A revisionist account of the career of Elizabeth I's 'favourite', the 2nd Earl of Essex.

This book traces the history of the outlawed mystical fellowship, the 'Family of Love', in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. The Familists, devoted followers of a Messianic Dutch mystic named 'H. N.', were passionately denounced by many literate contemporaries, and an association with extremism, subversion and hypocrisy has endured. The author tracks the English Familists into their houses, fields and places of work. Although members of the Family were few in number and highly secretive, identification has proved possible in contexts ranging from the court of Elizabeth I to rural...

This book examines the background to the English military intervention in the Thirty Years War. Blending accounts of diplomacy and factional in-fighting at Court with parliamentary and popular politics, it aims to illuminate the 'revolution' of 1624 when the Palatine crisis forced James I to abandon his long-held dream of an Anglo-Spanish dynastic alliance in favour of a more aggressive policy against the Habsburgs. In studying the English polity in a period of crisis, Professor Cogswell challenges many of the revisionist assumptions about early seventeenth-century England and highlights the...

This book examines gender relations in Shakespeare's England by looking at women's involvement in lawsuits in the largest courts in the land. It describes women's rights in theory and in practice, considers depictions of women in court scenes in plays, and analyzes the language and tactics women and their lawyers employed in pleadings. The book also reveals how many women went to law, how active they were, the discrimination they suffered, and the importance of the life cycle of marriage in determining their legal fortunes.

This book focuses on the "after-life" of historical texts in the period between the arrival of printing in England and the early eighteenth century. Whereas previous studies of historical writing during this period have focused on their authors and on their style or methodology, this work examines the social forces that controlled what was written, and the impact of readers and publishers on authors. The intent is to situate the study of history books within the current literature on the history of the book and the history of print culture.

This book looks at popular religion in early modern England, using detailed accounts of local conflicts to bring the religion of ordinary people to life. Unlike other studies, it examines not magical beliefs but orthodox religion. It counters the view that popular and elite culture in Europe and Britain became polarized by showing how the gentry and people cooperated in regulating religion. But while the clergy did not deserve their poor reputation, their defensiveness also prevented them from fulfilling popular religious needs.

The aftermath of the Popish Plot and the subsequent succession crisis of the years 1678 to 1681 are the context for this new study. It asks two key questions: was there an exclusion crisis? and did these years witness the birth of modern political parties? The author argues that the unrest was not simply due to a centrally organized party machine based around the single issue of exclusion; but was a broad-based controversy about the succession, fears of popery and arbitrary government which produced ideological polarization and political sophistication. Part One examines central politics to...

This unique history of the printed pamphlet in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain traces its rise as an imaginative and often eloquent literary form. Using a broad range of historical, bibliographical and textual evidence, the book shows the coherence of the literary form and the diversity of genres and imaginative devices employed by pamphleteers. Individual chapters examine Elizabethan religious controversy, the book trade, the distribution of pamphlets, pamphleteering in the English Civil War, women and gender, and print in the Restoration.

This is the first detailed study of the political significance of the seventeenth-century's most notorious and sensational court scandal--the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. Insisting that images of the scandalous court had serious political importance, the book retells the tale of Overbury's rise to power, his fall and murder in 1613, and the public revelation of the murder two years later. The book examines the production and circulation of news about the scandal and assesses the political significance of contemporary depictions of the affair.

The last years of Henry VIII's life, 1539-47, have conventionally been seen as a time when the king persecuted Protestants. This book argues that Henry's policies were much more ambiguous; that he continued to give support to Protestantism and that many accordingly also remained loyal to him. It also examines why the Protestants eventually adopted a more radical, oppositional stance, and argues that English Protestantism's eventual identity was determined during these years.