Four great magnalia of government. La riforma istituzionale di Henry Neville: un machiavelliano inglese alla corte di Cosimo III de’ Medici

2021 ◽  
pp. 001458582110254
Author(s):  
Luana Maria Alagna

The tumultuous phase running from the beheading of Charles I to the Glorious Revolution is the time frame in which England goes through the crucial phases that will put an end to royal absolutism. One of the most authoritative intellectual figures of that founding historical moment of modern constitutionalism is Henry Neville, author of political and satirical pamphlets who, taking up the lesson of the ancients with the experience of “modern things”, published in 1680 the Plato Redivivus, a work that will consecrate him as a Republican political thinker. The treaty, written and published in the context of the Exclusion crisis, exhort Charles II to reduce his powers. The disease suffered by the State, the causes of which Neville investigates by seeking remedies, arose precisely from the extension of the king's power and his arbitrariness.

Author(s):  
James J. Coleman

This chapter considers the commemoration of the later stage of the Covenanting era, between the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 through to the Glorious Revolution in 1688/9. In particular, we will focus on the Covenanter martyrs of the so-called ‘Killing Times’ of the 1680s. Following the imposition of episcopacy at the Restoration, over a quarter of Scottish Presbyterian ministers refused to conform, choosing instead to preach at illegal ‘conventicles’, concentrated mainly in the south-west of Scotland. In response, Charles II set out to suppress this rebellious activity and, as the level of persecution increased, it was a short step to armed revolt. The Covenanters’ victory at Drumclog and their subsequent defeat at Bothwell Bridge in 1679 ushered in a sustained period of intense persecution, including transportation or summary executions for the most unfortunate. Undaunted, these hard-line Presbyterians continued to gather illegally, becoming increasingly militant and militarised. The publication of the Cameronian Sanquhar Declaration in 1680, disavowing allegiance to the King, ushered in harsher responses from the state – anyone unwilling to swear the Abjuration Oath could be executed on the spot.


Author(s):  
Georges Dicker

This chapter is a brief biography of John Locke. It summarizes how his fortunes waxed and waned under the regimes of King Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, King Charles II, King James II, and the “Glorious Revolution,” and it touches on his education at Westminster School and Christ College and on his ties to the Earl of Shaftesbury and to Lady Masham. The chapter also provides a brief history of Locke’s publishing career, including the Essay and political works such as the First Treatise of Government (a critique of the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings) and the Second Treatise of Government (an outline of the bases for democracy and an influence on the U.S. Constitution).


1978 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 193-208
Author(s):  
Dennis A. Rubini

William of Orange tried to be as absolute as possible. Inroads upon the power of the executive were fiercely resisted: indeed, William succeeded in keeping even the judiciary in a precarious state of independence. To maintain the prerogative and gain the needed supplies from parliament, he relied upon a mixed whig-tory ministry to direct court efforts. Following the Glorious Revolution, the whigs had divided into two principle groups. One faction led by Robert Harley and Paul Foley became the standard-bearers of the broadly based Country party, maintained the “old whig” traditions, did not seek office during William's reign, tried to hold the line on supply, and led the drive to limit the prerogative. The “junto,” “court,” or “new” whigs, on the other hand, were led by ministers who, while in opposition during the Exclusion crisis, held court office, aggressively sought greater offices, and wished to replace monarchy with oligarchy. They soon joined tory courtiers in opposing many of the Country party attempts to place additional restrictions upon the executive. To defend the prerogative and gain passage for bills of supply, William also developed techniques employed by Charles II. By expanding the concept and power of the Court party, he sought to bring together the executive and legislative branches of government through a large cadre of crown office-holders (placemen) who sat, voted, and directed the votes of others on behalf of the government when matters of importance arose in the Commons. So too, William claimed the right to dissolve parliament and call new elections not on a fixed date, as was to become the American practice, but at the time deemed most propitious over first a three-year and then (after 1716) a seven year period.


Author(s):  
D.O. Gordienko ◽  

The article presents the results of a study devoted to the history of the British armed forces in the “long” 17th century. The militia was the backbone of England's national military system. The author examines the aspects of the development of the institutions of the modern state during the reign of the Stuart dynasty, traces the process of the development of the militia and the formation of the regular army. He reveals the role of the militia in the political events of the Century of Revolutions: the reign of Charles I, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the Restoration age, the Glorious Revolution, and also gives a retrospective review of the eventsof the 18th century.


