History

The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes offers a revisionist interpretation of Thomas Hobbes's evolving response to the English Civil War and Revolution. Conventionally, Hobbes is portrayed as a consistent, if intellectually maverick, royalist partisan. This book challenges that view, and vindicates the widespread contemporary belief that Hobbes had betrayed the royalist cause and accommodated himself to England's revolutionary regimes. In sustaining these conclusions, Professor Collins emphasizes the central importance of religion to both Hobbes's political thought and to the broader course of the English Revolution itself. Hobbes and the Revolution are both placed within the tumultuous historical process that saw the emerging English state securing political authority over public religion and the national church. This cause animated the radicals who propelled the English Revolution, including, Collins argues, Oliver Cromwell and his supporters. It also animated the evolution of Hobbes's political theory, which was centrally concerned with vindicating this aspect of the revolution's political program. Seen in this light, Thomas Hobbes emerges as a theorist who moved with, rather than against, the revolutionary currents of his age.

Altars are powerful symbols, fraught with meaning, but during the early modern period they became a religious battleground. Attacked by reformers in the mid-16th century because of their allegedly idolatrous associations with the Catholic sacrifice of the mass, a hundred years later they served to divide Protestants due to their reintroduction by Archbishop Laud and his associates as part of a counter-reforming programme. Moreover, having subsequently been removed by the victorious puritans, they gradually came back after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. This book explores these developments over a 150 year period, and recaptures the experience of the ordinary parishioner in this crucial period of religious change. Far from being the passive recipients of changes imposed from above, the laity is revealed as actively engaged from the early days of the Reformation, as zealous iconoclasts or their Catholic opponents — a division later translated into competing protestant views. This book integrates the worlds of theological debate, church politics and government, and parish practice and belief, which are often studied in isolation from one another. It draws on hitherto largely untapped sources, notably the surviving artefactual evidence comprising communion tables and rails, fonts, images in stained glass, paintings and plates, and examines the riches of local parish records — especially churchwardens' accounts.

This book examines the military experiences of peers and gentlemen from the British Isles who volunteered to fight in the religious and dynastic wars of mainland Europe, as well as the ordinary men who were impressed to serve in the ranks, from the time of the English intervention in the Dutch war of independence to the death of the soldier-king William III in 1702. The apprenticeship in arms exposed these men to the technological innovations of the military revolution, laid the foundations for a professional officer class based upon merit, established a fund of military expertise, and helped to shape a British identity. The remilitarization of aristocratic culture and society was completed by 1640, and provided numerous experienced military officers for the various armies of the British and Irish civil wars and, subsequently, for the embryonic British army after William III invaded and conquered the British Isles and committed the Three Kingdoms to the armed struggles against Louis XIV during the Nine Years War. Conflicts between amateur aristocrats and so-called ‘soldiers of fortune’ led to continuing debates about the relative merits of standing armies and a select militia. The individual pursuit of honour and glory by such amateurs also obscured the more rational military and political objectives of the modern state, subverted military discipline, and delayed the process of professionalization of the officer corps of the British army.

From 1649–1660 England was ruled by a standing army for the only time in its history. The nature of that military rule was far more complex and nuanced than has traditionally been appreciated. This is the first book to describe the nature of that rule, both for members of the army and for civilian society. The first part of the book describes the character of the army by looking at the life that officers and soldiers led, the promotion structure, and the ways in which political engagement changed to provide a sense of the day-to-day reality of being part of a standing army. The second part of the book considers the impact of the military presence on society by establishing where soldiers were quartered, how they were paid, the material burden that they represented, the divisive effect of the army's patronage of religious radicals, and the extensive involvement of army officers in the government of the localities. The final part of the book re-evaluates the army's role in the political events from Cromwell's death to the restoration of the Stuart monarchy, and explains why the army crumbled so pitifully in the last months of the Commonwealth. The book casts new light on: the changes in the army between 1649–60; Cromwell's control of the army; the co-existence of political ideals and a professional ethos among army officers; the place of the major-generals in English history; the attitude of the political nation to a standing army; the army's support of religious radicals; the reasons for the fall of the Commonwealth.

