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This thesis examines the missionary work of the Italian Capuchin Lorenzo da Brindisi. Renowned in his own day as a preacher, Bible scholar, missionary, chaplain, and diplomat, as well as vicar general of his Order, Lorenzo led the first organised, papally-commissioned Capuchin mission among the non-Catholics of Bohemia in the Holy Roman Empire from 1599 to 1602, and returned there, again under papal mandate, from 1606 to 1613. This thesis examines Lorenzo’s evangelistic and polemical activities in Central Europe in order to shed light on some of the ways the Capuchins laboured in religiously divided territories to confirm Catholics in their faith and to win over heretics. The introduction explains, principally, the thesis’s purpose and the historiographical background. Chapter one provides a brief biographical sketch of Lorenzo’s life followed by details of his afterlife. Chapter two examines his leading role in establishing the Capuchins’ new Commissariate of Bohemia-Austria-Styria in 1600, and specifically its first three friaries in Prague, Vienna, and Graz. Chapter three treats his preaching against heresy. Chapter four focuses on how Lorenzo, while in Prague, involved himself directly in theological disputations with two different Lutheran preachers. The first dispute, with Polykarp Leyser, took place in July 1607, and dealt with good works and justification. The second, with a Lutheran whose name is not known for certain, and which occurred in August 1610, concerned Catholic veneration of the Virgin Mary. Chapter five analyses the Lutheranismi hypotyposis, Lorenzo’s literary refutation of Lutheranism following additional contact with Polykarp Leyser in 1607. The conclusion considers briefly the effectiveness of Lorenzo’s apostolate and closes with a review of the thesis as a whole.

This thesis examines attitudes toward infertility in early modern England and colonial New England from c.1620 to 1720 through infertility’s representation in contemporary medical, religious, and literary sources. This study uses an expanded definition of infertility, namely a 'spectrum of infertility', to capture the tensions that arose during periods of infertility and experiences of reproductive failure such as miscarriages, stillbirths, monstrous births, and false conceptions. A spectrum, more than a modern definition, more accurately represents the range of bodily conditions experienced by early modern women and men that indicated reproductive disorder in the body; by extension, the language of infertility expressed fears about disorder in times of social, religious, and political crisis in early modern society. The two societies' relationship was often described through reproductive language and the language of infertility appears in both societies when order - within the body, within marriages, or within and between communities - was threatened. This thesis contributes to a growing body of scholarship on infertility in early modern society by analysing its presence in communications within and between early modern England and colonial New England. It argues that understanding the English origins of the colonists' attitudes toward infertility is fundamental both to understanding the close connection between the two societies and to providing context for the colonists' perceptions about their encounters with new lands, bodies, environments, and reasons for emigration. As a result, this thesis seeks to break new ground in providing an overview of social, medical, and cultural reactions in both England and New England, demonstrating that similar language and tropes were used in both regions to communicate concerns about infertility. Exploring the interplay between the many sources addressing this health issue more accurately represents the complexity of early modern attitudes toward infertility, and the intimacy of the relationship between the fledgling New England colonies and their metaphorical Mother England.

This thesis presents a new study of Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1696), with special reference to Bayle’s polemical engagement with the theologian Pierre Jurieu. While recent years have seen a surge of interest in Bayle, there is as yet no consensus on how to interpret Bayle’s ambiguous stance on reason and religion, and how to make sense of the Dictionnaire: although specific parts of the Dictionnaire have received much scholarly attention, the work has hardly been studied as a whole, and little is known about how the Dictionnaire was influenced by Bayle’s polemic with Jurieu. This thesis aims to establish a new method for reading the Dictionnaire, under a dual premise: first, that the work can only be rightly understood when placed within the immediate context of its production in the 1690s; second, that it is only through an appreciation of the mechanics of the work as a whole, and of the role played by its structural and stylistic particularities, that we can attain an appropriate interpretation of its parts. Special attention is paid to the heated theological-political conflict between Bayle and Jurieu in the 1690s, which had a profound influence on the project of the dictionary and on several of its major themes, such as the tensions in the relationship between the intellectual sphere of the Republic of Letters and the political state, but also the danger of religious fanaticism spurring intolerance and war. The final chapters demonstrate that Bayle’s clash with Jurieu was also one of the driving forces behind Bayle’s reflection on the problem of evil; they expose the fundamentally problematic nature of both Bayle’s theological association with Jurieu, and his self-defence in the second edition of the Dictionnaire. The title of this thesis comes from Herman Melville’s novel: ‘Pierre, or the Ambiguities’.

Research on English Catholic Music after the Reformation has focused almost entirely on a small number of Catholic composers and households in England. The music of the English Catholic colleges, convents, monasteries and seminaries that were established in Continental Europe, however, has been almost entirely overlooked. The chief aim of this thesis is to reconstruct the musical practices of these institutions from the Reformation until 1700, in order to arrive at a clearer understanding of the nature of music in the post-Reformation English Catholic community. To this end, four institutions have been selected to serve as case studies: 1. The Secular English College, Douai. 2. St Alban’s College, Valladolid. 3. The Benedictine Monastery of Our Lady of the Assumption, Brussels. 4. The Augustinian Monastery of Our Lady of Nazareth, Bruges. The music of these institutions is evaluated in two ways: firstly, as a means of constructing, reflecting and forming English Catholic identity, and secondly, in terms of the range of influences (both English and Continental) that shaped its stylistic development. The thesis concludes that as a result of the peculiarly domestic nature of religious practice among Catholics in England, and interactions with Continental Catholicism, the aesthetic and ideological bases for English Catholic music were markedly different from those of its Protestant counterpart. The marked influence of Italianate styles on the sacred music of English Catholic composers and institutions in exile demonstrates a simultaneous process of cultural alignment with the aesthetic and theological principles of the Counter-Reformation, and dissociation from those of English Protestantism. Finally, it is clear that music was an important formational tool in both the seminaries and convents, where it shaped both community and self-identity, and created affinities with the locales in which these institutions were situated – although it is also clear that these uses of music had the potential to conflict.

Despite a wealth of scholarship on the Tudors’ printed and visual propaganda, little has been written on how the population received this material. Doubts over how far either media penetrated a largely illiterate society with questionable access to the visual arts have likely been partly responsible, but as studies increasingly disprove these assumptions the need to address this gap becomes more pressing. After establishing that the governments from Henry VIII to Elizabeth were interested, to varying extents, in propagating particular messages to their subjects, this thesis employs a diverse range of sources to analyse popular responses to official pamphlets, portraits and other visual iconography. Primarily using inventories, the ownership of these different types is examined, in particular exploring the mixed motives that underlay the display of monarchical portraits and royal devices. Broadly positive reactions to propaganda are then discussed, similarly uncovering the different, potentially subversive reasons that drove people to accept government materials. The evidence of marginalia in surviving copies of polemical works is then used to show both the different approaches taken to reading official books, and how people engaged with several specific pamphlets, illuminating the success of particular arguments and propagandistic techniques. Finally, negative reactions to government images and books are investigated, highlighting not only opposition but, conversely, more evidence of propaganda’s positive impact. Analysing reception in these ways not only permits judgements about the extent and nature of propaganda’s success; it also provides valuable insights into important historiographical debates, like the progress of the English Reformation and the potential emergence of a public sphere, besides more generally revealing widely-held attitudes that underpinned sixteenth-century society and conditioned the relationship between rulers and ruled.

