Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History

Series · 41

books · 1987-2016

By Donald A. Spaeth, Steven C.A. Pincus, Joanne Bailey, and more

Books in series

The Common Peace

Participation and the Criminal Law in Seventeenth-Century England

1987

The Common Peace traces the attitudes behind the enforcement of the criminal law in early modern England. Focusing on five stages in prosecution (arrest, bail, indictment, conviction and sentencing), the book uses a variety of types of sources - court records, biographical information, state papers, legal commentaries, popular and didactic literature - to reconstruct who actually enforced the criminal law and what values they brought to its enforcement. A close study of the courts in eastern Sussex between 1592 and 1640 allows Dr Herrup to show that an amorphous collection of modest property holders participated actively in the legal process. These yeomen and husbandmen who appeared as victims, constables, witnesses and jurors were as important to the credibility of the law as were the justices and judges. The uses of the law embodied the ideas of these middling men about not only law and order but also religion and good government. By arguing that legal administration was part of the routine agenda of obligation for middling property holders, Dr Herrup shows how the expectations produced by legal activities are important for understanding the decades immediately before the outbreak of the English Civil War. As the first book to use early seventeenth-century legal records outside of Essex, The Common Peace adopts an explicitly comparative framework, attempting to trace the ways that social conditions influenced legal process as well as law enforcement in various counties. By blending social history, legal history and political history, this volume offers a complement to more conventional studies of legal records and of local government.

Thomas Starkey and the Commonwealth

Humanist Politics and Religion in the Reign of Henry VIII

1989

Thomas Starkey (c. 1495–1538) was the most Italianate Englishman of his generation. This book places Starkey into new and more appropriate contexts, both biographical and intellectual, taking him out of others in which he does not belong, from displaced Roundhead to follower of Marsilio of Padua. Beginning with his native Cheshire, it traces his career through Oxford, Padua, Paris, Avignon, Padua again, and finally England, where he spent the last four years of his life trying to fulfil his ambition to serve the commonweal. Most of Starkey's career revolved around his patron Reginald Pole, scion of the highest nobility, but Starkey (and many other Englishmen) managed to balance loyalty to Pole with allegiance to Henry VIII. Out of favour with the king's secretary after the middle of 1536, Starkey turned increasingly to religion, continuing to cling to his conciliarist and Italian Evangelical opinions until his death.

The Blind Devotion of the People

Popular Religion and the English Reformation

1989

The religious revolution known as the 'Reformation' must rank among the most crucial and transforming events in English history. Yet its original reception by the English people remains largely obscure. Did they welcome the innovations - or did they resist? By what internal motivations were their responses determined? And by what external influences were their attitudes shaped? These are the key issues explored by Robert Whiting in this major investigation, based primarily on original research in the south-west. Dr Whiting's controversial conclusion is that for most of the population the Reformation was less a conversion from Catholicism to Protestantism than a transition from religious commitment to religious passivity or even indifference.

George Lawson's 'Politica' and the English Revolution

1989

This is the first full account, analysis and subsequent history of George Lawson's Politica, 1660–89. For long accepted as a significant figure, through his criticism of Hobbes and his possible influence on Locke, Lawson has never been studied in depth, nor has his biography been previously established. Professor Condren here provides the context and the analysis of Lawson's major work, in the process re-dating it and providing a quite different interpretation from previous readings. A substantial section is devoted to the history of the text and its use in controversies in the period 1660–89, and there is some reassessment of the relationship between Hobbes, Locke and Lawson. The study also uses Lawson's text to reopen questions about English seventeenth-century political theory in general, and to prefigure a theoretical study on metaphor and political conceptualisation. The book thus operates on a number of levels, philosophical and linguistic as well as historical.

An Uncounselled King

Charles I and the Scottish Troubles, 1637 - 1641

1990

The concept of kingship as Charles I understood it was challenged by the Covenanters in a struggle of protest over the government of Scotland. Although many aspects of this episode have received historical attention, Charles' own role has not hitherto been investigated in detail. Using a large body of newly available evidence, Dr Donald here attempts to redress the balance, and in doing so offers a substantially new perspective on the Scottish troubles in the crisis years of 1637 41. This study sheds light on the processes whereby Charles, with counsel and yet often in spite of it, tried to uphold his case."

