scholarly journals Death by Honey and Bees

Author(s):  
Sarah Cavanagh

Intense political and religious divisions plagued mid-seventeenth-century English society following the execution of King Charles I and the English civil war conflicts.  Against this backdrop, a fringe, troublesome Puritan preacher named Samuel Clarke published a history of Protestant martyrs, A Generall Marytrologie (1651), modeled after John Foxe’s popular Book of Martyrs (1563). Clarke’s less famous but more sensational version offered a zealous, often embellished, graphic account of religious persecution designed to incite anti-Catholic and anti-Irish sentiment. Significantly, his rousing text was supported by eighty crude and provocative engraved images depicting grotesque scenes of abuse and brutal sexual violence repeatedly positioning women and children as victims of “Papist” torture. To modern viewers, the inflammatory visuals are startling and disturbing, but they were enabled by several factors including a censored publishing industry in lockstep with Protestant ideology; a largely illiterate population swayed by traditions of narrative storytelling and visual messaging; and a fractious political environment in which leading figures actively positioned the Irish and Catholics as a menace to English society.  

Author(s):  
David R. Como

This book charts the way the English Civil War of the 1640s mutated into a revolution (paving the way for the later execution of King Charles I and the abolition of the monarchy). Focusing on parliament’s most militant supporters, the book reconstructs the origins and nature of the most radical forms of political and religious agitation that erupted during the war, tracing the process by which these forms gradually spread and gained broader acceptance. Drawing on a wide range of manuscript and print sources, the study situates these developments within a revised narrative of the period, revealing the emergence of new practices and structures for the conduct of politics. In the process, the book illuminates the appearance of many of the period’s strikingly novel intellectual currents, including ideas and practices we today associate with western representative democracy—notions of retained natural rights, religious toleration, freedom of the press, and freedom from arbitrary imprisonment. The book also chronicles the way the civil war shattered English Protestantism—leaving behind myriad competing groupings, including congregationalists, baptists, antinomians, and others—while examining the relationship between this religious fragmentation and political change. Finally, the book traces the gradual appearance of openly anti-monarchical, republican sentiment among parliament’s supporters. Radical Parliamentarians provides a new history of the English Civil War, enhancing our understanding of the dramatic events of the 1640s, and shedding light on the long-term political and religious consequences of the conflict.


2021 ◽  
pp. 313-314
Author(s):  
Martin Wight

Wight notes that Williamson’s account of the English Civil War follows ‘the romantic view of history’ as ‘the relationship or interaction of characters’ in sometimes tragic circumstances. Williamson ‘shows a good dramatic sense’, Wight observes, in his narrative of events involving Cromwell and King Charles I of England; but the book fails to show insight on ‘the deeper dialectic of conservative and revolutionary psychology. It illuminates neither the particular clash between the Anglicanism of the King and the Independency of the Lieutenant-General, nor the general problem of political morals in a revolutionary situation.’ Cromwell and Charles were both ‘compelled to political methods which in private circumstances they would have condemned’. Owing in part to Williamson’s ‘life-long Cromwellian fervour’, the book does not attain ‘a high level of political literacy’, nor does it demonstrate deep discernment about the history of these conflicts.


Author(s):  
L. I. Ivonina

The article analyzes the main features of the Caroline era in the history of Britain, which were reflected in the cultural representation of the power of King Charles I Stuart and the court’s daily life in the 1630s. The author shows that, on the one hand, the cult of peace and the greatness of the monarch were the cultural product of the Caroline court against the background of the Thirty Years' War in continental Europe. On the other hand, there was a spread of various forms of escapism, the departure into the world of illusions. On the whole, the representation of the power of Charles Stuart and the court’s daily life were in line with the general trend of the time. At the same time, the court of Charles I reflected his personality. Thinly sensing and even determining the artistic tastes of his era, the English king abstracted from its political and social context.


