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In March 1638 Archibald "Archy" Armstrong, jester, was unceremoniously ejected from the court of King Charles I, as a result of a pointed jest he made to Archbishop William Laud regarding the trouble then occurring in Scotland over the archbishop's religious policies. Thus ended Armstrong's long career at court, as jester first to James I/VI and then to his son, Charles. Evidence suggests that Armstrong was not acting out of character; by all accounts, his notoriety was built upon his propensity for making remarks. Armstrong's involvement in such high profile events as the Spanish marriage fiasco also garnered him public renown. Armstrong's career thus evidences the increasingly widespread knowledge about and discussion of state affairs, the anxieties such issues raised, and the fluid boundaries of acceptable criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to this issue is presented in which the editor discusses various topics of this issue including the British Parliament, the politics of Great Britain from 1621 to 1629, and the Reformation movement in Great Britain.

The early Stuart parliaments witnessed a dramatic expansion in the exercise and scope of parliamentary privilege. What had once been essentially a mechanism for avoiding disruption to parliamentary business came, instead, to be seen as a personal benefit for members, or even a political weapon for use against the crown. While such developments occurred in both Houses, it was the Lords which normally led the way, continually pushing the boundaries of privilege as part of a general reassertion of its rights and status. While the Commons also proved capable of innovation in this field, it is the Lords which emerges from this survey as the more assertive of the two Houses, better organised and much more effective in exploiting the advantages that parliamentary privilege now provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I locate the Leveller John Lilburne within the broader literature on the history of political thought and I challenge scholars who associate Lilburne's Leveller political thought with Hobbesian liberty, with proto-libertarianism, or with proto-bourgeois political thought. I advance an understanding of Lilburne as creatively merging central tenets of proto-liberalism with central tenets of republicanism. To develop this amalgamation of ideas, I go considerably beyond the Agreement of the People and the Putney Debates to explore the larger Leveller corpus. Through this investigation I articulate Lilburne's account of key concepts in the history of political thought including: liberty, tyranny, rights, rule, political participation, popular sovereignty, civic virtue, self-interest, harmony, antagonism, and institutional design. I conclude by arguing that we should consider the Levellers, particularly John Lilburne, as offering an early example of what has come to be called liberal-republican political thought, a way of theorizing found within the writings of English Commonwealthsmen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two events, both labelled massacres by the English who suffered death at the hands of their rivals, took place within the space of a year on opposite sides of the globe and in widely different overseas contexts. The first episode took place in Virginia in March 1622, when Opechancanough and his soldiers killed one-third of the English colonists in a surprise attack. The second episode transpired in February 1623 in the Spice Islands, when Dutch East India Company officials in Ambon suspected English East India Company employees of conspiring with Japanese soldiers to seize the trading post, interrogated and tried them, and executed twenty-one men. This episode, known in England by 1624 as the ' Amboyna massacre', endured as a meaningful frame of reference well into the eighteenth century. This article explores the particular contexts of each episode and analyses what violence meant to different participants. It investigates how each event became a 'massacre' to survivors and to observers in England. In both Virginia and Amboyna, the English were victims, not perpetrators, of violence, and thus these events offer an opportunity to explore how victims of violence deployed their ordeals, in pamphlets, images, plays, and songs, to further their own ends. Labelled as massacres, these two episodes acquired a meaning apart from the actual course of events, helping the English to reassess their overseas goals, to re-evaluate their prospects and to define themselves anew. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1979, Conrad Russell speculated that in order to forestall the impeachment of the duke of Buckingham in the parliament of 1626, several contemporaries attempted a 'reformation of the duke'. Lack of solid evidence meant that Russell could make this no more than a suggestion. The recent discovery of a document, however, allows us to see the details of a projected reformation - and that Russell's intuition was indeed correct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally puritanism has been treated as a religious phenomenon that only impinged on the world of that 'secular' politics to a limited extent and mainly in relation to church reform. Such an approach, however, is to employ a misleadingly narrow definition which ignores the existence of a much more all-embracing puritan political vision traceable from the mid-sixteenth century. First clearly articulated by some of the Marian exiles, this way of thinking interpreted the Bible as a manifesto against tyranny whether in church or state. Under the successive regimes of Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I, puritans can be found who continued to judge the actions of government by the same biblical criterion, which also helps to explain among other things their prominence in opposing unparliamentary taxation. Puritan ideology itself was transmitted down the generations partly via a complex of family alliances, underpinned by teaching and preaching, and this in turn provided a basis for political organization. Moreover, the undiminished radical potential of puritanism is evident from responses to the assassination of Buckingham in 1628. Given these antecedents the subsequent resort to Civil War appears less surprising than historians often claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about how the puritan opposition thought about politics. It reads Thomas Ball's Life of John Preston not merely as a godly life but as a politick history — a political tract which uses an account of Preston's conduct during the late teens and twenties as a guide to how the puritan opposition should behave in the late 1630s. The local (Northamptonshire) milieu in which the life was both produced and read is reconstructed and the immediate political and polemical questions to which the life was addressed are delineated. The article addresses the use of history (here of the very recent past) to think about the present and immediate future; the connection between religion and politics, and in particular between politique and providential modes of political analysis in puritan political thinking; the valence of 'court' and 'country' as immediately contemporary categories of analysis; and the origins of English Presbyterianism as a 'moderate puritan' reaction against the populist (indeed republican) tendencies of the New England way, a sort of puritanvia media between separatism and Laudian prelacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is known that late in 1625 some county J.P.s were dismissed, but close investigation reveals there was in fact a major purge. On 22 December 1625, chancery issued new commissions of the peace to remove justices. But how can we discover who, how many, and why? For at least 20 counties we can reconstruct the composition of the commissions of the peace, and show that between thirty and forty per cent of J.P.s were abruptly dismissed. It was not only the lazy or the insignificant that lost their places, but nobles, knights and those who had carried the burden of sessions work – especially if they had opposed King Charles and the duke of Buckingham. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an examination of three pamphlets produced by English author John Milton in the year 1649 including, "The Tenure," "Observations" and "Eikonoklastes." The author explores how these pamphlets combine elements that Milton favored during the 1640s, particularity oration and the animadversion, and explores how these elements are rooted in classical rhetorical theory and the Renaissance adaption of it. The author discusses how the structure, style and aesthetics of the pamphlets illustrate Milton's ability to utilized the rhetoric and poetic elements of classical and Renaissance rhetorical literature.

The article focuses on the study of the electoral patronage of senior duchy officers between 1604 and 1628, including the significant evidence of the duchy of Lancaster in Great Britain. The death of high rank British peer, John of Gaunt in 1399, passed estates to the crown. It is stated that a total of 19 towns that the duchy had was controlled throughout the parliamentary seats. However, it shows no real meaning on a right of nominations outside the willingness of most boroughs. Other topics include duchy influence on elections and competition from local gentry.

The article discusses the evolution of print media culture and its impact on the parliament during the 1620s. It highlights the print restrictions posted by the House of Lords in 1624. A discussion is presented concerning the development of the culture, which represented the use of print media in the 1640s. Moreover, included in its scope is a discussion on the anomalies involving the Jacobean parliaments.

Discusses Jacobean political culture, highlighting the career of member of parliament in England, and poet Christopher Brooke, with emphasis on his poem `The Ghost of Richard the Third.' Use of the poem to illustrate the complex mediation of political discourses through literary forms; Details on the political situation in England in 1614; Details on the poem.

Explores the circulation of rumour and news among those at the lower levels of society in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century England focusing on its impact on political opinion. Analysis of court records in which people were indicted for spreading false reports or speaking seditious words; Relationship between oral, manuscript and printed media.