This thesis investigates the ceremonial and artistic strategies of the British monarchy in the years following the Glorious Revolution. By adopting a range of methodologies used in the study of visual culture, the thesis considers royal ceremonies as channels for conveying political messages non-verbally. These could affect attitudes to the monarchy, and inform artistic output. By paying particular attention to the way royal participants performed ceremonially in relation to the various formal and informal architectural settings for the court, the thesis highlights the process of seeing as a communicative act. Being alert to the impact of royal ceremonial and artistic activities on contemporary audiences, the thesis also considers the dissemination of royal imagery in England by commercial means. The thesis surveys paintings, prints and medals produced in England, and places the intended audiences at the centre of the analysis. It also pays keen attention to the impact of war on royal image making, and highlights the political context of continental Europe, especially in relation to William’s role as Stadholder-King but also the exiled Stuart court at St Germain near Paris. The evidence presented here supports a number of conclusions. Firstly, war had a profound impact on all aspects of royal image making. Secondly, royal behaviour and involvement in ceremony were vital elements in the visual presentation of monarchy. Kings and queens were of paramount importance, but their consorts were highly significant. Art was also taken seriously by the monarchy and the Crown tightened controls on royal image making during the period in question. The thesis also concludes that the nationalities of the incumbent monarchs and their consorts, along with their previous experiences and personalities, influenced their individual approach to visual representation. These approaches could shift depending on political circumstances and the personal inclinations of the person concerned.

Pierre de L'Estoile (1546-1611) kept an extraordinary diary and collection in Paris during the Wars of Religion, recording everything from high-political scandals to low-life criminality during this crucial turning point in early modern history. The first extensive study of L'Estoile in any language, this thesis demonstrates how he negotiated and commemorated the conflicts that divided France as he engaged creatively with the rumours, ephemeral prints, poems, pictures, and books that he assembled in his diary and cabinet. It argues that the story of his life and times is the history of the civil wars in the making. While historians and literary scholars depend on L’Estoile’s diaries as an essential source of information, citing him as a mere passive observer, this thesis instead explores his subjectivity and interprets a wide range of hitherto unseen or neglected manuscript evidence that situates him in the Parisian society of royal office-holders and demonstrates his significance in the republic of letters. It follows a microhistorical approach to L'Estoile and his world in order to challenge established interpretations of his sources as evidence of a widespread mentality of eschatological anxiety in sixteenth-century France, instead focusing on L’Estoile’s personal responses to pieces in his collection. In this way, it critiques a common trend in cultural history to roam freely among ‘collective representations’ and argues for the importance of a precise analysis of social context, materiality, and individual subjectivity in reception studies.

This thesis examines the interweaving metaphorical and material aspects of shipwreck in Renaissance French writing. In a period marked by proliferating transatlantic and other exploration on the one hand, and, on the other, by religious civil wars, the ship was freighted with new political and religious, as well as poetic, significance. This rich symbolism reaches its height in the moments where ships—both real and symbolic—are threatened with disaster. The thesis demonstrates that shipwreck does not function merely as an emblem or poetic motif, but as a part, or the whole, of significant modes of narrative. Shipwreck in this period is rarely, if ever, recounted as a purely aesthetic embellishment: the ethics of spectatorship and of co-operation are of constant concern. I argue that the possibility of ethical distance from shipwreck—imagined through the Lucretian suave mari magno commonplace—is constantly undermined, not least through a sustained focus on the corporeal. Examining the ways in which the ship and the body are made analogous in Renaissance shipwreck writing, I show how bodies are allegorised in nautical terms, and, conversely, how ships themselves become animalised and humanised. Secondly, in many of the texts in my corpus it is shown or anticipated that the description, narration and dramatisation of shipwreck has an impact not only on the bodies of its victims, but on those of spectators, listeners, and readers, too. This insistence on the physicality of shipwreck is also reflected in the dynamic of bricolage that, I argue, informs the production of shipwreck texts in the Renaissance. The dramatic potential of both the disaster and the processes of rebuilding is exploited throughout the century, culminating, as I show, in a shipwreck tragedy. By the late Renaissance, shipwreck is not only the end of a story; it forms, more often than not, its beginning.

This study examines the role of history in the writings of the English deists, a group of heterodox religious controversialists who were active from the last quarter of the seventeenth century until the middle of the eighteenth century. Its main sources are the published works of the deists and their opponents, but it also draws, where possible, on manuscript sources. Not all of the deists were English (one was Irish and another was of Welsh extraction), but the term ‘English Deists’ has been used on the grounds that the majority of deists were English and that they published overwhelmingly in England and in English. It shows that the deists not only disagreed with their orthodox opponents about the content of sacred history, but also about the relationship between religious truth and historical evidence. Chapter 1 explains the entwining of theology and history in early Christianity, how the connection between them was understood by early modern Christians, and how developments in orthodox learning set the stage for the appearance of deism in the latter decades of the seventeenth century. Each of the following three chapters is devoted to a different line of argument which the deists employed against orthodox belief. Chapter 2 examines the argument that certain propositions were meaningless, and therefore neither true nor false irrespective of any historical evidence which could be marshalled in their support, as it was used by John Toland and Anthony Collins. Chapter 3 traces the argument that the actions ascribed to God in sacred history might be unworthy of his goodness, beginning with Samuel Clarke’s first set of Boyle Lectures and then progressing through the writings of Thomas Chubb, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Morgan, and William Warburton. Chapter 4 charts the decline of the category of certain knowledge in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the rise of probability theory, and the effect of these developments on the deists’ views about the reliability of historical evidence. Chapter 5 is a case-study, which reads Anthony Collins’s Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724) in light of the findings of the earlier chapters. Finally, a coda provides a conspectus of the state of the debate in the middle decades of the eighteenth century, focusing on the work of four writers: Peter Annet, David Hume, Conyers Middleton, and Edward Gibbon.

The aim of the present study is to paint an overall picture of how Voltaire interacted with the books that made up his personal library. Situated at the crossroads between history of the book, literary history and literary studies in the standard meaning of the term, it seeks to deepen our understanding of the ways in which Voltaire used his books and of the different types of notes that he left in them. These notes are of course texts in themselves – short ones, to be sure, but texts all the same – and their material, literary and polemical significance have never before been studied in depth. We begin by classifying the marginalia according to the function they seem to have played for Voltaire and, based on their material characteristics, by developing methodologies to analyse these short manuscripts, along with the non-verbal markings that accompany them. An analysis follows of the ways in which Voltaire used the white spaces in his books, then of the links that can be established between the signs of his reading and the genesis of his published works. Finally, we study the poetics of the marginal notes as well as the dynamics at work in the annotated library as a whole. Throughout, Voltaire’s notes and reading habits are placed in the context of the critical literature that has grown up around the subject of marginalia. Along the way, we compare his marginal notes to those of other literary figures of the period, for the subject of this study is clearly the marginalia of a writer, which are necessarily inextricably linked to his principal activity – writing. Indeed, one might speak of an interpenetration, of a blurring of boundaries between reading and writing. Beyond the marks of Voltaire's reading, the study of marginalia raises questions that are relevant for other non-canonical and paratextual materials. To place them in the spotlight transforms their status, and a note that was 'marginal' comes to be considered a text in its own right.

Traditionally, Arthur Johnston has been judged proxime accessit to George Buchanan in the world of Scottish neo-Latin poetry, and particularly in the versification of the Book of Psalms. The thesis offers a counterpoint to that theme. More of his poetry came under scrutiny at the close of the nineteenth century, when an edition of his Parerga and Epigrammata of 1632, turned scholarly attention to his secular poems. This study examines the poems written between 1599 and 1622 during Johnston’s peregrenatio academica in Europe – poems which depict him at the moment of his emergence onto the public stage, and which offer insights into his life, and the worlds he occupied, during those years. Part one of the thesis will examine his early years and his move into the academic world in Aberdeen and at Heidelberg University. Part two will consider the years he passed as a teacher of philosophy at the Huguenot Academy in Sedan, the independent principality on the northern border of France. It will look, too, at the evidence of his year spent in Padua, where he studied to become a physician. Part three will focus on the years 1619-22 when his longest secular poems were composed. He wrote and published with an eye to achieving a post in the medical circle around James VI and I. The thesis concludes by considering the retreat he made from Europe and London to his home in Aberdeen, and looks briefly at one of the small poems he wrote in 1623-24. Throughout, themes emerge of Johnston’s irenic preferences, and his response to the disturbance to intellectual life brought about by Calvinist division, and by the crisis heralded by the Bohemian Revolt.

