Writing the history of parliament in Tudor and early Stuart England
Writing the history of parliament in Tudor and early Stuart England

Author: Paul Cavill

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2018-07-14

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 1526115913

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This volume of essays explores the rise of parliament in the historical imagination of early modern England. The enduring controversy about the nature of parliament informs nearly all debates about the momentous religious, political and governmental changes of the period – most significantly, the character of the Reformation and the causes of the Revolution. Meanwhile, scholars of ideas have emphasised the historicist turn that shaped political culture. Religious and intellectual imperatives from the sixteenth century onwards evoked a new interest in the evolution of parliament, framing the ways that contemporaries interpreted, legitimised and contested Church, state and political hierarchies. Parliamentary ‘history’ is explored through the analysis of chronicles, more overtly ‘literary’ texts, antiquarian scholarship, religious polemic, political pamphlets, and of the intricate processes that forge memory and tradition.

The Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor & Stuart Britain
The Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor & Stuart Britain

Author: John Stephen Morrill

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 556

ISBN-13: 9780192893277

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Two centuries of dramatic change are covered by this exciting and richly illustrated work. Eighteen leading scholars explore the political, social, religious, and cultural history of the period when monarchs based in south-east England imperfectly attempted to extend their authority over thewhole of the British Isles. These centuries witnessed the Reformation, the civil wars, and two revolutions, in which two monarchs, two wives of a king, and two archbishops of Canterbury were tried and executed, and hundreds of men and women tortured and burned in the name of religion. Yet in the same period, an explosion ofliteracy and the printed word, transformations in landscapes and townscapes, new forms of wealth, new structures of power, and new forms of political participation freed minds and broadened horizons. These centuries marked the beginning of Britain's imperial power and its emergence as perhaps themost liberal and mature of European states. The integrated illustrations and maps form an essential part of the book, complementing all aspects of the text. It also contains a Chronology, Glossary, Family Trees of the monarchy, Further Reading, and an extensive Index.

Theater of State
Theater of State

Author: Chris Kyle

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2012-02-08

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 080478101X

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This book chronicles the expansion and creation of new public spheres in and around Parliament in the early Stuart period. It focuses on two closely interconnected narratives: the changing nature of communication and discourse within parliamentary chambers and the interaction of Parliament with the wider world of political dialogue and the dissemination of information. Concentrating on the rapidly changing practices of Parliament in print culture, rhetorical strategy, and lobbying during the 1620s, this book demonstrates that Parliament not only moved toward the center stage of politics but also became the center of the post-Reformation public sphere. Theater of State begins by examining the noise of politics inside Parliament, arguing that the House of Commons increasingly became a place of noisy, hotly contested speech. It then turns to the material conditions of note-taking in Parliament and how and the public became aware of parliamentary debates. The book concludes by examining practices of lobbying, intersections of the public with Parliament within Westminster Palace, and Parliament's expanding print culture. The author argues overall that the Crown dispensed with Parliament because it was too powerful and too popular.

The Crown and Its Records
The Crown and Its Records

Author:

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2023-10-23

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 3110791463

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Archives are popularly seen as liminal, obscure spaces -- a perception far removed from the early modern reality. This examination of the central English archival system in the period before 1700 highlights the role played by the public records repositories in furnishing precedents for the constitutional struggle between Crown and Parliament. It traces the deployment of archival research in these controversies by three individuals who were at various points occupied with the keeping of records: Sir Robert Cotton, John Selden, and William Prynne. The book concludes by investigating the secretive State Paper Office, home of the arcana imperii, and its involvement in the government's intelligence network: notably the engagement of its most prominent Keeper Sir Thomas Wilson in judicial and political intrigue on behalf of the Crown.

Civil Religion in the Early Modern Anglophone World, 1550-1700
Civil Religion in the Early Modern Anglophone World, 1550-1700

Author: Rachel Hammersley

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2024-05-14

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 178327784X

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Civil Religion - a tradition of political thought that has argued for a close connection between religion and the state - made an important contribution to the development of religious and political thought at key moments of early modern British political and colonial history. As this volume shows, it was at work not just during the Enlightenment, but within a much wider periodical framework: the Reformation, the rise of the Puritan movement, the conflict over the Stuart state and church, the English Revolution, and the formation of key American colonies in the eighteenth century. Advocates of Civil Religion tried to reconcile a national church with religious toleration and design a constitution capable of preventing the church from interfering with affairs of state. The volume investigates the idea of Civil Religion in the works of canonical thinkers in the history of political thought (Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau), in the works of those who have been recognized as shaping political ideas (Hooker, Prynne et al.) during this period, and in the advocacy of those perhaps not previously associated with Civil Religion (William Penn). Although Civil Religion was often posited as a pragmatic solution to constitutional and ecclesiological problems created by the Reformation and the English Revolution, they also reveal that such pragmatism was not at odds with religious conviction or ideals. Civil Religion certainly enhanced citizenship in this period, but it did so in ways which depended on the truth claims of Protestantism, not on their domestication to politics.

