With this original study, Melissa Mowry makes a strong contribution to a provocative interdisciplinary conversation about an important and influential sub genre: seventeenth-century political pornography. This book further advances our understanding of pornography's importance in seventeenth-century England by extending its investigation beyond the realm of cultural rhetoric into the realm of cultural practice. In addition to the satires which previous scholars have discussed in this context, Mowry brings to light hitherto unexamined pornographies as well as archival texts that reveal the ways in which the satires helped shape the social policies endured by prostitutes and bawds. Her study includes substantial archival evidence of prostitution from the Middlesex Sessions and the Bridewell Courtbooks. Mowry argues that Stuart partisans cultivated representations of bawds and prostitutes because polemicists saw the public sale of sex as republicanism's ideological apotheosis. Sex work, partisans repeatedly asserted, inherently disrupted ancestral systems of property transfer and distribution in favour of personal ownership, while the republican belief that all men owned the labour of their body achieved a nightmarish incarnation in the prostitute's understanding that the sexual favours she performed were labour. The prostitute's body thus emerged in the loyalist imagination as the epitome of the democratic body politic. Carefully grounded in original research, The Bawdy Politic in Stuart England, 1660-1714 is a cultural study with broad implications for the way we understand the historical constructions and legal deployments of women's sexuality.

The Stuart Age provides an accessible introduction to England's century of civil war and revolution, including the causes of the English Civil War; the nature of the English Revolution; the aims and achievements of Oliver Cromwell; the continuation of religious passion in the politics of Restoration England; and the impact of the Glorious Revolution on Britain. The fifth edition has been thoroughly revised and updated by Peter Gaunt to reflect new work and changing trends in research on the Stuart age. It expands on key areas including the early Stuart economic, religious and social context; key military events and debates surrounding the English Civil War; colonial expansion, foreign policy and overseas wars; and significant developments in Scotland and Ireland. A new opening chapter provides an important overview of current historiographical trends in Stuart history, introducing readers to key recent work on the topic. The Stuart Age is a long-standing favourite of lecturers and students of early modern British history, and this new edition is essential reading for those studying Stuart Britain.

Amsterdam was, after London and Paris, the third largest city in early modern Europe, and was renowned throughout Europe for its widespread and visible prostitution. Delving deep into a wide range of sources, but making particular use of the transcripts of thousands of trials, The Burgher and the Whore reconstructs Amsterdam's whoredom in detail. The colourful and fascinating descriptions of the prostitutes, their bawds, their clients, and the police shed new light on the cultural, social, and economic conditions of the lives of poor women in a seafaring society. Lotte van de Pol explores how the vice trade was embedded in Amsterdam's society, economy, and judicial system, and how legislation and policing were shaped by misogynist attitudes towards women and fear of God's wrath and venereal diseases towards sex. The story concentrates on the people living at the margins of a rich metropolis, in which there was a large surplus of women, many of them poor immigrants with little prospect of marriage. Many changes are visible in the 150 years under scrutiny, including the view of prostitution from immorality to trade, and of prostitutes from whores and criminals to paupers. The result is a book that can be read as the history of the Dutch Golden Age from below.

External challenges, strategic threats, and war have shaped the course of modern British history. This volume examines how Britain mobilized to meet these challenges and how developments in the constitution, state, public sphere, and economy were a response to foreign policy issues from the Restoration to the rise of New Labour.

Here is an invaluable, user-friendly and compact compendium packed with facts and figures on the seventeenth century – one of the most tumultuous and complex periods in British history. From James I to Queen Anne, this Companion includes detailed information on political, religious and cultural developments as well as military activity, foreign affairs and colonial expansion. Chronologies, biographies, documents, maps and genealogies, and an extensive bibliography navigate the reader through this fascinating and formative epoch as the book details the key events and themes of the era including: the English Civil War and its military campaigns the Gunpowder Plot, Catholic persecution and the influence of Puritanism imperial adventures in America, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean Scotland and the Act of Union, 1707 the Irish Confederate wars and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland the Great Fire of 1666 and the rebuilding of London biographies of key figures, including women, artists, architects, writers and scientists the Restoration and the revival of drama. With complete lists of offices of state, an extensive glossary of key constitutional, political and religious terminology, and up-to-date thematic annotated bibliographies to aid further research, this student-friendly reference guide is essential for all those interested in the Stuart Age.

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.