Anthony Fletcher – författare

The foundation of the English state from the reigns of the Tudors to the age of Queen Victoria was a partnership between the crown and the country gentlemen who exercised administration and justice in the localities. This book is about a formative period in the making of that partnership. Anthony Fletcher suggests that the gentry's vigorous response to a gathering social crisis in the early decades of the seventeenth century enabled them to strengthen their nearly dominant hold upon local power. Although reform in the provinces, directed towards improving the efficiency and effectiveness of government, was not a tidy or even an entirely consistent process, there was enough continuity of administrative effort to ensure that by the reign of Queen Anne the enforcement of order had been streamlined in many respects.This book - the first synthesis of work done in the last two decades on local government - also provides fresh archival data on a number of counties. Fletcher begins with an account of the men who held office as justices of the peace and of their relationships with the Council in London and with the villagers they governed. He then explores in detail the world of the magistrate at work, paying particular attention to initiatives directed towards increasing the tempo of government and to the making of magisterial policy. In the second half of the book, Fletcher utilizes three case studies - of poverty, behaviour, and the militia - to explain the obstacles in the way of reform and assess how it was sometimes achieved. By analyzing the patterns, style, and impetus of the government that magistrates and deputy lieutenants achieved, Fletcher is able to explore fundamental changes in the nature and extent of gentry control and in the attitudes of the gentry to the public service. His book is an important and original contribution to Stuart and Restoration history. Anthony Fletcher has been Professor of History at the Universities of Sheffield, Durham and Essex, and Director of the Victoria County History Project at London University. His books include 'Gender, Sex, and Subordination in England, 1500-1800', published by Yale.

Men and women in early modern England lived their lives within a social and gender framework inherited from biblical times. Patriarchy—the social and cultural dominance of the male—has long been a fundamental feature of western civilization yet has only recently begun to be systematically investigated by historians. This book is the first attempt to provide a rounded portrait of its workings over a long stretch of the English past.Anthony Fletcher's account draws from a vast range of sources—literary, medical, religious, and historical—to investigate the mechanisms through which men and women interpreted and understood their social worlds. He explores the early modern view of the body, of sexual desire and appetites, and of gender difference. He looks at the nature of marital relationships and shows how subordination was implemented and consolidated through church, school, home, and community. And in a text that is poignant, humane, and beautifully written, he exposes patriarchy's tragic consequences: smothered opportunity, crushed sexuality, and a pall across many women's lives.Yet, over these three centuries, the conventional foundations of male superiority came under acute pressure. Fletcher reveals the depth of male anxiety in the face of women's volatility, verbal assertiveness, and alleged vibrant sexuality, and he shows how the gender system began to be transformed as men sought to detach it from its biblical foundations and inculcate gender identities on something like their modern ideological basis. This revolution in the entire premise upon which gender was grounded is fundamental to an understanding of the structure of English society today.

An insightful, hugely engaging new history of elite women and the country house from the sixteenth to the twentieth century  Grand houses can be found across the countryside of England and Wales. From the Stuart and Georgian periods to the Edwardian and Victorian, these buildings were once home to the aristocratic families of the nation. But what was life like for the mistresses of these great houses? How much power and influence did they really have?  Anthony Fletcher and Ruth M. Larsen explore the lives of country house mistresses. Focusing on eighteen women, and spanning five centuries, they look at the ways in which elite women not only shaped the house, household, and family, but also had an impact on society, culture, and politics within their estates and beyond. We meet Brilliana Harley, who defended her castle at Brampton Bryan; Frances Boscawen, who oversaw the building of Hatchlands; and Lady Mary Elcho, who preserved her secret life as mistress to Arthur Balfour. This is a fascinating account of the country house that puts women’s experiences centre stage.

This book presents an entirely fresh view of the upbringing of English children in upper and professional class families over three centuries. Drawing on direct testimony from contemporary diaries and letters, the book revises previous understandings of parenting and what it was like to grow up in the period between 1600 and 1914. Using advice literature which set out developing ideologies of childhood, gender and parenting, the book explores the separate but complementary roles of mothers and fathers in raising their children. Male upbringing is discussed in terms of schooling, female through the moral and social context of a domestic schoolroom dominated by a governess. Boys were trained for the world, girls for society and marriage. Rare teenage diaries surviving from the Georgian and Victorian periods show teenagers speaking for themselves about education; relationships with parents, siblings and friends;  and their social, class and gender identity.

