Raymond A. Anselment. Loyalist Resolve: Patient Fortitude in the English Civil War. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1988. 233 pp. $32.50. - “The Muses Common-Weale“: Poetry and Politics in the Seventeenth Century. Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth, eds., Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1988. vii + 223 pp. $28.

1989 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 598-600
Author(s):  
Victoria Kahn
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
University Of Delaware ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
University Presses

Hobbes's Behemoth and the Argument for Absolutism

1982 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 837-847 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert P. Kraynak
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Political Science ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Civil Strife ◽  
Human Choice ◽  
Psychological Analysis ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of

Hobbes's history of the English Civil War, The Behemoth, has been neglected by contemporary scholars, yet it provides the clearest statement of the problem that Hobbes's political science is designed to solve. In Behemoth, Hobbes shows that societies such as seventeenth century England inevitably degenerate into civil war because they are founded on authoritative opinion. The claim that there is a single, authoritative definition of Tightness or truth which is not an arbitrary human choice is an illusion of “intellectual vainglory,” a feeling of pride in the superiority of one's opinions which causes persecution and civil strife. By presenting Hobbes's historical and psychological analysis of this problem, I illuminate his argument for absolutism and show that Hobbes is not a precursor of totalitarianism but a founder of liberalism.

Marvell’s ‘Nymph Complaining’ and the Erotics of Vitalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 370-386
Author(s):  
Leah S. Marcus
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Natural World ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Hortus Conclusus

This enigmatic complaint has been studied in terms of a number of registers: political and ecocritical, relating to the English Civil War and its devastation of the countryside; Ovidian, relating to the Nymph’s desire to be metamorphosed into part of the natural world as a way of monumentalizing and assimilating her grief; ecclesiastical, relating to traditional images of the English Church as a hortus conclusus; and many others. This chapter briefly surveys these various strangs of meaning and then considers an understudied seventeenth-century context that helps tie them together: vitalist materialist thought, which posited an empathic relationship among humans, elements of nature, and even objects like stones, which we now are likely to consider inanimate. Recent vitalist materialist theorists like Bruno Latour and Jane Bennett interpret earlier vitalist ideas as a reaction against Descartes and his violent separation of the human from the non-human, which ruled out the potential for sub-human entities to feel emotion. But long before Descartes, vitalism flourished in England, thanks to Galenic and Paracelsian medicine, the Hermetic Books and Kabbala, and various other sources. In light of vitalist thinking in England at mid-century, Marvell’s poem can be read as a project for keeping the connections between humans and the natural world alive even amidst the wrenching changes alluded to in the poem.

The Last English Civil War

Daedalus ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 147 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Fukuyama
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
English History ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Normative Factors ◽  
The Glorious Revolution

This essay examines why England experienced a civil war every fifty years from the Norman Conquest up until the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689, and was completely stable after that point. The reasons had to do with, first, the slow accumulation of law and respect for the law that had occurred by the seventeenth century, and second, with the emergence of a strong English state and sense of national identity by the end of the Tudor period. This suggests that normative factors are very important in creating stable settlements. Rational choice explanations for such outcomes assert that stalemated conflicts will lead parties to accept second- or third-best outcomes, but English history, as well as more recent experiences, suggests that stability requires normative change as well.

The Independents Again

1968 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Underdown
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Statistical Methods ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Social Position ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Political Term

George Yule's “Independents and Revolutionaries” suggests that in many respects he and I are not so far apart. We agree that a “rigid two-party view” of Interregnum politics is a mistake, that not all members of the Rump were political Independents, that “Independent” was not commonly used as a political term after 1648, and that the clue to the events of 1648-49, the climax of the Puritan Revolution, lies in the existence of a group of genuine radicals who can and ought to be identified. He also seems to agree in one place that the criticisms of his statistical methods in The Independents in the English Civil War which I advanced in “The Independents Reconsidered” are justified, though in another he argues that the table in The Independents enables the reader to surmount these difficulties. This being so, if a technical dispute over methodology was all that remained between us, his latest article might well be left unchallenged. It contains, however, a number of assumptions about seventeenth-century religion and politics which are either unfounded or need serious qualification, and on which a few further comments are necessary.First, as to method. It is true that the table referred to enables the reader to obtain Yule's estimates of the total numbers in various groups, such as (a) “Fled to Army, 1647,” (b) purged, 1648, and (c) Rumper, and of how these break down by social position and religious affiliation. But nowhere is there any entry for all of Yule's allegedly Independent M.P.s and of the breakdown for these, nor is there any way of obtaining it from the table.

Ethics in the Marketplace: Gerrard Winstanley's London Bankruptcy, 1643

1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. D. Alsop
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Gerrard Winstanley ◽  
Whole Earth

One of the casualties of the economic malaise occasioned by the English Civil War was the business career of an obscure thirty-four-year-old junior freeman of the London Merchant Taylors' Company. Had circumstances been otherwise, Gerrard Winstanley would never have gone on to become the eventual leader and spokesman of the Diggers or to develop some of the most innovative and challenging socioeconomic theories of the seventeenth century. Winstanley's bankruptcy of 1643 did not, of course, create by itself one of the foremost radicals of the English Revolution. But scholars are agreed that the failure provoked a significant break in the continuity of Winstanley's life that forced him to change his livelihood and to transport himself from London to Cobham in Surrey, the location of his Digger radicalism. Furthermore, Winstanley never forgot the experience. Throughout his writings of the later 1640s, the bitter contempt and frustration engendered by his financial failings were obvious. They also colored his perceptions of England's current character and its errors. His portrayal of all commerce as dishonest and corrupt is one of the most striking features of his writings:For matter of buying and selling, the earth stinks with such unrighteousnesse, that for my part, though I was bred a tradesmen, yet it is so hard a thing to pick out a poor living, that a man shall sooner be cheated of his bread, then get bread by trading among men, if by plain dealing he put trust in any.And truly the whole earth of trading, is generally become the neat art of thieving and oppressing fellow-creatures, and so laies burdens, upon the Creation, but when the earth becomes a common treasury this burden will be taken off.