If we consider the representation of the body in the epic-romances of Torquato Tasso, Philip Sidney, and Edmund Spenser, certain instances of wounding and laceration emerge as crucial turning points in the development of their respective narratives: Clorinda’s redemptive mutilation, Parthenia’s blood-drenched pallor, Amavia’s disquieting suicide, Venus’s insatiable orifice, Amoret’s “perfect hole.” This thesis affords a detailed comparative study of such passages, contending that the wound assumed a critical metaphoric dimension in sixteenth-century epic-romance literature, particularly in relation to the perceived association between body condition and erotic desire. Along with its function as a marker of martial valor and somatic sacredness, the wound, I argue, increasingly is designated in these epic-romances as an interiorizing apparatus, one liable to accrue at any instance into a surplus of unanticipated meaning. As such, the wound becomes an emblem in these texts of what I call the phenomenology of desire—the equation of consummation and loss—as well as the aesthetic and metaphoric mechanism by which these writers seek to overcome it. The four chapters of this thesis constitute individual but cumulative points of response to the problem of thinking about desire as a type of wound. For Tasso, a wound poses a challenge to physical, psychological, and spiritual integrity, but its remarkable capacity for aestheticization also allows Tasso to envision it as a synthesizer of sacred and erotic affects. For Sidney, the prospect that a wound could define a body as courageous or pathetic, as sacred or corrupt, became both politically and socially troubling, and the New Arcadia, I argue, proleptically attempts to defend Sidney against interpretations of wounds that register them as manifestations of corrupt desire. For Spenser, body fracture and erotic wounding are analogic (indeed, almost indistinguishable), and The Faerie Queene investigates the prospect that confusing these analogies can become an empowering, even revelatory experience. In each of these epic-romances, a wound serves both a literal and a figurative function and, in this way, is established as the foremost image by which these writers imagine strength and mutilation, affect and heroism, epic and romance as being inextricably bound.

This thesis considers the burlesque literary forms in the work of the seventeenth-century writer, Cyrano de Bergerac. It challenges current scholarship by looking beyond libertinism to consider the importance of Cyrano's comic writing practices. While it does not deny the philosophical and scientific focus of Cyrano's oeuvre, it suggests that the burlesque is a defining characteristic. By taking into account the literary context in which Cyrano was writing – notably the querelle des Lettres and the rise of the histoire comique – as well as looking at other comic writers that could have influenced Cyrano, and through close textual readings, this thesis reveals that burlesque forms are often used in excess in Cyrano's work – forms compete against forms – producing destructive effects; burlesque forms can, in effect, be self-defeating. This project then asks whether it is possible to consider Cyrano a comic writer at all. It does demonstrate, however, that, in ridiculing everyone and everything, Cyrano too makes a mockery of the very idea of a dissimulative text. In questioning the literary gesture that Cyrano makes through his battling burlesque forms, this thesis suggests that libertinism can appear to be one of many playful masks the author assumes in his work. Is Cyrano a burlesque libertine? If so, this thesis raises the wider question of whether there are other imposters within the ranks.

This thesis reconstructs and interprets the evolution of legal culture in the Saxon city of Freiberg in the sixteenth century. It challenges the notion that early modern state institutions were punitive and disciplinary; and instead posits that in Saxony, they were flexible and sought to maintain social harmony. While previous scholarship has favoured a sociological approach, based on the concept of social control, this thesis employs a legal anthropological optic to study the interaction of state institutions and social life holistically. The focus is not just on how state institutions sought to regulate social life, but also on how ordinary people used institutions for their diverse purposes. The goal of this methodological approach, based on Lawrence Friedman’s concept of legal culture, is to assess the relative position and interaction of the people, the judiciary, and the law in early modern Germany. Probing the interactions of the court and the residents of Freiberg reveals that the court was primarily a record-keeper and a mediator. For the former, it logged and transcribed all manner of transactions: peace pacts, loans, and house purchases; and Freibergers readily turned to the court to get a formal record of an obligation. For the latter, the court was rarely a site of punishment, rather it was a place where conflicts were regulated, and bonds forged. At court, Freibergers fostered ties to one another. Neither of these roles, record-keeper or mediator, are ones traditionally ascribed to early modern courts. Only by considering by the culture of a court does either become apparent.

This thesis investigates legal and political authority in mid-Tudor England, using the operation of the legal system in Oxfordshire and Berkshire in the period from 1540 to 1570 as a case study through which to give context and content to more abstract forms of contemporary political thought. It seeks to address the broad question: how did people experience the civil—as opposed to the criminal—legal system, and what does this tell us about their understanding of authority? In so doing, it aims to shed light on mid-Tudor attitudes towards legality, limited government and the rule of law. The argument of the thesis is built up piece by piece. First, people in the Thames Valley engaged in a remarkable, and increasing, amount of litigation over the period in question, much of which was based on antecedent commercial transactions. Encountering the law, whether in its litigious or transactional forms, was thus a very common social experience. Second, despite their frequent interaction with the legal system, ordinary people perhaps knew less about the technical law than some historians have suggested. Third, even if technical legal knowledge was not widespread among the population, the complicated map of overlapping jurisdictions and rival legal institutions meant that ordinary people nonetheless cultivated a detailed mental map of their legal world. Boundaries mattered because jurisdiction and legal authority mattered. Fourth, partly because of their own lack of detailed technical knowledge, and partly because of the complicated legal landscape which they had to navigate, people sought out legal advice from professional advisers. Fifth, even if people frequently sought out professional legal advice, many people’s experience of the law (and of lawyers) was far more negative than their desire to seek out such advice might suggest. Seen in this light, the social utility of legal institutions was quite separate from their ability to provide an idealised standard of abstract justice.

This thesis examines travel to continental Europe as undertaken by several generations of Irish Protestants between 1660 and 1727. Historians draw parallels between the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland and other polities in ancien régime Europe, but these demand an exploration of contemporary encounters. Research on the Irish in Europe concentrates on Catholics without much regard to Protestant experiences, while work on English or British travel overlooks ways in which Irish Protestant voyages differed. This thesis analyses the experiences of Church-of-Ireland families from the gentry, nobility and aristocracy, especially the Southwells, Percevals, Molesworths, Molyneuxs, Boyles and Butlers. Correspondence, notebooks and financial accounts reconstruct their voyages, mainly to France, Italy, the Low Countries and Germany, and their attitudes towards the practice of travel. Journeys to other destinations are incorporated, as are the voyages of neighbours, acquaintances and employees. Purposes varied, but travel was consistently considered an opportunity for 'improvement'. The thesis follows the successive preoccupations of travellers, beginning with demonstrations of 'fitness to travel'. Wealthy young men were judged according to criteria that privileged anglicisation and Protestantism, though linguistic skill was a more socially-comprehensive standard. Advisors emphasised civil conversation and written observation, but warnings to avoid 'countrymen' were ignored. The company of English-speaking travellers and Irish Catholic expatriates created distinctive European experiences. Foreign hosts often saw uncomplicated Englishmen, though some recognised Irish difference. Anglican travellers held qualified membership of a 'Protestant international', drawing on a cross-confessional 'stock of friends'. Travellers received tuition that complicates perceptions of travel as 'informal' education and they memorialised experiences through souvenirs and gifts. Voyages encouraged some into English residence and identifications, though others brought improvements home to Ireland. 'Improvement', as it related to wealthy Church-of-Ireland families, functioned not as a binary between approved England and disdained Ireland but a triangular exchange in which continental Europe featured prominently.