#11

Exile and Kingdom

History and Apocalypse in the Puritan Migration to America

1991

By analyzing the ideological origins of the Puritan migration to America, the author shows how Puritans believed that their removal to New England fulfilled prophetic apocalyptic and eschatological visions. Based on a close reading of Puritan texts, the book explains how Puritans interpreted their migration as a prophetic revelatory event in the context of a sacred, ecclesiastical history, and why they considered it as the climax of the history of salvation and redemption.

#12

Stewards, Lords and People

The Estate Steward and his World in Later Stuart England

1992

The landed estates were one of the fundamental structures of early modern England. They were omnipresent, for they were not confined to the countryside but penetrated into every borough and city. English society was composed largely of landlords and tenants. It follows that to understand the nature of this society the relationship between the two must be studied, and in particular the role of the man who linked the estate steward. Stewards, Lords and People analyses the role of the estate stewards in the social mechanisms of later Stuart England. It is based on many years of research among more than 10,000 letters exchanged by stewards and their masters about estates as widely distributed as Northumberland and Cornwall, Cumberland and Sussex.

#13

The Bishops' Wars

Charles I's Campaigns against Scotland, 1638 - 1640

1994

King Charles I twice mobilised England in an attempt to enforce religious uniformity in Scotland, and both times he failed. The result was the resurgence of Parliament as partner in the government of the realm. The Bishops' Wars is an essay in military history in a political context, which analyses the institutions of war, its financing, and above all the recruitment of forces. The main purpose of the book is to explain why the King could not and did not reduce Scotland by force. Its significance lies in that it demonstrates how the military failures of 1639 and 1640 were determined by Charles' hand. Moreover, it seeks to show how poor strategic and tactical operations, coupled with the political controversy surrounding the war, plagued the English army. In the final measure, it is concluded that the King must bear responsibility for defeat at the hands of the Scots.

#14

John Locke

Resistance, Religion and Responsibility

1994

This book provides a contextual account of the development of John Locke's political, religious, social and moral thought. It analyses many of Locke's unpublished manuscripts and relatively neglected works as well as the Two Treatises, the Letter Concerning Toleration and the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Professor Marshall studies the development of Locke's political thought from absolutism to resistance, and provides significant revisions to current explanations of the immediate contexts and purposes of composition of the Two Treatises. He also sets out major accounts of Locke's moral, social and religious thought both as extremely important subjects in their own right and in order to challenge many scholars' interpretations of their influences on Locke's political thought.

#15

Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, c.1640–1649

1994

"Constitutional Royalism" is one of the most familiar yet least often examined of all the political labels found in the historiography of the English Revolution. This book fills a gap by investigating the leading Constitutional royalists who rallied to King Charles I in 1642 while consistently urging him to reach an "accommodation" with Parliament. These royalists' early careers reveal that a commitment to the rule of law and a relative lack of "godly" zeal were the characteristic predictors of Constitutional royalism in the Civil War. Such attitudes explain why many of them criticized the policies of the King's personal rule, but also why they joined the King in 1642 and tried to achieve a negotiated settlement thereafter.

#16

The Chief Governors

The Rise and Fall of Reform Government in Tudor Ireland 1536–1588

1995

This book offers a fundamental critique of conventional views of sixteenth-century Irish history that have stressed the centrality of colonization and military confrontation. It argues that reform rather than conquest was the aim of Tudor policy-makers, but shows that the immense difficulties faced by the reformers in pursuing their objectives forced them to make administrative innovations that ultimately contradicted and undermined their original policy.

#17

Sir Matthew Hale, 1609 - 1676

Law, Religion and Natural Philosophy

1995

Sir Matthew Hale (1609-76) was the best-known judge of the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell, but he nonetheless rose to be Lord Chief Justice under King Charles II. His constitutional ideas are of interest both to lawyers and to historians of political thought; but he also wrote extensively on scientific and religious questions, in ways that illustrate the birth of early Enlightenment attitudes to both. This book surveys all aspects of Hale's work, and supplies fresh perspectives on revolutionary developments in science and religion, as well as politics.

