scholarly journals The English Civil Parish

1916 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Benson Botts

English constitutional history, since the beginning of the political revolution in the seventeenth century, has been the subject of study of every civilized nation. This wide spread interest has resulted in a thorough search through English documents for every available source of information. There is however one field of English insitutuional history that has received little attention, that is the development of English vivil parish before the seventeenth century. The origin of the parish in both civil and ecclesiastical forms has recieved some notice from the older constitutional writers, and recently has been made the subject of special studies. The Elizabethan parish has been fully treated in the general works and in monographs dealing with special functions. However, no writer has attempted to trace the consecutive development of the civil parish from its origin to the heighth of its activity in the seventeenth century. This development is peculiarly important from the standpoint of the growth of English nationalism, yet is has been entirely overlooked. (1)

2021 ◽  
pp. 233-253
Author(s):  
Igor I. Barinov

The article examines the biography of Valentin Dittmann, a lawyer and politician of Baltic-German origin, who became a counselor of the Diplomatic Mission of the Belarusian People’s Republic (BNR) in Berlin. The German-language brochure “Weissruthenien” was published with Dittmann’s active involvement and was considered as the main source of information about this region in Germany for a long time. In a broader context, through the prism of Dittmann’s life and activities, the transformation of the system of ideas and motivations of former Imperial elites after the 1917 revolution became the subject of research. The desire to preserve and improve their social status during the political instability has significantly expanded the boundaries of imaginary. In particular, the elite representatives previously loyal to the throne could drastically change their views on the very idea of a “strong state”. From now on their position ranged from federalism to cooperation with those who were previously considered as “separatists”. On the example of Dittmann, we can follow the peculiar experience of the “homo impericus”, who strove to combine the elitist consciousness inherited from his ancestors with national democratic political views and local (Belo) russian patriotism.


Pólemos ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-145
Author(s):  
Matteo Nicolini

Abstract The article addresses the different narratives that characterize English constitutional history. It first examines the mainstream narrative, i. e., the retrospective reading of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century constitutional events dispensed by jurists and politicians in an attempt to pack the Establishment Constitution. It then focuses on the alternative legal narratives about the Constitution elaborated during the Civil War and the Restoration. Among them, it ascertains John Bunyan’s impact on the Establishment Constitution. Bunyan was a member of the New Model Army, a radical, and a Puritan who ended up in prison. Despite this background, he exerted a strong influence on Victorian society and on Thackeray’s representation of the body politic. As a consequence, Bunyan entered the political discourse in the first half of the nineteenth century when politicians started to reform English representative institutions, and therefore became part of the Establishment Constitution.


1964 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Robert Livingston Schuyler

The collaboration of Richardson and Sayles in the investigation of early English parliamentary history has long been justly celebrated. A full generation has passed since the publication of the first of those studies of theirs which have done so much to widen and deepen knowledge about medieval parliaments and have made their names, usually coupled, household words with students of medieval English constitutional history. The authors were influenced, no doubt, by some earlier historians, and the statement that they built on foundations laid by Maitland and McIlwain is not incorrect. In the volume, however, which is here under special consideration, The Governance of Mediaeval England from the Conquest to Magna Carta, they do not undertake, qua historians as distinguished from historical critics, to come this side of the reign of King John, when parliaments had not as yet assumed their later form and functions.IWhy, it seems not inappropriate to ask, was this latest joint product of their historical activities written; to what class or classes of readers was it particularly addressed? It was evidently not designed as a manual of the type that students of English constitutional history have long been familiar with; for one thing, its chronological scope is limited to about two centuries, from c. 1000 to 1215; and much of the book would be unintelligible to beginning students of the subject. An apologia, which serves as a Preface, and a preliminary chapter suggest answers to the questions that have just been asked.


2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 81-90
Author(s):  
Ivan Matic

The subject of this paper will be the analysis of the question of religious toleration in the political thought of seventeenth century English philosopher John Locke. The first part of the paper will discuss the foundational principles of Locke?s political thought, particularly his contract theory. The second part will be dedicated to situating his positions on freedom of religion within the domain of that theory, accentuating the moment of separation between church and state. The final part will analyze the implications of religious toleration, as well as its limits, upon which Locke?s criterion of freedom of religion will be critically examined.