A powerful account of life and loss in the Great War, as told by British soldiers in their letters homeThis book was inspired by the author’s discovery of an extraordinary cache of letters from a soldier who was killed on the Western Front during the First World War. The soldier was his grandfather, and the letters had been tucked away, unread and unmentioned for many decades. Intrigued by the heartbreak and history of these family letters, Fletcher sought out the correspondence of other British soldiers who had volunteered for the fight against Germany. This resulting volume offers a vivid account of the physical and emotional experiences of seventeen British soldiers whose letters survive. Drawn from different regiments, social backgrounds, and areas of England and Scotland, they include twelve officers and five ordinary “Tommies.” The book explores the training, journey to France, fear, shellshock, and life in the trenches as well as the leisure, love, and home leave the soldiers dreamed of. Fletcher discusses the psychological responses of 17- and 18-year-old men facing appalling realities and considers the particular pressures on those who survived their fallen comrades. While acknowledging the horror and futility the soldiers of the Great War experienced, the author shows another side to the story, focusing new attention on the loyal comradeship, robust humor, and strong morale that uplifted the men at the Front and created a powerful bond among them.

Tudor Rebellions, now in its seventh edition, gives a chronological account of the major rebellions against the Tudor monarchy in England from the reign of King Henry VII until the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603.The book throws light on some of the main themes of Tudor history, including the dynasty’s attempt to bring the north and west under the control of the capital, the progress of the English Reformation and the impact of inflation, taxation and enclosure on society, and makes comparisons with the other Tudor realm of Ireland. This new edition has been revised once more to take into account the exciting and innovative work on the subject in recent years and bring the historiographical debates right up to date. The primary sources, alongside the narrative history, allow students to fully explore these turbulent times, seeking to understand what drove Tudor people to rebel and what sort of people were inclined to do so. In doing so, the book considers both ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics, and the concerns of both the noble and the unprivileged in Tudor society.With supplementary materials including a chronology, who’s who and guide to further reading along with a selection of maps and images, Tudor Rebellions is an invaluable resource for all students of Tudor history.

Tudor Rebellions, now in its seventh edition, gives a chronological account of the major rebellions against the Tudor monarchy in England from the reign of King Henry VII until the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603.The book throws light on some of the main themes of Tudor history, including the dynasty’s attempt to bring the north and west under the control of the capital, the progress of the English Reformation and the impact of inflation, taxation and enclosure on society, and makes comparisons with the other Tudor realm of Ireland. This new edition has been revised once more to take into account the exciting and innovative work on the subject in recent years and bring the historiographical debates right up to date. The primary sources, alongside the narrative history, allow students to fully explore these turbulent times, seeking to understand what drove Tudor people to rebel and what sort of people were inclined to do so. In doing so, the book considers both ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics, and the concerns of both the noble and the unprivileged in Tudor society.With supplementary materials including a chronology, who’s who and guide to further reading along with a selection of maps and images, Tudor Rebellions is an invaluable resource for all students of Tudor history.

The final decades of the reign of Elizabeth I were marked by the meteoric career of her last great favourite, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex (1565-1601), and the outbreak of bitter political divisions at Court and across the realm. This revisionist 1999 study challenges the traditional 'romantic' image of Essex as a military incompetent and political dabbler. Studying his career between his arrival at court in 1585 and his appointment as earl marshal at the end of 1597, the book casts Essex in a new light and re-examines his role in the outbreak of factionalism in Elizabethan politics. Using an unparalleled range of manuscript and printed sources it explores the forces which drove Essex's career, why true political success remained frustratingly beyond his grasp, and how his efforts to achieve this success helped to fuel the polarisation of Elizabethan politics.

