The long-accepted standard view is that the gradual polarization of Court and Parliament during the reigns of James I and Charles I reflected the split between absolutists (who upheld the divine right of the monarchy to rule) and constitutionalists (who resisted tyranny by insisting the monarch was subject to law) and resulted inevitably in civil war.

New appreciations in history no. 30.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The Politics of the Ancient Constitution is a close examination of the political ideas of common lawyers in early Stuart England, and includes important surveys of the ideas of Sir Edward Coke and John Selden. It provides an original interpretation of the lawyers' theory of the ancient constitution and on this basis it provides a novel interpretation of the basic structure of political thought and ideology in pre-Civil War England. In this way the book is able to make a substantial contribution to debates over the ideological origins of the English Revolution.

This well-known book reasserts the central importance of political and religious ideology in the origins of the English Civil War. Recent historiography has concentrated on its social and economic causes: Sommerville reminds us what the people of the time thought they were fighting about. Examining the main political theories in c.17th England - the Divine Right of Kings, government by consent, and the ancient constitution - he considers their impact on actual events. He draws on major political thinkers like Hobbes and Locke, but also on lesser but more representative figures, to explore what was new in these ideas and what was merely the common currency of the age. This major new edition incorporates all the latest thinking on the subject.