Cheshire and the Tudor State 1480-1560


Book Description

The palatinate of Chester survives Tudor centralisation.




Propaganda and the Tudor State


Book Description

This book offers a fresh understanding of the substance behind the rhetoric of English Renaissance monarchy. Propaganda is identified as a key factor in the intensification of the English state. The Tudor royal image is pursued in all its forms: in print and prayer, in iconography andarchitecture. The monarchy surrounded itself with the trappings of majesty at court, but in the shires it relied on different strategies of persuasion to uphold its authority. The Reformation placed the provincial pulpit at the disposal of the crown, and the church became the main conduit of royalpropaganda. Sermons taught the duty of obedience, and parish prayer was redirected from local saints towards the sovereign as the symbolic core of the nation.Dr Cooper examines the relationship between the Tudor monarchy and its subjects in Cornwall and Devon, and the complex interaction between local and national political culture. These were years of social and religious upheaval, during which the western peninsula witnessed three major rebellions,and many more riots and affrays. A vibrant popular religion was devastated by the Protestant Reformation, and foreign invasion was a frequent threat. Cornwall remained recognizably different from England in its ancient language and traditions. Yet in the midst of all this, popular allegiance tomonarchy and nation survived and prospered. The Tudors were mourned and celebrated in towns and parish churches. Loyalty was fostered by the Duchy of Cornwall and the stannaries. Regional difference, far from undermining the power of the crown, was fundamental to its success in the westcountry.This is a study of government at the dangerous edges of Tudor England, and a testament to the unifying power of propaganda.




English Identity and Political Culture in the Fourteenth Century


Book Description

A study of the nature of national sentiment in fourteenth-century England, in its political and constitutional context.




The Extraordinary and the Everyday in Early Modern England


Book Description

A fascinating collection of essays by renowned and emerging scholars exploring how everyday matters from farting to friendship reveal extraordinary aspects of early modern life, while seemingly exceptional acts and beliefs – such as those of ghosts, prophecies, and cannibalism – illuminate something of the routine experience of ordinary people.




Border Liberties and Loyalties


Book Description

This book examines the organisation of power and society in north-east England over two crucial centuries in the emergence of the English 'state'. England is usually regarded as medieval Europe's most centralised kingdom, yet the North-East was dominated by liberties - largely self-governing jurisdictions - that greatly restricted the English crown's direct authority in the region. These local polities receive here their first comprehensive discussion; and their histories are crucial for understanding questions of state-formation in frontier zones, regional distinctiveness, and local and national loyalties. The analysis focuses on liberties as both governmental entities and sources of socio-political and cultural identification. It also connects the development of liberties and their communities with a rich variety of forces, including the influence of the kings of Scots as lords of Tynedale, and the impact of protracted Anglo-Scottish warfare from 1296. Why did liberties enjoy such long-term relevance as governance structures? How far, and why, did the English monarchy respect their autonomous rights and status? By what means, and how successfully, were liberty identities created, sharpened and sustained? In addressing such issues, this ground-breaking study extends beyond regional history to make significant contributions to the ongoing mainstream debates about 'state', 'society', 'identity' and 'community'.




Anatomy of a Duel in Jacobean England


Book Description

This book offers an analysis of Jacobean duelling and gentry honour culture through the close examination and contextualisation of the most fully documented duel of the early modern era. This was the fatal encounter between a Flintshire gentleman, Edward Morgan, and his Cheshire antagonist, John Egerton, which took place at Highgate on 21 April 1610. John Egerton was killed, but controversy quickly erupted over whether he had died in a fair fight of honour or had been murdered in a shameful conspiracy. The legal investigation into the killing produced a rich body of evidence which reveals in unparalleled detail not only the dynamics of the fight itself, but also the inner workings of a seventeenth-century metropolitan manhunt, the Middlesex coroner's court, a murder trial at King's Bench, and also the murky webs of aristocratic patronage at the Jacobean Court which ultimately allowed Morgan to secure a pardon. Uniquely, a series of dramatic Star Chamber suits have survived that also allow us to investigate the duel's origins. Their close examination, as Lloyd Bowen shows, calls into question the historiographical paradigm which sees early modern duels as matters of the moment and distinct from, as opposed to connected to, the gentry feud. The book throws much new light on questions of gentry honour, the nature and prevalence of early modern elite violence, and the process of judicial investigation in Shakespeare's England.




The Chester Cycle in Context, 1555-1575


Book Description

The Chester Cycle in Context, 1555-1575 considers the implications of recent archival research which has profoundly changed our view of the continuation of performances of Chester's civic biblical play cycle into the reign of Elizabeth I. Scholars now view the decline and ultimate abandonment of civic religious drama as the result of a complex network of local pressures, heavily dependent upon individual civic and ecclesiastical authorities, rather than a result of a nation-wide policy of suppression, as had previously been assumed.




The Channel Islands, 1370-1640


Book Description

Charts the history of Jersey and Guernsey, showing their crucial importance for England in the period. This book surveys the history of the bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey in the late medieval and early modern periods, focusing on political, social and religious history. The islands' regular tangential appearance in histories ofEngland and the British Isles has long suggested the need for a more systematic account from the perspective of the islands themselves. Jersey and Guernsey were at the forefront of attempts by the English kings in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries to maintain and extend their dominions in France. During the Wars of the Roses and the early Tudor period, they were frequently the refuge for claimants and plotters. Throughout the Reformation, they were a leading centre of Presbyterianism. Later, they were strategically important during the continental wars of Elizabeth's reign. The book charts all these events in a comprehensive way. In addition, it shows how the islands' relationship with central power in England varied but never saw a simple subjection to centralised uniform authority, how Jersey and Guernsey maintained links with Normandy, Brittany and France more widely, and how politics, religion, society and culture developed in the islands themselves. Tim Thornton is Professor of History and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Teaching and Learning) at the University of Huddersfield, having been previously Dean of the School of Music, Humanities and Media. He is the author of Cheshire and the Tudor State and Prophecy, Politics and the People in Early Modern England, both of which are published by Boydell & Brewer.




Seeking Sanctuary


Book Description

Seeking Sanctuary explores a curious aspect of premodern English law: the right of felons to shelter in a church or ecclesiastical precinct, remaining safe from arrest and trial in the king's courts. This is the first volume in more than a century to examine sanctuary in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Looking anew at this subject challenges the prevailing assumptions in the scholarship that this 'medieval' practice had become outmoded and little-used by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Although for decades after 1400 sanctuary-seeking was indeed fairly rare, the evidence in the legal records shows the numbers of felons seeing refuge in churches began to climb again in the late fifteenth century and reached its peak in the period between 1525 and 1535. Sanctuary was not so much a medieval practice accidentally surviving into the early modern era, as it was an organism that had continued to evolve and adapt to new environments and indeed flourished in its adapted state. Sanctuary suited the early Tudor regime: it intersected with rapidly developing ideas about jurisdiction and provided a means of mitigating the harsh capital penalties of the English law of felony that was useful not only to felons but also to the crown and the political elite. Sanctuary's resurgence after 1480 means we need to rethink how sanctuary worked, and to reconsider more broadly the intersections of culture, law, politics, and religion in the years between 1400 and 1550.




Fourteenth Century England IV


Book Description

This series provides a forum for the most recent research into the political, social and ecclesiastical history of the 14th century.