Martin Dzelzainis
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264706
- eISBN:
- 9780191734557
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264706.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Milton Studies
This chapter discusses Milton and his idea of regicide. It discusses his The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and the concepts of regicide, tyrranicide, and enemy found in his work. Milton's Tenure ...
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This chapter discusses Milton and his idea of regicide. It discusses his The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and the concepts of regicide, tyrranicide, and enemy found in his work. Milton's Tenure asserts that a tyrannical ruler should no longer be regarded as one of the powers ordained by God and may be therefore be resisted like a private person who employs unjust force. The chapter also discusses his political theory and his emerging notion of resistance, including the significance of his method of not naming Charles Stuart as a public enemy or hostis in his Tenure.Less
This chapter discusses Milton and his idea of regicide. It discusses his The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and the concepts of regicide, tyrranicide, and enemy found in his work. Milton's Tenure asserts that a tyrannical ruler should no longer be regarded as one of the powers ordained by God and may be therefore be resisted like a private person who employs unjust force. The chapter also discusses his political theory and his emerging notion of resistance, including the significance of his method of not naming Charles Stuart as a public enemy or hostis in his Tenure.
Nicholas Mcdowell
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199278008
- eISBN:
- 9780191707810
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278008.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Poetry
This chapter begins with the fortunes of the Stanley circle in the aftermath of regicide by exploring their involvement in a volume of elegies for Henry, Lord Hastings, which is also an indirect ...
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This chapter begins with the fortunes of the Stanley circle in the aftermath of regicide by exploring their involvement in a volume of elegies for Henry, Lord Hastings, which is also an indirect lament for the death of the king. Hall and Marvell both contribute elegies, even though Hall was by now a paid propagandist for the Commonwealth government. The rest of the chapter addresses the ‘Horatian Ode’ and relates it to the new patronage environment of post-regicide England. Former royalists were persuaded by John Hall to continue their literary activities under the new government, and the ‘Ode’ is seen as a meditation by Marvell on the choices open to the poet in this brave new world. The echoes of the poem embedded in early Restoration writing by Dryden and Cowley show that the poem circulated and was read as a bid for Cromwellian patronage.Less
This chapter begins with the fortunes of the Stanley circle in the aftermath of regicide by exploring their involvement in a volume of elegies for Henry, Lord Hastings, which is also an indirect lament for the death of the king. Hall and Marvell both contribute elegies, even though Hall was by now a paid propagandist for the Commonwealth government. The rest of the chapter addresses the ‘Horatian Ode’ and relates it to the new patronage environment of post-regicide England. Former royalists were persuaded by John Hall to continue their literary activities under the new government, and the ‘Ode’ is seen as a meditation by Marvell on the choices open to the poet in this brave new world. The echoes of the poem embedded in early Restoration writing by Dryden and Cowley show that the poem circulated and was read as a bid for Cromwellian patronage.
JEFFREY R. COLLINS
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199237647
- eISBN:
- 9780191708442
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199237647.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This chapter contextualizes the composition of Leviathan by placing that text within the religious debates roiling the English Revolution in the aftermath of the regicide. It demonstrates how ...
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This chapter contextualizes the composition of Leviathan by placing that text within the religious debates roiling the English Revolution in the aftermath of the regicide. It demonstrates how Hobbes's interest in Erastianism peaked during these years, as did his appreciation for Independency as a church form. These developments are set against a historical backdrop in which Oliver Cromwell and the Independents rose to power within post-regicidal England. Hobbes's intellectual development estranged him from the royalist cause, and ensured his fall from grace at the exiled court of the Stuarts. Hobbes offended both of the main royalist factions: the old royalists grouped around Edward Hyde, and the Louvre group royalists around Henrietta Maria.Less
This chapter contextualizes the composition of Leviathan by placing that text within the religious debates roiling the English Revolution in the aftermath of the regicide. It demonstrates how Hobbes's interest in Erastianism peaked during these years, as did his appreciation for Independency as a church form. These developments are set against a historical backdrop in which Oliver Cromwell and the Independents rose to power within post-regicidal England. Hobbes's intellectual development estranged him from the royalist cause, and ensured his fall from grace at the exiled court of the Stuarts. Hobbes offended both of the main royalist factions: the old royalists grouped around Edward Hyde, and the Louvre group royalists around Henrietta Maria.
