The Tudor And Stuart Monarchy

Providing detailed coverage of the main political and religious issues of the age, this new edition of Tudor and Stuart Britain has expanded sections on Ireland and Scotland, ensuring the text considers Britain as a whole. Historiographically up to date, there is also extra coverage of economic and social topics including trade and industry, the structure of society, the treatment of the poor, and the role of women. A guide to further reading lists the principal works published on the period since 1990, providing students with an excellent resource for extra research. This text is ideal for introductory undergradutate courses in Early Modern British History.

Moments of royal succession, which punctuate the Stuart era (1603-1714), occasioned outpourings of literature. Writers, including most of the major figures of the seventeenth century from Jonson, Daniel, and Donne to Marvell, Dryden, and Behn, seized upon these occasions: to mark the transition of power; to reflect upon the political structures and values of their nation; and to present themselves as authors worthy of patronage and recognition. This volume of essays explores this important category of early modern writing. It contends that succession literature warrants attention as a distinct category: appreciated by contemporaries, acknowledged by a number of scholars, but never investigated in a coherent and methodical manner, it helped to shape political reputations and values across the period. Benefitting from the unique database of such writing generated by the AHRC-funded Stuart Successions Project, the volume brings together a distinguished group of authors to address a subject which is of wide and growing interest to students both of history and of literature. It illuminates the relation between literature and politics in this pivotal century of English political and cultural history. Interdisciplinary in scope, the volume will be indispensable to scholars of early modern British literature and history as well as undergraduates and postgraduates in both fields.

Tudor and Stuart Britain charts the political, religious, economic and social history of Britain from the start of Henry VII’s reign in 1485 to the death of Queen Anne in 1714, providing students and lecturers with a detailed chronological narrative of significant events, such as the Reformation, the nature of Tudor government, the English Civil War, the Interregnum and the restoration of the monarchy. This fourth edition has been fully updated and each chapter now begins with an introductory overview of the topic being discussed, in which important and current historical debates are highlighted. Other new features of the book include a closer examination of the image and style of leadership that different monarchs projected during their reigns; greater coverage of Phillip II and Mary I as joint monarchs; new sections exploring witchcraft during the period and the urban sector in the Stuart age; and increased discussion of the English Civil War, of Oliver Cromwell and of Cromwellian rule during the 1650s. Also containing an entirely rewritten guide to further reading and enhanced by a wide selection of maps and illustrations, Tudor and Stuart Britain is an excellent resource for both students and teachers of this period.

The story of the Stuart dynasty is a breathless soap opera played out in just a hundred years in an array of buildings that span Europe from Scotland, via Denmark, Holland and Spain to England.