During the past 25 years Elizabethan history has been transformed by the work of Simon Adams. Famous for the depth and breadth of his research in libraries and archives throughout Britain, Western Europe and the USA, he has brought to life the most enigmatic of the greater Elizabethans: Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Together with his edition of Leicester's accounts and his reconstruction of Leicester's papers, Adams has published numerous essays and articles on Leicester's influence and activities. They have reshaped our knowledge of Elizabeth and her Court, Parliament, the localities from Wales to Warwickshire and such subjects of recent debate as the power of the nobility and the noble affinity, the politics of faction and the role of patronage. Sixteen of Simon Adams' essays are found in this collection, organized into three groups: the Court, Leicester and his affinity, and Leicester and the regions. The collection ranges from much-cited essays in standard textbooks to papers at international conferences, as well as articles in a variety of journals.
The early Quaker movement was remarkable for its prolific use of the printing press. Carefully orchestrated by a handful of men and women who were the movement's leaders, printed tracts were an integral feature of the rapid spread of Quaker ideas in the 1650s. Drawing on very rich documentary evidence, this book examines how and why Quakers were able to make such effective use of print. As a crucial element in an extensive proselytising campaign, printed tracts enabled the emergence of the Quaker movement as a uniform, national phenomenon. The book explores the impressive organization underpinning Quaker pamphleteering and argues that the early movement should not be dismissed as a disillusioned spiritual remnant of the English Revolution, but was rather a purposeful campaign which sought, and achieved, effective dialogue with both the body politic and society at large.
In sixteenth-century England Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex, enjoyed great domestic and international renown as a favourite of Elizabeth I. He was a soldier and a statesman of exceptionally powerful ambition. After his disastrous uprising in 1601 Essex fell from the heights of fame and favour, and ended his life as a traitor on the scaffold. This interdisciplinary account of the political culture of late Elizabethan England explores the ideological contexts of Essex's extraordinary career and fall from grace, and the intricate relationship between thought and action in Elizabethan England. By the late sixteenth century, fundamental political models and vocabularies that were employed to legitimise the Elizabethan polity were undermined by the strains of war, the ambivalence that many felt towards the church, continued uncertainty over the succession, and the perceived weaknesses of the rule of the aging Elizabeth. Essex's career and revolt threw all of these strains into relief. Alexandra Gajda examines the attitude of the earl and his followers to war, religion, the structures of the Elizabethan polity, and Essex's role within it. She also explores the classical and historical scholarship prized by Essex and his associates that gave shape and meaning to the earl's increasingly fractured relationship with the Queen and regime. She addresses contemporary responses to the earl, both positive and negative, and the earl's wider impact on political culture. Political and religious ideas in late sixteenth-century England had an important impact on political events in early modern England, and played a vital role in shaping the rise and fall of Essex's career.
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.
This title was first published in 2002. This second volume of The Shakespearean International Yearbook continues the work of assessing the present state of Shakespeare studies in the new millennium. Comprising 20 essays by distinguished scholars from North America, the UK and Australia, it is divided into sections on criticism and theory; text, textuality and technology; Renaissance ideas and conventions; and Shakespeare and the city. The essays address issues that are fundamental to our interpretive encounter with Shakespeare, including those of gender and sexuality, the staging of plays, and historical research on matters such as the monarchy, language, religion, and the law.
This collection of essays seeks to shed light on the politics of those people who are normally thought of as being excluded from the political nation in early modern England. If by political nation we mean those who sat in parliament, the governors of counties and towns, and the enfranchised classes in the constituencies, then the 'excluded' would be those who were neither actively involved in the process of governing nor had any say in choosing those who would rule over them - the bulk of the population at this time. Yet this volume shows that these people were not, in fact, excluded from politics. Not only did the masses possess political opinions which they were capable of articulating in a public forum, but they were alos often active participants in the political process themselves and taken seriously in that capacity by the governmental elite. The various essays deal with topics as wide-ranging as riots, rumours, libels, seditious words, public opinion, the structures of local government, and the gendered dimensions of popular political participation, and cover the period from the eve of the Reformation to the Industrial Revolution. They challenge many existing assumptions concerning the nature and significance of public opinion and politics out-of-doors in the early modern period and show us that the people mattered in politics, and thus why we, as historians, cannot afford to ignore them. Politics was more participatory, in this undemocratic age, than one might have thought. The contributors to this volume show that there was a lively and engaged public sphere throughout this period, from Tudor times to the Georgian era.
This book offers a reappraisal of the kingship and politics of the reign of Edward VI, the third Tudor king of England who reigned from the age of nine in 1547 until his death in 1553. The reign has often been interpreted as a period of political instability, mainly because of Edward's age, but this account challenges the view that the king's minority was a time of political faction. It shows how Edward was shaped and educated from the start for adult kingship, and how Edwardian politics evolved to accommodate a maturing and able young king. The book also explores the political values of the men around the king, and tries to reconstruct the relationships of family and association that bound together the governing elite in the king's Council, his court, and in the universities. It also assesses the impact of Edward's reign on Elizabethan politics.
This book is a study of popular responses to the English Reformation. It takes as its subject not the conversion of English subjects to a new religion but rather their political responses to a Reformation perceived as an act of state and hence, like all early modern acts of state, negotiated between government and people. These responses included not only resistance but also significant levels of accommodation, co-operation and collaboration as people attempted to co-opt state power for their own purposes. This study argues, then, that the English Reformation was not done to people, it was done with them in a dynamic process of engagement between government and people. As such, it answers the twenty-year-old scholarly dilemma of how the English Reformation could have succeeded despite the inherent conservatism of the English people, and it presents a genuinely post-revisionist account of one of the central events of English history.