Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- III PARLIAMENT
- 21 Studying the History of Parliament
- 22 ‘The Body of the Whole Realm’: Parliament and Representation in Medieval and Tudor England
- 23 Parliamentary Drafts 1529–1540
- 24 The Evolution of a Reformation Statute
- 25 The Commons' Supplication of 1532: Parliamentary Manoeuvres in the Reign of Henry VIII
- 26 An Early Tudor Poor Law
- 27 The Stuart Century
- 28 A High Road to Civil War?
- 29 The Unexplained Revolution
- IV POLITICAL THOUGHT
- General Index
- Index of Authors Cited
27 - The Stuart Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- III PARLIAMENT
- 21 Studying the History of Parliament
- 22 ‘The Body of the Whole Realm’: Parliament and Representation in Medieval and Tudor England
- 23 Parliamentary Drafts 1529–1540
- 24 The Evolution of a Reformation Statute
- 25 The Commons' Supplication of 1532: Parliamentary Manoeuvres in the Reign of Henry VIII
- 26 An Early Tudor Poor Law
- 27 The Stuart Century
- 28 A High Road to Civil War?
- 29 The Unexplained Revolution
- IV POLITICAL THOUGHT
- General Index
- Index of Authors Cited
Summary
Of all the centuries of English history, the seventeenth probably seems the most crucial to most students. It is generally regarded as the period when state and society were shaken apart and put together again, a revolutionary era with powerful consequences for the future, the foundation of modern England. Not only did it witness – or so we are told – the end of the medieval constitution, the establishment of parliamentary monarchy, and the acceptance of a secular state harbouring any number of Churches and denominations; it was also the time when England's imperial expansion began, when capitalist organization took its modern form, and when developments in science and philosophy replaced a whole inherited body of thought about the world by one that may fairly be called modern. Many would regard it as the formative century in the experience of England: an age of fascinating and fruitful turmoil.
One would therefore naturally expect to find an abundance of good books on this century; good minds and able writers must surely be falling over each other in their zeal to make the age their own. Now it is quite true that many of the ablest English historians have in fact been so attracted, but it is surprisingly difficult to find a good, up-to-date, single account of the whole period. Maurice Ashley's contribution to the Penguin History of England (1952) is the weakest volume in that series.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and GovernmentPapers and Reviews 1946–1972, pp. 155 - 163Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1974