Ireland and the Monarchy in the Early Stuart Multiple Kingdom

1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Perceval-Maxwell
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Foreign Intervention ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

Ireland's position as a kingdom in early modern Europe was, in some respects, unique, and this eccentricity sheds light upon the complexity of governing a multiple kingdom during the seventeenth century. The framework for looking at the way Ireland operated as a kingdom is provided, first by an article by Conrad Russell on ‘The British problem and the English civil war’ and secondly by an article by H. G. Koenigsberger entitled ‘Monarchies and parliaments in early modern Europe – dominium regale or dominium politicum et regale’. Russell listed six problems that faced multiple kingdoms: resentment at the king's absence, disposal of offices, sharing of war costs, trade and colonies, foreign intervention and religion. Koenigsberger used Sir John Fortescue's two phrases of the 1470s to distinguish between constitutional, or limited monarchies, and more authoritarian ones during the early modern period. Both these contributions are valuable in looking at the way the monarchy operated in Ireland because the application of the constitution there was deeply influenced by Ireland's position as part of a multiple kingdom and because Englishmen, looking at Ireland, wanted her to be like England, but, at the same time, did not wish her to exercise the type of independence that they claimed for England.

scholarly journals ‘Foretelling the judgements of God’: authorship and the prophetic voice in Elizabeth Poole’s A Vision (1648)

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Carme Font Paz
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Rare Case ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
General Council ◽  
Direct Involvement ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Prophetic Voice ◽  
Authorial Voice ◽  
Sectarian Group

A Vision: Wherein is Manifested the Disease and Cure of the Kingdome (1648) is Elizabeth Poole’s account of the prophecies she delivered before Cromwell and the Puritan Army’s General Council as they debated the regicide of Charles I at the end of the first English Civil War in 1648-49. This article discusses the prophetic voice in Elizabeth Poole’s texts as she uses strategies of ‘self’ and ‘others’ to establish her authority before her audience and her own sectarian group. While the circumstances surrounding Poole’s participation in the Whitehall deliberations are unclear, her appearance represents a rare case of a woman’s direct involvement in the mid-seventeenth-century discussions of the scope and legitimacy of government. With her defying anti regicidal speech, Poole builds her authorial voice beyond the divine mandate of her prophetic identity.

Philemon Holland’s Livy and Sir Francis Nethersole’s Problemes

2020 ◽  
pp. 142-163
Author(s):  
John-Mark Philo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
The Government ◽  
Formed Part

Chapter 6 turns to Philemon Holland’s (1552–1637) enormous Romane Historie (1600), the first full-scale translation of Livy into English, completed in the final years of the sixteenth century. This chapter examines the use to which Francis Nethersole (bap. 1587, d. 1659) put Holland’s Tudor translation at the height of the English Civil War. Nethersole’s appeal to Livy in 1648 formed part of an ever-intensifying engagement with the AUC in the mid-seventeenth century. Nethersole harnessed sections from Books 8 and 9 of the AUC to a contemporary debate among the Parliamentarians concerning the punishment of Delinquents. These selections from Holland’s Livy are located in the wider context of the intense engagement with Livy’s history in the mid-seventeenth century, from Leveller pamphlets celebrating the expulsion of kings to royalist defences of absolute monarchy. With his account of Rome’s transition from monarchy to a consular republic, Livy was readily exploited in debates concerning the government and constitution of England, serving as one of the most prominent authorities of political thought during the English Civil War.

Puritans, Politics, and Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century BritainThe Road to Revolution: Scotland under Charles I, by Maurice Lee, Jr., Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985, xvi, 259 pp., cloth. $29.95 U.S.Serving God and Mammon: William Juxon, 1582-1663, Bishop of London, Lord High Treasurer of England, and Archbishop of Canterbury, by Thomas A. Mason, Newark: University of Delaware Press, London and Toronto: Associated University Presses: 1985, 205 pp., cloth. $29.50 U.S.Dangerous Positions: Mixed Government, the Estates of the Realm, and the Answer to the xix Propositions, by Michael Mendle, University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1985, x, 257 pp., cloth. $28.50 U.S.Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Barry Reay, London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1985,319 pp., cloth. $19.95.Schemes and Undertakings: a Study of English Politics in the Seventeenth Century, by Clayton Roberts, Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1985, vii, 333 pp., cloth. $35.00 U.S.Wallington’s World: a Puritan Artisan in Seventeenth-Century London, by Paul S. Seaver, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1985, ix, 258 pp., cloth. $29.50 U.S.

1986 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-232
Author(s):  
D. R. Woolf
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Ohio State University ◽  
University Of Delaware ◽  
State University ◽  
University Of Alabama ◽  
University Of Illinois ◽  
Charles I ◽  
University Presses ◽  
English Politics
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