Author(s):  
David Rollison

This chapter examines the existence in England from the thirteenth century of the political ideal of ‘commonwealth’: the overarching principle, dominating the political thought of commoners, that the constitutional legitimacy of any government lay not in heredity or a mystic theology of authority but in its consultation with subjects and pursuit of the well-being of the entire people. Numerous medieval rebellions had risen with ‘the commonweal’ as their rallying cry, and Kett’s rebels of 1549 were likewise termed ‘commonwealths’. In Tudor England, ‘commonwealth’ was consequently a term coloured by subversive connotation, yet pervasive in political discourse as an honorific concept. The chapter shows this ambivalence to inhere in Shakespeare’s engagements with the word. Yet no one did more, it claims, in the generations before the English Revolution, to publicize this basic, yet too often ignored tenet of English constitutional history.


Traditio ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 235-257
Author(s):  
Robert S. Hoyt

Few problems in medieval constitutional history, and perhaps none in English constitutional history, have occasioned more irreconcilably different interpretations than the problem of the meaning and significance of the coronation oath of 1308. Divergent interpretations began in the seventeenth century, and they have continued to provide the substance of an interesting historiographical problem ever since. It is doubtful whether complete agreement on all of the specific questions raised by the oath will ever be reached, but at the present stage of debate there are still questions which have neither been raised nor answered. The purpose of this paper is to raise one of these questions and, by providing an answer, to narrow further the limits within which there is still disagreement concerning the oath which Edward II swore at his coronation.


1975 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Waterhouse

Historians have undertaken a number of specific investigations concerning the social, economic and geographic backgrounds, as well as their motives for emigrating, of those men and women who emigrated from England to Massachusetts, Virginia and Barbados during the course of the seventeenth century. While they have discussed the origins of the South Carolina charter, described the social and political status of the eight proprietors, dissected the Fundamental Constitutions, and examined the means by which the successful settlement of 1670 was organized, historians have neglected to explore the social backgrounds of those men who emigrated directly from England to South Carolina during the colony's initial decades of settlement. In contrast, not only the political but also the social and economic backgrounds of the Barbadian planters who colonized South Carolina have been the subject of a number of historical studies.


1916 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 654-682 ◽  
Author(s):  
James G. Randall

When the British parliament passed a vote extending the life of the existing house of commons, whose duration would otherwise have terminated in January, 1916, their action attracted little attention and aroused but slight opposition. The forces of the empire, engaged in a desperate war, must not be dissipated by an appeal to the people, with the consequent evils of electioneering. Yet to the student of politics this action has a profound interest. One of the cardinal features of the legislation of 1911 had been the quinquennial duration of parliament—a provision which, as the debates show, was essential to the whole compromise. Yet in an unforeseen crisis, the legislature by its own resolution could provide an extension of its life, and thus postpone the date of accountability to the people. No political measure could furnish so striking a test of the flexibility of the British system, its adaptibility to emergencies, and its reliance upon a practically omnipotent legislature.In this paper we shall trace the principal statutes which limit the parliamentary term and the intervals between parliamentary sessions. There are five such laws, each bearing a date full of significance in English constitutional history. The first three statutes, passed in 1641, 1664, and 1694, were triennial acts, though in different senses; the fourth statute, passed in 1716, was the familiar septennial act under which parliaments were so long regulated; the last permanent legislation on the subject was the parliament act of 1911 fixing a five-year maximum duration, and it still remains law though temporarily suspended in 1916.


Author(s):  
Torrance Kirby

This chapter discusses the theological affinity between the Elizabethan church and Peter Martyr Vermigli, the Italian reformer who spent his later career in Zurich. Vermigli’s thought did not simply migrate from the continent to England. The discussion notes that Vermigli’s English experience as an exile was formative for the development of his political theology and that the English monarchy left an imprint on his subsequent Old Testament commentaries on the subject of kingship. Scottish Covenanters and English puritans in the early seventeenth century nonetheless continued to find the work of Zurich reformers useful for refuting episcopacy. If the political theology of Vermigli was agreeable to the Elizabethan church, conformists associated Calvinism with political sedition on the grounds that reformation in Geneva was born out of revolution.


1936 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaillard Lapsley

The following notes were put together in response to a suggestion that workers in other fields might be interested to hear something of our problems and the solutions we are finding for them. I have addressed myself to such readers and have tried to avoid both the minute and the technical. I have confined myself to four topics largely from considerations of space. An article that covered the whole ground could have been little more than a select bibliography, and what I thought was wanted in this case was an indication of what the books contained. The selected topics have been chosen partly with reference to the amount and importance of the work that has recently been devoted to them, and partly because of their special relevance to the subject in hand. Thus much could have been said of the very interesting development of views as to origins and the pre-conquest period in general or of the important advances that have been made in the understanding of revenue, taxation and finance, but it will probably be agreed that these had to make way for such subjects as constitutional theory and parliament. Reasons for certain other obvious omissions will be given later.


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