London's ‘Monster’ Petition of 1680

1993 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Knights
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
Geographical Economic

ABSTRACTThe unrest in London during the ‘Exclusion Crisis’ filled Charles II with fear and foreboding of a new civil war. Yet although recent research has highlighted the important role played by the capital's inhabitants in the period, the evidence available for studying the groups of radicals involved has been sketchy and fragmentary. This article uses a new source, in the form of a mass petition, signed by almost 16,000 citizens, which was presented to the king in January 1680. It offers a unique opportunity to measure public opinion during one of the most turbulent periods of the Restoration, and to test assumptions about the character of the opposition to the king. After a discussion of the aims and conduct of the campaign, a prosopographical study of some of the most readily identifiable signatories provides the basis for a detailed examination of the political, religious, geographical, economic and social dimension of the petition. Finally, London's popular reaction to national politics is considered in terms of its effectiveness in altering royal policy, and its impact on the rest of the country.

THE CURSE OF MEROZ AND THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR

2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 343-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
JORDAN S. DOWNS
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Important Means ◽  
Printed Text ◽  
Irish Rebellion ◽  
Charles Ii

ABSTRACTThis article attempts to uncover the political significance of the Old Testament verse Judges 5:23, ‘the curse of Meroz’, during the English Civil War. Historians who have commented on the printed text of Meroz have done so primarily in reference to a single edition of the parliamentarian fast-day preacher Stephen Marshall's 1642Meroz cursedsermon. Usage of the curse, however, as shown in more than seventy unique sermons, tracts, histories, libels, and songs considered here, demonstrates that the verse was far more widespread and politically significant than has been previously assumed. Analysing Meroz in its political and polemical roles, from the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion in 1641 and through the Restoration of Charles II in the 1660s, sheds new light on the ways in which providentialism functioned during the Civil Wars, and serves, more specifically, to illustrate some of the important means by which ministers and polemicists sought to mobilize citizens and construct party identities.

scholarly journals Thomas Willis, the Restoration and the First Works of Neurology

2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 525-553 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Caron
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Book Of Common Prayer ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Neural Anatomy ◽  
Common Prayer ◽  
The Brain

This article provides a new consideration of how Thomas Willis (1621–75) came to write the first works of ‘neurology’, which was in its time a novel use of cerebral and neural anatomy to defend philosophical claims about the mind. Willis’s neurology was shaped by the immediate political and religious contexts of the English Civil War and Restoration. Accordingly, the majority of this paper is devoted to uncovering the political necessities Willis faced during the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, with particular focus on the significance of Willis’s dedication of his neurology and natural philosophy to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Gilbert Sheldon. Because the Restoration of Charles II brought only a semblance of order and peace, Willis and his allies understood the need for a coherent defense of the authority of the English church and its liturgy. Of particular importance to Sheldon and Willis (and to others in Sheldon’s circle) were the specific ceremonies described in theBook of Common Prayer, a manual that directed the congregation to assume various postures during public worship. This article demonstrates that Willis’s neurology should be read as an intervention in these debates, that his neurology would have been read at the time as an attempt to ground orthodox worship in the structure of the brain and nerves. The political necessities that helped to shape Willis’s project also help us to better understand Willis’s innovative insistence that philosophical statements about the mind should be formulated only after a comprehensive anatomical investigation of the brain and nerves.

II. Legal Sovereignty in the Brady Controversy

1972 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 409-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinne Comstock Weston
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Characteristic Function ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
High Court ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Law Making

A Major source of difficulty in interpreting the political thought of Dr Robert Brady, the high tory historian who imparted a new dimension to the political quarrels of late Stuart England, arises out of a limitation that he imposed upon himself in writing history. He deliberately included very little political reflection in his writings, observing that he would not ‘inlarge further upon the great Use and Advantage Those that read Old Historians may make of these Discourses, but leave that to the Judgment of Understanding Readers’. This limitation may be offset, it is suggested here, by placing Brady securely within the intellectual framework created by the contemporary theories of legal sovereignty mat had originated during the English civil war and were fast becoming tradition by the late years of Charles II. When Brady made his researches public, almost all the elements were present that were required for fashioning a theory of legal sovereignty on the lines made famous in Blackstone. Englishmen were reading Sir Thomas Smith and Sir Edward Coke on the uncontrollable authority that resided in parliament for making, confirming, repealing, and expounding laws; and many of them were by this time accustomed to associating the legislative power, itself a new expression, with sovereignty in the state. They had also learned during the civil war years to recognize law-making as the characteristic function of their high court of parliament. All that remained for the whole to fall

