scholarly journals Rumor and “Common Fame”: The Impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham and Public Opinion in Early Stuart England

2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Coast
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Common People ◽  
Charles I ◽  
King Charles I ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Popular Speech

AbstractThis article reexamines the parliamentary impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham, the royal favorite of King Charles I, by placing this event in the broader contexts of political culture and social change in early Stuart England. Buckingham's enemies based the impeachment on “common fame,” claiming that his faults were a matter of public knowledge. Charles, however, believed that the charges were based on seditious rumors. The impeachment undercut an important element of elite rhetoric that associated rumor with the rebellious multitude, revealing ideological divisions over the nature of grievances and the legitimacy of popular speech. The article contextualizes the impeachment within 1620s underground literature that purported to present the views of the common people, arguing that there was a wider tendency to ventriloquize public opinion. When Buckingham's allies produced their own tracts featuring the persona of the “honest ploughman,” appeals to the authority of public opinion were clearly gaining in strength. By explaining this development in political culture with reference to the growth of a more politically reliable “middling sort,” the article contributes to debates about the relationship between social change and political conflict in early Stuart England.

Radical Parliamentarians and the English Civil War

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Como
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Press ◽  
King Charles I ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

This book charts the way the English Civil War of the 1640s mutated into a revolution (paving the way for the later execution of King Charles I and the abolition of the monarchy). Focusing on parliament’s most militant supporters, the book reconstructs the origins and nature of the most radical forms of political and religious agitation that erupted during the war, tracing the process by which these forms gradually spread and gained broader acceptance. Drawing on a wide range of manuscript and print sources, the study situates these developments within a revised narrative of the period, revealing the emergence of new practices and structures for the conduct of politics. In the process, the book illuminates the appearance of many of the period’s strikingly novel intellectual currents, including ideas and practices we today associate with western representative democracy—notions of retained natural rights, religious toleration, freedom of the press, and freedom from arbitrary imprisonment. The book also chronicles the way the civil war shattered English Protestantism—leaving behind myriad competing groupings, including congregationalists, baptists, antinomians, and others—while examining the relationship between this religious fragmentation and political change. Finally, the book traces the gradual appearance of openly anti-monarchical, republican sentiment among parliament’s supporters. Radical Parliamentarians provides a new history of the English Civil War, enhancing our understanding of the dramatic events of the 1640s, and shedding light on the long-term political and religious consequences of the conflict.

Review of Hugh Ross Williamson, Charles and Cromwell (London: Duckworth, 1946)

2021 ◽  
pp. 313-314
Author(s):  
Martin Wight
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
General Problem ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Charles I ◽  
King Charles I ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Literacy ◽  
Revolutionary Situation ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Relationship

Wight notes that Williamson’s account of the English Civil War follows ‘the romantic view of history’ as ‘the relationship or interaction of characters’ in sometimes tragic circumstances. Williamson ‘shows a good dramatic sense’, Wight observes, in his narrative of events involving Cromwell and King Charles I of England; but the book fails to show insight on ‘the deeper dialectic of conservative and revolutionary psychology. It illuminates neither the particular clash between the Anglicanism of the King and the Independency of the Lieutenant-General, nor the general problem of political morals in a revolutionary situation.’ Cromwell and Charles were both ‘compelled to political methods which in private circumstances they would have condemned’. Owing in part to Williamson’s ‘life-long Cromwellian fervour’, the book does not attain ‘a high level of political literacy’, nor does it demonstrate deep discernment about the history of these conflicts.

scholarly journals Political Communication and Social Change. Political Communication and Challenges in the Digital Age

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-41
Author(s):  
Laura Solito ◽  
Carlo Sorrentino
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Digital Environment ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Global Vision ◽  
Collective Commitment ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between political institutions and citizens has been redefined in the digital environment. The aim of this paper is to identify the main circumstances of this transformation. In this regard, individualization has been a key factor. So far, this relationship had been based on collective commitment and a global vision of society. Instead, it now depends on personal commitment and interest in individual issues. The voting process, traditionally based on affiliation, is now conditioned by voters’ opinions. Public opinion can no longer be taken for granted. In addition, persuasion as the only strategy to connect with the electorate is insufficient. Therefore, professionals of political communication have been forced to use the logic of marketing and to explore the potential of digital media, to obtain more consensus and visibility in an increasingly competitive context of communication.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosamund Oates
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
James I ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Turbulent Times ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
The Church

Tobie Matthew (c.1544–1628) lived through the most turbulent times of the English Church. Born during the reign of Henry VIII, he saw Edward VI introduce Protestantism, and then watched as Mary I violently reversed her brother’s changes. When Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558, Matthew rejected his family’s Catholicism to join the fledgling Protestant regime. Over the next sixty years, he helped build a Protestant Church in England under Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I. Rising through the ranks of the Church, he was Archbishop of York in the charged decades leading up to the British Civil Wars. Here was a man who played a pivotal role in the religious politics of Tudor and Stuart England, and nurtured a powerful strain of Puritanism at the heart of the established Church....