Blair Worden
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199570492
- eISBN:
- 9780191739347
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199570492.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
The Puritan Revolution escaped the control of its creators. The parliamentarians who went to war with Charles I in 1642 did not want or expect the fundamental changes that would follow seven years ...
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The Puritan Revolution escaped the control of its creators. The parliamentarians who went to war with Charles I in 1642 did not want or expect the fundamental changes that would follow seven years later: the trial and execution of the king, the abolition of the House of Lords, and the creation of the only republic in English history. There were startling and unexpected developments, too, in religion and ideas: the spread of unorthodox doctrines; the attainment of a wide measure of liberty of conscience; new thinking about the moral and intellectual bases of politics and society. This volume centres on the principal instrument of radical change, Oliver Cromwell, and on the unfamiliar landscape of the decade he dominated, from the abolition of the monarchy in 1649 to the return of the Stuart dynasty in 1660. Its theme is the relationship between the beliefs or convictions of politicians and their decisions and actions. We explore the biblical dimension of Puritan politics; the ways that a belief in the workings of divine providence affected political conduct; Cromwell's commitment to liberty of conscience and his search for godly reformation through educational reform; the constitutional premises of his rule and those of his opponents in the struggle for supremacy between parliamentary and military rule; the relationship between conceptions of civil and religious liberty. The conflicts which the book reconstructs are placed in the perspective of long‐term developments, of which historians have lost sight, in ideas about parliament and about freedom. The final chapters turn to the guiding convictions of two writers at the heart of politics, John Milton and the royalist Edward Hyde, the future Earl of Clarendon. Material from previously published essays, much of it expanded and extensively revised, comes together with freshly written chapters.Less
The Puritan Revolution escaped the control of its creators. The parliamentarians who went to war with Charles I in 1642 did not want or expect the fundamental changes that would follow seven years later: the trial and execution of the king, the abolition of the House of Lords, and the creation of the only republic in English history. There were startling and unexpected developments, too, in religion and ideas: the spread of unorthodox doctrines; the attainment of a wide measure of liberty of conscience; new thinking about the moral and intellectual bases of politics and society. This volume centres on the principal instrument of radical change, Oliver Cromwell, and on the unfamiliar landscape of the decade he dominated, from the abolition of the monarchy in 1649 to the return of the Stuart dynasty in 1660. Its theme is the relationship between the beliefs or convictions of politicians and their decisions and actions. We explore the biblical dimension of Puritan politics; the ways that a belief in the workings of divine providence affected political conduct; Cromwell's commitment to liberty of conscience and his search for godly reformation through educational reform; the constitutional premises of his rule and those of his opponents in the struggle for supremacy between parliamentary and military rule; the relationship between conceptions of civil and religious liberty. The conflicts which the book reconstructs are placed in the perspective of long‐term developments, of which historians have lost sight, in ideas about parliament and about freedom. The final chapters turn to the guiding convictions of two writers at the heart of politics, John Milton and the royalist Edward Hyde, the future Earl of Clarendon. Material from previously published essays, much of it expanded and extensively revised, comes together with freshly written chapters.
Blair Worden
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199230822
- eISBN:
- 9780191696480
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199230822.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Milton Studies
The prose that John Milton published before the regicide constituted two phases. There were the anti-episcopal or anti-prelatical tracts of 1641–2; and there were the pamphlets of 1643–5 which argued ...
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The prose that John Milton published before the regicide constituted two phases. There were the anti-episcopal or anti-prelatical tracts of 1641–2; and there were the pamphlets of 1643–5 which argued against divorce laws, against the licensing of the press, and for the reform of education. His political polemic likewise had two phases, but both of them came after the regicide. There were, as he observed in the Latin of his Defensio Secunda in 1654, ‘three species of liberty … namely ecclesiastical, domestic or private, and civil’. Milton's priorities were reflected in the pattern of his own writing. In the year in which the first civil war ended, 1646, when his ‘right hand’ returned from a period of poetic silence, it was for religious, not for political, liberty that his verse called. A longer period of poetic silence ended in 1652 with poems on the subject of liberty of conscience.Less
The prose that John Milton published before the regicide constituted two phases. There were the anti-episcopal or anti-prelatical tracts of 1641–2; and there were the pamphlets of 1643–5 which argued against divorce laws, against the licensing of the press, and for the reform of education. His political polemic likewise had two phases, but both of them came after the regicide. There were, as he observed in the Latin of his Defensio Secunda in 1654, ‘three species of liberty … namely ecclesiastical, domestic or private, and civil’. Milton's priorities were reflected in the pattern of his own writing. In the year in which the first civil war ended, 1646, when his ‘right hand’ returned from a period of poetic silence, it was for religious, not for political, liberty that his verse called. A longer period of poetic silence ended in 1652 with poems on the subject of liberty of conscience.
