Law and Order in Seventeenth-Century England: The Organization of Local Administration during the Personal Rule of Charles I

1997 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrik Langelüddecke
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Central Government ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Political Relationship ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Personal Rule

Two of the most significant factors in the development of European nation states are the enforcement of the law and the political relationship between central government and the provinces. The establishment of powerful national institutions in the Middle Ages, the successful incorporation of its geographical fringes, and the involvement of local elites in implementing national law and policies have made England a challenging subject to test this interaction between the center and the localities. Although this relationship could never be free of tensions, reflection on the context of the English Civil War has suggested a new interpretation. Pursuing the inquiries initiated by the so-called “gentry controversy” in the 1950s and 1960s, a group of historians has studied individual counties and argued that, for local aristocrats and gentlemen, provincial values and issues took precedence over national policies. The Civil War, in their view, appeared to be a conflict between an increasingly interventionist and “nationalizing” central government and semiautonomous shires.

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.

Religion in Times of War and Republic, 1642–60

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Eales
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Religious Dissent ◽  
Episcopal Church ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Revolutionary Politics ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
Personal Rule ◽  
Local Leaders

Religious debate was central to the revolutionary politics of the 1640s and 1650s. One area of disagreement between Charles I and the Long Parliament concerned the nature and structure of the English national Church: whether bishops should be abolished in line with the Calvinist reformed Churches of the continent and if the religious changes of Charles’ Personal Rule were legal. From 1640 puritan demands for religious reform led to a proliferation of modes of worship ranging from Scottish-style Presbyterianism to independent congregations headed by charismatic local leaders who generated fears of heresy. The civil war sects were so loosely organized that most did not survive the Restoration of 1660, when the re-establishment of the episcopal Church 1660 was welcomed by the Royalists. However, a powerful legacy of religious dissent allowed groups such as the Quakers and Baptists to persist and flourish.

Biography and Memory: Sandal Castle and the English Civil War

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Askew
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Social Discourse ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Charles I ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
King Charles I ◽  
Biographical Approach

The post-medieval castle is often neglected in English archaeology, with most analyses focusing on whether the castle was built for status or defence, a debate which has become known as ‘the Battle for Bodiam’. However, in the English Civil War between 1642 and 1651, many castles were fortified either for King Charles I or his rebellious Parliament. Although the fortification of castles during this period is often attributed to acts of desperation and a lack of more suitable defences, an examination of the Royalist occupation of Sandal Castle in West Yorkshire demonstrates how this view is simplistic. The decision to fortify Sandal can be directly linked to the Battle of Wakefield in 1460, when Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, the father of King Edward IV and Richard III, was killed outside its walls. This episode heavily influenced subsequent events, culminating in the occupation of the castle at the outbreak of the English Civil War. The importance of the past during this later conflict is reinforced by the faunal and artefactual assemblages, and the locations in which they were found (and consumed). The complexity of the social discourse at Sandal challenges current approaches in castle studies and highlights the need for a biographical approach which sees the interpretation and interaction of the castle through time and space as far more important than the motivations behind its initial construction. Such a way of proceeding complements existing methodologies but also relies on material culture and history to create a subtler interpretation of these complex buildings.

Opposition to the Personal Rule of Charles I: The Diary of Robert Woodford, 1637–1641

1988 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 769-788 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Fielding
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Inns Of Court ◽  
Personal Rule ◽  
National Biography ◽  
The Town ◽  
The Church

Robert Woodford was an obscure man, the steward of Northampton from 1636 until his death in 1654, whose diary, which covers the period 1637 until 1641, tells us much about how provincial men viewed the growing political crisis which was to culminate in civil war. There are very few sources available from which to assemble a biography of the diarist. He warrants no article in Dictionary of national biography, he is not recorded as having attended either university, nor to have registered at any of the inns of court. In a brief biography, his eldest son Samuel stated that his father was born in 1606, the son of a gentleman, Robert Woodford of Old in Northamptonshire, that ‘he had but Ordinary Education’, and that his ‘meane Fortune’ meant that ‘he could never provide for us in Lands or Money’. He married Hannah, daughter of Robert Hancs, citizen of London, in 1635 at the church of Allhallows-in-the-Wall. The minute book of the Northampton Town Assembly furnishes us with a few brief details of his career as a provincial legal practitioner. In 1636, he was elected steward of the town of Northampton by the good offices of his patron John Reading, the outgoing steward, who relinquished the office in his favour. The climax of his career would seem to have been his appointment as under-sheriff of the county in 1653 until his death in 1654: he remained a provincial lawyer.

Office under Queen Elizabeth: the Case of Lord Hunsdon and the Lord Chamberlainship in 1585

1967 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Stone
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Small Minority ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Political Evolution ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Advancement ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
Similar Letter

In recent years considerable attention has been focused on the role played by the Court and government office in the social and political evolution of Elizabethan and Early Stuart England. Professor Trevor-Roper has treated office under the Crown as a smooth highroad to economic advancement, one of the principal causes of such rise of the gentry as may have occurred. According to this view, the political antecedents of the English Civil War are best interpreted in terms of the polarities of Court and Country: it was reaction against an overgrown and corruptly lucrative Court that inspired the opposition in 1640; it was desire to dismantle the whole centralizing apparatus which inspired the policy of the Independents in the late 1640s and the 1650s. Others, including Professor Aylmer and myself, have subjected officialdom to detailed inspection and have concluded that its rewards were usually modest, especially under Elizabeth and Charles I, its personnel was restricted in numbers, and its more spectacular beneficiaries were a very small minority. The recently published letter of Sir Edward Stanhope to Thomas Viscount Wentworth, advising him to refuse the Deputyship of Ireland in 1631, has cast a flood of light on contemporary attitudes towards the acceptance of at least one high office. Forty-six years before, when Henry Carey, 1st Earl of Hunsdon, was offered the Lord Chamberlainship of the Royal Household, he received a similar letter of warning from a close follower.

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.

English Civil War Politics and the Religious Settlement

1972 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-325
Author(s):  
Lawrence Kaplan
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Precise Relationship ◽  
Descriptive Names ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Historical Controversies ◽  
Religious Considerations

One of the more active historical controversies centers around the precise relationship of religion to politics during the period of the English Civil War. While all historians recognize the crucial role played by Puritans in the rebellion against Charles I, the extent to which religious considerations influenced political activity within the Long Parliament remains open to question. A major reason for the dispute is that terms used by contemporaries tend to be misleading. Thus, the two parties which are said to have dominated the Long Parliament during the 1640s are known by descriptive names (“the Presbyterians” and “the Independents”) that the bear little resemblance to their actual platforms.

Charles I on the ‘Ile of Wait’

2020 ◽  
pp. 232-248
Author(s):  
David Cressy
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Isle Of Wight ◽  
Charles I

This chapter deals with the remarkable year-long imprisonment of King Charles himself on the Isle of Wight, after his defeat in the English civil war. It examines the conditions of the king’s confinement in Carisbrooke Castle, his relations with his captors, and his attempts to escape from the island that a contemporary cartoonist called ‘the Ile of Wait’. The Isle of Wight became a centre of national attention during this fatal twilight of the Stuart regime. Aided by royalist intriguers, including his servant Henry Firebrace and the spy Jane Whorwood, the king sought to outwit his keeper, the parliamentary governor Robert Hammond, without success.

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