Exploring a year in the life of Stuart Britain

First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, John Morrill's Very Short Introduction to Stuart Britain sets the Revolution into its political, religious, social, economic, intellectual, and cultural contexts. It thus seeks to integrate what most other surveys pull apart. It gives a graphic account of the effects of a century-long period during which population was growing inexorably and faster than both the food supply and the employment market. It looks at the failed attempts of successive governments to make all those under their authority obedient members of a unified national church; it looks at how Charles I blundered into a civil war which then took on a terrifying momentum of its own. The result was his trial and execution, the abolition of the monarchy, the house of lords, the bishops, the prayer book and the celebration of Christmas. As a result everything else that people took for granted came up for challenge, and this book shows how painfully and with what difficulty order and obedience was restored. Vividly illustrated and full of startling detail, this is an ideal introduction to those interested in getting into the period, and also contains much to challenge and stimulate those who already feel at home in Stuart England. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

An expert in Stuart England examines the sexual lives of Britons in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in this frank, informative, and revealing history. Acclaimed Stuart historian Andrea Zuvich explores the sexual mores of Stuart Britain, including surprising beliefs, bizarre practices, and ingenious solutions for infertility, impotence, sexually transmitted diseases, and more. Along the way, she reveals much about the prevailing attitudes towards male and female sexual behavior. Zuvich sheds light not only on the saucy love lives of the Royal Stuarts, but also on the dark underbelly of the Stuart era with histories of prostitution, sexual violence, infanticide, and sexual deviance. She looks at everything from what was considered sexually attractive to the penalties for adultery, incest, and fornication. Sex and Sexuality in Stuart Britain touches on the fashion, food, science, art, medicine, magic, literature, love, politics, faith and superstition of the day.

"Compelling...A masterly feat...A magnificent, sweeping, authoritative, warm yet wry history."--The Wall Street Journal In this fascinating and intimate portrait of the Stuarts, author Allan Massie takes us deep into one of history's bloodiest and most tumultuous reigns. Exploring the family's lineage from the first Stuart king to the last, The Royal Stuarts is a panoramic history of the family that acted as a major player in the Scottish Wars of Independence, the Union of the Crowns, the English Civil War, the Restoration, and more. Drawing on the accounts of historians past and present, novels, and plays, this is the complete story of the Stuart family, documenting their path from the salt marshes of Brittany to the thrones of Scotland and England and eventually to exile. The Royal Stuarts brings to life figures like Mary, Queens of Scots, Charles I, and Bonnie Prince Charlie, uncovering a family of strong affections and fierce rivalries. Told with panache, this is the gripping true story of backstabbing, betrayal, and ambition gone awry.

The story of the Stuart dynasty is a breathless soap opera played out in just a hundred years in an array of buildings that span Europe from Scotland, via Denmark, Holland and Spain to England.

Set in the tumultuous late 17th Century, His Last Mistress tells the true story of the final years in the life of James Scott, the dashing but doomed Duke of Monmouth, and Lady Henrietta Wentworth. As the popular but illegitimate eldest son of King Charles II, the Duke is a spoiled, lecherous man. With both a wife and a mistress, this rakish libertine is nevertheless captivated by the innocence of young Lady Henrietta Wentworth, who has been raised to covet her virtue. Will she succumb? At the same time, the Duke begins to harbour risky political ambitions which may threaten not only his life but also that of those around him. Will the path he chooses lead him to bloody rebellion, or peace and happiness? His Last Mistress is a passionate, sometimes explicit, carefully researched and ultimately moving story of love and loss, set against a backdrop of dangerous political unrest, brutal religious tensions, and the looming question of who will be the next King.

The Huguenots in Later Stuart Britain is planned as one work to be published in three interlinking volumes (titles/publication dates detailed below). It examines the history of the French communities in Britain from the Civil War, which plunged them into turmoil, to the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, after which there was no realistic possibility that the Huguenots would be readmitted to France. There is a particular focus on the decades of the 1680s and 1690s, at once the most complex, the most crucial, and the most challenging alike for the refugees themselves and for subsequent historians. The work opens with the Calvinist French-speaking communities in England caught up in the Civil War. They could not avoid it, with many of their members largely assimilated into English society by the 1640s. Generally they favoured the Parliamentarian side, but any victory was pyrrhic because the Interregnum supported the rights of Independent congregations which undermined their whole Calvinist structure. Weakened by in-fighting, in the 1660s the old-established French churches then had to reassert their right to exist in the face of a sometimes hostile restored monarchy and episcopacy, a newly licenced French church emphasizing its Anglicanism and its loyalty to the crown, and the challenges of the Plague and the Fire of London which burnt the largest French church in England to the ground. They were still staggering to find their feet when the first trickle and then the full flood of new Huguenot immigration overwhelmed them. As for the newly arriving Huguenot ministers, not prepared for the England to which they came, they found they had to resolve what was often an intense personal dilemma: should they stand fast for the worship they had led in France, or accept Anglican ways? and if they did accept Anglicanism, to what extent? It is demonstrated that many ministers took the Anglican route, although Volume II will show that the French communities as a whole, old and new alike, voted with their feet not to do so. A substantial appendix provides a biographical account of over 600 ministers in the orbit of the French churches across this period. Volume II: Settlement, Churches, and the Role of London 978-1-84519-619-6 (2017); Volume III: The Huguenots and the Defeat of Louis XIV's France 978-1-84519-620-2 (2020).