Blair Worden
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199230822
- eISBN:
- 9780191696480
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199230822.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Milton Studies
John Milton and Marchamont Nedham were fellow writers for the government that came to power in 1649. The treatises that Milton published for the government were written in its first two years, when ...
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John Milton and Marchamont Nedham were fellow writers for the government that came to power in 1649. The treatises that Milton published for the government were written in its first two years, when its rule was precarious. In their vindications of the regicide and of the rule of the republic, Milton's and Nedham's writings developed common arguments and a common vocabulary. The resemblances, at least in their persistence, set their prose apart from the run of polemic in the Puritan cause. Behind its shared features lie premisses and rhetorical methods that derive largely from the classical world, to whose history, and to whose civic values, both writers so often appeal. From that source they acquired a confident intellectual cosmopolitanism that is rarely matched in other defences of the new order of 1649–53, most of which were narrowly biblical or providentialist or legal or prudential in scope.Less
John Milton and Marchamont Nedham were fellow writers for the government that came to power in 1649. The treatises that Milton published for the government were written in its first two years, when its rule was precarious. In their vindications of the regicide and of the rule of the republic, Milton's and Nedham's writings developed common arguments and a common vocabulary. The resemblances, at least in their persistence, set their prose apart from the run of polemic in the Puritan cause. Behind its shared features lie premisses and rhetorical methods that derive largely from the classical world, to whose history, and to whose civic values, both writers so often appeal. From that source they acquired a confident intellectual cosmopolitanism that is rarely matched in other defences of the new order of 1649–53, most of which were narrowly biblical or providentialist or legal or prudential in scope.
Derek Hughes
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198119746
- eISBN:
- 9780191671203
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198119746.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
In 1669, Sir William Killigrew published his last play, The Imperial Tragedy, which deals with regicide and restoration based on Zeno; sive, Ambitio Infelix by the English Jesuit Joseph Simons, which ...
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In 1669, Sir William Killigrew published his last play, The Imperial Tragedy, which deals with regicide and restoration based on Zeno; sive, Ambitio Infelix by the English Jesuit Joseph Simons, which opens with the appearance of Astraea on high. Gerard Langbaine believed that the play had been acted at the Barbican Nursery, but there is no record of performance at either of the main houses, and by this time its subject and outlook were dated. Indeed, Simons was at the time helping to make it even more dated by converting the Duke of York to Catholicism. Earl of Orrery's Tryphon, another play about restoration, had already failed, and when John Dryden depicted the deposition of the usurper Maximin in Tyrannick Love, he portrayed not a return to hereditary monarchy but the election of two emperors by the Senate. Increasingly, indeed, serious dramatists turned from celebration of restored authority to reflection upon the problems inherent in the exercise and very nature of power.Less
In 1669, Sir William Killigrew published his last play, The Imperial Tragedy, which deals with regicide and restoration based on Zeno; sive, Ambitio Infelix by the English Jesuit Joseph Simons, which opens with the appearance of Astraea on high. Gerard Langbaine believed that the play had been acted at the Barbican Nursery, but there is no record of performance at either of the main houses, and by this time its subject and outlook were dated. Indeed, Simons was at the time helping to make it even more dated by converting the Duke of York to Catholicism. Earl of Orrery's Tryphon, another play about restoration, had already failed, and when John Dryden depicted the deposition of the usurper Maximin in Tyrannick Love, he portrayed not a return to hereditary monarchy but the election of two emperors by the Senate. Increasingly, indeed, serious dramatists turned from celebration of restored authority to reflection upon the problems inherent in the exercise and very nature of power.
Blair Worden
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199230822
- eISBN:
- 9780191696480
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199230822.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Milton Studies
John Milton and Marchamont Nedham agreed that Pride's Purge and the regicide, the emergency measures, had delivered England from a return to tyranny. So long as the royalist military threat survived, ...
