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During the Scottish Revolution (1637-1651), royalists and Covenanters appealed to Scottish law, custom and traditional views on kingship to debate the limits of King Charles I's authority. But they also engaged with the political ideas of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant and Catholic intellectuals beyond the British Isles. This book explores the under-examined European context for Scottish political thought by analysing how royalists and Covenanters adapted Lutheran, Calvinist, and Catholic political ideas to their own debates about church and state. In doing so, it argues that Scots advanced languages of political legitimacy to help solve a crisis about the doctrines, ceremonies and polity of their national church. It therefore reinserts the importance of ecclesiology to the development of early modern political theory.
Including Professor salmon's pioneering and authoritative analyses as well as particular studies of french revolts.
Reprint of the original, first published in 1839.
Author John Staines here argues that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers in England, Scotland, and France wrote tragedies of the Queen of Scots - royal heroine or tyrant, martyr or whore - in order to move their audiences towards political action by shaping and directing the passions generated by the spectacle of her fall. In following the retellings of her history from her lifetime through the revolutions and political experiments of the seventeenth century, this study identifies two basic literary traditions of her tragedy: one conservative, sentimental, and royalist, the other radical, skeptical, and republican. Staines provides new readings of Spenser and Milton, as well as of ear...
A new look at the beginning of James VI and I's reign in England, arguing for a reappraisal of his capabilities as a monarch. The early years of the reign of James VI and I have been much examined, but this book takes a new approach, via an overall survey rather than focussing on what are traditionally perceived as the most important moments, such as theHampton Court Conference and the Gunpowder Plot. This enables the author to show how circumstances and events immediately after James' accession were crucial to shaping his approach to ruling England, and provides a fresh understanding of his reign in England. Unusually, the book draws on both English and Scottish sources, governmental and ec...
This collection of essays engages with a variety of aspects of early modern book culture in the 16th-17th centuries, considered in the Catholic context. The contributions reflect on the engagement of institutions and authorities in the process of book production, bringing to the fore the role of networks in this process; show the book as a tool of resistance to the Protestant Reformation; give insight into the content and design of book collections; showcase textual production in the context of cultural appropriation and shed light on the role of the image in the propagation of Catholicism. Together the sixteen contributions demonstrate the diversity of the Catholic book in its forms and functions, in various social and national contexts.
THREE hundred years have passed since Brantôme wrote these lines, and his prevision has been fully verified. Writers of every opinion—friends and foes—have taken as their theme the life and death of Mary Stuart, and it would now seem as if nothing further could be written on the subject, fascinating though it has proved. Fresh historical matter bringing new evidence, however, comes to light now and then, and the publication in France, some years ago, of such testimony is our excuse for adding a short chapter to the history of Queen Mary. That this evidence relates to her last days and death, is very welcome, for we hold that in Queen Mary's case we may specially apply her own motto, "In...
Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587) was active as monarch of Scotland for just six years between 1561 and 1567, but her impact as a ruler in Scotland is much less important than her subsequent role in popular culture and imagination. Her story has enjoyed perpetual retelling and reached a global audience over the past four and a half centuries. This collection surveys the exceptionally varied range of objects, literature, art and media that have been produced to commemorate Mary between her own time and the present day. Why is her story so enduring, pervasive, and of such interest to so many different audiences? How have the narratives associated with these objects evolved in response to shifting cultural attitudes? The collection offers a much-needed novel perspective on the Queen of Scots, using an approach at the intersection of early modern, gender and cultural history, museum and heritage studies, and memory studies.