#19

Henry Parker and the English Civil War

The Political Thought of the Public's 'Privado'

1995

This is the first full study in fifty years of the author of the most celebrated political tract of the early years of the English Civil War, Observations upon Some of His Majesties Late Answers and Expresses. Professor Mendle situates each of Parker's significant tracts in its polemical, intellectual, and political context. He also views Parker's literary work in the light of his career as privado, or intimate advisor, to leading figures of the parliamentary leadership. Parker emerges as a fierce opponent of clerical pretension, a strikingly brutal critic of the common law mind, and a leading proponent of parliamentary absolutism.

#20

William III and the Godly Revolution

1996

This book provides the first full account of William III's propaganda during his reign in England, 1689-1702. It thus explores the self-presentation of the English monarchy at a particularly difficult moment. In the 1690s the king had both to justify his irregular succession to the throne in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and to mobilize his country for mass warfare. Unlike most other works on the political language of late Stuart England, this volume does not concentrate on secular arguments, but rather stresses the importance of religious ideas of the period, insisting that the king solved his ideological problems by posing as a providential ruler sent by God to protect and renew the pure Protestant religion.

#21

Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought

Behmenism and its Development in England

1996

This is the first comprehensive account of the development of the ideas on gender of Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) among his English followers. It traces the changes in thought on gender and sexuality in such esoteric traditions as alchemy, Hermeticism and the Cabala. The book argues that Behmenist thought in these areas is a neglected aspect of the revision in the moral status of women during the early modern period, contributing significantly to the rise of the Romantic notion of womanhood and "Victorian" sexual ideology.

#22

Protestantism and Patriotism

Ideologies and the Making of English Foreign Policy, 1650-1668

1996

Protestantism and Patriotism is a detailed study of the first two Anglo-Dutch Wars (1652-1654 and 1665-1667) and the ideological contexts in which they were fought. It differs from other treatments of English foreign policy in this period by emphasizing that diplomacy, trade and warfare cannot be studied in isolation from domestic culture. It also insists, unlike most studies of domestic politics in the period, that England's place in Europe and the wider world was central to political and cultural developments in this revolutionary age.

#24

Law-Making and Society in Late Elizabethan England

The Parliament of England, 1584–1601

1996

David Dean's book offers the first detailed account of the last Elizabethan parliaments. Examining a wide range of social and economic issues, law reform, religious and political concerns, Law-Making and Society in Late Elizabethan England addresses the importance of parliament both as a political event and as a legislative institution. David Dean draws on an array of local, corporate and personal archives to reinterpret the legislative history of the period and in doing so, reach a deeper understanding of many aspects of Elizabethan history.

#26

Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England

The Caroline Puritan Movement, c.1620–1643

1997

Religion, and Puritanism in particular, was a crucially important influence in seventeenth-century England. This book attempts to trace the way in which Puritan clergymen saw themselves and the world in which they lived. It discusses the changes they wanted to make to the Church of England in terms of services and in terms of how they wanted to replace bishops. By looking at such matters through the networks of friendship and alliances made by the ministers, a new picture emerges of the role played by Puritans in the decades leading up to the English Civil War.

#27

The English Reformation and the Laity

Gloucestershire, 1540–1580

1997

This book tells the story of the English Reformation from the viewpoint of ordinary people and their parishes. It discusses official policy and policymakers, as well as local bishops and priests, but the emphasis is on the laity in all its diversity, not just Catholic or Protestant. The book shows that while some individuals and parishes may have welcomed the new religion, people generally resisted change and then gradually created their own idiosyncratic sets of beliefs and practices.

#29

Dismembering the Body Politic

Partisan Politics in England's Towns, 1650–1730

1998

This is a major survey of how towns were governed in late Stuart and early Hanoverian England. England's civil wars in the 1640s broke apart a society that had been used to political consensus. Though all sought unity after the wars ended, a new kind of politics developed—one based on partisan division, arising first in urban communities, not at Parliament. This book explains how war unleashed a long cycle of purge and counter-purge and how society found the means to absorb divisive politics peacefully. Legal changes are explored with reference to the rarely-studied court records of King's Bench, to which local competitors turned for help in resolving their differences.

