Republicanism : a shared European heritage

‘Godly Violence: Military Providentialism in the Puritan Atlantic World, 1636–1676’ Matthew Patrick Rowley This thesis recounts the Puritan struggle for military hegemony and the more difficult contest for an authoritative interpretation of divine communications through war. It asks a simple question: What did Puritans (‘the godly’) say God did in warfare; and how did they claim to know? I have given the term ‘military providentialism’ to the attempt to understand God’s will and agency in war; ‘godly violence’ to the conclusion that an act of killing was both just and holy. These twin themes are explored by looking at Puritan warfare against four groups: Native Americans, royalist Episcopalians, Irish Catholics and Scottish Presbyterians. A situational case study approach is used to examine complex and competing providentialisms after decisive victories. The case studies bear witness to the complicated relationship between texts, beliefs, circumstances and actions. It also evidences the immense energy and creativity that went into dynamic and richly textured beliefs about God and warfare. Five victories are examined: Mystic Massacre (1637), Battle of Naseby (1645), Siege of Drogheda (1649), Battle of Dunbar (1650) and the Great Swamp Fight (1675). This is the first comprehensive study of the providence surrounding these decisive victories. In the case of Naseby, Dunbar and Drogheda, none have given a detailed study of providentialism. Scholars have paid careful attention to the theology of the Mystic Massacre and the Great Swamp Fight. The primary contribution of the New England chapters is to compare the theology of killing Native Americans with that used against other enemies. These cross-conflict case studies facilitate many comparisons, some of which are explored in the concluding chapter. Additionally, the conclusion makes two contributions: it argues for a new understanding of the relationship between justice and holiness and for a deeper understanding of the function of Scripture and providence in conflict.

Godly Violence: Military Providentialism In The Puritan Atlantic World, 1636–1676

This illuminating new study considers the Bible as a political document in seventeenth-century England, revealing how the religious text provided a key language of political debate and played a critical role in shaping early modern political thinking. Kevin Killeen demonstrates how biblical kings were as important in the era's political thought as any classical model. The book mines the rich and neglected resources of early modern quasi-scriptural writings - treatise, sermon, commentary, annotation, poetry and political tract - to show how deeply embedded this political vocabulary remained, across the century, from top to bottom and across all religious positions. It shows how constitutional thought, in this most tumultuous era of civil war, regicide and republic, was forged on the Bible, and how writers ranging from King James, Joseph Hall or John Milton to Robert Filmer and Thomas Hobbes can be better understood in the context of such vigorous biblical discourse.

The Political Bible in Early Modern England

An extended study of gender and crime in early modern England. It considers the ways in which criminal behaviour and perceptions of criminality were informed by ideas about gender and order, and explores their practical consequences for the men and women who were brought before the criminal courts. Dr Walker's innovative approach demonstrates that, contrary to received opinion, the law was often structured so as to make the treatment of women and men before the courts incommensurable. For the first time, early modern criminality is explored in terms of masculinity as well as femininity. Illuminating the interactions between gender and other categories such as class and civil war have implications not merely for the historiography of crime but for the social history of early modern England as a whole. This study therefore goes beyond conventional studies, and challenges hitherto accepted views of social interaction in the period.

http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam033/2002035186.pdf

Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England

Drawing on more than 20 years of anthropological and historical research in northern Portugal, this article explores the temporal dimensions of womens and mens lives in rural agricultural societies. The first part critically evaluates the process by which lives are reconstructed in time using both written and ethnographic records, looking particularly at methods of transcription, translation, and transformation. The second part explores how a multiplicity of records can be used to construct a narrative about culturally meaningful turning points in the lives of men and women. Three topics that are meaningful in the ethnographic and historical context of northern Portugal are explored: migration, marriage and family formation, and inheritance. The paper compares differences in the sequencing of these events in the lives of men and women and in the synchrony or asynchrony of personal time in relation to family time. Whenever relevant, the data on Portugal are compared with those from other parts of Western Europe.

Gendered Lives: Transitions and Turning Points in Personal, Family, and Historical Time

By 1648 in England many of parliament's supporters believed that peace was as far away as ever. The members of parliament who had declared they were fighting to rescue the king from the hands of his evil counsellors may have rethought their views about the personal responsibility of the king, but they still believed that the only viable settlement would be one based upon agreement between king and parliament. Consequently they had dispatched, with wearisome monotony, negotiators and messengers with propositions for peace to the king. Their initiatives were always destroyed in the last resort because Charles refused the terms offered, but apart from governing without him for the time being, the members of parliament could think of nothing else but a settlement based on agreement with Charles. The political thinking of the majorities in both Houses was bound by convention: a king was essential. Outside parliament, pamphleteers had questioned the importance of the king, but parliament's view was not seriously threatened until 1647 when it showed itself incapable of settling the kingdom and the Army showed a willingness to intervene in politics. The outbreak of the second Civil War in 1648 convinced the soldiers that parliament's policies of either seeking terms with the king or of ignoring him were alike futile and dangerous. So long as Charles remained alive, at the center of royalist hopes, so long would wars continue and lives be lost. At this point the Army spoke of the king in a new way.

“Charles Stuart, That Man of Blood”*

Women and Property: Women as Property

Historians, Women and the Civil War Sects, 1640 - 1660

The concept of blood guilt, the necessity of avenging the shedding of innocent blood, and the sense that the shedding of blood polluted not only the land but the whole people were crucial ideas that shaped thinking in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Army called upon the biblical precedent of blood vengeance to justify the regicide of Charles I in 1649; to accuse him of shedding the blood of innocent subjects was to find a legitimate motive and an Old Testament mandate to kill him. Even after executing those who had signed the king’s death warrant, royalists continued to pray that the nation would not suffer punishment for shedding the king’s innocent blood.

Patricia Crawford

Papers

“Charles Stuart, That Man of Blood”*

Women and Property: Women as Property

Historians, Women and the Civil War Sects, 1640 - 1660

Charles stuart, that man of blood