This book traces the history of the outlawed mystical fellowship, the 'Family of Love', in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. The Familists, devoted followers of a Messianic Dutch mystic named 'H. N.', were passionately denounced by many literate contemporaries, and an association with extremism, subversion and hypocrisy has endured. The author tracks the English Familists into their houses, fields and places of work. Although members of the Family were few in number and highly secretive, identification has proved possible in contexts ranging from the court of Elizabeth I to rural villages in Cambridgeshire. The author also examines the distinctive way of life which was developed by Family members within a wider society that, on the face of it, was hostile to religious dissenters: one surprising conclusion is that most English men and women seem to have possessed an impressive capacity to tolerate known 'heretics' in their midst.

This 1998 study describes the most neglected site of political, religious and literary culture in early modern England: the court pulpits of Elizabeth I and James I. It unites the most fertile strains in early modern British history - the court and religion. Dr McCullough shows work previous to his own underestimated the place of religion in courtly culture, and presents evidence of the competing religious patronage not only of Elizabeth and James but also of Queen Anne, Prince Henry and Prince Charles. The book contextualises the political, religious and literary careers of court preachers such as Lancelot Andrewes, John Donne and William Laud, and presents evidence of the tensions between sermon- and sacrament-centred piety in the established Church period. Additional web resources provide the reader with a definitive calendar of court sermons for the period.

This book examines the background to the English military intervention in the Thirty Years War. Blending accounts of diplomacy and factional in-fighting at Court with parliamentary and popular politics, it aims to illuminate the 'revolution' of 1624 when the Palatine crisis forced James I to abandon his long-held dream of an Anglo-Spanish dynastic alliance in favour of a more aggressive policy against the Habsburgs. In studying the English polity in a period of crisis, Professor Cogswell challenges many of the revisionist assumptions about early seventeenth-century England and highlights the dangers in confusing the history of Court faction with the broader political history of the period. In particular, the author stresses the vital importance of Parliament, an institution which in 1624 had no trouble delaying the passage of the subsidy bill until the government redressed a long list of grievances. Indeed, the 'blessed revolution' celebrated the evolution of Parliament into what many contemporaries regarded as its proper role in the state as much as it did the collapse of the longstanding Anglo-Spanish entente.

This book investigates the surprisingly large number of women who participated in the vast expansion of litigation in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Making use of legal sources, literary texts, and the neglected records of the Court of Requests, it describes women's rights under different jurisdictions, considers attitudes to women going to court, and reveals how female litigants used the law, as well as fell victim to it. In the central courts of Westminster, maidservants sued their masters, widows sued their creditors, and in defiance of a barrage of theoretical prohibitions, wives sued their husbands. The law was undoubtedly discriminatory, but certain women pursued actively such rights as they possessed. Some appeared as angry plaintiffs, while others played upon their poverty and vulnerability. A special feature of this study is the attention it pays to the different language and tactics that distinguish women's pleadings from men's pleadings within a national equity court.

This book focuses on the 'after-life' of historical texts in the period between the arrival of printing in England and the early eighteenth century. Whereas previous studies of historical writing during this period have focused on their authors and on their style or methodology, this work examines the history book from a number of other perspectives. The intent is to situate the study of history books within the current literature on the history of the book and the history of print culture. After discussing the process whereby the inheritance of the medieval chronicle was broken down into a variety of different historical genres during the sixteenth century, the author turns to the questions of how and why history books were read, who owned them, the borrowing and lending of them, their production and printing, and methods for marketing and distributing them.

This book explores popular support for the Church of England during a critical period, from the Stuart Restoration to the mid-eighteenth century, when Churchmen perceived themselves to be under attack from all sides. In many provincial parishes, the clergy also found themselves in dispute with their congregations. These incidents of dispute are the focus of a series of detailed case studies, drawn from the diocese of Salisbury, which help to bring the religion of the ordinary people to life, while placing local tensions in their broader national context. The period 1660-1740 provides important clues to the long-term decline in the popularity of the Church. Paradoxically, conflicts revealed not anticlericalism but a widely shared social consensus supporting the Anglican liturgy and clergy: the early eighteenth century witnessed a revival. Nevertheless, a defensive clergy turned inwards and proved too inflexible to respond to lay wishes for fuller participation in worship.

