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Peacey unearths and reconstructs a strange early modern dispute over a small estate in Gloucestershire that was contested over a period of 160 years, becoming acrimonious and violent. The microhistory represents the common forms of litigation which shed light upon political culture and ideological conflict around the time of the English Revolution.
List of contents
- Introduction
- Part One: Suits
- Introduction to Part One
- 1: 'Strange passages in divers suits': waging law over Warrens Court, 1560-1615
- 2: 'Given to superstitious uses': contesting Lady Katherine Berkeley's Grammar School, 1615-1662
- Part Two: Strategies
- Introduction to Part Two
- 3: 'A lawyer by practice': John Smyth of Nibley as litigant
- 4: 'Power and wicked practices': John Smyth, influence, and intimidation
- 5: 'A huntsman after broken titles': Benjamin Crokey as litigant
- 6: 'For your sake I sent this down': the battle over Crokey's pamphlet, 1625-1631
- Part Three: Structures
- Introduction to Part Three
- 7: 'Country malice', the 'inferior sort', and the Church of England: the mental world of John Smyth
- 8: 'The many-headed multitude': the royalism of John Smyth junior
- 9: 'For God's cause and the public good': the mental world of Benjamin Crokey
- Conclusion
About the author
Jason Peacey is Professor of Early Modern British History at UCL, which he joined in 2006, after working at the History of Parliament. He was educated at the universities of Lancaster, York, and Cambridge. He is the author of Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (2004) and of Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution (2013), and he has published widely on politics and political culture in early modern Britain. He is currently researching Anglo-Dutch relations in the seventeenth century, as well as the history of citizenship in early modern England.
Summary
Peacey unearths and reconstructs a strange early modern dispute over a small estate in Gloucestershire that was contested over a period of 160 years, becoming acrimonious and violent. The microhistory represents the common forms of litigation which shed light upon political culture and ideological conflict around the time of the English Revolution.
Additional text
This is, then, a highly instructive study.