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John Milton and Marchamont Nedham agreed that Pride's Purge and the regicide, the emergency measures, had delivered England from a return to tyranny. So long as the royalist military threat survived, Nedham's propaganda was mainly negative. It had more to say about the evils of royalism and Presbyterianism than about the virtues of kingless rule. Yet the concluding chapter of The Case of the Commonwealth in May 1650, a work published when the morale of the government was at its lowest point and when the regime was desperate for survival, departed from that policy and supplied his adventurous ‘discourse of the excellency of a free state above a kingly government’. By the time of the Battle of Worcester he had, on the same subject, a book or series of essays up his sleeve.Less
John Milton and Marchamont Nedham agreed that Pride's Purge and the regicide, the emergency measures, had delivered England from a return to tyranny. So long as the royalist military threat survived, Nedham's propaganda was mainly negative. It had more to say about the evils of royalism and Presbyterianism than about the virtues of kingless rule. Yet the concluding chapter of The Case of the Commonwealth in May 1650, a work published when the morale of the government was at its lowest point and when the regime was desperate for survival, departed from that policy and supplied his adventurous ‘discourse of the excellency of a free state above a kingly government’. By the time of the Battle of Worcester he had, on the same subject, a book or series of essays up his sleeve.
Blair Worden
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199230822
- eISBN:
- 9780191696480
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199230822.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Milton Studies
Defensio Secunda is a response to another Latin work, Regii Sanguinis Clamor, ‘The Cry of the Royal Blood’, which was published anonymously in or around late August 1652. Clamor ...
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Defensio Secunda is a response to another Latin work, Regii Sanguinis Clamor, ‘The Cry of the Royal Blood’, which was published anonymously in or around late August 1652. Clamor took up the cause of Claudius Salmasius against the English regicides and against John Milton. It savagely attacked the first ‘defence’ (Defensio) and the character of its author. Milton supposed that it had been written, in France or Holland, by the clergyman Alexander More, a friend of Salmasius. Though More contributed prefatory material to Clamor and helped it through the press, it was almost certainly composed, in England, by the Anglican clergyman Peter du Moulin. Milton, who had manufactured evidence to support his mistake in 1652, thereafter refused to acknowledge his error, though by the time Defensio Secunda appeared he must have been fully aware of it.Less
Defensio Secunda is a response to another Latin work, Regii Sanguinis Clamor, ‘The Cry of the Royal Blood’, which was published anonymously in or around late August 1652. Clamor took up the cause of Claudius Salmasius against the English regicides and against John Milton. It savagely attacked the first ‘defence’ (Defensio) and the character of its author. Milton supposed that it had been written, in France or Holland, by the clergyman Alexander More, a friend of Salmasius. Though More contributed prefatory material to Clamor and helped it through the press, it was almost certainly composed, in England, by the Anglican clergyman Peter du Moulin. Milton, who had manufactured evidence to support his mistake in 1652, thereafter refused to acknowledge his error, though by the time Defensio Secunda appeared he must have been fully aware of it.
Christopher Hill
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198206682
- eISBN:
- 9780191677274
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198206682.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, History of Ideas
This is a revised edition of an examination of the motivations behind the English Revolution and Civil War first published in 1965. In addition to the text of the original, the book includes thirteen ...
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This is a revised edition of an examination of the motivations behind the English Revolution and Civil War first published in 1965. In addition to the text of the original, the book includes thirteen new chapters that take account of other publications since the first edition, bringing the work up-to-date. It poses the problem of how, after centuries of rule by King, lords, and bishops when the thinking of all was dominated by the established church, English men and women found the courage to revolt against Charles I, abolish bishops, and execute the King in the name of his people. The far-reaching effects and the novelty of what was achieved should not be underestimated — the first legalized regicide, rather than an assassination; the formal establishment of some degree of religious toleration; Parliament taking effective control of finance and foreign policy on behalf of gentry and merchants, thus guaranteeing the finance necessary to make England the world's leading naval power; abolition of the Church's prerogative courts (confirming gentry control at a local level); and the abolition of feudal tenures, which made possible first the agricultural and then the industrial revolution. The book examines the intellectual forces that helped to prepare minds for a revolution, which was much more than the religious wars and revolts that had gone before, and which became the precedent for the great revolutionary upheavals of the future.Less
This is a revised edition of an examination of the motivations behind the English Revolution and Civil War first published in 1965. In addition to the text of the original, the book includes thirteen new chapters that take account of other publications since the first edition, bringing the work up-to-date. It poses the problem of how, after centuries of rule by King, lords, and bishops when the thinking of all was dominated by the established church, English men and women found the courage to revolt against Charles I, abolish bishops, and execute the King in the name of his people. The far-reaching effects and the novelty of what was achieved should not be underestimated — the first legalized regicide, rather than an assassination; the formal establishment of some degree of religious toleration; Parliament taking effective control of finance and foreign policy on behalf of gentry and merchants, thus guaranteeing the finance necessary to make England the world's leading naval power; abolition of the Church's prerogative courts (confirming gentry control at a local level); and the abolition of feudal tenures, which made possible first the agricultural and then the industrial revolution. The book examines the intellectual forces that helped to prepare minds for a revolution, which was much more than the religious wars and revolts that had gone before, and which became the precedent for the great revolutionary upheavals of the future.
