Proposing a new model for understanding religious debates in the churches of England and Scotland between 1603 and 1625, Charles Prior sets aside 'narrow' analyses of conflict over predestination, This book's theme is ecclesiology--the nature of the church, its rites and governance, and its relationship to the early Stuart political world. Drawing on a substantial number of polemical works, from sermons to books of several hundred pages, it argues that rival interpretations of scripture, pagan and civil history and the sources central to the Christian historical tradition lay at the heart of...

This is a study of the political, religious, social and mental worlds of the Catholic aristocracy from 1550 to 1640. Michael Questier examines the familial and patronage networks of the English Catholic community and their relationship to the later Tudors and Stuarts. He shows how the local history of the Reformation can be used to rewrite mainstream accounts of national politics and religious conflict in this period. The book takes in the various crises of mid- and late Elizabeth politics, the accession of James VI, the Gunpowder Plot, religious toleration and the start of the Thirty Years...

This book is a study of centre-local interaction, based upon the experience of the people of an English county, during a very turbulent period in their history. The work revolves around: the relationship between centre and locality, and the partisan use of local institutions and sentiment for 'national' ends. Dr Coleby combines administrative and political history, and establishes with unusual rigour and clarity the nature of the late-seventeenth-century English polity. Whilst there have been many county studies of the early Stuart and Civil War periods, few accounts hitherto have looked at...

Traditionally historians have argued that the court of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) was factional, divided among competing subjects who were manipulated by their Queen. This book provides a different account: of councilors who were united by two connected dangers, namely Catholic opposition to Protestant England and Elizabeth's refusal to marry or to settle England's succession. Working from the papers of the Queen's secretary, William Cecil, the author has set this crisis in the context of events in Scotland, Ireland and mainland Europe, and has explored fully the long-term political impact of...

This book is the first modern intellectual biography of the Scottish theologian and political theorist Samuel Rutherford (c. 1600-1661). Its main purpose is to provide a thorough discussion of Rutherford's religious and political ideas, and their role in the ideology of the Scottish Covenanters whose rebellion against Charles I marked the beginning of the British troubles in the mid-seventeenth century. The book also constitutes an important multidisciplinary case study in the Calvinist and Puritan traditions.

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.