Author: Arthur Williamson
Publisher: Birlinn Ltd
ISBN: 1788854349
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
This book deals with the problem of Scottish identity within the British context in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On James VI's succession to the English throne in 1603 the Scots were troubled at the prospect of Scotland's nationhood being absorbed by a supremely confident and intolerant England. Their strategic response was to develop a self-conscious attention to Scotland's past. The non-institutionalised nature of Scottish society made it difficult for the Scots to produce a long and respectable history to vie with England's much-vaunted and impressive pedigree. The idea that the Scots seized on to define and validate their identity was that of the covenant with God – and this had profound and far-reaching results. This original and stimulating book provides a valuable contribution to the understanding of the processes of secularisation in early modern Europe, and indicates the significant ways in which the Scottish experience differed from that of England. It therefore provides a useful corrective to an Anglocentric interpretation of 'Britain'.
Author: Arthur H. Williamson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781904607236
Category : Nationalism
Languages : en
Pages : 215
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Book Description
This stimulating book looks at the processes of secularization in early modern Europe and provides a useful corrective to an Anglocentric interpretation of 'Britain'.
Author: Ralph Houlbrooke
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351925725
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 211
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Book Description
James VI and I was the first king to rule both England and Scotland. He was unique among British monarchs in his determination to communicate his ideas by means of print, pen, and spoken word. James's own work as an author is one of the themes of this volume. One essay also sheds new light on his role as a patron and protector of plays and players. A second theme is the king's response to the problems posed by religious divisions in the British Isles and Europe as a whole. Various contributors to this collection elucidate James's own religious beliefs and their expression, his efforts before 1603 to counter a potential Catholic claim to the English throne, his attempted appropriation of scripture in support of his own authority, and his distinctive vision of imperial kingship in Britain. Some different reactions to the king, to his expression of his ideas and to the implementation of his policies form this book's third theme. They include the vigorous resistance to his attempt to change Scottish religious practice, and the sharply contrasting assessments of his life and reign written after James's death.
Author: G. Burgess
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230501583
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
This book analyzes the consequences of the accession of James I in 1603 for English and British history, politics, literature and culture. Questioning the extent to which 1603 marked a radical break with the past, the book explores the Scottish, Welsh, and wider European and colonial contexts, to this crucial date in history.
Author: Julian Goodare
Publisher: Birlinn Ltd
ISBN: 1788854179
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
The reign of James VI (1567–1625) remains one of the most enigmatic in Scottish history. There are long periods within it that resemble black holes in our knowledge. This study is a concerted attempt by a group of ten scholars of the reign, drawn from three different disciplines, to shed light on its politics and government, viewed through various perspectives. These include the royal court, which is analysed through its literature, architecture and ceremony; noble factionalism; relations with England; a revised model of tensions between church and state; and the relationship between the government and the Highlands, the Borders and the south west, a future region of opposition to Charles I. This study also analyses James as a literary author, correspondent, husband and 'universal king'. The book offers alternatives to accepted views of the reign, dismissing both Melvillianism and 'laissez faire monarchy' as useful tools. It sees the centre of politics as the interaction between an expanded and increasingly expensive royal court and a phenomenal growth of the state, based on a huge increase in legislation and the business of the Privy Council.