The general historiography of Stuart diplomacy has, by and large, argued that those who were tasked with carrying out foreign policy were ineffective, amateurish and, in some cases, incompetent. This harsh view is in need of reassessment in the light of a number of incidents, which suggest that much effective foreign policy and general diplomatic work was carried out by lower-ranking diplomats, who were titled agents. These agents have attracted little historical comment or study. This thesis sets out to redress this by considering the agents employed from 1603 to 1688, when the title disappeared due to rank inflation, duties transferred to consuls, and other factors. The texts of the period on the perfect ambassador leave clear omissions in descriptions of diplomatic work, which therefore suggests a role for another type of diplomat, the agent. The initial chapter looks at background and education and offers a portrait of an average agent as typically a well-educated member of the lower gentry. The terms under which agents served are compared with other professional groups of comparable social rank and those in other government positions. Agents’ work in information gathering, including where and from what sources they obtained material and how it was transmitted, is investigated. The existence of an efficient international network is uncovered. Agents’ role in negotiations, unconstrained by protocol, allowed them a greater degree of freedom than ambassadors. This and the element of deniability are key to understanding their importance to Stuart diplomacy. The task of protecting merchants’ rights is demonstrated by a case study in France which shows all the usual stages involved in resolving a dispute. Involvement in buying naval supplies and cultural transfer are also discussed in chapters concerned with agents’ practical activities. Finally, the careers pursued after their agencies are outlined, showing how some, such as Cottington, used their skills and knowledge to their advantage. Having demonstrated the differences amongst, and the utility of, agents it is possible to suggest that some of the criticism of Stuart diplomacy comes from a misunderstanding of the use of both agents and ambassadors, and how, when and why each could be employed for a specific task.

This thesis examines political culture in London, 1500–1550, by looking at different forms of political communication between the civic government and the city’s inhabitants, and at how these acts were situated within the urban environment. Based on the records of the civic government, the body of the work is divided into two halves addressing those acts conducted by the authorities – proclamations, processions, public punishments – and those directed towards the civic government by others, such as petitions, libels, and seditious talk. The study of these acts reveals two important things: first, that they were not only pragmatic attempts to communicate information, but also performances designed either to construct or contest particular images of authority; secondly, that these performances were spatially structured and that the urban environment was an integral aspect of the city’s political culture. It is then demonstrated that, just as political communication was inherently performative and spatial, so the urban environment was itself a medium of political communication. These observations highlight the importance of political communication to an understanding of the city’s political culture as depicted in the historiography of early modern London. At the same time, recent scholarship on the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries has identified an increasingly distinctive culture in towns typified by attitudes to political authority as communal and contingent, and to social identity as performative and self-fashioned. In London in particular, historians have pointed to a radical transformation in the city’s political culture in reaction to dramatic urban growth after 1550. The spatial aspect of this, however, has been neglected. It is argued here that the inherently political nature of urban space and its communicative potential, already in existence, was integral to changing urban values and part of what made rapid change in London after 1550 a politically traumatic and transformative process.

England in the late-Elizabethan and early-Stuart period saw a surge of pastoral writings intended to provide lay-readers with information and advice about sacraments. Using sixty-four such texts from the period 1590-1630, this thesis analyses the conceptions of sacraments offered by cleric-authors to their audience. As a group these works had two structural features in common. First they were concerned to outline the ‘qualities’ of a ‘worthy’ receiver of the Lord’s Supper, foremost amongst which were knowledge, faith, newness of life and repentance. Second they tended to divide the concept of worthiness into three temporal chunks comprising the times before, during, and after the Supper. Using these rubrics as guidelines the thesis compares and contrasts the content of the corpus. In opposition to stereotypes of puritans neglecting sacraments, it is found that sacraments were presented by Reformed English clerics as highly efficacious entities, which truly communicated something to the believer. The importance of faith to the Reformed conception of sacraments is affirmed, with the caveat that the dominance of this concept did not prohibit clerics from extolling the sensuous or ceremonial aspects of sacraments. It is further contended that sacraments continued to be seen as spurs to moral amelioration, occasions for charity, and a demonstration of community – and that receiving sacraments did not become a wholly individualised enterprise. Building on this analysis the thesis offers three broader conclusions. Firstly it is shown that sacraments played a key part in the quest to gain assurance of salvation. Secondly it can be seen that in England there was a way of extolling sacraments and their use which is not usually thought about – a species of ‘sacramental piety’ which used mainstream Reformed ideas about sacrament to urge believers to comfort and increased Godliness. Thirdly it is contended that key Reformed theological distinctions were often submerged by the contingencies of pastoral writing.

Cardinal Richelieu is traditionally accredited with defeating the power of the grands, the upper echelon of the French nobility, as part of his supposedly successful project for monarchical absolutism. Modern historians have recast Richelieu as a nobleman of his time, who advanced himself within the social and political hierarchies through marriage alliances and patronage. He therefore worked hard to forge alliances with the grands rather than trying to destroy them. Yet his ministry was riven by persistent noble conspiracies and rebellions, which have gone largely without systematic investigation. This study examines the nature and causes of that unrest during Richelieu’s final six years, offering a radical re-assessment of the opposition and the politics of the period. Noble conspiracy was not just a by-product of government by a first minister, but reflected the factional nature of Richelieu’s approach. Factional rivalry was exacerbated by the emergence, after 1638, of a struggle for the anticipated regency. After this, Richelieu took a more hostile approach to his adversaries, forcing them to adopt strong countermeasures in order to preserve their positions. Richelieu’s opponents were surprisingly successful in asserting their independence. As well as enjoying widespread domestic support, they allied with the Habsburg powers to engineer military rebellion, posing a major threat to the Cardinal and undermining the war effort against Spain. The Spanish set their stall out for a long-term war, expecting that Richelieu’s opponents would eventually gain power and negotiate peace on more flexible terms. The ability of the grands to re-assert themselves was still a dominant characteristic of French politics. Richelieu’s legacy, on his death in 1642, was a highly volatile political situation in which success was still a long way off for France. These findings suggest the catalytic impact of Habsburg power on France’s internal divisions, which should consequently be seen as integral to the forging of the ancien régime.

In the seventeenth century, news of the Transylvanian princes in weekly newspapers and biannual Messrelationen rarely comes from the principality itself, but from the cities which are the Transylvanians' allies, enemies and invaded neighbors. This thesis examines the German language periodicals of four periods: István Bocskai's rebellion against the Habsburg Emperor (1604-5), Gábor Bethlen's first march into Hungary (1619-21), György I Rákóczi's Hungarian offensive (1643-5) and György II Rákóczi's incursion into Poland-Lithuania and the subsequent Ottoman invasion of Transylvania (1657-8). Between these periods, political developments and postal improvements shift the reporting networks which carry the news of Transylvania. As a result, each prince is reported on by a different set of reporting regions altering the language of the news. Bocskai's rebellion is presented in the Messrelationen as an alliance of the unchristian Protestants and Ottomans, dependent on military success rather than political legitimacy and causing devastation in the region. This perspective continues in later periods in news from Vienna, the most consistent reporter on Transylvania, as the princes are shown to be capable of upsetting the Emperor's position in Hungary, but more feared for their association with the Ottomans. Bethlen's march is also reported on by Transylvania's allies in Prague, who present the prince with greater diplomatic importance, and supporters in Hungary, who detail the diet meetings where he is elected king, proving his legitimacy. György I's march does not benefit from a breadth of perspectives, and Vienna’s dominates the news with its concern for quick peace. György II’s invasion of Poland is largely reported from the new news centers along the Baltic, presenting him as a military commander with precedent for his claim to the Polish throne. With the Ottomans' invasion the following year, Vienna’s fears for the safety of Christendom once again dictate Transylvania’s portrayal in the news.

This study explores the rediscovery and development of a tradition of Ciceronian academic scepticism in British philosophy between c.1660-c.1760. It considers this tradition alongside two others, recently recovered by scholars, which were recognised by contemporaries to offer opposing visions of man, God and the origins of society: the Augustinian-Epicurean, and the neo-Stoic. It presents John Locke, Conyers Middleton and David Hume as the leading figures in the revival of the tradition of academic scepticism. It considers their works in relation to those of Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury, and Bernard Mandeville, whose writings refashioned respectively the neo-Stoic and Augustinian-Epicurean traditions in influential ways. These five individuals explicitly identified themselves with these late Hellenistic philosophical traditions, and sought to contest and redefine conventional estimations of their meaning and significance. This thesis recovers this debate, which illuminates our understanding of the development of the ‘science of man’ in Britain. Cicero was a central figure in Locke’s attempt to explain, against Hobbes, the origins of society and moral consensus independent of political authority. Locke was a theorist of societies, religious and civil. He provided a naturalistic explanation of moral motivation and sociability which, drawing heavily from Cicero, emphasised the importance of men’s concern for the opinions of others. Locke set this within a Christian divine teleology. It was Locke’s theologically-grounded treatment of moral obligation, and his attack on Stoic moral philosophy, that led to Shaftesbury’s attempt to vindicate Stoicism. This was met by Mandeville’s profoundly Epicurean response. The consequences of the neo-Epicurean and neo-Stoic traditions for Christianity were explored by Middleton, who argued that only academic scepticism was consistent with Christian belief. Hume explored the relationship between morality and religion with continual reference to Cicero. He did so, in contrast to Locke or Middleton, to banish entirely moral theology from philosophy.