John Morrill
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263303
- eISBN:
- 9780191734137
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263303.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
At no point in the history of Britain and Ireland has the whole archipelago experienced such sustained and brutal internal war as in the 1640s and early 1650s. Alongside and largely underpinning the ...
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At no point in the history of Britain and Ireland has the whole archipelago experienced such sustained and brutal internal war as in the 1640s and early 1650s. Alongside and largely underpinning the persistent Scottish demand for a confederal settlement, and a factor in the English preference for either an integrative union or no union at all was, of course, religion. There were two largely separate rebellions in Ireland in late 1641: by the Old English of the Pale and Munster and by the dispossessed and the exiled Gaelic Irish communities of Ulster. There has been a tension between calling the events of 1638–54 the War of the Three Kingdoms and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The Covenant itself and the king's response both in making the Cessation in Ireland and in authorising Montrose's Scottish-Irish war in Scotland or the early months of 1645 are considered. It then describes the way the English and the Scots reacted to the crisis of the winter of 1648–9 and the wholly English act of regicide. The wars of the 1640s fragmented the political communities in England and in Scotland.Less
At no point in the history of Britain and Ireland has the whole archipelago experienced such sustained and brutal internal war as in the 1640s and early 1650s. Alongside and largely underpinning the persistent Scottish demand for a confederal settlement, and a factor in the English preference for either an integrative union or no union at all was, of course, religion. There were two largely separate rebellions in Ireland in late 1641: by the Old English of the Pale and Munster and by the dispossessed and the exiled Gaelic Irish communities of Ulster. There has been a tension between calling the events of 1638–54 the War of the Three Kingdoms and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The Covenant itself and the king's response both in making the Cessation in Ireland and in authorising Montrose's Scottish-Irish war in Scotland or the early months of 1645 are considered. It then describes the way the English and the Scots reacted to the crisis of the winter of 1648–9 and the wholly English act of regicide. The wars of the 1640s fragmented the political communities in England and in Scotland.
Geoffrey Cubitt
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198228684
- eISBN:
- 9780191678790
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198228684.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, History of Religion
This chapter discusses one of the prevailing images of the Jesuits made popular by the anti-jesuit movement. In this chapter, the three major generic figures from the blackened version of the Jesuit ...
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This chapter discusses one of the prevailing images of the Jesuits made popular by the anti-jesuit movement. In this chapter, the three major generic figures from the blackened version of the Jesuit past of the 19th-century imaginations are examined in detail. These three imagery of the Jesuits include the Jesuit regicide, the Jesuit accapareur des heritages, and the Jesuit confessor as a spy. From these three imageries, the accusations and speculations of the anti-jesuits of Jesuit murder and terrorism, Jesuit accumulation of wealth, and the Jesuit intelligence system formed.Less
This chapter discusses one of the prevailing images of the Jesuits made popular by the anti-jesuit movement. In this chapter, the three major generic figures from the blackened version of the Jesuit past of the 19th-century imaginations are examined in detail. These three imagery of the Jesuits include the Jesuit regicide, the Jesuit accapareur des heritages, and the Jesuit confessor as a spy. From these three imageries, the accusations and speculations of the anti-jesuits of Jesuit murder and terrorism, Jesuit accumulation of wealth, and the Jesuit intelligence system formed.
Christopher Hill
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198206682
- eISBN:
- 9780191677274
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198206682.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, History of Ideas
The issues at stake in the seventeenth century were often discussed in what one would regard as religious language; but ‘religion’ then covered far more than it does today. As Sir Louis Namier used ...