One of the most important aspects of the Reformation in England was its impact on the status of the dead. Protestant reformers insisted vehemently that between heaven and hell there was no ‘middle place’ of purgatory where the souls of the departed could be assisted by the prayers of the living. This was no remote theological proposition, but a revolutionary doctrine affecting the lives of all 16th-century English people, and the ways in which their Church and society were organised. This book illuminates the (sometimes ambivalent) attitudes towards the dead in pre-Reformation religious culture, and traces (up to about 1630) the uncertain progress of the ‘reformation of the dead’ attempted by Protestant authorities as they sought to stamp out traditional rituals and provide the replacements acceptable in an increasingly fragmented religious world. It provides surveys of perceptions of the afterlife, of the cultural meanings of ghosts, and of the patterns of commemoration and memory which became characteristic of post-Reformation England. Together these topics constitute an important case-study in the nature and tempo of the English Reformation as an agent of social and cultural transformation.

From childbirth and baptism through to courtship, weddings, and funerals, every stage in the life-cycle of Tudor and Stuart England was accompanied by ritual. Even under the Protestantism of the reformed Church, the spiritual and social dramas of birth, marriage, and death were graced with elaborate ceremony. Powerful and controversial protocols were in operation, shaped and altered by the influences of the Reformation, the Revolution, and the Restoration. Each of the major rituals was potentially an arena for argument, ambiguity, and dissent. Ideally, as classic rites of passage, these ceremonies worked to bring people together. But they also set up traps into which people could stumble, and tests which not everybody could pass. In practice, ritual performance revealed frictions and fractures that everyday local discourse attempted to hide or to heal. Using first-hand evidence, this book shows how the making and remaking of ritual formed part of a continuing debate, sometimes strained and occasionally acrimonious, which exposed the raw nerves of society in the midst of great historical events. In doing so, it brings to life the common experiences of living and dying in Tudor and Stuart England.

Britain’s separateness from the rest of Europe is often taken as read. For generations, historians have presented Britain as exceptional and different. In recent years, an emphasis on the Atlantic and imperial aspects of British history, and on the importance of the nation and national identity, has made Britain and Ireland seem even more distant from the neighbouring Continent. This study offers a different perspective on eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland’s relationship with continental Europe. It acknowledges areas of difference and distinctiveness, but points to areas of similarity. It accepts that both Britain and Ireland were part of an Atlantic and wider imperial world, but highlights their under-recognized connections with the rest of Europe. And, perhaps most ambitiously of all, it suggests that if the British and Irish thought and acted in national terms, they were also able, in the appropriate circumstances, to see themselves as Europeans. Some of the chapters say more about British and Irish similarities to the Continent, others stress connections, and still others illustrate European identities. But, taken together, they present a case for our regarding eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland as integral parts of Europe, and for our appreciating that this was the perspective of many of the British and Irish at the time. Other historians have opended up parts of this subject, presenting a more rounded picture than exceptionalist narratives allow, stressing convergence rather than divergence, establishing important connections and exploring their ramifications; but none has attempted such a panoramic view.

This book provides a full view of the social, political, and military aspects of the volunteer movement of the French Wars: the volunteer infantry, yeomanry cavalry, and the armed associations in England, Scotland, and Wales from 1794 to 1814. It considers the antecedents of voluntary military forces, and the government planning that led to the formation and development of the volunteers and yeomanry. It shows how the administration of volunteering fitted into the existing system of county administration and central government. It analyses the geographical spread and concentrations of volunteering in relation to the apparent threats from popular radicalism and French invasion. It considers the type of men who joined the volunteers and their motivation for doing so, and those who promoted and organized the corps and the incentives they offered to recruit them. It analyses the social structure of volunteer membership and compares it with other mass organizations. It looks at the ways in which volunteering affected existing social relations, and examines the allegedly democratic aspects of corps' internal organization. The book examines the political affiliations of volunteers and the implications they had for the behaviour and use of the force. It considers criticisms of volunteering, in particular the alleged political and constitutional dangers of an armed population able to challenge the existing order. It shows how volunteering fitted into national defence planning, in particular for preparations against invasion, for evacuation and maintaining internal order. It examines in detail how the volunteers were used in policing roles.