Dreaming of Death and the Dead in the Stuart Political World Imaginary

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-195
Author(s):  
Carole Levin
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Political World ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
Close Friendship ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Political Pamphlets

Abstract William Laud played a critical role in the politics and religion in the reign of James I and especially that of his son, Charles I. There was great antagonism toward him by Puritans, and Laud’s close friendship with George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, made Laud even more controversial, as did his fight with the king’s jester, Archy Armstrong. Dreams were seen as having great significance at time of Laud, and Laud recorded his dreams in his journal. Dreams also played a role in the early Stuart political world. This essay examines how Laud’s enemies used his own dreams against him in the work of William Prynne, once Laud was arrested during the English Civil war. It also looks at how Laud was compared to also despised Thomas, Cardinal Wolsey in a number of political pamphlets that used dreams, such as Archy’s Dream and Canterburie’s Dream. Laud also appeared as a character in a dream of Charles I’s attendant Thomas Herbert the night before the king’s execution, where Laud came to comfort Charles.

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON BRITAIN'S CIVIL WARS Regicide and republicanism: politics and ethics in the English Revolution, 1646–1659. By Sarah Barber. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998. Pp. x+246. ISBN 1-85331-211-8. £40.00. The English Civil War: the essential readings. Edited by Peter Gaunt. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Pp. viii+360. ISBN 0-631-20809-7. £15.99. Soldiers, writers and statesmen of the English Revolution. Edited by Ian Gentles, John Morrill, and Blair Worden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xi+343. ISBN 0-521-59120-1. £40.00. Constructing Cromwell: ceremony, portrait, and print, 1645–1661. By Laura Lunger Knoppers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii+249. ISBN 0-521-66261-3. £35.00. The journal of Thomas Juxon, 1644–1647. Edited by Keith Lindley and David Scott. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. x+214. ISBN 0-521-65259-6. £45.00. The political world of Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, 1621–1641. Edited by J. F. Merritt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xiv+293. ISBN 0-521-56041-1. £37.50. Refiguring revolutions: aesthetics and politics from the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution. Edited by Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker. Berkeley and Los Angeles: California University Press, 1998. Pp. x+376. ISBN 0-520-20920-6. £13.95. Celtic dimensions of the British Civil Wars. Edited by John R. Young. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1997. Pp. viii+232. ISBN 0-85976-452-4. £20.00.

2003 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 449-461
Author(s):  
DAVID L. SMITH
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Political World ◽  
Wide Range

The crisis that gripped the three kingdoms of England, Ireland, and Scotland in the mid-seventeenth century continues to fascinate historians. The sheer variety of names attached to these events reveals the diversity of interpretations and preoccupations that scholars have brought to them. ‘The English Civil War’, ‘the English Revolution’, and ‘the British Civil Wars’ are just three of the different labels found in the titles of the eight books under review. Between them, these books offer a valuable cross-section of current work on the period. They present a range of perspectives, principally on the 1640s and 1650s, and give a flavour of the experiences of very different individuals living through these extraordinary events. They also indicate the variety of approaches that historians are now adopting to the period, ranging from finely focused work on particular figures to the reconstruction of British (or un-English) dimensions, and the use of interdisciplinary methods. Rarely in this field can such a wide range of tools have been simultaneously applied to so many different areas or individuals or types of source material. Such varied approaches are essential for recovering the experiences and mindsets of those who lived through these events, and between them these books offer a vivid sense of the richness, diversity, and drama of the period.

Excavations at Basing Grange, Basing House, Hampshire, 1999–2006

2020 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 323-378
Author(s):  
David Allen ◽  
Briony A. Lalor ◽  
Ginny Pringle
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Historical Society ◽  
Tobacco Pipes ◽  
House Site ◽  
Early 18Th Century

This report describes excavations at Basing Grange, Basing House, Hampshire, between 1999 and 2006. It embraces the 'Time Team' investigations in Grange Field, adjacent to the Great Barn, which were superseded and amplified by the work of the Basingstoke Archaeological & Historical Society, supervised by David Allen. This revealed the foundations of a 'hunting lodge' or mansion built in the 1670s and demolished, and effectively 'lost', in the mid-18th century. Beneath this residence were the remains of agricultural buildings, earlier than and contemporary with the nearby Great Barn, which were destroyed during the English Civil War. The report contains a detailed appraisal of the pottery, glass and clay tobacco pipes from the site and draws attention to the remarkable window leads that provide a clue to the mansion's date of construction. It also explores a probable link with what was taking place on the Basing House site in the late 17th and early 18th century.

Presentism, Inevitability and the English Civil War

1982 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. Dray
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
English Civil War

The “Ghastly Spectacle”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Finseth
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Ethical Challenge ◽  
The Dead ◽  
War Dead ◽  
Social Logic

This chapter focuses on how witneᶊes to Civil War death made sense of their traumatic experience. The ethical challenge was one of recognition: to see and know the often-anonymous dead for who and what they were. Yet the dead were invariably integrated into familiar frameworks of meaning and into the conventions of aesthetics and rhetoric. Drawing on insights from phenomenology, pragmatism, Freudian psychology, and affect theory, the chapter shows that the psychological proceᶊes of abstraction and typification underlay a social logic of necrophilic dependency that both thrived on the dead and yet resisted their complex individuality. This problem is then connected to a long-standing cultural and historical melancholia whereby the Civil War dead have been internalized and eternalized as representational artifacts within a society that remains divided and ambivalent over the meaning of the war.

Writing History: Domestic Papers, Biographical Writing, and Public Histories

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret J. M. Ezell
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Family Member ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Margaret Cavendish ◽  
Lucy Hutchinson ◽  
History Of ◽  
Life Writings

Many who lived through the English Civil War penned memoirs of their experiences, some of which were published after their deaths, such as Richard Baxter’s life writings and Thomas Fuller’s accounts of the worthies of England, or wrote and published topical public histories, including John Milton’s history of Britain. Samuel Pepys’s and John Evelyn’s diaries are among the most important sources about the Restoration years. Others such as Lucy Hutchinson wrote memoirs for their family or, like Margaret Cavendish, to defend the reputation of a family member. There was also interest in the history of foreign cultures, past rulers, and antiquarian topics.

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