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The issues at stake in the seventeenth century were often discussed in what one would regard as religious language; but ‘religion’ then covered far more than it does today. As Sir Louis Namier used to say, religion was (among other things) a sixteenth-century word for nationalism. However, in looking for the intellectual origins of the major achievements of the English Revolution, this chapter gives more weight to the Protestant Reformation. The novel achievements of the English Revolution thus include: regicide; abolition of prerogative courts and so confirmation of gentry control of their localities; establishment of effective control of finance and foreign policy by Parliaments representing gentry and merchants, guaranteeing the finance necessary to make England the world's leading naval power; abolition of feudal tenures, which made possible first the agricultural and then the industrial revolution; the establishment of religious toleration of sorts.Less
The issues at stake in the seventeenth century were often discussed in what one would regard as religious language; but ‘religion’ then covered far more than it does today. As Sir Louis Namier used to say, religion was (among other things) a sixteenth-century word for nationalism. However, in looking for the intellectual origins of the major achievements of the English Revolution, this chapter gives more weight to the Protestant Reformation. The novel achievements of the English Revolution thus include: regicide; abolition of prerogative courts and so confirmation of gentry control of their localities; establishment of effective control of finance and foreign policy by Parliaments representing gentry and merchants, guaranteeing the finance necessary to make England the world's leading naval power; abolition of feudal tenures, which made possible first the agricultural and then the industrial revolution; the establishment of religious toleration of sorts.
Alastair Bellany and Thomas Cogswell
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300214963
- eISBN:
- 9780300217827
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300214963.003.0030
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This chapter discusses the secret history's shifting place in contemporary political imagination from 1655–63. As the revolution stabilized under Oliver Cromwell, it no longer seemed quite so ...
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This chapter discusses the secret history's shifting place in contemporary political imagination from 1655–63. As the revolution stabilized under Oliver Cromwell, it no longer seemed quite so important to legitimate the regicide and the Republic. Indeed, as the Protectorate incorporated men of a more conservative bent, repeating stories about the murderous former king may have seemed increasingly counter-productive. In the crisis following Cromwell's death, contentious tracts again poured from the presses, and they again alluded to the secret history, albeit to a lesser degree. By that point, Royalist writers had finally seized back some of the initiative in the battle over James I's death. Within months of Charles II's restoration, some of the men who had engineered the regicide and made James' murder a political shibboleth would be punished for their actions, and the secret history returned to the underground.Less
This chapter discusses the secret history's shifting place in contemporary political imagination from 1655–63. As the revolution stabilized under Oliver Cromwell, it no longer seemed quite so important to legitimate the regicide and the Republic. Indeed, as the Protectorate incorporated men of a more conservative bent, repeating stories about the murderous former king may have seemed increasingly counter-productive. In the crisis following Cromwell's death, contentious tracts again poured from the presses, and they again alluded to the secret history, albeit to a lesser degree. By that point, Royalist writers had finally seized back some of the initiative in the battle over James I's death. Within months of Charles II's restoration, some of the men who had engineered the regicide and made James' murder a political shibboleth would be punished for their actions, and the secret history returned to the underground.
Andrew Hopper
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199575855
- eISBN:
- 9780191744617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199575855.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History, Military History
Rather than being a marginal activity with little impact on the war's outcome, a bewildering number of contemporaries can be identified for whom side‐changing became a critical issue. The concept of ...
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Rather than being a marginal activity with little impact on the war's outcome, a bewildering number of contemporaries can be identified for whom side‐changing became a critical issue. The concept of a ‘turncoat’ was culturally constructed and highly contested, as a double standard emerged over the circumstances in which changing sides was acceptable. Side‐changing shaped the war's outcome, accelerating royalist decline and radicalizing elements of the parliamentarian coalition in 1648. Notions of treachery became central to defining ‘the cause’ on both sides, while discrediting comrades as turncoats deepened the infighting on both sides. Whilst side‐changing could have a benign effect in making civil‐war divisions less absolute, the opposite sometimes occurred when particular defectors provoked extreme reactions. The concept of breach of trust, first applied to side‐changers, was turned on the king himself to justify the regicide and the regimes that followed it.Less
Rather than being a marginal activity with little impact on the war's outcome, a bewildering number of contemporaries can be identified for whom side‐changing became a critical issue. The concept of a ‘turncoat’ was culturally constructed and highly contested, as a double standard emerged over the circumstances in which changing sides was acceptable. Side‐changing shaped the war's outcome, accelerating royalist decline and radicalizing elements of the parliamentarian coalition in 1648. Notions of treachery became central to defining ‘the cause’ on both sides, while discrediting comrades as turncoats deepened the infighting on both sides. Whilst side‐changing could have a benign effect in making civil‐war divisions less absolute, the opposite sometimes occurred when particular defectors provoked extreme reactions. The concept of breach of trust, first applied to side‐changers, was turned on the king himself to justify the regicide and the regimes that followed it.