The aftermath of the Popish Plot and the subsequent succession crisis of the years 1678 to 1681 are the context for this new study. It asks two key questions: was there an exclusion crisis? and did these years witness the birth of modern political parties? The author argues that the unrest was not simply due to a centrally organized party machine based around the single issue of exclusion; but was a broad-based controversy about the succession, fears of popery and arbitrary government which produced ideological polarization and political sophistication. Part One examines central politics to explore the succession crisis within the context of the court and an emergent political structure. Part Two explores public opinion in the country as a whole, and argues that propaganda electioneering, religious conflict and petitions committed men to organized networks of belief.

In this volume seventeen distinguished historians of early modern Britain pay tribute to an outstanding scholar and teacher. Several present reviews of major areas of debate: of the significance of the regulations which determined the social and legal status of professional actors in Elizabethan England, of Protestant ideas about marriage, of the political significance of the Anglo-Scottish Union, of relations between the Churches of England, Scotland and Ireland under the early Stuarts, and of the riddle of the inner dynamic of the experience of emigration of New England. There are case studies which include the relationship between ideas of cleanliness and godliness, and the flowering of the notion of unitive Protestantism in two declarations at a moment of political crisis in the north of England. This very wide-ranging and fascinating collection of essays will appeal both to specialists in the period and to those interested in the social and cultural history of early modern Britain.

By the end of the seventeenth century the most effective means of persuasion and communication was the pamphlet, which created influential moral and political communities of readers, and thus formed a 'public sphere' of popular, political opinion. This book is a unique history of the printed pamphlet in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain and traces its rise as an imaginative and often eloquent literary form. Using a long-term perspective and a broad range of historical, bibliographical and textual evidence, the book sketches a complex definition of a 'pamphlet', showing the coherence of the literary form, the diversity of genres and imaginative devices employed by pamphleteers; and it explores readers' relationship with pamphlets and how both influenced politics. Individual chapters examine topics such as Elizabethan religious controversy, the book trade, the distribution of books and pamphlets, pamphleteering in the English Civil War, women and gender, and print in the Restoration.

The social history of early modern England has become a lively area of publication and debate. This volume attempts both to take stock of distinct directions in the field and to suggest fresh perspectives on some central aspects of the period. The distinguished contributors bring to bear upon the theme of order and disorder their diversity of experience in the writing of political, religious, social and economic history. They treat a number of problems in depth, and the result is a series of tr

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's 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.

Criticism and Compliment examines the poems, plays and masques of the three figures who succeeded Ben Jonson as authors of court entertainments in the England of Charles I. The courtly literature of Caroline England has been dismissed by critics and characterised by historians as propaganda for Charles I's absolutism penned by sycophantic hirelings. Kevin Sharpe questions the assumptions on which these evaluations have been based. Challenging the traditional argument for a polarity between court and country cultures in early Stuart England, he re-reads the plays, poems and masques as primary documents of political attitudes articulated at court. Far from being confined to a decade or a party, the courtly literature of the 1630s is relocated within the broader humanist tradition of counsel. Through the language of love - a language, it is argued, that was part of the discourse of politics in Caroline England - the court poets criticised fundamental premises of the King's political ideology, and counselled traditional and moderate modes of government.

This study of the political attitudes of ordinary Londoners during the reign of Charles II examines not only the manifestations of public opinion - for example, riot and demonstration - but also the manner of its formation - religious experience, economic activity, and exposure to mass political propaganda. Professor Harris shows to be misleading the conventional view, that the whigs enjoyed the support of the London masses, and the tories were essentially anti-populist. Both sides had public support during the exclusion crisis, and this division stemmed from fundamental religious tensions within London political culture, dating back to 1660 and before. Attractively illustrated with polemical contemporary engravings, London Crowds demonstrates clearly the value of bringing together both high and low activity into a truly integrated social history of politics, and sheds important new light not just on urban agitation but on the nature of late-Stuart party conflict.

