A Monarchy Transformed: Britain 1603-1714

by Mark Kishlansky

Overview

The seventeenth century, writes Mark Kishlansky, was “a wheel of transformation in perpetual motion,” a period of political and religious upheaval that defined the nation for decades to come and remains critical for understanding the nation today.
 
Beginning with the accession of James I and concluding with the death of Queen Anne, this compelling account describes the tempestuous events that took place during the Stuart dynasty and provides lively pen portraits of the many fascinating personalities involved. Conspiracies, rebellions, and revolutions jostle side by side with court intrigues, political infighting and the rise of parties. In 1603 Britain was an isolated archipelago; by 1714 it had emerged among the intellectual, commercial, and military centers of the world.
 
“Kishlansky’s century saw one king executed, another exiled, the House of Lords abolished, and the Church of England reconstructed along Presbyterian lines . . . A masterly narrative, shot through with the shrewdness that comes from profound scholarship.”—Jonathan Clark, Spectator
 
“A historian with a real love for the period, a real understanding of many different aspects of it, and an exhilarating style.”—Ronald Hutton, The Times Literary Supplement
 
“This sweeping, dramatic chronicle of a century of Stuart rule will rivet even the general reader with no particular interest in British history.”—Publishers Weekly

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140148275
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/01/1997
Series:	Hist of Britain , #6
Edition description:	6th Revised ed.
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.13(w) x 7.77(h) x 0.91(d)

About the Author

Mark Kishlansky was the Frank Baird Jr Professor of History at Harvard University and one of the world's leading scholars on Stuart England. He is the author of A Monarchy Transformed, the 17th-century volume in the Penguin History of England series. He is also the coauthor of Societies and Culture in World History and Civilization in the West. He died in 2015.

Table of Contents

A Monarchy TransformedList of Maps
Preface
Prologue
1. The Social World
2. The Political World
3. The Scottish Accession, 1603-1618
4. The Duke of Clubs, 1618-1628
5. The Reign of Charles I, 1629-1637
6. Rebellion and Civil War, 1637-1644
7. Civil War and Revolution, 1645-1649
8. Saints and Soldiers, 1649-1658
9. The Restoration Settlements, 1659-1667
10. For Church and King, 1668-1685
11. A Protestant Succession, 1685-1689
12. A European Union, 1689-1702
13. Great Britain, 1702-1714
Epilogue
For Further Reading
Index

Editorial Reviews

This sweeping, dramatic chronicle of a century of Stuart rule will rivet even the general reader with no particular interest in British history. Harvard history professor Kishlansky charts a tumultuous period of internecine wars, revolutions, political crises and endless religious strife, an era that saw England's union with neutralized Scotland, its conquest and plunder of Ireland, its acquisition of an empire in America. Each narrative chapter begins with a vivid italicized account of a key event (e.g., the trial and execution of Charles I in 1649; the 1628 knifing assassination of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, scapegoat for the failure of wars against Spain and France)-a device that works well, segueing into in-depth discussions of the political, social and economic conflicts that roiled Britain. There are magisterial, incisive portraits of Oliver Cromwell, fired by a millenarian vision of a glorious world to come; Catholic zealot James II, whose unprecedented, abortive libel suit against the Archbishop of Canterbury and six bishops led to his own ouster; and peacemaker Queen Anne, stubborn, unattractive, taciturn, yet beloved, whose rule brought the maturing of party politics. Kishlansky freshly delineates an age that opened with the public whipping, branding and mutilation of vagrants and closed with a newly defined interdependence of king, Parliament and the people. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A beautifully written but narrowly focused narrative of high politics in 17th-century Britain.

Kishlansky (English and European History/Harvard) recognizes that history is a story and that a good historian is a storyteller. His strongly delineated point of view contributes to the flow of the narrative, and his enthusiasm for the subject sustains the reader through thickets of detail about high politics and war. Viewing 17th-century Britain through the eyes of those at the top, Kishlansky always comes down on the side of political stability. He successfully avoids uncritical power worship with judicious criticism of both the Stuart monarchs and of Cromwell. However, as a volume in the new Penguin History of Britain (see also Peter Clarke, Hope and Glory: Britain 19001990, p. 186), A Monarchy Transformed is intended to provide a definitive introductory guide for the student and general reader. Although every historian must leave things out of the story, too many important things are neglected in this one. Kishlansky mentions in passing such important matters as Britain's overseas empire, the slave trade, art and literature, science and mathematics, but doesn't weave such materials into his narrative. John Donne is identified merely as a recipient of royal patronage, and John Milton dismissed as an "ideologue." The momentous religious changes of the period are discussed mainly when they influence politics or threaten social stability. What is most disappointing, though, is the treatment of women. Queen Mary is mentioned and Queen Anne gets a chapter, but beyond that women appear at the margins of history, as irrational teenage royal brides or midwives accused of kidnapping children for satanic rituals. Women should not be marginalized in any volume that aspires to the status of a general survey.

Although successful as a forceful narrative of politics at the center, this volume is a disappointing general introduction to 17th-century British history.

Kirkus Reviews