Jack V. Haney (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617037306
- eISBN:
- 9781621039235
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617037306.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Folk Literature
This book of folktales from the Far North of European Russia features seventeen works by five narrators of the Russian tale, all recorded in the twentieth century. The tales, distinguished by their ...
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This book of folktales from the Far North of European Russia features seventeen works by five narrators of the Russian tale, all recorded in the twentieth century. The tales, distinguished by their extraordinary length and by the manner in which they were commonly told, appear to have flourished only in the twentieth century and only in Russian Karelia. Although they are easily recognized as wondertales, or fairy tales, their treatment of the traditional matter is anything but usual. In these tales, one encounters such topics as regicide, matricide, patricide, fratricide, premarital relations between the sexes and more, all related in the typical manner of the Russian folktale. The narrators were not educated beyond a rudimentary level. All were middle-aged or older, and all were men. Crew members of a fishing or hunting vessel plying the White Sea or lumberjacks or trappers in the vast northern forests, they frequently began the narration of a tale in an evening, then broke off at an appropriate moment and continued at a subsequent gathering. Such tales were thus told serially. Given their length, their thematic and narrative complexity, and their stylistic proficiency, one might even refer to them as orally delivered Russian short stories or novellas.Less
This book of folktales from the Far North of European Russia features seventeen works by five narrators of the Russian tale, all recorded in the twentieth century. The tales, distinguished by their extraordinary length and by the manner in which they were commonly told, appear to have flourished only in the twentieth century and only in Russian Karelia. Although they are easily recognized as wondertales, or fairy tales, their treatment of the traditional matter is anything but usual. In these tales, one encounters such topics as regicide, matricide, patricide, fratricide, premarital relations between the sexes and more, all related in the typical manner of the Russian folktale. The narrators were not educated beyond a rudimentary level. All were middle-aged or older, and all were men. Crew members of a fishing or hunting vessel plying the White Sea or lumberjacks or trappers in the vast northern forests, they frequently began the narration of a tale in an evening, then broke off at an appropriate moment and continued at a subsequent gathering. Such tales were thus told serially. Given their length, their thematic and narrative complexity, and their stylistic proficiency, one might even refer to them as orally delivered Russian short stories or novellas.
Susan Wiseman
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199205127
- eISBN:
- 9780191709579
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199205127.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter asks what happened to the political and spiritual languages of women in the sects at the regicide, through an exploration of the published texts of Elizabeth Poole. The chapter continues ...
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This chapter asks what happened to the political and spiritual languages of women in the sects at the regicide, through an exploration of the published texts of Elizabeth Poole. The chapter continues the discussion of the political implications of printed texts emerging from the sectarian struggles of the 1640s, tracing the political languages and positions of sectaries responding to the regicide. In examining Elizabeth Poole's place in the controversies, this chapter addresses the complexity of women's relationship to the figural languages and print debate which emerged in response to that event. In this story of Poole, prominence is given to the radical publishers Giles and Elizabeth Calvert, the Baptist minister John Pendarves and his wife Thomasine, her minister William Kiffin and his old associate, John Lilburne. The chapter asks the twin questions of who bound Poole to politics, and what were the implications of her spoken, written, and published interventions.Less
This chapter asks what happened to the political and spiritual languages of women in the sects at the regicide, through an exploration of the published texts of Elizabeth Poole. The chapter continues the discussion of the political implications of printed texts emerging from the sectarian struggles of the 1640s, tracing the political languages and positions of sectaries responding to the regicide. In examining Elizabeth Poole's place in the controversies, this chapter addresses the complexity of women's relationship to the figural languages and print debate which emerged in response to that event. In this story of Poole, prominence is given to the radical publishers Giles and Elizabeth Calvert, the Baptist minister John Pendarves and his wife Thomasine, her minister William Kiffin and his old associate, John Lilburne. The chapter asks the twin questions of who bound Poole to politics, and what were the implications of her spoken, written, and published interventions.
Deborah W. Rooke
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199279289
- eISBN:
- 9780191738050
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199279289.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The libretto for Saul was provided by Charles Jennens, who would later supply Handel with the libretto for Messiah. Saul in the biblical text is often read sympathetically by modern scholars as being ...
