Francis Watson delights in Defoe's inimitable personage not only as the hero of one of the greatest of all adventure stories, but “as the portrait of an Englishman, a representative of the contemporary middle class, with a Protestant stimulus to hard work, founding a new age of commercial, industrial and political development.”
Caesar once crossed the Thames on the back of an animal previously unseen by Britons. Here, C.E. Stevens assesses just how much of a historical anomaly this pairing was.
Albert Makinson assesses the rival party claims of Lancaster and York, which afforded the pretext for a blaze of plebeian discontent and patrician lawlessness that filled England for the next one hundred and fifty years with a profound horror of civil war genealogy of the ruling family, and fewer still in the principles of parliamentary democracy.
J.P. Kenyon profiles William III, of whom Hallam said: “It must ever be an honour to the English Crown that it has been worn by so great a man.”
D.G.C. Allan introduces the eleven Secretaries of State employed by Charles II, who reflect in the variety of their personalities, the social brilliance and the shifting policies of the Restoration Age.
Edmund Baker describes how Cromwell's principal assistant in foreign affairs and his most devoted friend, Thurloe, saw in the Protectoral system “a mean between two intolerable extremes of unrestrained anarchy and reaction.”
R.J. Adam presents a new study of the Jacobite rising, and of the complex pattern of local interests that helped to determine the conduct of the Scottish clan-leaders.
J. Leslie Nightingale describes how, during the 17th century, Puritanism spread into English villages, with the twelve sons of Jacob and all the major and minor prophets to be found on the village greens. Names after the Christian graces and virtues—Patience, Honour, Faith, Hope, Charity—were also widely bestowed at Puritan baptisms.
A.F.C. Baber writes that traditions of English local government, carried to the New World, provide an important clue to the success of the Pilgrims' emigration.
Church and State stood foursquare behind the superiority of man in seventeenth century England. It was only when a lady became a widow, writes Maurice Ashley, that a glorious opportunity for authority and freedom suddenly flooded in upon her.
