Religious controversy was central to political conflict in the years leading up to the outbreak of the English Civil War. Historians have focused on one religious doctrine--predestination, but Catholic and Reformed analyzes the broader preconceptions that lay behind religious debate. It offers an analysis of the nature of the English Church, and how this related to the Roman Catholic and Reformed Churches of the Continent. The book's conclusions explain the nature of English religious culture and its role in provoking the Civil War.

This book completes the study of the life and political thought of Algernon Sidney (1623-1683), which began with Algernon Sidney and the English Republic, 1623-1677 (1988). In the process it offers a reinterpretation of the major political crisis of Charles II's reign, and of its European and seventeenth-century contexts. Like its predecessor, the book spans the disciplines of intellectual and political history. Its twin focus is the last six years of Sidney's life, which culminated in the famous public drama of his trial and execution for treason in 1683, and in his major political work, the...

"Constitutional Royalism" is one of the most familiar yet least often examined of all the political labels found in the historiography of the English Revolution. This book fills a gap by investigating the leading Constitutional royalists who rallied to King Charles I in 1642 while consistently urging him to reach an "accommodation" with Parliament. These royalists' early careers reveal that a commitment to the rule of law and a relative lack of "godly" zeal were the characteristic predictors of Constitutional royalism in the Civil War. Such attitudes explain why many of them criticized the...

This is the first comprehensive study of the House of Lords in the reign of Charles II. It examines the House's institutional and political activities, and reveals the vital role played by the peerage in Caroline parliaments. Andrew Swatland also describes the emergence of political parties, reinterpreting the origins of "Toryism" and "Whiggism." This detailed and balanced study is both a major institutional history and an important contribution to the history of Restoration politics and political culture.

Protestantism and Patriotism is a detailed study of the first two Anglo-Dutch Wars (1652-1654 and 1665-1667) and the ideological contexts in which they were fought. It differs from other treatments of English foreign policy in this period by emphasizing that diplomacy, trade and warfare cannot be studied in isolation from domestic culture. It also insists, unlike most studies of domestic politics in the period, that England's place in Europe and the wider world was central to political and cultural developments in this revolutionary age.

Childhood in question brings together some of today's foremost writers working on the history of childhood.

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.

A major study of the 1549 rebellions, the largest and most important risings in Tudor England.

A powerful account of life and loss in the Great War, as told by British soldiers in their letters home

This book was inspired by the author's discovery of an extraordinary cache of letters from a soldier who was killed on the Western Front during the First World War. The soldier was his grandfather, and the letters had been tucked away, unread and unmentioned for many decades. Intrigued by the heartbreak and history of these family letters, Fletcher sought out the correspondence of other British soldiers who had volunteered for the fight against Germany. This resulting...