1997 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Harris

When I first began my researches into later Stuart history as a graduate student back in 1980, the Restoration was a relatively underdeveloped field of inquiry. Although there were a number of scholars producing excellent work in this area, there was not the same depth of scholarship as characterized study of the first half of the seventeenth century: wide gaps in our knowledge existed, and for some of the most crucial episodes of the period we were dependent upon a limited range of studies and dated works. The best general entrée into the period was still David Ogg's classic two-volumeEngland in the Reign of Charles II, first published in 1934! A suitable modern textbook did not emerge until 1978, with the publication of J. R. Jones'sCounty and Court: England 1658–1714, a book that had neither Ogg's range nor lively analytical style. For our understanding of why the monarchy was restored we were reliant upon a study that had come out in 1955, which was supplemented only in 1980 by Austin Woolrych's book-length “Historical Introduction” to volume seven of the Yale edition of theComplete Prose Works of John Milton. On the Exclusion Crisis we had J. R. Jones'sThe First Whigs, which had appeared in 1961, although for the first Tories we still needed to use Sir Keith Feiling's 1924History of the Tory Party. For the Glorious Revolution we had a book written by a man who tragically died (at a young age) before he could complete the work, and another self-consciously thought-provoking work designed to raise questions and suggest future avenues of research—both excellent studies in their own right, but hardly the plethora of monographs that we possessed for the mid-century revolution.


2004 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-144
Author(s):  
Deborah Payne Fisk

This superb monograph examines how radical politics found expression in performance in the decade prior to the Glorious Revolution. The years from 1678 to 1688 saw the English monarchy rocked by successive crises, ranging from allegations of secret Catholic plots to murder the king (largely fabricated) to murmurings of dark dealings between Louis XIV and Charles II (largely true). The inability of Charles II to produce a legitimate heir also worried a Protestant citizenry who feared that the line of succession would devolve to James, the Catholic brother of Charles II. Arbitrary rule, strict censorship, excessive taxation, and an atmosphere of Stalinesque surveillance further inflamed the populace. As Johnson wryly notes, the problem with the Restoration was that it restored too much, especially the oppressive political attitudes that caused the Civil War in the first place. Amid this tumult, Johnson situates the patent theatres and street performance. He is certainly not the first scholar to do so, but he is, happily, the first in a long time to combine keen intelligence with common sense. That he tells this compelling story stylishly and with verve gives one all the more reason to read this first-rate study.


1993 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Harris

The Restoration period has attracted renewed scholarly interest in recent years, with the result that many of our commonly held assumptions about politics in the reign of Charles II have come under increased critical scrutiny. Nowhere is this more true than for the Exclusion Crisis and the subsequent Tory Reaction. For a long time we thought we had the dynamics of this period worked out: the Exclusion Crisis gave birth to two parties—the Whigs and Tories—with the Whigs being the anti-Catholic, exclusionist, and Parliamentarian party, who carried with them the support of the people out-of-doors, and the Tories being the party of divine-right, absolute monarchy, anti-populist in their outlook, putting their belief in the sanctity of the hereditary principle before the interests of the people. The Whig challenge was essentially defeated with the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament in 1681, and thereafter the 1680s saw a drift towards monarchical absolutism, until this trend was defeated by the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89.


Author(s):  
Meredith McNeill Hale

This chapter examines seven of De Hooghe’s eighteen satires on the events surrounding William III’s invasion of England and associated diplomatic and military campaigns. These satires, which were produced between the autumn of 1688 and summer of 1690, followed the events of the Glorious Revolution as they unfolded and represent not only key political-historical events but also the development of De Hooghe’s satirical strategies. William III is featured as the sober and valiant defender of Protestantism against the Catholic kings, James II and Louis XIV, who appear as a darkly comic duo, misguided adherents of a primitive religion committed only to their own aggrandizement. This discussion examines the iconography of the foreign satires, providing detailed interpretive analysis and translation of many of the texts into English for the first time. It will be demonstrated that De Hooghe responded almost immediately to the rapid unfolding of events that constituted the Glorious Revolution, highlighting the need to consider them in terms of the speed with which they were produced and their serial nature. It is often possible to determine the month in which a satire was made and, in certain cases, the timeframe can be narrowed to weeks. This dramatic imbrication in a particular historical moment is characteristic of political satire to this day.


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