Early modern Westminster is familiar as the location of the Royal Court at Whitehall, parliament, the law courts and the emerging West End, yet it has never been studied in its own right. This book is the first study to provide an integrated picture of the town during this crucial period in its history. It reveals the often problematic relations between the diverse groups of people who constituted local society - the Court, the aristocracy, the Abbey, the middling sort and the poor - and the competing visions of Westminster's identity which their presence engendered.
Different chapters...

Ideas about marriage, gender and the family were central to political debate in late Stuart England. Rejecting both the whig narrative that ties Lockeian contract theory to 'affective individualism', and the recently fashionable claim that liberalism expelled women from the 'public sphere', Weil shows how political argument became an arena in which the proper relations between men and women, parents and children, public and private were defined and contested. Using sources that range from high political theory to scurrilous lampoons, she considers public debates about succession, resistance...

What was it like to live under the English Republic and, later, Cromwell's Protectorate, if one supported the defeated Stuarts and yearned for the day when Charles II would once again set foot in England? This book tells the story of the traumatic decade of the 1650s (or, 'the Interregnum', from the Latin meaning 'between the reign of the kings') from the vantage point of those who lost the Civil Wars. It describes how these men and women negotiated the difficult choices they faced: to compromise, collaborate, or resist.
It brings together essays by established and emerging historians and...

The Scottish Reformation of 1560 is one of the most controversial events in Scottish history, and a turning-point in the history of Britain and Europe. Yet its origins remain mysterious, buried under competing Catholic and Protestant versions of the story. Drawing on fresh research and recent scholarship, this book provides the first full narrative of the question, for scholars, students and general readers. Focusing on the crucial period 1525-60, and in particular the childhood of Mary, Queen of Scots, it argues that the Scottish Reformation was neither inevitable nor predictable. A range of...

"This England" is a celebration of "Englishness" in the sixteenth century, which explores: the growing conviction of "Englishness" through the rapidly developing English language; the reinforcement of cultural nationalism as a result of the Protestant Reformation; the national and international situation of England at a time of acute national catastrophe; and of Queen Elizabeth I, the last of her line, remaining unmarried, refusing to even discuss the succession to her throne. Introducing students of the period to an aspect of history largely neglected in the current vogue for histories of...

This book uses the notion of the public sphere to produce a new view of the history of England in the post-reformation period, tracing its themes from the 1530s to the early eighteenth century. The contributors, who are all leaders in their own fields, bring a diverse range of approaches and types of material and analysis to bear on the central theme. The book aims to put the results of some of the most innovative and exciting work in the field before the reader in accessible form. Each chapter can stand on its own and represents a contribution to its own area of study and sub-period as well...

This is the first full-length study of one of the most prolific and controversial polemical authors of the seventeenth century. It provides for the first time a detailed analysis of the ways in which Laudian and royalist polemical literature was created, tracing continuities and changes in a single corpus of writings from 1621 through to 1662. In the process, the author presents important new perspectives on the origins and development of Laudianism and 'Anglicanism' and on the tensions within royalist thought. Milton's book is neither a conventional biography nor simply a study of printed...

An analysis of the new physical presence of Chinese companies operating in Latin America and the Caribbean, the associated challenges that they face, and how they are impacting the region and its relationship with the PRC.