This book addresses a conundrum. Alone of the major competing political interests during the civil wars of the 1640s, royalism needed to transcend attachment to one nation or one religious tradition and recruit a support base in each of England, Ireland and Scotland. This book aims to provide a concise interpretation and reassessment of royalism during these crucial years and focuses on this dilemma, and on the resources, intellectual and practical, deployed to address it, with mixed success. It focuses on the key ideas and values which made royalism a formidable political alternative, rather than on the more usual factional, military or literary perspectives. It argues that a ‘three-kingdom’ perspective not only gives a broader view but also clarifies the distinctive characteristics of English royalism, more robust than its counterparts in the other nations.
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 English Civil War is a joy to behold, a thing of beauty... this will be the civil war atlas against which all others will judged and the battle maps in particular will quickly become the benchmark for all future civil war maps.' -- Professor Martyn Bennett, Department of History, Languages and Global Studies, Nottingham Trent University The English Civil Wars (1638–51) comprised the deadliest conflict ever fought on British soil, in which brother took up arms against brother, father fought against son, and towns, cities and villages fortified themselves in the cause of Royalists or Parliamentarians. Although much historical attention has focused on the events in England and the key battles of Edgehill, Marston Moor and Naseby, this was a conflict that engulfed the entirety of the Three Kingdoms and led to a trial and execution that profoundly shaped the British monarchy and Parliament. This beautifully presented atlas tells the whole story of Britain's revolutionary civil war, from the earliest skirmishes of the Bishops' Wars in 1639–40 through to 1651, when Charles II's defeat at Worcester crushed the Royalist cause, leading to a decade of Stuart exile. Each map is supported by a detailed text, providing a complete explanation of the complex and fluctuating conflict that ultimately meant that the Crown would always be answerable to Parliament.
One late summer's day in 1642 two rival armies faced each other across the rolling Warwickshire countryside at Edgehill. There, Royalists faithful to King Charles I engaged in a battle with the supporters of the Parliament. Ahead lay even more desperate battles like Marston Moor and Naseby. The fighting was also to rage through Scotland and Ireland, notably at the siege of Drogheda and the decisive battle of Dunbar. Few periods in English history are more significant than that to which acclaimed author Trevor Royle turns his attention in CIVIL WAR. From his shrewd analyses of the characters who played their parts in the wars to his brilliantly concise descriptions of battles, Trevor Royle has produced a vivid and dramatic narrative of those turbulent years. His book also reveals how the new ideas and dispensations that followed from the wars - Cromwell's Protectorate, the Restoration of Charles II and the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1689 - made it possible for England, Ireland and Scotland to progress towards their own more distant future as democratic societies.
A study of Scottish thinkers and writers in their political and cultural context. The "advancement of learning" was the term used by late seventeenth-century Scots for intellectual enquiry of all kinds. Encouraged by Stuart patronage, and echoing a Royalist ideology of continuity and order following the chaos of the Civil War, the "Virtuosi", Scottish writers and thinkers, sought to define Scotland's identity. They undertook structured, empirical enquiry into Scottish natural history and geography, human history and antiquities, law and society, while the legal and medical professions developed their status and purpose through institutions such as the Royal College of Physicians and the Advocates' Library. They both complemented and eclipsed the changing intellectual life of the Church and Universities. This book considers the work of leading authors, such as Sir George Mackenzie, Sir Robert Sibbald and Lord Stair, alongside the many other voices engaged in learned research and debate, examining their shared or contrasting philosophy and methods. It shows how a distinctively Scottish take on the "Scientific Revolution" was enhanced by close contacts with the Royal Society and English thinkers, and a conscious membership of the European Republic of Letters.
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.
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.
Printed Drama and Political Instability in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Britain: The Literary Politics of Resistance and Distraction in Plays and Entertainments, 1649–1658 describes the function of printed drama in 1650s Britain. After the regicide of 1649, printed plays could be interpreted by royalist readers as texts of resistance to the republic and protectoral governments respectively. However, there were often discrepancies between the aspirational content of these plays and the realities facing a royalist party who had been defeated in the Civil Wars. Similarly, plays with a classically republican Roman setting failed to offer a successful model for the new republic. Consequently, writers who supported the new republic and, eventually, Cromwell’s protectoral government, proposed entertainments, based around the concept of the sublime, whose purpose was to create political amnesia in the audience, thereby nullifying any political dissatisfaction with a non-monarchical form of government. This volume will appeal to students and scholars of seventeenth-century literature, and of the political history of 1640s and 1650s Britain.
John Adamson provides a new synthesis of current research on the political crisis that engulfed England in the 1640s. Drawing on new archival findings and challenging current orthodoxies, these essays by leading historians offer a variety of original perspectives, locating English events firmly within a 'three kingdoms' context.
This collection examines some of the people, places, and plays at the edge of early modern English drama. Recent scholarship has begun to think more critically about the edge, particularly in relation to the canon and canonicity. This book demonstrates that the people and concepts long seen as on the edge of early modern English drama made vital contributions both within the fictive worlds of early modern plays, and without, in the real worlds of playmakers, theaters, and audiences. The book engages with topics such as child actors, alterity, sexuality, foreignness, and locality to acknowledge and extend the rich sense of playmaking and all its ancillary activities that have emerged over the last decade. The essays by a global team of scholars bring to life people and practices that flourished on the edge, manifesting their importance to both early modern audiences, and to current readers and performers.