2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Askew

The post-medieval castle is often neglected in English archaeology, with most analyses focusing on whether the castle was built for status or defence, a debate which has become known as ‘the Battle for Bodiam’. However, in the English Civil War between 1642 and 1651, many castles were fortified either for King Charles I or his rebellious Parliament. Although the fortification of castles during this period is often attributed to acts of desperation and a lack of more suitable defences, an examination of the Royalist occupation of Sandal Castle in West Yorkshire demonstrates how this view is simplistic. The decision to fortify Sandal can be directly linked to the Battle of Wakefield in 1460, when Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, the father of King Edward IV and Richard III, was killed outside its walls. This episode heavily influenced subsequent events, culminating in the occupation of the castle at the outbreak of the English Civil War. The importance of the past during this later conflict is reinforced by the faunal and artefactual assemblages, and the locations in which they were found (and consumed). The complexity of the social discourse at Sandal challenges current approaches in castle studies and highlights the need for a biographical approach which sees the interpretation and interaction of the castle through time and space as far more important than the motivations behind its initial construction. Such a way of proceeding complements existing methodologies but also relies on material culture and history to create a subtler interpretation of these complex buildings.


Author(s):  
Marissa Nicosia

This essay tracks the shift from Republic to Restoration through two play pamphlets, The Famous Tragedie (1649) and Cromwell’s Conspiracy (1660). As short plays retelling current events, these play pamphlets are like brief history plays that document the Stuart reign in an era of crisis. Moreover, these playbooks include typographically distinct couplets that encapsulate parliamentarian and royalist positions on history and governance. In particular, the royalist couplets in The Famous Tragedie mourn Charles I and gesture to future readers. These couplets are also marked as commonplaces, or sententious material intended for later use in other contexts. This chapter argues that these plays use couplets and commonplaces to create a royalist political history of the mid-seventeenth century.


1967 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 159-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Blackburn

Few documents relevant to the history of literary criticism during the early seventeenth century have escaped the searching eyes of scholars of the period. Edmund Bolton's The Cabanet Royal (British Museum MS. Royal 18A. LXXI.) is, however, one of those rarities. Written in 1627 as an attempt to interest King Charles I in the ‘Academ Roial’ which Bolton first proposed during the reign of James, the manuscript has previously been noted only by historians of England's learned societies. Yet it is less a prospectus for that academy than a discourse on the arts, including, most importantly, a substantial comparison of history and poetry clearly designed as a corrective to Sir Philip Sidney's harsh treatment of historians in his Apology for Poetry.


1950 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 31-48
Author(s):  
C. V. Wedgwood

Clarendon, in his History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, states that the disturbances in Scotland which preceded- the Bishops' Wars came as a shock to the English councillors of King Charles I. It seems probable that they came as a shock to King Charles himself. The unexampled authority that his father James VI had succeeded in establishing for the Crown in Scotland—an authority Which he continued to exercise at long range when he became king of England—was something which Charles I had learnt to take for granted.


2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (3 (239)) ◽  
pp. 25-40
Author(s):  
Paulina Nortowska

The Last Months , Trial and Execution of Charles I in the Opinion of the English Press The aim of this article is to compare different points of view on phenomenon of the trial, conviction and execution of the English (and Scottish) monarch, Charles I. The newsbooks A Perfect diurnall of the passages in Parliament (paper published by Parliament) and Mercurius Pragmaticus, Communicating intelligence from all parts, touching all affaires, designes, humours, and conditions, throughout the kingdome, especially from Westminster and the head‑quartes (newspaper of supporters of King Charles I of England) were analysed and compared. The comparison was made for the years 1647–1649 with a focus on the Second English Civil War. In the case of A Perfect diurnall, the articles published between 3.06.1647 and 7.02.1649 — from the extradition of King Charles I of England to Commissioners to the King’s funeral. The other newsbook, Mercurius Pragmaticus, was published from 14.09.1947 to 1.05.1649. The main focus of this analysis is to show the differences between the two publications in their presentation of the imprisonment, trial and execution of King Charles I.


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).


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