The New Progressive Dilemma through the Lens of Comparative Welfare State and Party Research

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis C. Spies
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Attitudinal Change ◽  
Welfare Institutions ◽  
The Us ◽  
Social Expenditures ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Cross National

The chapter summarizes the New Progressive Dilemma (NPD) debate, identifying three arguments from comparative welfare state and party research likely to be relevant to the relationship between immigration and welfare state retrenchment: public opinion, welfare institutions, and political parties. Alignment of anti-immigrant sentiments and welfare support varies considerably between countries, especially between the US and Europe, leading to different party incentives vis-à-vis welfare state retrenchment. The chapter introduces insights from comparative welfare state and party research to the debate, discussing inter alia, political parties in terms of welfare retrenchment, immigrants as a voter group, and cross-national variation of existing welfare institutions. It addresses the complex debates around attitudinal change caused by immigration, levels of welfare support, voting behavior, and social expenditures. Combining these strands of literature, a common theoretical framework is developed that is subsequently applied to both the US and Western European context.

Realignment and Beyond

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell J. Dalton
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
Societal Changes

Affluent democracies have experienced tremendous socio-economic changes since the mid- twentieth century, which has reshaped public opinion, party programs, and electoral choices. This chapter first summarizes the societal changes that have been a driving force behind the political changes described in this study. One pattern involves the longstanding economic issues of contemporary democracies, and shifting social positions on these issues. In addition, an evolving cultural cleavage and its ties to broader attitudes toward social change have altered citizen policy preferences. In most affluent democracies, the parties’ responses to these changing citizen demands have produced a realignment to represent both economic and cultural positions. The chapter concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for the working of electoral systems and the democratic process more broadly.

The Progresses, Processions, and Royal Entries of King Charles I, 1625-1642

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siobhan Keenan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Public Display ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Charles I ◽  
King Charles I

The Progresses, Processions, and Royal Entries of King Charles I, 1625–1642 is the first book-length study of the history, and the political and cultural significance, of the progresses, public processions, and royal entries of Charles I. As well as offering a much fuller account of the king’s progresses and progress entertainments than currently exists, this study throws new light on one of the most vexed topics in early Stuart historiography—the question of Charles I’s accessibility to his subjects and their concerns, and the part that this may, or may not, have played in the conflicts which culminated in the English civil wars and Charles’s overthrow. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book opens with an introduction to the early modern culture of royal progresses and public ceremonial as inherited and practised by Charles I. Part I explores the question of the king’s accessibility and engagement with his subjects further through case studies of Charles’s ‘great’ progresses in 1633, 1634, and 1636. Part II turns attention to royal public ceremonial culture in Caroline London, focusing on Charles’s royal entry on 25 November 1641. More widely travelled than his ancestors, Progresses reveals a monarch who was only too well aware of the value of public ceremonial and who did not eschew it, even if he was not always willing to engage in ceremonial dialogue with his people or able to deploy the power of public display to curry support for his policies as successfully as his Tudor and Stuart predecessors.

North America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James B. Bell
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Early America ◽  
Charles I ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
King Charles I ◽  
The Church

In step with the gradually unfolding imperial policies of the successive governments of King Charles I and later monarchs, the Church of England was extended to the northern part of the Western hemisphere between 1662 and 1829. Under the supervision of the Board of Trade and Plantations until 1701, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts from that year, decade after decade an increasing number of men of differing origins and places of collegiate education in Britain came to serve missions of the Church in early America. The ranks included natives of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and the American colonies, who were supported by the SPG or the legislatures of the provinces in which the Church was established. Development was shaped by imperial policies and administration over 160 years amid rising populations, changing political situations, and the consequences of war and diplomacy.

Ethics, National Sovereignty and the Control of Immigration

1996 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myron Weiner
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Human Right ◽  
National Sovereignty ◽  
Migration Policies ◽  
Open Borders ◽  
The Relationship

This paper examines the debate as to whether migration is a basic human right or if the claims of outsiders are superseded by the principle of national sovereignty – the moral obligation of states to do the best for their own citizens. In evaluating migration and refugees it focuses on issues of open borders, migration selectivity, the capacity of sovereign states to control entry, the claims of refugees, the relationship between sovereignty and justifiable intervention, and the role of public opinion and morals throughout migration policies.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document