Liang Sou-ming and the Rural Reconstruction Movement

1959 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 457-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyman P. van Slyke
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Severe Attack ◽  
Political Coalition ◽  
Prime Movers ◽  
East And West

The name of Liang Sou-ming is perhaps most familiar in connection with his controversial published lectures of the early 1920's, The Cultures of East and West, and Their Philosophies. It is less well known that Liang had an extensive career in the field of rural reconstruction during the 1930's, that he was one of the prime movers of the political coalition which ultimately became the China Democratic League, and that, more recently, he has been under severe attack by communist thinkers for his continuing rejection of Marxism-Leninism as applied to China. Particularly during the time when he was active in rural reconstruction and in national politics, Liang represented movements which stood, or seemed to stand, as alternatives to both the Kuomintang and the Communist solutions to China's problems. The failure of these movements to prevent antagonistic polarization and civil war in China raises some of the most important problems to which a study of Liang Sou-ming gives entry. Here we shall be concerned primarily with the first of these efforts—rural reconstruction.

Has the Supreme Court Been More a Friend or Foe to African Americans?

Daedalus ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 140 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Klarman
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
American History ◽  
Social Climate ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Racial Issues ◽  
The Supreme Court

This essay challenges the conventional wisdom that regards the Supreme Court as a heroic defender of the rights of racial minorities against majority oppression. It argues that over the course of American history, the Court, more often than not, has been a regressive force on racial issues. Klarman draws three lessons from his survey of the Court's racial jurisprudence: (1) the composition of the Court influences whether its racial jurisprudence is progressive or regressive; (2) the composition of the Court is, in significant part, a reflection of national politics; and (3) the Court's constitutional interpretations regarding race – just as on any other issue – broadly reflect the political and social climate of the era and thus rarely deviate far from dominant public opinion.

Educating Monks

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Borchert
Keyword(s):  
High Schools ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Junior High Schools ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Theravada Buddhism ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Reform Era ◽  
And Training

Educating Monks examines the education and training of novices and young Buddhist monks of a Tai minority group on China’s Southwest border. The Buddhists of this region, the Dai-lue, are Chinese citizens but practice Theravada Buddhism and have long-standing ties to the Theravāda communities of Southeast Asia. The book shows how Dai-lue Buddhists train their young men in village temples, monastic junior high schools and in transnational monastic educational institutions, as well as the political context of redeveloping Buddhism during the Reform era in China. While the book focuses on the educational settings in which these young boys are trained, it also argues that in order to understand how a monk is made, it is necessary to examine local agenda, national politics and transnational Buddhist networks.

Language Movement and Civil War in West Africa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ericka A. Albaugh
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Language Spread ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter examines how civil war can influence the spread of language. Specifically, it takes Sierra Leone as a case study to demonstrate how Krio grew from being primarily a language of urban areas in the 1960s to one spoken by most of the population in the 2000s. While some of this was due to “normal” factors such as population movement and growing urbanization, the civil war from 1991 to 2002 certainly catalyzed the process of language spread in the 1990s. Using census documents and surveys, the chapter tests the hypothesis at the national, regional, and individual levels. The spread of a language has political consequences, as it allows for citizen participation in the political process. It is an example of political scientists’ approach to uncovering the mechanisms for and evidence of language movement in Africa.

Playing with Positionality?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Kingston
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Associational Life ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
Research Site ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions

The chapter outlines how researchers take on different roles and positionalities as they adapt to the field, moving, for instance, from that of an “outsider” laden with externalized theoretical assumptions and having few contacts with and knowledge of the research site to one approaching, to varying degrees, that of a “pseudo-insider.” Indeed, the argument here is that researchers make choices when moving from outsider to insider roles (and between them), contingently adapting their positionality in the hope to better understand the political dynamics that underlie research projects. The setting is post-civil war Lebanon and the research project revolves around an examination of the micropolitics of civil society and associational life in this re-emerging but fragmented polity.

Communication

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian D. Liddy
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
And Control ◽  
Ordinary Citizens

The exercise of political power in late medieval English towns was predicated upon the representation, management, and control of public opinion. This chapter explains why public opinion mattered so much to town rulers; how they worked to shape opinion through communication; and the results. Official communication was instrumental in the politicization of urban citizens. The practices of official secrecy and public proclamation were not inherently contradictory, but conflict flowed from the political process. The secrecy surrounding the practices of civic government provoked ordinary citizens to demand more accountability from town rulers, while citizens, who were accustomed to hear news and information circulated by civic magistrates, were able to use what they knew to challenge authority.

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