Gentry culture and the politics of religion: Cheshire on the eve of civil war

by Richard Cust, Peter Lake, Anthony Milton (Editor)

Overview

This book revisits the county study as a way of understanding the dynamics of civil war in England during the 1640s. It explores gentry culture and the extent to which early Stuart Cheshire could be said to be a ‘county community’. It also investigates how the county’s governing elite and puritan religious establishment responded to highly polarising interventions by the central government and Laudian ecclesiastical authorities during Charles I’s Personal Rule. The second half of the book provides a rich and detailed analysis of petitioning movements and side-taking in Cheshire in 1641–2. An important contribution to understanding the local origins and outbreak of civil war in England, the book will be of interest to all students and scholars studying the English revolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781526114433
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
Publication date:	06/24/2020
Series:	Politics, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	392
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Richard Cust is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Birmingham Peter Lake is Distinguished Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee
Peter Lake is University Distinguished Professor of History at Vanderbilt University
Anthony Milton is Professor of Early Modern British History at the University of Sheffield

Table of Contents

Introduction Part I: The Cheshire gentry and their world 1 The culture of dynasticism 2 The culture of the Cheshire gentleman 3 The governance of the shire Part I conclusion Part II: The Personal Rule and its problems 4 Cheshire politics in the 1620s and 1630s 5 Puritans and ecclesiastical government Part II conclusion Part III: The crisis, 1641–42 6 Petitioning and the search for settlement 7 The search for the centre as partisan enterprise? 8 Cheshire and the outbreak of civil war Part III conclusion Bibliography of manuscript sources Index

Editorial Reviews

'It [Gentry Culture and the Politics of Religion] broadens our understanding of the ideology and material culture of the pre–Civil War gentry, and it shows how, even in counties with long efforts at consensus, tensions'
Journal of British Studies

From the Publisher