An analysis of the nature of apocalyptic and millennial beliefs that reveals concerns prominent in England in the early seventeenth century had not abated after 1660.

Imagine you could see the smiles of the people mentioned in Samuel Pepys’s diary, hear the shouts of market traders, and touch their wares. How would you find your way around? Where would you stay? What would you wear? Where might you be suspected of witchcraft? Where would you be welcome? This is an up-close-and-personal look at Britain between the Restoration of King Charles II in 1660 and the end of the century. The last witch is sentenced to death just two years before Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, the bedrock of modern science, is published. Religion still has a severe grip on society and yet some—including the king—flout every moral convention they can find. There are great fires in London and Edinburgh; the plague disappears; a global trading empire develops.Over these four dynamic decades, the last vestiges of medievalism are swept away and replaced by a tremendous cultural flowering. Why are half the people you meet under the age of twenty-one? What is considered rude? And why is dueling so popular? Mortimer delves into the nuances of daily life to paint a vibrant and detailed picture of society at the dawn of the modern world as only he can.

Censorship profoundly affected early modern writing. Censorship and Conflict in Seventeenth-Century England offers a detailed picture of early modern censorship and investigates the pressures that censorship exerted on seventeenth-century authors, printers, and publishers. In the 1600s, Britain witnessed a civil war, the judicial execution of a king, the restoration of his son, and an unremitting struggle among crown, parliament, and people for sovereignty and the right to define “liberty and property.” This battle, sometimes subtle, sometimes bloody, entailed a struggle for the control of language and representation. Robertson offers a richly detailed study of this “censorship contest” and of the craft that writers employed to outflank the licensers. He argues that for most parties, victory, not diplomacy or consensus, was the ultimate goal. This book differs from most recent works in analyzing both the mechanics of early modern censorship and the poetics that the licensing system produced—the forms and pressures of self-censorship. Among the issues that Robertson addresses in this book are the workings of the licensing machinery, the designs of art and obliquity under a regime of censorship, and the involutions of authorship attendant on anonymity.

The first comprehensive history of seventeenth-century London, told through the lives of those who experienced it The Gunpowder Plot, the Civil Wars, Charles I’s execution, the Plague, the Great Fire, the Restoration, and then the Glorious Revolution: the seventeenth century was one of the most momentous times in the history of Britain, and Londoners took center stage. In this fascinating account, Margarette Lincoln charts the impact of national events on an ever-growing citizenry with its love of pageantry, spectacle, and enterprise. Lincoln looks at how religious, political, and financial tensions were fomented by commercial ambition, expansion, and hardship. In addition to events at court and parliament, she evokes the remarkable figures of the period, including Shakespeare, Bacon, Pepys, and Newton, and draws on diaries, letters, and wills to trace the untold stories of ordinary Londoners. Through their eyes, we see how the nation emerged from a turbulent century poised to become a great maritime power with London at its heart—the greatest city of its time.

A comprehensive introduction to Bunyan's life and works, examining their place in the broader context of seventeenth-century history and literature.

This key Seminar Study was first published as Restoration England: The Reign of Charles II in 1985. Unavailable for several years, the book has now been heavily revised, and expanded, to take account of over ten years of new scholarship. In particular, the Second Edition reflects new work done on political parties, the constitution, taxation, the church, and the legacy of the civil wars. As ever primary documents illustrate points raised in the text and an extensive bibliography directs readers to further reading. New for this edition is a chronology of the main events in Charles II's reign which, given the thematic treatment of the reign, readers are likely to find particularly useful. When Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660 the event was widely greeted as a return to normal after the upheavals of civil war. In this short study Professor John Miller explores how far this was true and how far the civil wars had, in fact, weakened (or strengthened) the monarchy. The book divides neatly into two: in the first part the 'Restoration Settlement' of 1660-4 is examined in detail; and, in the second, the salient features of government, politics and religion under Charles II are considered, seeking to show how well the restored regime worked in practice. Throughout, complex issues of change over time are explained as clearly and concisely as possible and the Restoration is placed in the wider context of the development of England in the seventeenth century.