This thesis investigates cognition and knowledge in a rich selection of late medieval Florentine commonplace books (zibaldoni) and diaries (ricordanze) with a special focus on Giovanni Rucellai’s Zibaldone Quaresimale. In Chapter Two a new methodology, named Mental Model Framework in History (MMFH), is elaborated. By studying mental processes such as categorisation and decision making, MMFH enables us to study cognition in historical documents. The dissertation is based on a computer-assisted analysis described in Chapter Three . This has brought together a number of technologies (Natural Language Processing, Semantic Web, Text Encoding Initiative) and used them according to the interpretative goals of the MMFH. Chapter Four investigates the knowledge-constructing practice of late medieval Florentines, and concludes that commonplace books and diaries were tools of information management and knowledge transmission. The core chapters study four domains of thinking: space, time, agency and perception. Chapter Five analyses social recognition and judgement in Renaissance Florence and reveals how a new ethical thought took shape, one that prepared the transition to capitalism. By applying decision and game theory, Chapter Six examines horizontal friendship, a bond that functioned as an informal but risky social insurance in Florence. Chapter Seven studies how Florentines used superlatives to construct a hierarchy of the world, with Florence on the top. This was the manifestation of a fierce competition within and outside the walls of Florence, competition that strongly influenced the social and physical environment of the city. By studying selection, periodisation and causal reasoning, Chapter Eight pinpoints the gradual secularisation of the conception of time. The thesis concludes that the late medieval revolution in information culture marked by the gradual transition from an overwhelmingly oral culture to an increasingly literate culture produced quantitative and qualitative changes in human thought. This largely contributed to the birth of modern thought, and to the late medieval transformation of the social and physical environment.

The thesis examines the relationship between reprobation fears and melancholic illness in puritan culture over a period of approximately ninety years. Reprobation formed part of the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination, by which God had chosen a few for salvation (the elect), and many for destruction (the reprobate). When a person came to believe that they were reprobate, this could give rise to symptoms of fear and despair similar to those associated with melancholy (an imbalance of black bile believed to affect the brain). The thesis shows how puritans used explanations based on melancholy in order to explain how otherwise godly people came to doubt their election. The first chapter shows how the Calvinist physician, Timothy Bright, incorporated ideas from medieval scholastic and medical texts into his Treatise of melancholie (1586), in order to explain how physiological causes could be at the root of reprobation fears. The second and third chapters examine the religious context in which Bright was writing. The second chapter shows puritan ambivalence about pronouncing a person to be reprobate through an examination of responses to the death of the apostate, Francesco Spiera. The third chapter shows how the Elizabethan puritan clergy developed a form of consolation for those suffering from despair of salvation based on the medieval idea that melancholy was the ‘devil’s bath’. The fourth and fifth chapters show the importance of physiological explanations for despair in defending the reputations of the dying. When a godly person despaired on their death-bed, or committed suicide, this was blamed on a combination of forces external to themselves – melancholy and the devil. The final chapter shows how Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy adapted puritan ideas about despair, to be more acceptable in the context of growing resistance to the preaching of double predestination in the 1620s and 30s.

In 1563, the publication of the Heidelberg Catechism marked the conversion of the Rhineland Palatinate to a stronghold for Reformed religion. Immediately thereafter, however, the Palatinate church experienced a deeply unsettling surge in the popularity of antitrinitarianism. To their Lutheran and Catholic opponents, this development revealed a toxic connection between Reformed theology and the tenets of antitrinitarianism. As early as 1565, for instance, the Catholic Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius argued anonymously that the Reformed principle of sola scriptura was indistinguishable from the biblicism which had led heretics to reject the doctrine of the Trinity on the grounds that it was nowhere explicitly justified in the biblical text. Seven years later, the displaced Italian theologian and Heidelberg professor, Girolamo Zanchi, countered this argument in his De Tribus Elohim (1572). This huge landmark of this early theological crisis in Heidelberg sought to oppose the biblicism of the early antitrinitarians by arguing that the doctrine of the Trinity was explicitly taught within the Hebrew divine names Jehovah and Elohim. The following year De Tribus Elohim received an Imperial Privilege from the Catholic court in Vienna, a distinction virtually unheard of for a Reformed theological text. Zanchi’s argument was then widely promulgated in the marginal notations of the tremendously influential Biblia Sacra of Franciscus Junius and Immanuel Tremellius, and became a staple of refutations of antitrinitarianism thereafter. Yet Zanchi’s confidence that trinitarian theology was contained within the Hebrew of the Old Testament was not shared by many of his own Reformed colleagues. John Calvin’s exegetical works had explicitly rejected this argument; and theologians like David Pareus (Zanchi’s younger colleague in Heidelberg) and the Dutch Hebraist Johannes Drusius preferred a more historical-grammatical reading of the Old Testament and dismissed Zanchi’s reading of the name Elohim despite the danger that this might sacrifice a valuable defence against antitrinitarianism. Complicating the picture further, the Lutheran polemicist Aegidius Hunnius directed Zanchi’s arguments against Calvin in his Calvinus Iudaizans (1593). This variety of responses to Zanchi’s argument demonstrates the diversity of assumptions about the nature of the biblical text within the Reformed church, contradicting the notion that the Reformed world in the age of “confessionalization” was becoming increasingly homogenous or that the works of John Calvin had become the authoritative touchstone of Reformed orthodoxy in this period.

This is the first full-scale study of Robert Greene’s drama, offering a new interpretation of the dramatic oeuvre of one Shakespeare’s most neglected literary predecessors. Recent criticism has emphasised Greene’s pioneering role as an author of Elizabethan romance. Yet, in contrast to the numerous prose works which were printed during his life time, his drama, which was printed posthumously, has received little attention. Greene’s plays are visually magnificent: madmen wander on stage waving the severed limbs of their victims (Orlando Furioso, c. 1591), the dead are resurrected (James IV, c. 1590), tyrants gruesomely mutilate their subjects (Selimus, c. 1591-4), extravagant stage properties such as the mysterious brazen head prophesy to the audience (Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, c. 1589), and sinners are swallowed into hell accompanied by fireworks (A Looking Glass for London and England, c. 1588). This thesis will examine the way in which these stage images evoke astonishment, which in turn encourages the audience to contemplate their symbolic significance. The triumph of Greene’s drama is not one of effects over affect; it lies in the interaction between effect and affect. My principal objective in this thesis is to develop a methodological strategy which will allow critics of non-Shakespearean plays, which frequently lack a substantial performance tradition, to study drama through the lens of performance. Engaging purposively with anachronism as an enabling mode of linking old and new, this thesis will draw analogies between the early modern stage and modern cinema in order to emphasise the relevance of early modern drama to today’s ocularcentric world, a relevance that more historical theoretical approaches would seek to deny. My opening chapter will try to establish Greene’s dramatic canon and assess the critical reception of Greene’s plays. Drawing on material from Greene’s entire oeuvre, Chapter Two will outline my methodological and conceptual approach. This chapter will include an extended analysis of Friar Bacon’s discussion of the ‘strategy with cunning shows’ in John of Bordeaux (JB. 735). Launching into detailed studies of specific spectacles, Chapter Three focuses on Thomas Lodge and Robert Greene’s collaborative effort, the biblical drama A Looking Glass for London and England. During the play, Prophet Jonah is ‘cast out of the whale’s belly upon the stage’ (LG. IV.i.1460-1). Focusing on this stage spectacle, this chapter seeks to emphasise the commercial appeal of this biblical drama. Examining another stage property, Chapter Four will explore the melodramatic and sensational potential of the tomb stage property in Greene’s James IV. Examining the apparent tension between the play’s two presenters, I will demonstrate that Bohan, a cynical Scot, and Oberon, the King of the Fairies, proffer two distinct, but not mutually exclusive, ways of conceiving of and interpreting theatrical spectacle. Completing my study of spectacular stage properties, Chapter Five examines the symbolic significance of the brazen head, which appears in two of Greene’s plays: Alphonsus, King of Aragon and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. In both plays, the brazen head becomes an object of excessive or supreme devotion as either a religious idol or a secular deity. The brazen head is perceived as monstrous not simply because it is a source of horror or astonishment but because it represents the misplaced veneration or worship of something other than God. Turning away from stage properties, my final two chapters look at how Greene exploited specific stage conventions. Directing my attention towards Greene’s Orlando Furioso (c. 1591), I will argue that the figure of Orlando Furioso bequeathed an enduring legacy to early modern theatrical discourse, contributing to the convention of the mad poet, which would be replicated and parodied by a new generation of dramatists. Orlando’s behaviour, which rapidly alternates between that of a madman and that of a poet, forces the audience to contemplate the link between the mania of the mentally ill and the melancholia of the creative genius. Ridiculing the concept of furor poeticus, Greene’s play interrogates the belief that great writers are divinely inspired by God through ecstatic revelation. My final chapter will explore the aesthetics of violence in Selimus. A relatively recent addition to the Greene canon, Selimus depicts the rise of an anti-hero amidst a cycle of brutal violence. My reading of this play posits Selimus as a surrogate playwright, arguing that the semiotics of dismemberment allows Greene to interrogate the concept of artistic autonomy. Widespread indifference to Greene’s work has facilitated critical blindness to the powerful aesthetic appeal of spectacle in early modern drama. This reassessment of Robert Greene’s dramatic oeuvre offers a new perspective on the aesthetics of spectacle in early modern drama.