Author: R. Malcolm Smuts
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192863134
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 769
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Book Description
In the period between 1575 and 1625, civic peace in England, Scotland, and Ireland was persistently threatened by various kinds of religiously inspired violence, involving conspiracies, rebellions, and foreign invasions. Religious divisions divided local communities in all three kingdoms, but they also impacted relations between the nations, and in the broader European continent. The challenges posed by actual or potential religious violence gave rise to complex responses, including efforts to impose religious uniformity through preaching campaigns and regulation of national churches; an expanded use of the press as a medium of religious and political propaganda; improved government surveillance; the selective incarceration of English, Scottish, and Irish Catholics; and a variety of diplomatic and military initiatives, undertaken not only by royal governments but also by private individuals. The result was the development of more robust and resilient, although still vulnerable, states in all three kingdoms and, after the dynastic union of Britain in 1603, an effort to create a single state incorporating all of them. R. Malcolm Smuts traces the story of how this happened by moving beyond frameworks of national and institutional history, to understand the ebb and flow of events and processes of religious and political change across frontiers. The study pays close attention to interactions between the political, cultural, intellectual, ecclesiastical, military, and diplomatic dimensions of its subject. A final chapter explores how and why provisional solutions to the problem of violent, religiously inflected conflict collapsed in the reign of Charles I.
Author: L. Charles Jackson
Publisher: Reformation Heritage Books
ISBN: 1601783744
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 339
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Book Description
Coauthor of the famous Scottish National Covenant, moderator of the Glasgow General Assembly that defied King Charles I, and member of the Westminster Assembly, Alexander Henderson (1583–1646) led Scotland during the tumultuous period of the British Revolutions. He influenced Scotland as a Covenanter, preacher, Presbyterian, and pamphleteer and earned an important place in the nation’s history. Despite his numerous accomplishments, no modern biography of Henderson exists. In Riots, Revolutions, and the Scottish Covenanters , L. Charles Jackson corrects this omission. He avoids the extremes of casting Henderson as a forerunner to liberty or as a theological tyrant and instead places his actions in their historical setting, presenting this important leader as he saw himself: primarily a minister of the gospel who was struggling to live faithfully as he understood it. Using neglected and, in some cases, new sources, Jackson reassesses the role of religion in early modern Scotland as reflected in the life of Alexander Henderson. Table of Contents: 1. The Preparation 2. The Covenanter 3. The Preacher 4. The Presbyterian 5. The Pamphleteer 6. The Collapse of the Cause
Author: J. G. A. Pocock
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521850957
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
The Discovery of Islands consists of a series of linked essays in British history, written by one of the world's leading historians of political thought and published over the past three decades. Its purpose is to present British history as that of several nations interacting with - and sometimes seceding from - an imperial state. The commentary presents this history as that of an archipelago, expanding across oceans to the Antipodes. Both New Zealand history and the author's New Zealand heritage inform this vision, presenting British history as oceanic and global, complementing (and occasionally criticising) the presentation of that history as European. Professor Pocock's interpretation of British history has been hugely influential in recent years, making The Discovery of Islands a resource of immense value for historians of Britain and the world.
Author: John D Ford
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1847313981
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 662
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Book Description
In Britain at least, changes in the law are expected to be made by the enactment of statutes or the decision of cases by senior judges. Lawyers express opinions about the law but do not expect their opinions to form part of the law. It was not always so. This book explores the relationship between the opinions expressed by lawyers and the development of the law of Scotland in the century preceding the parliamentary union with England in 1707, when it was decided that the private law of Scotland was sufficiently distinctive and coherent to be worthy of preservation. Credit for this surprising decision, which has resulted in the survival of two separate legal systems in Britain, has often been given to the first Viscount Stair, whose Institutions of the Law of Scotland had appeared in a revised edition in 1693. The present book places Stair's treatise in historical context and asks whether it could have been his intention in writing to express the type of authoritative opinions that could have been used to consolidate the emerging law, and whether he could have been motivated in writing by a desire to clarify the relationship between the laws of Scotland and England. In doing so the book provides a fresh account of the literature and practice of Scots law in its formative period and at the same time sheds light on the background to the 1707 union. It will be of interest to legal historians and Scots lawyers, but it should also be accessible to lay readers who wish to know more about the law and legal history of Scotland
Author: Deborah Willis
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501711601
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279
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Book Description
In Malevolent Nurture, Deborah Willis explores the dynamics of witchcraft accusation through legal documents, pamphlet literature, religious tracts, and the plays of Shakespeare.