The law was one of the most potent sources of authority and stability in early modern England. Historians, however, have argued over whether the discretion and flexibility embodied in the judicial system was used as a method of social control, and by focusing their attention on felonies and on the action of the protagonists in judicial decisions they have tended to ignore rich sources of information concerning attitudes towards and experiences of the law. Misdemeanour prosecutions affected many more people (and a broader social variety of participants) than felony prosecutions, and in their choice of methods of prosecution both victims and Justices of the Peace exercised considerably greater flexibility in responding to petty crimes than they did with felonies. This book examines the day-to-day operation of the criminal justice system in Middlesex from the point of view of plaintiffs and defendants, and offers an assessment of the social significance of the law in pre-industrial England.

This book explores the ideological origins of the Puritan migration to and experience in America, and shows how Puritans believed that their removal to New England fulfilled prophetic apocalyptic and eschatological visions. An apocalyptic ideology of history, as a mode of historical thought, enabled Puritans to reconstruct their removal to America within the confines of sacred, ecclesiastical history. By tracing the ideological origins of the Puritan migration within the context of the English apocalyptic tradition, Dr Zakai shows how Puritans transformed the premises of that tradition by rejecting the notion of England as God's elect nation and by conferring that title upon the American wilderness. The Puritan migration is analyzed further within the wider context of Western colonization of America. Dr Zakai shows that the unique characteristics of the Puritan settlement in New England derived from identification with the 'Errand of the Church of the Wilderness' as described in the Book of Revelation.

This book shows King James VI and I, king of Scotland and England, in an unaccustomed light. Long regarded as inept, pedantic, and whimsical, James is shown here as an astute and far-sighted statesman whose reign was focused on achieving a permanent union between his two kingdoms and a peaceful and stable community of nations throughout Europe.

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.

The Reformation was, in many ways, an experiment in conversion. English Protestants urged conversion from popery to the Gospel, from idolatry to the true God, while Catholic polemicists persuaded people away from heresy to Catholic truth, from schism to unity. Michael Questier's meticulous study of conversion is the first to concentrate on this phenomenon from the perspective of individual converts, people who alternated between conformity to and rejection of the pattern of worship established by law. Since religion was a matter of great political importance, this book also investigates the power of the State to compel uniformity, and the success of the Protestant regime in directing dissidents to conform. By discovering how people were exhorted to change religion, how they experienced conversion, and how they faced demands for Protestant conformity, Michael Questier develops a fresh view of the English Reformation.

Sir Matthew Hale (1609-76) was the greatest common lawyer of his age, and the most universally admired. Although he held office under Oliver Cromwell, this barely affected his standing in Restoration times. A study of Hale's life and thought necessarily illuminates the central role of the common law in Stuart politics. This book explains Hale's political ideas, and his subtle understanding of the peculiar character of an 'unwritten' law. It also covers his extensive writings on scientific and religious questions, writings which document a shift from puritan to liberal Protestantism. His acute but equivocal response to the science of Descartes and Boyle reveals a fascinating interplay between his 'latitudinarianism' and the new natural philosophy. The result is a unique case study, and a comprehensive portrait of a seventeenth-century mind.

This book explores the culture of conformity to the Church of England and its liturgy in the period after the Reformation and before the outbreak of the Civil War. It provides a necessary corrective to our view of religion in the period by a serious exploration of the laity who conformed, out of conviction, to the Book of Common Prayer. Through the use of church court records and parliamentary petitions, the views of lay people are examined - those who were neither 'puritan' nor 'Laudian', yet were committed to the reformed liturgy and episcopacy out of sincere belief, and not as a matter of political expediency.

This book offers an extended reinterpretation of English policy in Ireland over the sixteenth century. It seeks to show that the major conflicts between Tudor governors and native lords which characterised the period were not the result of a deliberate Tudor strategy of confrontation, but arose from a failed experiment in legal reform and cultural assimilation which had been applied with remarkable success elsewhere in the Tudor dominions. The book identifies a distinct administrative style which evolved in Irish government in the mid-sixteenth century under a complex set of pressures acting on the would-be reformers both in Ireland and at the Tudor court, and argues that it was this highly centralised and intensely activist mode of government that undermined the aims of reform policy and provoked alienation and hostility.