Political and religious practice in the early modern British world

Political and religious practice in the early modern British world

Author: William J. Bulman

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2022-06-07

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1526151340

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This volume brings together cutting-edge research by some of the most innovative scholars of early modern Britain. Inspired in part by recent studies of the early modern ‘public sphere’, the twelve chapters collected here reveal an array of political and religious practices that can serve as a foundation for new narratives of the period. The practices considered range from deliberation and inscription to publication and profanity. The narratives under construction range from secularisation to the rise of majority rule. Many of the authors also examine ways British developments were affected by and in turn influenced the world outside of Britain. These chapter will be essential reading for students of early modern Britain, early modern Europe and the Atlantic World. They will also appeal to those interested in the religious and political history of other regions and periods.


The Cradle King

The Cradle King

Author: Alan Stewart

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2011-10-31

Total Pages: 458

ISBN-13: 1448104572

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As the son of Mary Queen of Scots, born into her 'bloody nest', James had the most precarious of childhoods. Even before his birth, his life was threatened: it was rumoured that his father, Henry, had tried to make the pregnant Mary miscarry by forcing her to witness the assassination of her supposed lover, David Riccio. By the time James was one year old, Henry was murdered, possibly with the connivance of Mary; Mary was in exile in England; and James was King of Scotland. By the age of five, he had experienced three different regents as the ancient dynasties of Scotland battled for power and made him a virtual prisoner in Stirling Castle. In fact, James did not set foot outside the confines of Stirling until he was eleven, when he took control of his country. But even with power in his hands, he would never feel safe. For the rest of his life, he would be caught up in bitter struggles between the warring political and religious factions who sought control over his mind and body. Yet James believed passionately in the divine right of kings, as many of his writings testify. He became a seasoned political operator, carefully avoiding controversy, even when his mother Mary was sent to the executioner by Elizabeth I. His caution and politicking won him the English throne on Elizabeth's death in 1603 and he rapidly set about trying to achieve his most ardent ambition: the Union of the two kingdoms. Alan Stewart's impeccably researched new biography makes brilliant use of original sources to bring to life the conversations and the controversies of the Jacobean age. From James's 'inadvised' relationships with a series of favourites and Gentlemen of the Bedchamber to his conflicts with a Parliament which refused to fit its legislation to the Monarch's will, Stewart lucidly untangles the intricacies of James's life. In doing so, he uncovers the extent to which Charles I's downfall was caused by the cracks that appeared in the monarchy during his father's reign.


London presbyterians and the British revolutions, 1638–64

London presbyterians and the British revolutions, 1638–64

Author: Elliot Vernon

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2021-09-28

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 1526157799

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This is the first book-length exploration of presbyterians and presbyterianism in London during the crisis period of the mid-seventeenth century. It charts the emergence of a movement of clergy and laity that aimed at ‘reforming the Reformation’ by instituting presbyterianism in London’s parishes and ultimately the Church of England. The book analyses the movement’s political narrative and its relationship with its patrons in the parliamentarian aristocracy and gentry. It also considers the political and social institutions of London life and examines the presbyterians’ opponents within the parliamentarian camp. Finally, it focuses on the intellectual influence of presbyterian ideas on the political thought and polity of the Church and the emergence of dissent at the Restoration.


Law, Politics and Society in Early Modern England

Law, Politics and Society in Early Modern England

Author: Christopher W. Brooks

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-01-08

Total Pages: 469

ISBN-13: 1139475290

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Law, like religion, provided one of the principal discourses through which early-modern English people conceptualised the world in which they lived. Transcending traditional boundaries between social, legal and political history, this innovative and authoritative study examines the development of legal thought and practice from the later middle ages through to the outbreak of the English civil war, and explores the ways in which law mediated and constituted social and economic relationships within the household, the community, and the state at all levels. By arguing that English common law was essentially the creation of the wider community, it challenges many current assumptions and opens new perspectives about how early-modern society should be understood. Its magisterial scope and lucid exposition will make it essential reading for those interested in subjects ranging from high politics and constitutional theory to the history of the family, as well as the history of law.