Between 1648 CE and 1666 CE, news, rumours, and theories about the messiah and the Lost Tribes of Israel were disseminated amongst diverse populations of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Employing a world history methodology, this thesis follows three sets of such narratives that were spread through the American colonies, England, the Dutch Republic, the Italian peninsula and the Ottoman Empire, connecting people separated by linguistic, religious, national, and continental divides. This dissertation starts by situating this transmission within a broader context that dates back to 1492 CE and then traces the three-stage process in which eschatological constructs originating in the Americas in the 1640s were transmitted across Europe to the Levant in the 1650s, preparing the minds of Jews and Christians for the return of these ideas from the Ottoman Empire in the 1660s. In this manner, this study seeks to make three contributions to the existing literature. It brings together often isolated historiographies, it unearths fresh archival sources, and it provides a new conceptual framework. Overall, it argues that one cannot understand the growth of apocalyptic tension that reached its peak in 1666 without examining the major historical events and processes that began in 1492 and affected Jews, Christians, and Muslims across the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds.

The Mirror for Magistrates, the collection of de casibus complaint poems compiled by William Baldwin in the 1550s and expanded and revised between 1559 and 1610, was central to the development of imaginative literature in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Additions by John Higgins, Thomas Blenerhasset and Richard Niccols extended the Mirror’s scope, shifted its focus, and prolonged its popularity; in particular, the 1587 edition of the original text with Higgins’s ancient British and Roman complaint collections profoundly influenced the work of Spenser and Shakespeare. However, while there has been a recent resurgence of critical interest in the editions of 1559 and its 1563 ‘Second Part’, the later additions are still largely neglected and disparaged, and the transmission of the original text beyond 1563 has never been fully explored. Without an understanding of this transmission and expansion, the importance of the Mirror to sixteenth-century intellectual culture is dramatically distorted. Higgins, Blenerhasset and Niccols’s contributions are invaluable witnesses to how verse history was conceptualised, written and read across the period, and to the way in which the Mirror tradition was repeatedly reinterpreted and redeployed in response to changing contemporary concerns. The Mirror corpus encompasses topical allegory, nationalist polemic, and historiographical scepticism. What has not been recognised is the complex interaction of these themes right across the Mirror’s history. This thesis provides a comprehensive reassessment of the Mirror’s expansion, transmission, and appropriation between 1559 and 1610, focusing in particular on Higgins, Blenerhasset, and Niccols’s work. By comparing editions and tracing editorial revisions, the changing contexts and attitudes which shaped the early texts’ development are explored. Higgins, Blenerhasset, and Niccols’s contributions are analysed against this backdrop for the first time here, both within their own literary and historiographical contexts, and in dialogue with the early editions. A broad reading of the themes and concerns of these recensions, rather than the limited approach which has characterised previous scholarship, takes account of their depth and variety, and provides a new understanding of the extent of the Mirror’s influence and ubiquity in early modern literary culture.

The writings of John Aubrey (1626-1697) cover a variety of subjects, including natural philosophy, mathematics, educational theory, biography, and magic, among others. His principal scholarly interest, however, was antiquarianism, the early modern discipline which embraced subjects such as archaeology, anthropology, and palaeography. This thesis is a study of Aubrey’s antiquarian writings within the context of the European Republic of Letters. It begins with a revisionary survey of antiquarianism in England, 1660-1720, and proceeds to map his personal contacts and library before studying each of his major antiquarian works in detail. Aubrey emerges from this as a product of his time, but somewhat unusual in his eclectic use of the antiquarian tradition and his blending of antiquarian and natural philosophical methodologies. He was receptive to the latest scholarship, regardless of its origin, and his antiquarian writings were never mere antiquarianism, but moved beyond technical scholarship to address wider issues concerning the origins of English culture, the evolution of religion, the antiquity of the earth, and the nature of human invention. Aubrey is now best known for his so-called Brief Lives, a series of biographies of contemporaries, and this thesis also includes a chapter studying the Lives as a form of antiquarianism. It argues that their keen observation and unconventional form are due to a mixture of antiquarian minuteness with traditions of Theophrastan character-writing and Tacitean historiography and that previous readings of them rely too heavily upon an outdated view of Aubrey as eccentric and peripheral to the larger intellectual movements of the century. This thesis concludes with a reassessment of Aubrey’s scholarship and an argument that the patterns revealed highlight the insufficiency of current theories of antiquarian development in the early modern period. It also argues for the “literary” quality of Aubrey’s work and emphasises the importance of reading his antiquarian texts within the context of early modern definitions of literature.

In contradistinction to critical trends which have rendered Milton’s thought disembodied, this thesis studies how seventeenth-century material culture informed Milton’s poetry and prose at the epistemic level and by suggesting a palette of forms for literary play. The first chapter explores the early modern culture of fruit. At the epistemic level, practices of fruit cultivation and consumption inform Milton’s imagination and his vocabulary, thereby connecting their historic-material lives with their symbolic ones. Milton further turns commonplace gestures of fruit consumption into narrative devices that frame discussions of agency, aspiration, sinful and right practice. The second chapter examines two floral catalogues to discover how they find shape through the epistemologies of flowers, ceremony, and decorative arts. Here material culture shapes literary convention, as one catalogue is found to secret ceremonial consolation in its natural ingenuousness, while the other’s delight in human physicality upsets the distinctions between inner virtue and outer ornament, faith and rite. In the third chapter, urban epistemologies of light, darkness, movement, and space are examined through urban phenomena: skyline, suburbs, highways, theft, and waterways. By interpellating contemporary debates, these categories anatomise fallen character, intent, action, and their consequences. Milton’s instinctive distaste for urban nuisances is interesting in this Republican figure and is subversive of some ideologies of the text. Discursive and material aspects meet again in the fourth chapter in a discussion of his graphic presentations of geography on the page. Usually prone to analyses of textual knowledge, they are also informed by the embodiment of knowledge as material object. Milton’s search for a fitting cartographic aesthetic for the Biblical narrative and for the rhetoric of his characters leads him to an increasing consciousness of the ideologies energising these material forms. The fifth chapter explores Milton’s engagement with forms of armour and weapons. Military preferences for speed and mobility over armour help Milton explore the difference between unfallen and fallen being. Milton also uses his inescapably proleptic knowledge of arms and armour as a field of imaginative play for representations that are both anachronistic and typological. These lead to a discussion of imitation in the mythic imagination. In each of these studies, we witness Milton’s consciousness of his temporal and proleptic location, and his attempts to marry the temporal and the pan- or atemporal. In the conclusion I suggest that Milton’s simultaneous courting of the atemporal while he is drawn to or draws on temporal material culture imply an incarnational aesthetic.

