Royalist Agents, Conspirators and Spies
Royalist Agents, Conspirators and Spies

Author: Geoffrey Smith

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-08

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 131706108X

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Between 1640 and 1660 the British Isles witnessed a power struggle between king and parliament of a scale and intensity never witnessed, either before or since. Although often characterised as a straight fight between royalists and parliamentarians, recent scholarship has highlighted the complex and fluid nature of the conflict, showing how it was waged on a variety of fronts, military, political, cultural and religious, at local, national and international levels. In a melting pot of competing loyalties, shifting allegiances and varying military fortunes, it is hardly surprising that agents, conspirators and spies came to play key roles in shaping events and determining policies. In this groundbreaking study, the role of a fluctuating collection of loyal, resourceful and courageous royalist agents is uncovered and examined. By shifting the focus of attention from royal ministers, councillors, generals and senior courtiers to the agents, who operated several rungs lower down in the hierarchy of the king's supporters, a unique picture of the royalist cause is presented. The book depicts a world of feuds, jealousies and rivalries that divided and disorganised the leadership of the king's party, creating fluid and unpredictable conditions in which loyalties were frequently to individuals or factions rather than to any theoretical principle of allegiance to the crown. Lacking the firm directing hand of a Walsingham or Thurloe, the agents looked to patrons for protection, employment and advancement. Grounded on a wealth of primary source material, this book cuts through a fog of deceit and secrecy to expose the murky world of seventeenth-century espionage. Written in a lively yet scholarly style, it reveals much about the nature of the dynamics of the royalist cause, about the role of the activists, and why, despite a long series of political and military defeats, royalism survived. Simultaneously, the book offers fascinating accounts of the remarkable activities of a number of very colourful individuals.

Clarendon and the Rhetoric of Historical Form
Clarendon and the Rhetoric of Historical Form

Author: Martine Watson Brownley

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2016-11-11

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1512803987

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Clarendon and the Rhetoric of Historical Form is the first major evaluation from a literary point of view of the writings of Edward Hyde, the first Earl of Clarendon and the most important English historiographer of the seventeenth century. As an early reformer in the Long Parliament, as an adviser to Charles I and Charles II, as the major architect of the Restoration on the Royalist side, and as Lord Chancellor of England from 1660 to 1667, Clarendon played a crucial role in determining the course of English history during and after the tumultuous years of the civil wars. As a historian and a literary stylist, he produced the History of the Rebellion, generally regarded as the greatest historical work written in England during the seventeenth century. Martine Watson Brownley evaluates Clarendon's literary abilities and achievements, focusing on his prose style, narrative form, and thematic structure on biographical influences on his writing; and on his literary background and associations. She also places Clarendon in the context of the development of English literary historiography during the seventeenth century. Various political and literary changes—for example, the antiquarian movement, the civil wars, and alterations in English prose and narrative styles—made the seventeenth century a particularly crucial era in the evolution of an English historiography that would lead to historical works which were also classics of literature. Brownley demonstrates that, through his experiments in style and structure in the History of the Rebellion, and particularly through the imaginative overview which he evolved for and in his work, Clarendon made the most significant advances in English literary historiography before the late eighteenth-century triumvirate of Gibbon, Robertson, and Hume. Clarendon and the Rhetoric of Historical Form will be valuable to scholars interested in historiography, prose and narrative style, and seventeenth-century literature and history.

Hobbes on Politics and Religion
Hobbes on Politics and Religion

Author: Laurens van Apeldoorn

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-06-27

Total Pages: 469

ISBN-13: 0192525107

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Thomas Hobbes, one of the most important figures in the history of political philosophy, is still widely regarded as a predominantly secular thinker. Yet a great deal of his political thought was motivated by the need to address problems of a distinctively religious nature. This is the first collection of essays dedicated to the complex and rich intersections between Hobbes's political and religious thought. Written by experts in the field, the volume opens up new directions for thinking about his treatment of religion as a political phenomenon and the political dimensions of his engagement with Christian doctrines and their history. The chapters investigate his strategies for showing how his provocative political positions could be accepted by different religious audiences for whom fidelity to religious texts was of crucial importance, while also considering the legacy of his ideas and examining their relevance for contemporary concerns. Some chapters do so by pursuing mainly historical inquiries about the motives and circumstances of Hobbes's writings, while others reconstruct the logic of his arguments and test their philosophical coherence. They thus offer wide-ranging and sometimes conflicting assessments of Hobbes's ideas, yet they all demonstrate how closely intertwined his political and religious preoccupations are and thereby showcase how this perspective can help us to better understand his thought.