#30

Women Waging Law in Elizabethan England

1998

This book examines gender relations in Shakespeare's England by looking at women's involvement in lawsuits in the largest courts in the land. It describes women's rights in theory and in practice, considers depictions of women in court scenes in plays, and analyzes the language and tactics women and their lawyers employed in pleadings. The book also reveals how many women went to law, how active they were, the discrimination they suffered, and the importance of the life cycle of marriage in determining their legal fortunes.

#31

The Politics of Social Conflict

The Peak Country, 1520–1770

1995

This book provides a new approach to the history of social conflict, popular politics and plebeian culture. Based on a close study of the Peak Country of Derbyshire c. 1520-1770, it has implications for understandings of class identity, popular culture, riot, custom and social relations. Important insights are offered into early modern social and gender identities, civil war allegiances, the appeal of radical ideas and the making of the English working class. Above all, the book challenges the claim that early modern England was a hierarchical, "pre-class" society.

#33

The Church in an Age of Danger

Parsons and Parishioners, 1660-1740

1996

This book looks at popular religion in early modern England, using detailed accounts of local conflicts to bring the religion of ordinary people to life. Unlike other studies, it examines not magical beliefs but orthodox religion. It counters the view that popular and elite culture in Europe and Britain became polarized by showing how the gentry and people cooperated in regulating religion. But while the clergy did not deserve their poor reputation, their defensiveness also prevented them from fulfilling popular religious needs.

#34

The Politics of Religion in the Age of Mary, Queen of Scots

The Earl of Argyll and the Struggle for Britain and Ireland

1998

During his brief political career, Archibald Campbell, 5th earl of Argyll (1530-73) played a crucial role in the mid-century upheavals in Scottish and British politics. This definitive study on Argyll is a major contribution to Scottish political history, and a significant new contribution to the history of the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots. The study of his career changes significantly the axis of mid-Tudor studies as well as the study of the dynamics of Scottish history. Important European contexts and resonances are also explored.

#35

Treason and the State

Law, Politics and Ideology in the English Civil War

1998

This study traces the transition of treason from a personal crime against a monarch to a more modern crime against the impersonal state. Prior to the Civil Wars of the 1640s, English jurists construed the law of treason largely as a personal crime against the monarch. The book reveals how the events of the 1640s challenged pre-existing interpretations and led to a revised understanding of treason as a crime committed against "the state" as an impersonal entity.

#38

Mercy and Authority in the Tudor State

1999

Using a wide range of legal, administrative and literary sources, this study explores the role of the royal pardon in the exercise and experience of authority in Tudor England. It examines such abstract intangibles as power, legitimacy, and the state by looking at concrete life-and-death decisions of the Tudor monarchs. Drawing upon the historiographies of law and society, political culture, and state formation, mercy is used as a lens through which to examine the nature and limits of participation in the early modern polity.

#39

Unquiet Lives

Marriage and Marriage Breakdown in England, 1660–1800

1999

Drawing upon vivid court records and newspaper advertisements, this study challenges traditional views of married life in eighteenth-century England. It reveals husbands' and wives' expectations and experiences of marriage to expose the extent of co-dependency between spouses. The book, therefore, presents a new picture of power in marriage and the household. It also demonstrates how attitudes towards adultery and domestic violence evolved during this period, influenced by profound shifts in cultural attitudes about sexuality and violence.

#40

The Gospel and Henry VIII

Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation

1999

The last years of Henry VIII's life, 1539-47, have conventionally been seen as a time when the king persecuted Protestants. This book argues that Henry's policies were much more ambiguous; that he continued to give support to Protestantism and that many accordingly also remained loyal to him. It also examines why the Protestants eventually adopted a more radical, oppositional stance, and argues that English Protestantism's eventual identity was determined during these years.

#41

London and the Restoration, 1659–1683

2004

This comprehensive study of political and religious conflicts examines the challenge to Restoration institutions by Protestant dissent in the London of Charles II's reign. It presents liberty of conscience as the greatest political issue of the Restoration and explains how the contest between dissenters and Anglicans contributed to the development of parties in 1679-83 that unsettled the nation.

