You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 represented a crucial turning point in modern British history by decisively shifting political power from the monarchy to Parliament. In this cogent study, first published in 1972, Stuart Prall offers a well-balanced account of the Revolution, its roots, and its consequences. The events of 1688, Prall argues, cannot be viewed in isolation. Examining the tempestuous half-century that preceded and precipitated William and Mary's accession, he provides a comprehensive overview of the Revolution's context and of its historical meaning. "[Prall] insists that the Revolution of 1688 was the culmination of a long crisis begun back in 1640, and the revolution settlement was the resolution of problems which the Puritan Revolution and the Restoration had left unsolved. This is an admirable combination of analysis, commentary upon views of historians, and chronological narrative, starting with the Restoration in 1660 and continuing through the Act of Settlement in 1701."--Choice
The Law's Conscience is a history of equity in Anglo-American juris-prudence from the inception of the chancellor's court in medieval England to the recent civil rights and affirmative action decisions of the United States Supreme Court. Peter Hoffer argues that equity embodies a way of looking at law, including constitutions, based on ideas of mutual fairness, public trusteeship, and equal protection. His central theme is the tension between the ideal of equity and the actual availability of equitable remedies. Hoffer examines this tension in the trusteeship constitutionalism of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson; the incorporation of equity in the first American constitutions; the antebellum controversy over slavery; the fortunes of the Freedmen's Bureau after the Civil War; the emergence of the doctrine of "Balance of Equity" in twentieth-century public-interest law; and the desegregation and reverse discrimination cases of the past thirty-five years. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) was the most important equity suit in American history, and Hoffer begins and ends his book with a new interpretation of its lessons.
Overshadowed in the popular imagination by the figure of Oliver Cromwell, historians are increasingly coming to recognize the importance of Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron, in shaping the momentous events of mid-seventeenth-century Britain. As both a military and political figure he played a central role in first defeating Charles I and then later supporting the restoration of his son in 1660. England’s Fortress shines new light on this significant yet surprisingly understudied figure through a selection of essays addressing a wide range of topics, from military history to poetry. Divided into two sections, the volume reflects key aspects of Fairfax’s life and career which are, nevertheless, as interconnecting as they are discrete: Fairfax the soldier and statesman, and Fairfax the husband, horseman and scholar. This fresh account of Fairfax’s reputations and legacy questions assumptions about neatly demarcated seventeenth-century chronological, geographic and cultural boundaries. What emerges is a man who subverts as much as he reinforces assumed characteristics of martial invincibility, political disengagement and literary dilettantism.
"Since antiquity, mercy has been regarded as a virtue. The power of monarchs was legitimated by their acts of clemency, their mercy demonstrating their divine nature. Yet by the end of the eighteenth century, mercy had become "an injustice committed against society, a manifest vice." Mercy was exiled from political life. How did this happen? In this book, Malcolm Bull analyses and challenges the Enlightenment's rejection of mercy. A society operating on principles of rational self-interest had no place for something so arbitrary and contingent, and having been excluded from Hobbes's theory of the state and Hume's theory of justice, mercy disappeared from the lexicon of political theory. But,...
A classic study of popular resistance to the momentous changes of 17th century England In 17th Century England, the law was not an instrument of justice - it was an instrument of oppression. The enclosures of common land, loss of many traditional rights and draconian punishments for minor transgressions changed the lives of the peasantry and created a landless class of wage labourers. In this, the last book published during his lifetime, renowned historian of the English Revolution Christopher Hill explores the immense social changes that occurred and the expressions of liberty against the law through the literary culture of the times and the hero-worship of the outlaw. As well as chapters on gypsies and vagabonds, Hill analyses class, religion and the shift away from the importance of the church after the Reformation. Liberty Against the Law is a late classic of Hill's work, and essential reading for anyone interested in the history and politics of the 17th Century.
"An introduction to the rich history of criminal justice charting all its main developments from the dooms of Anglo-Saxon times to the rise of the Common Law, struggles for political, legislative and judicial ascendency and the formation of the innovative Criminal Justice System of today." "The book looks at the Rule of Law, the development of the criminal courts and the people who work in them, police forces, the jury, judges, magistrates, crime and punishment. It deals with all the iconic events of criminal justice history and reform to show how criminal justice evolved." --Book Jacket.
In this major contribution to the Ideas in Context series Anne McLaren explores the consequences for English political culture when, with the accession of Elizabeth I, imperial 'kingship' came to be invested in the person of a female ruler. She looks at how Elizabeth managed to be queen, in the face of considerable male opposition, and demonstrates how that opposition was enacted. Dr McLaren argues that during Elizabeth's reign men were able to accept the rule of a woman partly by inventing a new definition of 'citizen', one that made it an exclusively male identity, and she emphasizes the continuities between Elizabeth's reign and the outbreak of the English civil wars in the seventeenth century. A significant work of cultural history informed by political thought, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I offers a wholesale reinterpretation of the political dynamics of the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
Defoe's fictional settings all begin in the reign of the Stuarts, but the lack of specificity invariably reflects on the Hanoverian political and social situation, which witnessed a crisis in Whig leadership from 1717 to Walpole's resumption of power after the disaster of the South Sea Bubble and the sudden deaths of Stanhope and Sunderland. This serious split in Whig leadership probably played a role in Defoe's turning toward fiction. But Defoe never abandoned his social and political views. This study explores how his social viewpoint actuates his major fiction. --
Newly available in paperback, this is a full-length, modern study of the Diggers or ‘True Levellers’, who were among the most remarkable of the radical groups to emerge during the English Revolution of 1640-60. It was in April 1649 that the Diggers, inspired by the teachings and writings of Gerrard Winstanley, began their occupation of waste land at St George’s Hill in Surrey and called on all poor people to join them or follow their example. Acting at a time of unparalleled political change and heightened millenarian expectation, the Diggers believed that the establishment of an egalitarian, property-less society was imminent. This book should be of interest to all those interested in England’s mid-seventeenth-century revolution and in the history of radical movements.
An account of the lawyers who helped over centuries to develop and protect civil liberties, human rights and the Rule of Law. Also discusses breaches of the Rule of Law in modern cases and in response to terrorism. Champions of the Rule of Law looks at an overarching principle of English law. It describes how a powerful and fundamental rule came about and how it has been preserved in the face of attempts to circumvent it. Standing at the heart of all matters of justice and now exported to many parts of the world the Rule of Law holds, in short, that the law applies in equal measure to everyone. No matter how high, mighty or privileged someone may be, or whatever claim or allegati...