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The libretto for Saul was provided by Charles Jennens, who would later supply Handel with the libretto for Messiah. Saul in the biblical text is often read sympathetically by modern scholars as being victimized by the prophet Samuel and by God. But for Jennens this was unthinkable, and he portrays the clash between Saul and his young rival David as a clash between embodiments of vice and virtue. In addition, Jennens's treatment of David in the libretto has overtones of Messianism, making David a kind of Christ‐figure, and Saul by implication his satanic adversary. However, Saul's death is narrated in a way that emphasizes the wickedness of regicide even if the king killed is evil. This is a position that probably comes from Jennens's convictions as a non‐juror. The libretto thus appears as a meditation on monarchy that contains a rich mix of morality, theology and politics.Less
The libretto for Saul was provided by Charles Jennens, who would later supply Handel with the libretto for Messiah. Saul in the biblical text is often read sympathetically by modern scholars as being victimized by the prophet Samuel and by God. But for Jennens this was unthinkable, and he portrays the clash between Saul and his young rival David as a clash between embodiments of vice and virtue. In addition, Jennens's treatment of David in the libretto has overtones of Messianism, making David a kind of Christ‐figure, and Saul by implication his satanic adversary. However, Saul's death is narrated in a way that emphasizes the wickedness of regicide even if the king killed is evil. This is a position that probably comes from Jennens's convictions as a non‐juror. The libretto thus appears as a meditation on monarchy that contains a rich mix of morality, theology and politics.
David Francis Taylor
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780300223750
- eISBN:
- 9780300235593
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300223750.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter looks at William Shakespeare's Macbeth as a source for graphic satire. Given both its resonant depiction of regicide, atrocity, and criminality, and its sensational conjoining of the ...
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This chapter looks at William Shakespeare's Macbeth as a source for graphic satire. Given both its resonant depiction of regicide, atrocity, and criminality, and its sensational conjoining of the political and the fantastical, it is to be expected that Macbeth was a recurrent source for the period's graphic satirists. Between 1754 and 1835, at least sixty-two political prints cite the play in some manner: thirty-seven do so in extended or elaborate ways, and many others engage with it by means of brief but often complex intertextual gestures of the kind exemplified in Isaac Cruikshank's The Near in Blood, The Nearer Bloody (1793). The chapter then considers the largest and most prominent cluster of Macbeth prints, that is, parodies of the weird sisters. The weird sisters have long been the subject of scholarly fascination, but when looked at through the political and parodic lens of graphic satire, their history and status seems suddenly less familiar.Less
This chapter looks at William Shakespeare's Macbeth as a source for graphic satire. Given both its resonant depiction of regicide, atrocity, and criminality, and its sensational conjoining of the political and the fantastical, it is to be expected that Macbeth was a recurrent source for the period's graphic satirists. Between 1754 and 1835, at least sixty-two political prints cite the play in some manner: thirty-seven do so in extended or elaborate ways, and many others engage with it by means of brief but often complex intertextual gestures of the kind exemplified in Isaac Cruikshank's The Near in Blood, The Nearer Bloody (1793). The chapter then considers the largest and most prominent cluster of Macbeth prints, that is, parodies of the weird sisters. The weird sisters have long been the subject of scholarly fascination, but when looked at through the political and parodic lens of graphic satire, their history and status seems suddenly less familiar.
David Brown
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781526131997
- eISBN:
- 9781526152107
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526132000.00012
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
The Adventurers for Irish land applied their English war profits to colonial development and commandeered England’s great trading companies, the East India Company, Levant Company and Fellowship of ...
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The Adventurers for Irish land applied their English war profits to colonial development and commandeered England’s great trading companies, the East India Company, Levant Company and Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers. They strengthened their grip on state finance and targeted their colonial profits towards specific loans to finance the parliamentary army, which resulted in further trading concessions. Firmly allied to the War Party in parliament, the Adventurers navigated their way through the political upheavals in England, 1647–49, and although quietly opposed to the execution of Charles I they made no attempt to oppose it.Less
The Adventurers for Irish land applied their English war profits to colonial development and commandeered England’s great trading companies, the East India Company, Levant Company and Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers. They strengthened their grip on state finance and targeted their colonial profits towards specific loans to finance the parliamentary army, which resulted in further trading concessions. Firmly allied to the War Party in parliament, the Adventurers navigated their way through the political upheavals in England, 1647–49, and although quietly opposed to the execution of Charles I they made no attempt to oppose it.