#42

Defining the Jacobean Church

The Politics of Religious Controversy, 1603-1625

2005

Proposing a new model for understanding religious debates in the churches of England and Scotland between 1603 and 1625, Charles Prior sets aside 'narrow' analyses of conflict over predestination, This book's theme is ecclesiology—the nature of the church, its rites and governance, and its relationship to the early Stuart political world. Drawing on a substantial number of polemical works, from sermons to books of several hundred pages, it argues that rival interpretations of scripture, pagan and civil history and the sources central to the Christian historical tradition lay at the heart of disputes between proponents of contrasting ecclesiological visions.

#46

Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate

2007

This volume provides a detailed book-length study of the period of the Protectorate Parliaments from September 1654 to April 1659. The study is very broad in its scope, covering topics as diverse as the British and Irish dimensions of the Protectorate Parliaments, the political and social nature of factions, problems of management, the legal and judicial aspects of Parliament's functions, foreign policy and the nature of the parliamentary franchise and elections in this period. In its wide-ranging analysis of Parliaments and politics throughout the Protectorate the book also examines both Lord Protectors, all three Protectorate Parliaments and the reasons why Oliver and Richard Cromwell were never able to achieve a stable working relationship with any Parliament. Its chronological coverage extends to the demise of the Third Protectorate Parliament in April 1659. This comprehensive account will appeal to historians of early modern British political history.

#47

Hobbes, Bramhall and the Politics of Liberty and Necessity

A Quarrel of the Civil Wars and Interregnum

2007

This book was the first full account of one of the most famous quarrels of the seventeenth century, that between the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and the Anglican archbishop of Armagh, John Bramhall (1594–1663). This analytical narrative interprets that quarrel within its own immediate and complicated historical circumstances, the Civil Wars (1638–49) and Interregnum (1649–60). The personal clash of Hobbes and Bramhall is connected to the broader conflict, disorder, violence, dislocation and exile that characterised those periods. This monograph offered not only the first comprehensive narrative of their hostilities over two decades, but also an illuminating analysis of aspects of their private and public quarrel that have been neglected in previous accounts, with special attention devoted to their dispute over political and religious authority. This will be of interest to scholars of early modern British history, religious history and the history of ideas.

#49

Hunting and the Politics of Violence before the English Civil War

2008

A major contribution to debates about the origins of the Civil War, this study of English forests and hunting from the late sixteenth century to the early 1640s explores their significance in the symbolism and effective power of royalty and the nobility in early modern England. Blending social, cultural and political history, Dan Beaver examines the interrelationships among four local communities to explain the violent political conflicts in the forests in the years leading up to the civil war. Adopting a micro-historical approach, the book explores how local politics became bound up with national political and ideological divisions. The author argues that, from the early seventeenth century, a politics of land use in forests and other hunting reserves involved its participants in a sophisticated political discourse, touching on the principles of law and justice, the authority of the crown and the nature of a commonwealth.

#50

Martial Power and Elizabethan Political Culture

Military Men in England and Ireland, 1558–1594

2009

This book studies the careers and political thinking of English martial men, left deeply frustrated as Elizabeth I's quietist foreign policy destroyed the ambitions that the wars of the mid-sixteenth century had excited in them. Until the mid 1580s, unemployment, official disparagement and downward mobility became grim facts of life for many military captains. Rory Rapple examines the experiences and attitudes of this generation of officers and points to a previously overlooked literature of complaint that offered a stinging critique of the monarch and the administration of Sir William Cecil. He also argues that the captains' actions in Ireland, their treatment of its inhabitants and their conceptualisation of both relied on assumptions, attitudes and political thinking which resulted more from their frustration with the status quo in England than any tendency to 'other' the Irish. This book will be required reading for scholars of early modern British and Irish history.