The Parliament of 1624

The Parliament of 1624

Author: Robert E. Ruigh

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1971

Total Pages: 462

ISBN-13: 9780674652255

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In 1624 James I invited Parliament to discuss issues of war and peace, setting a precedent that would make yet another inroad into the prerogatives of the crown. The "Happy Parliament" turned against the peace-loving King and supported war with Spain. Ruigh presents an absorbing narrative of the proceedings and their far-reaching consequences.


England's Wars of Religion, Revisited

England's Wars of Religion, Revisited

Author: Dr Charles W A Prior

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2013-06-28

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 1409482340

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The causes and nature of the civil wars that gripped the British Isles in the mid-seventeenth century remain one of the most studied yet least understood historical conundrums. Religion, politics, economics and affairs local, national and international, all collided to fuel a conflict that has posed difficult questions both for contemporaries and later historians. Were the events of the 1640s and 50s the first stirrings of modern political consciousness, or, as John Morrill suggested, wars of religion? This collection revisits the debate with a series of essays which explore the implications of John Morrill's suggestion that the English Civil War should be regarded as a war of religion. This process of reflection constitutes the central theme, and the collection as a whole seeks to address the shortcomings of what have come to be the dominant interpretations of the civil wars, especially those that see them as secular phenomena, waged in order to destroy monarchy and religion at a stroke. Instead, a number of chapters present a portrait of political thought that is defined by a closer integration of secular and religious law and addresses problems arising from the clash of confessional and political loyalties. In so doing the volume underlines the extent to which the dispute over the constitution took place within a political culture comprised of many elements of fundamental agreement, and this perspective offers a richer and more nuanced readings of some of the period's central figures, and draws firmer links between the crisis at the centre and its manifestation in the localities.


Altars Restored

Altars Restored

Author: Kenneth Fincham

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2007-11-29

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 0191518719

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Altars are powerful symbols, fraught with meaning, but during the early modern period they became a religious battleground. Attacked by reformers in the mid-sixteenth century because of their allegedly idolatrous associations with the Catholic sacrifice of the mass, a hundred years later they served to divide Protestants due to their re-introduction by Archbishop Laud and his associates as part of a counter-reforming programme. Moreover, having subsequently been removed by the victorious puritans, they gradually came back after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. This book explores these developments, over a 150 year period, and recaptures the experience of the ordinary parishioner in this crucial period of religious change. Far from being the passive recipients of changes imposed from above, the laity are revealed as actively engaged from the early days of the Reformation, as zealous iconoclasts or their Catholic opponents - a division later translated into competing protestant views. Altars Restored integrates the worlds of theological debate, church politics and government, and parish practice and belief, which are often studied in isolation from one another. It draws from hitherto largely untapped sources, notably the surviving artefactual evidence comprising communion tables and rails, fonts, images in stained glass, paintings and plates, and examines the riches of local parish records - especially churchwardens' accounts. The result is a richly textured study of religious change at both local and national level.


Restoration Historians and the English Civil War

Restoration Historians and the English Civil War

Author: R.C. MacGillivray

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 9401016259

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This is a study of the histories of the English Civil War or some aspects of it written in England or by Englishmen and Englishwomen or publish ed in England up to 1702, the year of the publication of the first volume of Clarendon's History of the Rebellion. By the terms of this definition, Clarendon is himself, of course, one of the historians studied. Clarendon's History is so formidable an achievement that all historians writing about the war before its publication have an air of prematureness. Nevertheless, as I hope the following pages will show, they produced a body of writing which may still be read with interest and profit and which anticipated many of the ideas and attitudes of Clarendon's History. I will even go so far as to say that many readers who have only a limited interest or no in terest in the Civil War are likely to find many of these historians interest ing, should their works come to their attention, for their treatment of the problems of man in society, for their psychological acuteness, and for their style. But while I intend to show their merits, my main concern will be to show how the Civil War appeared to historians, including Clarendon, who wrote within one or two generations after it, that is to say, at a time when it remained part of the experience of people still alive. A word is necessary on terminology.