Time, History, and Political Thought
Time, History, and Political Thought

Author: John Robertson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-06-22

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 1009289365

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Explores the multiple ways in which different conceptions of time and history have been used to understand politics since late antiquity, showing that no conception of politics has dispensed altogether with time, and many have explicitly sought legitimacy in association with forms of history.

The King's Felons
The King's Felons

Author: Margaret McGlynn

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-03-03

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 019288770X

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The King's Felons examines the subtle but intentional development of criminal confinement as an alternative to capital punishment in early Tudor England. As the judicial establishment looked for ways to enhance law and order without provoking political opposition, they increasingly turned to two traditional mitigations of criminal punishment: benefit of clergy and sanctuary. Often reviled as corrupt clerical rights which served to undermine secular authority and the rule of law, benefit of clergy and sanctuary in fact provided the justices with room to manoeuvre, allowing them to punish a larger number of felons less harshly while avoiding political scrutiny. The King's Felons explores the evolution of this approach over a period of sixty years, allowing us to see not only the internal development of both law and process, but the ways in which the judicial system responded to external pressures. The dissolution of the monasteries between 1536 and 1540, together with the steady erosion of the wealth and power of the bishops, meant that the institutional and financial foundations on which the justices built this system began to crumble as it was reaching fruition. Over the next two decades they scrambled, with limited success, to secure some small vestiges of the system they had built. The epilogue connects the state of the system in the aftermath of this collapse to our existing understanding of the system in the later part of the century. Providing the first detailed study of criminal justice in the early Tudor period, The King's Felons highlights the role of the Church in the administration of criminal justice and reframes our understanding of many significant acts of the Reformation parliament. This book is a must-read for students and scholars of Tudor history, legal historians and those interested in the role of the church with regard to politics, law, and crime.

Studies in Tudor and Stuart politics and government : papers and reviews 1946-1972
Studies in Tudor and Stuart politics and government : papers and reviews 1946-1972

Author: Geoffrey Rudolph Elton

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9780521533195

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The papers collected in these volumes revolve around the political, constitutional and personal problems of the English government between the end of the fifteenth-century civil wars and the beginning of those of the seventeenth century. Previously published in a great variety of places, none of them appeared in book form before. They are arranged in four groups (Tudor Politics and Tudor Government in Volume I, Parliament and Political Thought in Volume II) but these groups interlock. Though written in the course of some two decades, all the pieces bear variously on the same body of major issues and often illuminate details only touched upon in Professor Elton's books. Several investigate the received preconceptions of historians and suggest new ways of approaching familiar subjects. They are reprinted unaltered, but some new footnotes have been added to correct errors and draw attention to later developments.

Political Culture, the State, and the Problem of Religious War in Britain and Ireland, 1578-1625
Political Culture, the State, and the Problem of Religious War in Britain and Ireland, 1578-1625

Author: R. Malcolm Smuts

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-02-23

Total Pages: 769

ISBN-13: 0192863134

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In the period between 1575 and 1625, civic peace in England, Scotland, and Ireland was persistently threatened by various kinds of religiously inspired violence, involving conspiracies, rebellions, and foreign invasions. Religious divisions divided local communities in all three kingdoms, but they also impacted relations between the nations, and in the broader European continent. The challenges posed by actual or potential religious violence gave rise to complex responses, including efforts to impose religious uniformity through preaching campaigns and regulation of national churches; an expanded use of the press as a medium of religious and political propaganda; improved government surveillance; the selective incarceration of English, Scottish, and Irish Catholics; and a variety of diplomatic and military initiatives, undertaken not only by royal governments but also by private individuals. The result was the development of more robust and resilient, although still vulnerable, states in all three kingdoms and, after the dynastic union of Britain in 1603, an effort to create a single state incorporating all of them. R. Malcolm Smuts traces the story of how this happened by moving beyond frameworks of national and institutional history, to understand the ebb and flow of events and processes of religious and political change across frontiers. The study pays close attention to interactions between the political, cultural, intellectual, ecclesiastical, military, and diplomatic dimensions of its subject. A final chapter explores how and why provisional solutions to the problem of violent, religiously inflected conflict collapsed in the reign of Charles I.