Excerpt from Later Stuart Tracts The conclusion of the whole was that 'tis personal virtue only makes us great.' 'i am one, ' says Defoe in the Preface, 'that would be glad to see Englishmen behave themselves better to strangers, and to governors also that one might not be reproached in foreign countries for belonging to a nation that wants manners.' The publica tion of the poem led to Defoe's introduction to William III., 'whose goodness to me, ' he says, 'i never forgot, neither can forget; whose memory I never patiently heard abused, nor ever can do so.' About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This Elibron Classics title is a reprint of the original edition published by A. Constable and Co., 1904, Westminster

Excerpt from Stuart Tracts: 1603-1693 The French ambassador is solely responsible for the state ment that she at an earlier period admitted by word of mouth that the King of Scotland would hereafter become King of Great Britain. More trustworthy witnesses merely depose that on two occasions in her latest weeks, when the comments of others in her presence compelled her to break silence, she took refuge in oracular utterances which owe all their significance to the interpretation that their hearers deemed it politic to place on them. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

In this original and illuminating new study, Mark Knights reveals how the political culture of the eighteenth century grew out of earlier trends and innovations. Arguing that the period from 1675 needs to be seen as the second stage of a seventeenth-century revolution that ran on until c.1720, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain charts the growth of a national political culture and traces the development of the public as an arbiter of politics. In doing so, it uncovers a crisis of public discourse and credibility, and finds a political enlightenment rooted in local and national partisan conflict. The later Stuart period was characterized by frequent elections, the lapse of pre-publication licensing, the emergence of party politics, the creation of a public debt, and ideological conflict over popular sovereignty. These factors combined to enhance the status of the 'public', not least in requiring it to make numerous acts of judgement. Contemporaries from across the political spectrum feared that the public might be misled by the misrepresentations pedalled by their rivals. Each side, and those ostensibly of no side, discerned a culture of passion, slander, libel, lies, hypocrisy, dissimulation, conspiracy, private languages, and fictions. 'Truth' appeared an ambiguous, political matter. Yet the reaction to partisanship was also creative, for it helped to construct an ideal form of political discourse. This was one based on reason rather than passion, on moderation rather than partisan zeal, on critical reading rather than credulity; and an increasing realization that these virtues arose from infrequent rather than frequent elections. Finding synergies between social, political, religious, scientific, literary, cultural, and intellectual history, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain reinvigorates the debate about the emergence of 'the public sphere' in the later Stuart period.

First published in 1934, Late Tudor and Early Stuart Geography is a critical commentary on a chronologically arranged bibliography of nearly two thousand contemporary printed and manuscript works. Poets, preachers and philosophers, mathematicians, physicians and astrologers, sailors, merchants and company-promoters were contributors to the absorbing medley that comprises the geographical literature of the late Tudor and early Stuart period. For this was the fading twilight of that Golden Age of unspecialized learning when all knowledge lay within one man’s compass. This book will be of interest to historians, economists, sociologists and litterateurs.