Presents a history of a period productive of grave national results for Ireland, and destined to influence the course of the British Empire. Specific attention is paid to Irish patriotism, the Tudor system and the peace negotiations.

This Handbook brings together leading historians of the events surrounding the English revolution, exploring how the events of the revolution grew out of, and resonated, in the politics and interactions of the each of the Three Kingdoms - England, Scotland, and Ireland. It captures a shared British and Irish history, comparing the significance of events and outcomes across the Three Kingdoms. In doing so, the Handbook offers a broader context for the history of the Scottish Covenanters, the Irish Rising of 1641, and the government of Confederate Ireland, as well as the British and Irish perspective on the English civil wars, the English revolution, the Regicide, and Cromwellian period. The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution explores the significance of these events on a much broader front than conventional studies. The events are approached not simply as political, economic, and social crises, but as challenges to the predominant forms of religious and political thought, social relations, and standard forms of cultural expression. The contributors provide up-to-date analysis of the political happenings, considering the structures of social and political life that shaped and were re-shaped by the crisis. The Handbook goes on to explore the long-term legacies of the crisis in the Three Kingdoms and their impact in a wider European context.

The New Scots, the men of the army the Scottish covenanters sent to Ireland, were the most formidable opponents of the Irish confederates for several crucial years in the 1640s, preventing them conquering all Ireland and destroying the Protestant plantation in Ulster. The greatest challenge to the power of the covenanters in Scotland at a time when they seemed invincible came from a largely Irish army, sent to Scotland by the confederates and commanded by the royalist marquis of Montrose. Thus the relations of Scotland and Ireland are clearly of great importance in understanding the complex 'War of the Three Kingdoms' and the interactions of the civil wars and revolutions of England, Scotland and Ireland in the mid-seventeenth century. But though historians have studied Anglo-Scottish and Anglo-Irish relations extensively, Scottish-Irish relations have been largely neglected. Scottish Covenanters and Irish Confederates attempts to fill this gap, and in doing so provides the first comprehensive study of the Scottish Army in Ireland.

This illuminating collection of essays assesses the 17th century, interpreting what used to be called "The Puritan Revolution," the ideas which helped to produce it and resulted from it, and the relations between these ideas and the political events of the day.

'Technically this book is a masterly achievement: the collection, sorting, selecting and balancing of material has meant an immense amount of hard and highly skilful work. The presentation is not only learned but cool, objective, unimpassioned and yet almost always alive and compassionate as well . . . As a reference book alone it is immensely valuable . . . As an example of a humane, scholarly, expert history, Professor Beckett's book will be difficult to surpass.' D. B. Quinn, Belfast Telegraph '[He] has brilliantly succeeded. The book is admirably constructed and written with clarity and economy which carry the narrative unflaggingly through to the end . . . This excellent book supersedes all previous histories of modern Ireland.' F. S. L. Lyons, New Statesman

This illuminating collection of essays assesses the seventeenth century, interpreting what used to be called 'The Puritan Revolution', the ideas which helped to produce it and resulted from it, and the relation between these ideas and the political and economic events of the day. Each essay approaches the subject from a different angle, looking at aspects of the revolution - whether religious, constitutional, economic or biographical - in conjunction with a lively sympathy for the men who lived in that revolutionary time. Analysing the writings of Marvell, Hobbes, Harrington and Samuel Richardson, as well as less 'respectable' writers, Professor Hill examines the legacy of the Reformation and the inspiration provided by ideals like the Brotherhood of Man and the desire to re-create a pre-Norman Golden Age. A book that no serious student of our history should miss; it is a treasury of interesting detail and strong ideas, CV Wedgwood.

Catholicism's impact in Northern Ireland--For sale in the U.S., its dependencies, & Canada only.

The English Civil Wars and Revolution remain controversial. This book develops the theme that the Revolution, arising from the three separate rebellions, was an English phenomenon exported to Ireland and then to Scotland. Dr Kennedy examines the widespread effects of years of bloody and unnatural civil wars upon the British Isles. He also explores the symbolism of Charles I's execution, the 'great debates' about the proper limits of the King's authority and the 'great divide' in English politics which makes neutral writing about this period impossible. Taking into account the radical exigencies and expectations of war and peace-making, the discordant testimonies from battlefield and bargaining table, Parliament, press and pulpit, Dr Kennedy provides a full analysis of the English experience of revolution.

The Court and the Country (1969) offers a fresh view and synthesis of the English revolution of 1640. It describes the origin and development of the revolution, and gives an account of the various factors – political, social and religious – that produced the revolution and conditioned its course. It explains the revolution primarily as a result of the breakdown of the unity of the governing class around the monarchy into the contending sides of the Court and the Country. A principal theme is the formation within the governing class of an opposition movement to the Crown. The role of Puritanism and of the towns is examined, and the resistance to Charles I is considered in relation to other European revolutions of the period.

The success of the Irish Counter-Reformation was a crucial development in the history of the island and subsequently a vital component in the troubled relationship between Ireland and Britain. For centuries the politics of the archipelago have been affected by conflicts whose deepest roots are located in the religious changes of the seventeenth century. This book offers a scholarly and dramatic reappraisal of a central episode in the extension of Catholic reform to the island, the papal nunciature of GianBattista Rinuccini. Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin situates Rinuccini's mission in its wider European context, and provides an entirely new perspective, not only on the man at the heart of events during the turbulent 1640s, but also on the seventeenth-century penetration of Catholic reform into Ireland and on the Irish theatre of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.