This book makes an original contribution to the history of the English Revolution and to the meaning of crowd behavior. It recreates one of the most famous episodes, in which crowds from Essex and Suffolk attacked and plundered the houses of the gentry, and sought to "ethnically cleanse" their communities of Catholics. The deeper perspective offered by history shows that this action was not "blind violence": the book deciphers the logic that informed the crowd's behavior, and finds evidence of both the importance--and reach--of puritanism and popular parliamentarianism.

Although Western societies cannot escape from images of famine in the present world, their direct experience with widespread hunger has receded into the past. England was one of the very first countries to escape from the shadow of famine and in this volume, a team of distinguished economic, social, and demographic historians analyze why. The contributors combine detailed local studies of individual communities, broader analyses of the impact of hunger and disease, and methodological discussions that explore the effect of crisis mortality on early modern societies. The essays examine the...

This book makes an original contribution to the history of the English Revolution and to the meaning of crowd behavior. It recreates one of the most famous episodes, in which crowds from Essex and Suffolk attacked and plundered the houses of the gentry, and sought to "ethnically cleanse" their communities of Catholics. The deeper perspective offered by history shows that this action was not "blind violence": the book deciphers the logic that informed the crowd's behavior, and finds evidence of both the importance--and reach--of puritanism and popular parliamentarianism.