This book discusses the origins, impact and aftermath of the Civil War in Warwickshire, examining administration, religion and politics in their social context. The focus is mainly on the landed elite, but the importance of relationships between members of the elite and their social inferiors is also stressed. Early chapters discuss the economic and social character of Warwickshire; a middle section examines the onset of the Civil War in 1642; and finally there is a discussion of the economic impact of the war and the administrative, political and religious changes of the 1640s and 1650s,...

This book tells the story of the English Reformation from the viewpoint of ordinary people and their parishes. It discusses official policy and policymakers, as well as local bishops and priests, but the emphasis is on the laity in all its diversity, not just Catholic or Protestant. The book shows that while some individuals and parishes may have welcomed the new religion, people generally resisted change and then gradually created their own idiosyncratic sets of beliefs and practices.

This is the first history and analysis of the intelligence and espionage activities of the regime of Charles II (1660 85). It is concerned with the mechanics, activities and philosophy of the intelligence system which developed under the auspices of the office of the Secretary of State and which emerged in the face of the problems of conspiracy and international politics. It examines the development of intelligence networks on a local and international level, the use made of the Post Office, codes and ciphers, and the employment of spies, informers and assassins. The careers of a number of...

Thomas Starkey (c. 1495 1538) was the most Italianate Englishman of his generation. This book places Starkey into new and more appropriate contexts, both biographical and intellectual, taking him out of others in which he does not belong, from displaced Roundhead to follower of Marsilio of Padua. Beginning with his native Cheshire, it traces his career through Oxford, Padua, Paris, Avignon, Padua again, and finally England, where he spent the last four years of his life trying to fulfil his ambition to serve the commonweal. Most of Starkey's career revolved around his patron Reginald Pole,...

This is the first full study in fifty years of the author of the most celebrated political tract of the early years of the English Civil War, Observations upon Some of His Majesties Late Answers and Expresses. Professor Mendle situates each of Parker's significant tracts in its polemical, intellectual, and political context. He also views Parker's literary work in the light of his career as privado, or intimate advisor, to leading figures of the parliamentary leadership. Parker emerges as a fierce opponent of clerical pretension, a strikingly brutal critic of the common law mind, and a...

This study of the character and policies of Charles I provides an analysis of the political crisis leading to his personal rule in England during the years before the civil wars. It fills a gap in the historical literature of the period by integrating ideological with political developments and English with international affairs. It is also a contribution to the wider European history of a critical phase of the Thirty Years War. The book offers a new way of understanding Charles by demonstrating how ill-suited his personality was to the workings of the political world. It also argues that...

A detailed examination of the poet John Skelton's satirical assault upon Cardinal Wolsey.

Religion, and Puritanism in particular, was a crucially important influence in seventeenth-century England. This book attempts to trace the way in which Puritan clergymen saw themselves and the world in which they lived. It discusses the changes they wanted to make to the Church of England in terms of services and in terms of how they wanted to replace bishops. By looking at such matters through the networks of friendship and alliances made by the ministers, a new picture emerges of the role played by Puritans in the decades leading up to the English Civil War.

By analyzing the ideological origins of the Puritan migration to America, the author shows how Puritans believed that their removal to New England fulfilled prophetic apocalyptic and eschatological visions. Based on a close reading of Puritan texts, the book explains how Puritans interpreted their migration as a prophetic revelatory event in the context of a sacred, ecclesiastical history, and why they considered it as the climax of the history of salvation and redemption.

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.