This study examines Reformed identity as an aspect of religious identity formation during the early Reformation period. It contributes towards an understanding of the character of the English Reformation by examining the reception of Swiss theology. The research is principally focussed upon the theological concept of covenant which blossomed in a distinctively bilateral and conditional form in early Reformation Switzerland. Patterns of thought discerned in English theology are related to this Swiss pattern, thereby assisting the process of identifying individual reformers according to continental models and elucidating an important theological development of the period. The concept of covenant had implications for contemporary discourses regarding the doctrines of justification and sanctification. It also made an impact upon sacramental theology in the way that sacraments were viewed as covenant signs. Despite the essential uniformity of the Swiss Reformed concept of covenant, three distinct emphases arose in Swiss Reformed sacramental theology with regard to the efficacy of the sacraments as means of grace. Having identified cases of English reception of the Swiss concept of covenant, their specific influences are determined using patterns of sacramental theology. Chapter one considers the problems involved in discerning different forms of religious identity in this period. Evidence for Reformed identity in England from the 1520s to the 1550s is surveyed from various different angles. The transmission of Swiss ideas through the Low Countries is considered, and alternative explanations for the failure of English Lutheranism are evaluated, particularly Lollardy and humanism. Chapter two demonstrates the essential consistency of the concepts of covenant espoused by leading Swiss reformers. Chapter three examines the concepts of covenant of four English reformers. Chapter four highlights different patterns in Swiss sacramental theology, and chapter five analyses English cases in light of those Swiss models.

The rapid expansion in the size and effectiveness of the British fiscal-military state between 1689 and 1713 has been analysed by historians such as John Brewer and Michael Braddick as the outcome of increasingly impartial, rational and professional bureaucratic administration. Yet recent work on state formation in Britain and Europe has emphasised that effectiveness often arose from practices usually dismissed as inefficient or corrupt. This thesis provides a new paradigm by comparing fiscal-military structures to contemporary commercial enterprises, which functioned by coordinating the efforts of suppliers and buyers. Coordination was achieved in turn through mutual trust, which overcame principal-agent problems and reduced transaction costs. This thesis suggests that by analogy, those polities that could encourage cooperation and mutual trust between autonomous officials, agencies and private contractors enjoyed the greatest success as fiscal-military states. In the mercantile or financial world trust was created through kinship and friendship, as well as common religious, ethnic or national identities, which contained inbuilt informal mechanisms for policing behaviour. This thesis examines the financing and supply of the British army in Ireland and Europe between 1689 and 1713 to conclude that these elements also served to create trust within state structures, and that even political partisanship – normally dismissed as a disruptive, even destructive, influence – generated a community of shared political interests that encouraged trust and improved coordination. It also demonstrates that officials, politicians and financiers constructed politicised networks that interlocked efficiently with each other, permitting the improved coordination of public and private credit, and even informal financial intermediation intended to maintain the liquidity of the army’s fiscal structures. It therefore concludes that the success of the British fiscal-military state during this period was the product of improved informal coordination rather than institutional change and bureaucratic reform, and that political partisanship was integral to this process.

German musicology has customarily situated a paradigm shift in musical aesthetics some time during the first half of the sixteenth century. This dissertation examines the suggestion that German Reformation theology inspired a modern musical aesthetic. In Part One, the existing narrative of relationship between theological and musical thought is tested and rejected. Chapter 1 analyses twentieth-century music historians' positive expectation of commensurability between Luther's theological ideas and the sixteenth-century concepts of the musical work and musical rhetoric, concluding that their positive expectation was dependent on a Germanocentric modernity narrative. Chapter 2 assesses Listenius' Musica (1537), the textbook in which the concepts of the musical work and musica poetica were expounded for the first time. I argue that, since Listenius' textbook was intended as a pedagogical tool, it is inappropriate to read his exposition of musica poetica and opus as if logical sentences on musical aesthetics. Part Two investigates the treatment of musica in the theology of early German Reformation disputants. Chapter 3 finds that Luther's early musical thought was borrowed from the late mediæval mystics, and resisted the influence of the Renaissance Platonists. Chapter 4 shows that, far from embracing humanist ideas of musical rhetoric, Luther's Reformed musical aesthetic became increasingly anti-rational and sceptical of music's relation to verbal meaning. Chapter 5 examines the discussions of music by the German Romanist polemicists. It finds that their music-aesthetic assertions were opportunistic attempts to situate the Lutherans outside the bounds of orthodoxy. The dissertation concludes that the discussions of music in early German Reformation texts ran counter to the general sixteenth-century trajectory towards a humanistic or modern aesthetic of music. It further argues that the aesthetic proposals of sixteenth-century German theologians should be taken seriously in the formation of our present-day picture of sixteenth-century musical thought.

This thesis considers the civic elite in Coventry during the Reformation, from 1530-1580. It describes how the presence of a longstanding civic and political culture, dating back to the late middle ages, helped to mitigate religious change and bring other economic and social priorities to the fore during this period. The thesis looks at contemporary understanding of ideas of the city, including civic history and political power, as well as the economic forces which shaped the civic government?s interaction with other political hierarchies and the broader social world of the kingdom. It is argued that, although the corporation was keen to protect and define the political and physical boundaries of the city, they lived in an environment that was permeable to outside influence and the presence of geographically broad social and political networks. Urban political disputes are also examined, with the aim of elucidating those principles which ensured the smooth running of civic government and the control of the city by the corporation and the civic elite. Religious disagreements during the 1540s and 1550s are examined in detail, to show why, despite the potential for turmoil, the city never saw the breakdown of order or the political hierarchy. The spread of protestantism during later decades is dissected, alongside attempts to maintain urban religious provision at an acceptable standard, and to preserve the structures and hierarchies of civic religion. The thesis concludes that, even in cities like Coventry, where the effects of the dispute and dissonance that came with the growth of a new religion were strongest, it was possible for the traditional moral rules of urban governance to ensure that the city was an ordered and successful society well into the latter half of the sixteenth century.

Benjamin Keach, the most prolific Particular Baptist theologian of the seventeenth century, described himself as a defender of ‘Reformed Orthodoxy’. Despite this self-identification, modern scholarship has largely relegated Keach to a self-educated dissenting pastor whose major achievement could be found in his controversial support of hymn singing. Two recent dissertations have attempted to revise this view of Keach, but no scholarly work has yet attempted to wrestle holistically with Keach’s view of himself as a Reformed theologian. This work fills that void by reviewing Keach’s own understanding of the term ‘Reformed Orthodoxy’, reconstructing Keach’s connections both in the personal contacts available in dissenting London and Buckinghamshire and in the books at his disposal, examining the major aspects of his theology, and placing that theology within the spectrum of Reformed Orthodoxy. From the time of his entry onto the public theological stage, Keach quickly became identified with those with whom he networked intellectually. From his branding as a Fifth Monarchist to his identification first as a General Baptist and later as the most prominent Particular Baptist, those connections proved to be the most idiosyncratic characteristic of Keach’s theological pilgrimage. Those connections crossed the conventional lines of systematic theology and boundaries of religious sects, resulting in Keach’s theology crossing those same lines yet remaining Reformed in its major assertions. Following the organizational structure of Keach’s catechisms and confessions, this work proceeds by expounding and interrogating Keach’s major theological positions—his understanding of the Trinity including this doctrine’s foundational role in ecclesiology, the significance of the covenants, justification, and eschatology. Throughout this exposition, Keach’s theological lenses, shaped by his contacts and his independent, creative thought, become clear. Ultimately, Keach proves himself to be a capable Reformed theologian, able and willing to dialogue with the most influential theologians, yet consistently forging his own ground within Reformed Orthodoxy as a whole and more specifically Particular Baptist theology.

