This is a historical study of the career of King James VI and I, as king of Scotland (1567-1625) and England (1603-1625), who achieved a union of the crowns as the first king of Great Britain, and who undertook to end the recurring religious wars. His peacemaking by diplomatic means was complemented by his efforts to foster closer relations among the churches. The peace that he helped to maintain by these initiatives, though cut short by the coming of the Thirty Years' War, was immensely beneficial both to Britain and to the other countries of Europe.

During his brief political career, Archibald Campbell, 5th earl of Argyll (1530-73) played a crucial role in the mid-century upheavals in Scottish and British politics. This definitive study on Argyll is a major contribution to Scottish political history, and a significant new contribution to the history of the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots. The study of his career changes significantly the axis of mid-Tudor studies as well as the study of the dynamics of Scottish history. Important European contexts and resonances are also explored.

David Dean's book offers the first detailed account of the last Elizabethan parliaments. Examining a wide range of social and economic issues, law reform, religious and political concerns, Law-Making and Society in Late Elizabethan England addresses the importance of parliament both as a political event and as a legislative institution. David Dean draws on an array of local, corporate and personal archives to reinterpret the legislative history of the period and in doing so, reach a deeper understanding of many aspects of Elizabethan history.

This is a major survey of how towns were governed in late Stuart and early Hanoverian England. England's civil wars in the 1640s broke apart a society that had been used to political consensus. Though all sought unity after the wars ended, a new kind of politics developed--one based on partisan division, arising first in urban communities, not at Parliament. This book explains how war unleashed a long cycle of purge and counter-purge and how society found the means to absorb divisive politics peacefully. Legal changes are explored with reference to the rarely-studied court records of King's...

This book re-evaluates the nature of Elizabethan politics and Elizabeth's queenship in late sixteenth-century England, Wales and Ireland. Natalie Mears shows that Elizabeth took an active role in policy-making and suggests that Elizabethan politics has to be perceived in terms of personal relations between the queen and her advisors rather than of the hegemony of the privy council. She challenges current perceptions of political debate at court as restricted and integrates recent research on court drama and religious ritual into the wider context of political debate.

John Marshall offers an extensive study of late seventeenth-century practices of religious intolerance and toleration in England, Ireland, France, Piedmont and the Netherlands and of the arguments which John Locke and his associates made in defence of 'universal religious toleration'. He analyzes early modern and early Enlightenment discussions of toleration; debates over toleration for Jews and Muslims as well as for Christians; the limits of toleration for the intolerant, atheists, 'libertines' and 'sodomites'; and the complex relationships between intolerance and resistance theories...

This book describes preaching at the royal courts during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I (1558-1625) and reconstructs the contexts--architectural, religious, political--in which the sermons were preached. The author shows how previous work has underestimated the place of religion at court, presents new evidence of the competing royal religious patronage, and reconceptualizes the careers of preachers such as Andrewes, Donne and Laud. The book is accompanied by a definitive calendar of court sermons for the period on diskette.

This study of the religious culture of sixteenth-century England is concerned with the competing forms of evangelism promoted by humanists of the Roman Catholic Church and emerging forms of Protestantism. The book shows how Protestant reformers adopted "preaching Christ" as their strategy to promote new doctrine, and explores shifts in political power toward Protestantism. It also offers new perspectives on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century figures such as John Rotheram, John Colet, Hugh Latimer, and Anne Boleyn.

Examines the careers and political thinking of Elizabethan martial men, whose military ambitions were thwarted by a quietist foreign policy.

Garthine Walker reveals that women were not treated leniently by the courts and that beliefs about gender and order impacted on real legal outcomes in early modern England. She demonstrates that the household role had as much to do with the nature of criminality as the individual in this period. Challenging hitherto accepted views regarding gender stereotyping, this book illuminates the complexities of everyday English life in the early modern period.