Roger L'Estrange (1616-1704) was one of the most remarkable, significant and colourful figures in seventeenth-century England. Whilst there has been regular, if often cursory, scholarly interest in his activities as Licenser and Stuart apologist, this is the first sustained book-length study of the man for almost a century. L'Estrange's engagement on the Royalist side during the Civil war, and his energetic pamphleteering for the return of the King in the months preceding the Restoration earned him a reputation as one of the most radical royalist apologists. As Licenser for the Press under Charles II, he was charged with preventing the printing and publication of dissenting writings; his additional role as Surveyor of the Press authorised him to search the premises of printers and booksellers on the mere suspicion of such activity. He was also a tireless pamphleteer, journalist, and controversialist in the conformist cause, all of which made him the bête noire of Whigs and non-conformists. This collection of essays by leading scholars of the period highlights the instrumental role L'Estrange played in the shaping of the political, literary, and print cultures of the Restoration period. Taking an interdisciplinary approach the volume covers all the major aspects of his career, as well as situating them in their broader historical and literary context. By examining his career in this way the book offers insights that will prove of worth to political, social, religious and cultural historians, as well as those interested in seventeenth-century literary and book history.

A new perspective on the interaction of science, religion and politics in Restoration England, based on discussion of Cumberland's De legibus naturae. Richard Cumberland is one of the seventeenth century's most interesting political theorists. His masterpiece, the De legibus naturae(1672), has rarely been examined on its own terms, but by tracing the political, religiousand intellectual circumstances of the composition of this puzzling work, and showing its importance as a critique of Thomas Hobbes, author of the Leviathan, Dr Parkin demonstrates how Cumberland created a new political andethical theory which absorbed and neutralised many of Hobbes's insights. He also examines the science of the Royal Society as a basis for Cumberland's natural law theory and its influence on such thinkers as Samuel Pufendorf and John Locke. Overall, the book provides an important new perspective on the interaction of science, religion and politics in Restoration England. Dr JON PARKIN teaches in the Department of History at King's College, London.

The 70 years of late Stuart and early Hanoverian Britain following 1680 were a crucial period in British politics and society, seeing the growth both of political parties and of stability. This collection of original essays provides a coherent account of Britain in the 'First Age of Party'.

The Oxford Handbook of Restoration Literature begins by asking if there was a distinctive literature of the Restoration. For a long time, the answer seemed obvious: heroic drama, libertine comedy, scandalous lyrics, and the short but brilliant career of John Wilmot, earl of Rochester. Could there be an age when the coincidence of literary culture and political rule were any more obvious? But as this Handbook will remind us, some of the most wonderful literature of this Restoration came from writers who had lived across the decades of turbulence and into an age when the Stuart kings returned, when the Church and House of Lords were restored, a world made safe for bishops and for the memory of divine right rule. Of course, these returns and restorations did not meet with uniform celebration. John Milton wrote his great epic poems not in quiet submission but in a kind of resistance to the dominant culture of the 1660s, and Andrew Marvell produced his most brilliant satiric verse by holding up a looking glass to court corruption and Anglican intolerance. So we begin with the most obvious conclusion: Restoration literature does and does not fit to the categories that so long defined the late Stuart age. This book explores and contests, challenges and reimagines the experience embodied by the writing of the late Stuart world and invites readers new to this world and those who have often read its literatures to the pleasures but as well to the challenges and discomforts of its texts.

Honoring the memory of Professor Alan Everitt, who advanced the fruitful notion of the county community during the 17th century, this volume proposes some modifications to Everitt's influential hypotheses in the light of the best recent scholarship. With an important reevaluation of political engagement in civil war Kent and an assessment of numerous midland and southern counties as well as Wales, this record evaluates the extraordinary impact of Everitt's book and the debate it provoked. Comprehensive and enlightening, this collection suggests future directions for research into the relationship between the center and localities in 17th-century England.

The career of George Joachim Goschen illuminates many of the problems faced by the British ruling classes the in the late nineteenth century.

A sensitive analysis of the thought and intellectual development of G. D. H. Cole (1889-1959) the distinguished Labour historian. Cole's career is traced from his earliest days in the Labour movement to his final years as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Thought at Oxford. Professor Carpenter examines Cole's role in the creation of Guild Socialism; his work in the early 1920s when after the decline of Guild Socialism, he turned towards the analysis of policies, research through the New Statesman and the New Fabian Research Bureau and teaching at Oxford; his attempts to provide a policy for the Left in the 1930s, the idea of economic planning and the Popular Front; his activities during the Second World War; and his place in the debates over the Labour movement's cause after the 1945 government. Finally Professor Carpenter discusses Cole's courageous recognition, towards the end of his life, that Socialism had not come and his attempts to start a new cycle of research in one of the first efforts to create a New Left.

The first study of the career of H. W. Massingham, an outstanding journalist early in the twentieth century when editors were often ranked equal in significance with ministers of state. Massingham featured most significantly in the history of the press as editor of the Star, the Daily Chronicle and finally the Nation. Professor Havighurst demonstrates Missingham's central position by arguing that he played a more important role in the formation of 'progressivism' in the period 1888-92 than even the Fabian Society. Massingham's clash with the Fabians is examined, along with his gradual disillusionment with Rosebery, his influence upon important questions of public opinion, his connection and his subsequent contact with Ramsay MacDonald. The influence of journalists is frequently alleged but is often unproved; this biography provides a detailed assessment of the impact of a major journalist and is a complete and fascinating account of an extremely important political figure. It will appeal to specialists in political and social history and the history of journalism.

Mark Goldie's authoritative and highly readable introduction to the political and religious landscape of Britain during the turbulent era of later Stuart rule.