England's Troubles Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context

Seventeenth-century English history is known best for "the English Civil War" and "the English Revolution." This highly original and wide-ranging study analyzes and explains both of these major historical events, and others, by setting them in their wider contexts in relation to political instability across the century; in relation to the history of religions and political ideas; and in relation to contemporary European events.

In this path-breaking study, first published in 2000, Jonathan Scott argues that seventeenth-century English history was shaped by three processes. The first was destructive: that experience of political instability which contemporaries called 'our troubles'. The second was creative: its spectacular intellectual consequence in the English revolution. The third was reconstructive: the long restoration voyage toward safe haven from these terrifying storms. Driving the troubles were fears and passions animated by European religious and political developments. The result registered the impact upon fragile institutions of powerful beliefs. One feature of this analysis is its relationship of the history of events to that of ideas. Another is its consideration of these processes across the century as a whole. The most important is its restoration of this extraordinary English experience to its European context.

Preface; Introduction: experience other than our own; 1. The shape of the seventeenth century; Part I. England's Troubles, 1618–89: Political Instability: 2. Taking contemporary belief seriously; 3. The unreformed polity; 4. Reformation politics (1) 1618–41; 5. Counter-reformation England; 6. Reformation politics (2) 1637–6; 7. Restoration memory; 8. Restoration crisis 1678–83; 9. Invasion 1688–9; Part II. The English Revolution 1640–89: Radical Imagination: 10. The shape of the English Revolution; 11. Radical reformation (1): the power of love; 12. Radical reformation (2): outward bondage; 13. Radical renaissance (1): after monarchy; 14. Radical renaissance (2): republican moral philosophy and the politics of settlement; 15. Radical restoration (1): the subjected plaine; 16. Radical restoration (2): the old cause; Part III. Restoration 1660–1702: Reconstruction and Statebuilding: 17. Restoration process; 18. First restoration 1660–78; 19. 'Second Restauration' 1679–85; 20. Third restoration 1688–94; 21. Anglo-Dutch statebuilding.

Seventeenth-century English history is known best for 'the English Civil War' and 'the English Revolution'. This study, first published in 2000, analyses and explains both events, and others, by setting them in their wider contexts in relation to political instability, the history of religions and political ideas, and contemporary European events.