Fire from Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century

History

Underdown, David

Europe

London: HarperCollins

Two hundred years before Hardy disguised it as Casterbridge, Dorchester was a typical English county town, of middling size and unremarkable achievements. But on 6 August 1613 much of it was destroyed in a great conflagration, which its inhabitants regarded as a 'fire from heaven', the catalyst for the events described in this book. Over the next twenty years, a time of increasing political and religious turmoil all over Europe, Dorchester became the most religiously radical town in the kingdom. The tolerant, paternalist Elizabethan town oligarchy was quickly replaced by a group of men who had a vision of a godly community in which power was to be exercised according to religious commitment rather than wealth or rank. One of this book's most remarkable achievements is the re-creation, with an intimacy unique for an English community so distant from our own, of the lives of those who do not make it into history books. We glimpse the ordinary men and women of the town drinking and swearing, fornicating and repenting, triumphing over their neighbours or languishing in prison, striving to live up to the new ideals of their community or rejecting them with bitter anger and mocking laughter. In it subtle exploration of human motives and aspirations, in its brilliant and detailed reconstruction, this book shows how much of the past we can recover when in the hands of a master historian.

Fire From Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century

Fontana Press

Pride's Purge: Politics in the Puritan Revolution

G. Allen & Unwin

What do maypoles, charivari processions, and stoolball matches have to do with the English civil war? A great deal, argues Underdown in this provocative reinterpretation of the English Revolution. Underdown uses case histories of three western counties to show that the war was, above all, the result of profound disagreements among people of all social levels about the moral basis of their communities-that commoners as well as rulers held strong opinions about order and governance. Through an original synthesis of social history and popular culture, Underdown links these regionally diverse political opinions to cultural diversity and shows that local differences in popular allegiance in the civil war strikingly coincided with regional contrasts in the traditional festive culture.

Revel, Riot, and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England 1603-1660

Oxford University Press

Written by one of the world's most distinguished historians of early modern history, A Freeborn People is a provocative exploration of the ways in which the political cultures of the elite and of the common people intersected during the seventeenth century. David Underdown shows that the two worlds were not as separate as historians have often thought them to be; English men and women of all social levels had similar expectations about good government and about the traditional liberties available to them under the "Ancient Constitution". Throughout the century, both levels of politics were also powerfully influenced by prevailing assumptions about gender roles, and, especially in the years before the civil wars, by fears that the country was threatened by evil forces of satanic inversion. This dramatic reinterpretation of the Stuart period, based on the author's acclaimed 1992 Ford Lectures, begins a new chapter in the continuing debate over the historical meaning of Britain's seventeenth-century revolutions.

A Freeborn People: Politics and the Nation in Seventeenth-Century England

Pride's Purge: Politics and the Puritan Revolution

Clarendon Press

What do maypoles, charivari processions, and stoolball matches have to do with the English civil war? A great deal, argues Underdown in this provocative reinterpretation of the English Revolution. Underdown uses case histories of three western countries to show that the war was, above all, the result of profound disagreements amond people of all social levels about the moral basis of their communities--that commoners as well as rulers held strong opinions about order and governance. Through an original synthesis of social history and popular culture, Underdown links these regionally diverse political opinions to cultural diversity and shows that local differences in popular allegiance in the civil war strikingly coincided with regional contrasts in the traditional festive culture. This pioneering study offers a new understanding of the relationship between society, politics, and culture in 17th-century England.

Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England 1603-1660

Hardcover with dust jacket. G/G. Slightly edge worn and scuffed dust jacket and boards. Dust jacket covered with mylar.

Somerset in the Civil War and Interregnum

David&Charles

ACLS Humanities E-Book

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Books by Underdown, David

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Underdown, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Fire from Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century

Fire From Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century

Pride's Purge: Politics in the Puritan Revolution

Revel, Riot, and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England 1603-1660

A Freeborn People: Politics and the Nation in Seventeenth-Century England

Pride's Purge: Politics in the Puritan Revolution

Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England 1603-1660

Somerset in the Civil War and Interregnum

Pride's Purge: Politics in the Puritan Revolution