British Political Thought 1500 1660

Focusing on the interaction of religion and politics, this is a comprehensive chronological survey of the political thought of post-Reformation Britain which examines the work of a wide range of thinkers.

A history of political debate and theory in England (later Britain) between the English Reformation and French Revolution.

The history of British political thought has been one of the most fertile fields of Anglo-American historical writing in the last half-century. David Armitage brings together an interdisciplinary and international team of authors to consider the impact of this scholarship on the study of early modern British history, English literature, and political theory. Leading historians survey the impact of the history of political thought on the 'new' histories of Britain and Ireland; eminent literary scholars offer novel critical methods attentive to literary form, genre, and language; and distinguished political theorists treat the relationship of history and theory in studies of rights and privacy. The outstanding examples of critical practice collected here will encourage the emergence of fresh research on the historical, critical, and theoretical study of the English-speaking world in the period around 1500–1800. This volume celebrates the contribution of the Folger Institute to British studies over many years.

The Politics of the Ancient Constitution is a close examination of the political ideas of common lawyers in early Stuart England, and includes important surveys of the ideas of Sir Edward Coke and John Selden. It provides an original interpretation of the lawyers' theory of the ancient constitution and on this basis it provides a novel interpretation of the basic structure of political thought and ideology in pre-Civil War England. In this way the book is able to make a substantial contribution to debates over the ideological origins of the English Revolution.

First published in 1938. A study of the political doctrines and events which led to a hardening of lines between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians. "From the March of 1604, when James I met his first Parliament to the assembly of the Long Parliament in November 1640, there was going on a conflict between irreconcilable views concerning the constitution of government in England. It was concerned with what had been and with what was and, necessarily, with what should be." By 1640 the question soon would be "how stable government could ever again be established . . . But the confusion, if it produced little else of value, produced a ferment of thought." And this ferment has had an incalculable effect on the centuries which have followed. Among the many topics discussed, on the basis of firm knowledge and with reasonableness, are the King and the nature of his claim, the parliamentary opposition and its conceptions and the possibility of compromise, the approach to Toleration, Puritanism and the Laudian Church, and the final collapse of government.

This volume celebrates the contribution of the Folger Institute to British studies over many years.