#51

Enforcing the English Reformation in Ireland

Clerical Resistance and Political Conflict in the Diocese of Dublin, 1534–1590

2005

This book explores the enforcement of the English Reformation in the heartland of English Ireland during the sixteenth century. Focusing on the diocese of Dublin - the central ecclesiastical unit of the Pale - James Murray explains why the various initiatives undertaken by the reforming archbishops of Dublin, and several of the Tudor viceroys, to secure the allegiance of the indigenous community to the established Church ultimately failed. Led by its clergy, the Pale's loyal colonial community ultimately rejected the Reformation and Protestantism because it perceived them to be irreconcilable with its own traditional English culture and medieval Catholic identity. Dr Murray identifies the Marian period, and the opening decade of Elizabeth I's reign, as the crucial times during which this attachment to survivalist Catholicism solidified, and became a sufficiently powerful ideological force to stand against the theological and liturgical innovations advanced by the Protestant reformers.

#53

Godly Kingship in Restoration England

The Politics of The Royal Supremacy, 1660–1688

2011

The position of English monarchs as supreme governors of the Church of England profoundly affected early modern politics and religion. This innovative book explores how tensions in church-state relations created by Henry VIII's Reformation continued to influence relationships between the crown, Parliament and common law during the Restoration, a distinct phase in England's 'long Reformation'. Debates about the powers of kings and parliaments, the treatment of Dissenters and emerging concepts of toleration were viewed through a Reformation prism where legitimacy depended on godly status. This book discusses how the institutional, legal and ideological framework of supremacy perpetuated the language of godly kingship after 1660 and how supremacy was complicated by the ambivalent Tudor legacy. It was manipulated by not only Anglicans, but also tolerant kings and intolerant parliaments, Catholics, Dissenters and radicals like Thomas Hobbes. Invented to uphold the religious and political establishments, supremacy paradoxically ended up subverting them.

#54

Oaths and the English Reformation

2012

The practice of swearing oaths was at the centre of the English Reformation. On the one hand, oaths were the medium through which the Henrician regime implemented its ideology and secured loyalty among the people. On the other, they were the tool by which the English people embraced, resisted and manipulated royal policy. Jonathan Michael Gray argues that since the Reformation was negotiated through oaths, their precise significance and function are central to understanding it fully. Oaths and the English Reformation sheds new light on the motivation of Henry VIII, the enforcement of and resistance to reform and the extent of popular participation and negotiation in the political process. Placing oaths at the heart of the narrative, this book argues that the English Reformation was determined as much by its method of implementation and response as it was by the theology or political theory it transmitted.

#55

Richard Bancroft and Elizabethan Anti-Puritanism

2013

This major new study is an exploration of the Elizabethan Puritan movement through the eyes of its most determined and relentless opponent, Richard Bancroft, later Archbishop of Canterbury. It analyses his obsession with the perceived threat to the stability of the church and state presented by the advocates of radical presbyterian reform. The book forensically examines Bancroft's polemical tracts and archive of documents and letters, casting important new light on religious politics and culture. Focussing on the ways in which anti-Puritanism interacted with Puritanism, it also illuminates the process by which religious identities were forged in the early modern era. The final book of Patrick Collinson, the pre-eminent historian of sixteenth-century England, this is the culmination of a lifetime of seminal work on the English Reformation and its ramifications.

#56

Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution

2013

This is a major reassessment of the communications revolution of the seventeenth century. Using a wealth of archival evidence and the considerable output of the press, Jason Peacey demonstrates how new media - from ballads to pamphlets and newspapers - transformed the English public's ability to understand and participate in national political life. He analyses how contemporaries responded to political events as consumers of print; explores what they were able to learn about national politics; and examines how they developed the ability to appropriate a variety of print genres in order to participate in novel ways. Amid structural change and conjunctural upheaval, he argues that there occurred a dramatic re-shaping of the political nation, as citizens from all walks of life developed new habits and practices for engaging in daily political life, and for protecting and advancing their interests. This ultimately involved experience-led attempts to rethink the nature of representation and accountability.

#57

Reformation Unbound

Protestant Visions of Reform in England, 1525-1590

2014

Fundamentally revising our understanding of the nature and intellectual contours of early English Protestantism, Karl Gunther argues that sixteenth-century English evangelicals were calling for reforms and envisioning godly life in ways that were far more radical than have hitherto been appreciated. Typically such ideas have been seen as later historical developments, associated especially with radical Puritanism, but Gunther's work draws attention to their development in the earliest decades of the English Reformation. Along the way, the book offers new interpretations of central episodes in this period of England's history, such as the 'Troubles at Frankfurt' under Mary and the Elizabethan vestments controversy. By shedding new light on early English Protestantism, the book ultimately casts the later development of Puritanism in a new light, enabling us to re-situate it in a history of radical Protestant thought that reaches back to the beginnings of the English Reformation itself.

