Jason McElligott – författare

Much ink has been spent on accounts of the English Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century, yet royalism has been largely neglected. This volume of essays by leading scholars in the field seeks to fill that significant gap in our understanding by focusing on those who took up arms for the king. The royalists described were not reactionary, absolutist extremists but pragmatic, moderate men who were not so different in temperament or background from the vast majority of those who decided to side with, or were forced by circumstances to side with, Parliament and its army. The essays force us to think beyond the simplistic dichotomy between royalist 'absolutists' and 'constitutionalists' and suggest instead that allegiances were much more fluid and contingent than has hitherto been recognized. This is a major contribution to the political and intellectual history of the Civil Wars and of early modern England more generally.

Much ink has been spent on accounts of the English Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century, yet royalism has been largely neglected. This volume of essays by leading scholars in the field seeks to fill that significant gap in our understanding by focusing on those who took up arms for the king. The royalists described were not reactionary, absolutist extremists but pragmatic, moderate men who were not so different in temperament or background from the vast majority of those who decided to side with, or were forced by circumstances to side with, Parliament and its army. The essays force us to think beyond the simplistic dichotomy between royalist 'absolutists' and 'constitutionalists' and suggest instead that allegiances were much more fluid and contingent than has hitherto been recognized. This is a major contribution to the political and intellectual history of the Civil Wars and of early modern England more generally.

What was it like to live under the English Republic and, later, Cromwell’s Protectorate, if one supported the defeated Stuarts and yearned for the day when Charles II would once again set foot in England? This book tells the story of the traumatic decade of the 1650s (or, ‘the Interregnum’, from the Latin meaning ‘between the reign of the kings’) from the vantage point of those who lost the Civil Wars. It describes how these men and women negotiated the difficult choices they faced: to compromise, collaborate, or resist.It brings together essays by established and emerging historians and literary scholars in Britain, Europe, the United States and Australia. The essays sketch the difficulties, complexities, and nuances of the Royalist experience during the Commonwealth and Protectorate, looking at women, religion, print-culture, literature, the politics of exile, and the nature and extent of royalist networks in England.

Between the years 1677 and 1691 the Puritan minister Roger Morrice compiled an astonishingly detailed record of public affairs in Britain. Running to almost a million words his 'Entring Book' provides a unique record of late seventeenth-century political and religious history. It charts the rise of British party politics, and the transformation of Puritanism into 'Whiggery' and Dissent. It provides a wealth of information on social and cultural history, as well as the relationships between the three Stuart kingdoms. All the essays in this volume have been inspired by the key concerns of the Entring Book: the palpable sense of the fear and foreboding in the 1680s; the long shadow cast by the mid-century civil war; the profound effect on Englishmen of events on the continent; and the anxieties and opportunities caused by a socially diffuse culture of news and information. In so doing they give a vivid sense of what it was like to live in England in the years before the Revolution and help to explain why that Revolution took place when it did, and why it took the particular form that it did. These chapters provide fresh and insightful perspectives on religion, politics and culture from established and emerging scholars on three continents. Taken together they offer a valuable introduction to the world of Roger Morrice, and will be an essential companion to the scholarly edition of the Entring Book.

This collection of essays illustrates various pressures and concerns—both practical and theoretical—related to the study of print culture. Procedural difficulties range from doubts about the reliability of digitized resources to concerns with the limiting parameters of 'national' book history.

Helps scholars to examine historical press censorship in England. This title draws together around 500 texts, reaching across 140 years from the rigours of the Elizabethan Star Chamber Decree to the publication of "Cato's Letters", which famously advanced principles of free speech.

Helps scholars to examine historical press censorship in England. This title draws together around 500 texts, reaching across 140 years from the rigours of the Elizabethan Star Chamber Decree to the publication of "Cato's Letters", which famously advanced principles of free speech.

Helps scholars to examine historical press censorship in England. This title draws together around 500 texts, reaching across 140 years from the rigours of the Elizabethan Star Chamber Decree to the publication of "Cato's Letters", which famously advanced principles of free speech.

Helps scholars to examine historical press censorship in England. This title draws together around 500 texts, reaching across 140 years from the rigours of the Elizabethan Star Chamber Decree to the publication of "Cato's Letters", which famously advanced principles of free speech.

This collection of essays illustrates various pressures and concerns—both practical and theoretical—related to the study of print culture. Procedural difficulties range from doubts about the reliability of digitized resources to concerns with the limiting parameters of 'national' book history.

A study of the content and methods of royalist propaganda via newsbooks in the crucial period following the end of the first civil war.This is a study of a remarkable set of royalist newsbooks produced in conditions of strict secrecy in London during the late 1640s. It uses these flimsy, ephemeral sheets of paper to rethink the nature of both royalism and Civil War allegiance. Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England moves beyond the simple and simplistic dichotomies of 'absolutism' versus 'constitutionalism'. In doing so, it offers a nuanced, innovative and exciting visionof a strangely neglected aspect of the Civil Wars. Print has always been seen as a radical, destabilizing force: an agent of social change and revolution. Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England demonstrates, bycontrast, how lively, vibrant and exciting the use of print as an agent of conservatism could be. It seeks to rescue the history of polemic in 1640s and 1650s England from an undue preoccupation with the factional squabbles of leading politicians. In doing so, it offers a fundamental reappraisal of the theory and practice of censorship in early-modern England, and of the way in which we should approach the history of books and print-culture. JASON McELLIGOTT is the J.P.R. Lyell Research Fellow in the History of the Early Modern Printed Book at Merton College, Oxford.