Seventeenth-Century England and the Making of the Modern Political Imaginary

Author: Feisal G. Mohamed

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-02-06

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 0192593064

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This book argues that sovereignty is the first-order question of political order, and that seventeenth-century England provides an important case study in the roots of its modern iterations. It offers fresh readings of Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, and Andrew Marvell, as well as lesser-known figures and literary texts. In addition to political philosophy and literary studies, it also takes account of the period's legal history, exploring the exercise of the crown's feudal rights in the Court of Wards and Liveries, debates over habeas rights, and contests of various courts over jurisdiction. Theorizing sovereignty in a way that points forward to later modernity, the book also offers a sustained critique of the writings of Carl Schmitt, the twentieth century's most influential, if also most controversial, thinker on this topic.