This thesis represents an important investigation into the much-neglected period of exile endured by many Royalists as a consequence of the violence and alienation of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639-1651).Drawing from extensive archival research conducted in Britain, Ireland and Europe, this study expands upon existing literature on royalism, British and Irish interaction with Continental Europe and seventeenth-century mentalities more generally in order to illumine the unique issues faced by these exiles. Central to this study are the roles and experiences of the Irish element within Charles II’s exiled court. Recent studies focussed upon the place of Ireland within Europe and the North Atlantic are employed to assess such issues as confessional division, court culture, the impact of memory and the influence of conflicting European ideas upon the survival of the exiles and the course of the restoration cause. A thematic, rather than chronological structure is employed in order to develop these interpretations, allowing for an approach which emphasizes the place of individuals in relation to broader Royalist mentalities. Dominant figures include Murrough O’Brien, Lord Inchiquin (c. 1614-1674), Theobald, Lord Taaffe (d. 1677), John Bramhall (1594-1663), Church of Ireland bishop of Derry, Daniel O’Neill (c. 1612-1664), Father Peter Talbot (SJ) (c. 1618/20 – 1680) and James Butler, marquis of Ormond (1610-1688). Through investigation of Irish strands of royalism and the wider issues in which they were set in the course of civil war and exile, this thesis makes a powerful argument for the need to consider seventeenth-century ideas of allegiance and identity not only within a ‘Three Kingdoms’ approach, but Europe more generally. It also makes a compelling case for the centrality of Irish Royalists in the formation and implementation of policy during the exile period through their familiarity with and access to European centres of power and influence.

This thesis seeks to illuminate a blind spot in the scholarship of the later Cromwellian Protectorate by focusing on an intriguing innovation in the parliamentary constitution of 1657 – the creation of an upper chamber or "Other House". The Other House may have filled the void left vacant by the defunct House of Lords, but it did not necessarily mean that the Protectorate was backsliding its way towards the ancient constitution of King, Lords and Commons. Although many aspects of ceremony and procedure remained exactly the same as its predecessor, its functions were reformulated and its membership was significantly different. The life peers nominated by Oliver Cromwell to sit there were politically, religiously, socially and geographically diverse. Yet, Cromwell's attempt to nominate a chamber that would please all sides ultimately ended up pleasing nobody; instead of bringing definition to the constitutional arrangement, his choices simply muddied the waters further. The resulting mood was one of apathy among civilian Cromwellian MPs in the second session of the second Protectorate Parliament towards both the Other House and the settlement as a whole. More importantly, the Other House was never a bulwark for the military Cromwellians; it did not institutionalise the army's position within the constitution. Although this posed no immediate problem under the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, it came to the fore following the succession of his conservative-minded son Richard. When the Commons and Protector united behind an anti-military programme in April 1659, the military Cromwellians found themselves outnumbered and outmanoeuvred in the Other House. Unable to protect their interests by constitutional means, the military men turned to their ultimate source of strength – the army. In forcing the Protector to dissolve Parliament, they undermined completely the constitutional arrangement and effectively sealed the end of the Protectorate regime.

This thesis examines the theory of diplomacy in the formative phase of the European states-system. From the viewpoint of the discourse on the 'ideal ambassador', it explores early modern diplomacy as cultural history encompassing ideas, discourses, perceptions and 'codes'. The scope of study is the century following the Peace of Westphalia (1648), and three states and regions (France, Britain, the Holy Roman Empire) serve as case studies for a comparative approach of diplomatic theory and practice. In five parts, the adaptation of the theory and practice of diplomacy to the new demands of international relations after 1648 are considered. The first section sets the stage by illustrating that the mid-seventeenth century was regarded as a turning point in the practice of diplomacy. Part II examines diplomatic theory as a particular 'language' in its intellectual and socio-professional contexts. While published treatises on the 'ideal ambassador' build the core of this study, related genres of international law theory, ceremonial theory and political and state science are also taken into account. From the viewpoint of this diplomatic theory, the following section examines the ways in which the instruments and practices of diplomacy were aligned to the new framework. These ranged from changes in the structural framework of diplomacy to the evolution of norms and procedures of negotiation, international law and ceremonial. Part IV reconsiders the issue of 'professionalism' in diplomatic theory with regard to the preparation and training of diplomats. Special attention is given to proposals for diplomatic 'academies', which are for the first time examined in comparison. Finally, section V recasts the findings of this thesis in a comparative perspective. It underlines that, with the emergence of a states-system, the techniques of diplomacy became formalised and uniform, constituting a common European diplomatic practice. Against the background of the different regional and structural conditions, the alleged model role of France in the evolution of diplomatic theory and practice is re-evaluated.

The research is a study of the context of the life and work of John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, 1551-1555. It charts the nature of his relationships with friends, patrons, mentors, colleagues, and lay and clerical supporters and opponents in England and on the Continent, through the study of ecclesiastical, political, business and economic, intellectual, official and judicial, kinship and social networks in which he was involved. Its purpose is to reveal the complex mix of societal and confessional pressures influencing Hooper's approach and constraining his freedom of manoeuvre, and to a large extent determining how successful he was at achieving change. The study reveals key determinants of the nature and direction of the Reformation in England. It shows that the pressure to change doctrinal allegiances and to accommodate reformed church practices challenged not only personal confessional loyalties but also the very framework of society; that is, familial and social ties, economic, business and judicial groupings, educational affiliations, and ruling oligarchies. Within these societal networks there existed the momentum for, and resistance to, religious change. Confessional allegiances were just part of a complex mix of political and social pressures that included the exercise of patronage and protection, the use of conflict and compromise, the practise of different obligations, allegiances and loyalties, the employment of status and kinship, and the accommodation of various alliances and means of association. All of these influenced Hooper's approach and scope for action. As such, the research provides insight into why and how, in the development of the newly-reformed church in England, thoroughgoing religious change was resisted and contained.

This study seeks to provide historical and literary contexts for elderly characters from English play-texts c.1580 to 1625. Its primary aim, from a literary perspective, is to draw attention to the ways that a better understanding of elderly characterisation can enrich the appreciation of much-studied play-texts, and to indicate some interesting features of more obscure ones. Its secondary aim is to suggest the value, for social historians of old age in early modern England, of play-texts as social evidence. I have examined most of the published extant play-texts of the period, and have found approximately 150 of these to be relevant (the most important of these are listed in the Appendix). Because of the problems of handling all aspects of such a large amount of material, I have chosen to consider the plays chiefly as texts to be read, with little reference to their performative aspects. However, I analyse the dramas as literary as well as social documents. Specific plays provide illustrations for observations and support for various hypotheses about dramatic representations of the elderly. In some instances, I address plays which have received little critical attention. The thesis falls into two parts. In the first three chapters, I discuss the socio-historical, cultural and non-dramatic literary contexts for representations of elderly men and women in play-texts. In chapters four through seven, I examine elderly characters in specific role or relationship categories: as sovereigns and magistrates, in sexual and marital relationships, and as parents. In the final chapter, I offer a detailed analysis of The Old Law by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley.

The economic history of England has long been dominated by the Industrial Revolution, examining its degree of uniqueness, and its longer-term implications for both the domestic economy and that of the nations whose advance to the modern industrial state took place rather later. In this study , scholars have tended to concentrate on the period after 1750, often dismissing the previous century rather naively in terms of 'preconditions' for industrial growth. Relatively few have looked at the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in depth, except in the fields of public finance and overseas trade. For most purposes, the century before the Industrial Revolution is still, in Professor Fisher's words, a 'Dark Age'. One sector of the economy, the retail trade and retailing institutions, has been generally deprived of scholarly attention. Apart from the development of the great chain stores in the nineteenth century, the bulk of our knowledge of the sector of the economy stems from research conducted prior to 1920. While age is hardly synonymous with a lack of quality, the time had clearly come for some revision. As scholars such as Professor Eversley have come to stress the significance of changing patterns of consumption in the home market to the Industrial Revolution, this sector of the economy has increasingly demanded more research.