The Political Thought of the English Free State, 1649–1653

The Political Thought of the English Free State, 1649–1653 PDF

Author: Markku Peltonen

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-10-31

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 1009212044

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Presents a provocative reassessment of the English Revolution and an original new perspective on English republicanism, drawing on a wide range of sources, including the vast political pamphlet literature of the era. The book also highlights the unprecedented debate over whether the free state was an aristocracy or democracy.

Inventing a Republic

Inventing a Republic PDF

Author: Sean Kelsey

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9780719050572

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The character and appearance of English governance were changed utterly in 1649, when Charles I was executed and the monarchy abolished. At a stroke, legitimate authority in the nation was stripped of the charismatic focus from whence it had derived much of its apparently ageless dignity. This volume provides a study of how England's political culture was reinvented by the new parliamentary republic. It describes how government members colonized and revived the abandoned royal palace at Whitehall, and describes the imaginative and consistently iconographic and ceremonial languages with which they replaced the imagery and spectacle of the monarchy. It makes a case for the comprehensive revision of the historio-graphical preconceptions surrounding England's only lengthy period of kinglessness.

God's Instruments

God's Instruments PDF

Author: Blair Worden

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-03-22

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 0191624411

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The Puritan Revolution escaped the control of its creators. The parliamentarians who went to war with Charles I in 1642 did not want or expect the fundamental changes that would follow seven years later: the trial and execution of the king, the abolition of the House of Lords, and the creation of the only republic in English history. There were startling and unexpected developments, too, in religion and ideas: the spread of unorthodox doctrines; the attainment of a wide measure of liberty of conscience; and new thinking about the moral and intellectual bases of politics and society. God's Instruments centres on the principal instrument of radical change, Oliver Cromwell, and on the unfamiliar landscape of the decade he dominated, from the abolition of the monarchy in 1649 to the return of the Stuart dynasty in 1660. Its theme is the relationship between the beliefs or convictions of politicians and their decisions and actions. Blair Worden explores the biblical dimension of Puritan politics; the ways that a belief in the workings of divine providence affected political conduct; Cromwell's commitment to liberty of conscience and his search for godly reformation through educational reform; the constitutional premises of his rule and those of his opponents in the struggle for supremacy between parliamentary and military rule; and the relationship between conceptions of civil and religious liberty. The conflicts Worden reconstructs are placed in the perspective of long-term developments, of which many historians have lost sight. The final chapters turn to the guiding convictions of two writers at the heart of politics, John Milton and the royalist Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. Material from previously published essays, much of it expanded and extensively revised, comes together with newly written chapters to bring fresh evidence and argument to a period of lively debate and interest.

Harrington: 'The Commonwealth of Oceana' and 'A System of Politics'

Harrington: 'The Commonwealth of Oceana' and 'A System of Politics' PDF

Author: James Harrington

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1992-08-20

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9780521423298

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James Harrington's brief career as a political and historical theorist spans the last years of the Cromwellian Protectorate and the Restoration of 1660. This volume comprises the first and last of Harrington's writings. Harrington was the first theorist to interpret the English Civil Wars as a revolution, the result of a long-term process of social change which led to the decay of the old political order. The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) is a fictionalised presentation of English history up to the victory of the New Model Army, explaining the fall of the monarchy and proposing a republic to replace it. A System of Politics, written after the Restoration, is a scheme of history and political philosophy erected on the foundations of his previous works. Professor Pocock's introduction emphasises Harrington's place as a pivotal figure in the history of English political thought. This edition also contains a chronology of events in Harrington's life and a guide to further reading.

Commonwealth Principles

Commonwealth Principles PDF

Author: Jonathan Scott

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004-11-18

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 1139456709

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The republican writing of the English revolution has attracted a major scholarly literature. Yet there has been no single treatment of the subject as a whole, nor has it been adequately related to the larger upheaval from which it emerged, or to the larger body of radical thought of which it became the most influential component. Commonwealth Principles addresses these needs, and Jonathan Scott goes beyond existing accounts organized around a single key concept (whether constitutional, linguistic or moral) or author (usually James Harrington) to analyse this body of writing in full context. Linking various social, political and intellectual agendas Professor Scott explains why, when classical republicanism came to England, it did so in the moral service of an explicitly religious revolution. The resulting ideology hinged not upon political language, or constitutional form, but Christian humanist moral philosophy applied in the practical context of an attempted radical reformation of manners.

A Union for Empire

A Union for Empire PDF

Author: John Robertson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1995-04-20

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 0521431131

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This volume of essays explores for the first time the intellectual context of the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707. Challenging the received view of the Union as a simple political job, it argues instead that the Union was a landmark in the history of political thought. The opening contributions investigate the ideas of union, universal monarchy and empire current in Europe and Britain before 1707. There follow chapters devoted to intellectual and religious developments in Scotland between the Restoration and the Union, before attention is focused on the issues of sovereignty at the centre of the Union debate itself. The volume concludes by studying the aftermath of the debate in eighteenth-century discussions of Britain's relations to Ireland and the North American colonies. Underlining the vitality of Scottish intellectual life before the Enlightenment, the volume also gives unprecedented attention to the English view of the Union, to its European setting and to its consequences for the subsequent understanding of the British Empire. The result is a major contribution to the history of British (including Anglo-Irish and American) political thought, and more generally to the history of ideas of union and empire, which will be of wide interest.

The Excellencie of a Free State

The Excellencie of a Free State PDF

Author: Marchamont Nedham

Publisher: Gale Ecco, Print Editions

Published: 2018-04-18

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9781379464259

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The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Delve into what it was like to live during the eighteenth century by reading the first-hand accounts of everyday people, including city dwellers and farmers, businessmen and bankers, artisans and merchants, artists and their patrons, politicians and their constituents. Original texts make the American, French, and Industrial revolutions vividly contemporary. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ British Library T107681 A compilation of the leading articles of Marchamont Nedham's Mercurius politicus. Edited by R. Barron. London: printed for A. Millar and T. Cadell, G. Kearsly, and H. Parker, 1767. xxviii,176p.; 8°