#60

The Smoke of London

Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City

2016

The Smoke of London uncovers the origins of urban air pollution, two centuries before the industrial revolution. By 1600, London was a fossil-fuelled city, its high-sulfur coal a basic necessity for the poor and a source of cheap energy for its growing manufacturing sector. The resulting smoke was found ugly and dangerous throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, leading to challenges in court, suppression by the crown, doctors' attempts to understand the nature of good air, increasing suburbanization, and changing representations of urban life in poetry and on the London stage. Neither a celebratory account of proto-environmentalism nor a declensionist narrative of degradation, The Smoke of London recovers the seriousness of pre-modern environmental concerns even as it explains their limits and failures. Ultimately, Londoners learned to live with their dirty air, an accommodation that reframes the modern process of urbanization and industrial pollution, both in Britain and beyond.

Authors

Steven Pincus is a professor of history at Yale University, where he specializes in 17th- and 18th-century British and European history. He is also the Chair of Yale's Council on European Studies.

William M. Cavert is a historian of early modern Britain focusing on urban and environmental history, holding a PhD from Northwestern University, Illinois.

Daniel C. Beaver

Author · 1 books

Jonathan Michael Gray

Tony Claydon is Senior Lecturer in History at the School of History and Welsh History, University of Wales, Bangor

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

Alec Ryrie is a prize-winning historian of the Reformation and Protestantism. He is the author of Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt and Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World. Ryrie is Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University and Professor of Divinity at Gresham College, London.

Patrick Little is Senior Research Fellow, History of Parliament Trust.

John Marshall

Author · 1 books

John Marshall is professor of history (early modern Europe, with emphasis on British and intellectual history) at Johns Hopkins University.

Also writes as Jane Dawson Interested in the four countries within the British Isles, Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales, and in the Reformation throughout Europe.

Jason Peacey is Senior Lecturer in British History at University College London, and is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Caroline Litzenberger

Author · 1 books

David Roger Hainsworth

Author · 1 books

David Roger Hainsworth (born 1931) is a retired academic who taught at Adelaide University from 1965 until his retirement in 1993.

David Dean specialises in public history, particularly historical representation and performance in museums, film, and theatre, and early modern British history. His most recent book is History, Memory, Performance (Palgrave, 2015), an interdisciplinary co-edited collection of essays exploring performances of the past in a variety of contexts. He is editing A Companion to Public History (Wiley-Blackwell) and writing Shakespeare’s England: A Cultural History, 1558-1649 (with Dr Kathryn Prince, Wiley-Blackwell). In 2013 he guest edited a special issue of Peace and Conflict, focusing on Canadian museums as sites for historical understanding and social justice. His most recent article is an exploration of the film depiction of the Elizabethan Settlement in Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth. David is organising this year’s Shannon Lectures in History on the theme Performing History: Re-Staging the Past. After completing his Cambridge doctorate, David taught at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London for eleven years before coming to Carleton where he has been Full Professor since 2000. From 2008 until 2012 David was Company Historian to Ottawa’s National Art Centre’s English Theatre, working on productions such as Macbeth, Mother Courage, the Christmas Carol, Romeo and Juliet, Vimy and King Lear. One of the founding members of the Department’s MA in Public History, which he co-ordinated for six years, David was co-founder of the Carleton Centre for Public History, and currently shares the directorship with Dr James Opp. David’s current teaching repertoire includes undergraduate courses such as Early Modern Britain, History at the Movies, and a seminar on early modern witchcraft and social disorder, as well as the core MA in Public History seminar on Museums, Public Memory and National Identify and an optional seminar, Narrativity and Performance in Public History. He has supervised twenty-seven postgraduates over the past six years. David has been active in Ottawa’s Workers’ History Museum as a collaborator, advisor and patron; he is a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge and a Fellow of Britain’s Royal Historical Society.