The Civil Wars Experienced is an exciting new history of the civil wars, which recounts their effects on the 'common people'. This engaging survey throws new light onto a century of violence and political and social upheaval By looking at personal sources such as diaries, petitions, letters and social sources including the press, The Civil War Experienced clearly sets out the true social and cultural effects of the wars on the peoples of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland and how common experiences transcended national and regional boundaries. It ranges widely from the Orkneys to Galway and from Radnorshire to Norfolk. The Civil Wars Experienced explores exactly how far-reaching the changes caused by civil wars actually were for both women and men and carefully assesses individual reactions towards them. For most people fear, familial concerns and material priorities dictated their lives, but for others the civil revolutions provided a positive force for their own spiritual and religious development. By placing the military and political developments of the civil wars in a social context, this book portrays a very different interpretation of a century of regicide and republic.

Based on documents from two Suffolk villages, this study examines the operation of the poor law and the individual effort the elderly poor needed to make to survive.

This collection is concerned with the articulation, mediation and reception of authority; the preoccupations and aspirations of both governors and governed in early modern England. It explores the nature of authority and the cultural and social experiences of all social groups, especially insubordinates. These essays probe in depth the ways in which young people responded to adults, women to men, workers to masters, and the 'common sort' to their 'betters'. Early modern people were not passive receptacles of principles of authority as communicated in, for example, sermons, statutes and legal process. They actively contributed to the process of government, thereby exposing its strengths, weaknesses and ambiguities. In discussing these issues the contributors provide fresh points of entry to a period of significant cultural and socio-economic change.