This thesis studies the development of the power of judicature which was exercised jointly by the two Houses of Parliament in the early seventeenth century. It examines this against the background of the medieval procedural inheritance from the century after 1350 when a somewhat similar power was being exercised by Parliament; and it also sets the seventeenth-century development alongside the growth in the jurisdiction of each House separately in the early Stuart period. This study is concerned primarily with procedural developments, but the political circumstances from which these are derived are not completely ignored. It is argued that there was, in the early seventeenth century, a general but cautious expansion in the judicial activities of both Houses, together and separately. In this expansion, the revival of joint judicature is probably the most important theme, but it cannot be isolated from the remainder, upon which, as upon the medieval inheritance, it is, to some extent, dependent. It is suggested that joint judicature developed in a flexible and varied manner, responding more to the needs of the moment than to ary long-term objectives, evidence for the existence of which is lacking. This thesis also questions the view that joint judicature was revived in ary very mature form in 1621. It is argued that this opinion conceals the very important procedural developments which occurred during the trials of the 1620s, developments which may point to a change in the type of procedure used as the trials of the period became more openly political in character.

Addressing the military organisation of both Royalists and Parliamentarians, the subject of this thesis is an examination of war effort during the mid-seventeenth century English Civil Wars by taking the example of Shropshire. The county was contested during the First Civil War of 1642-6 and also saw armed conflict on a smaller scale during the Second Civil War of 1648. This detailed study provides a comprehensive bipartisan analysis of military endeavour, in terms of organisation and of the engagements fought. Drawing on numerous primary sources, it explores: leadership and administration; recruitment and the armed forces; military finance; supply and logistics; and the nature and conduct of the fighting. The extent of military activity in Shropshire is explained for the first time, informing the history of the conflict there while reflecting on the nature of warfare across Civil War England. It shows how local Royalist and Parliamentarian activists and 'outsider' leaders provided direction, while the populace widely was involved in the administrative and material tasks of war effort. The war in Shropshire was mainly fought between the opposing county-based forces, but with considerable external military support. Similarly, fiscal and military assets were obtained locally and from much further afield. Attritional war in Shropshire from 1643 to 1646 involved the occupying Royalists engaging Parliamentarian inroads, in fighting the garrison warfare characteristic of the period. Although the outcome of both wars in Shropshire was determined by wider national events, in 1646 and again in 1648 the defeat of the county Royalists was due largely to their local Parliamentarian adversaries. Broadening this study to 1648 has provided insight into Parliamentarian county administration during the short interwar period.

Bibliography: leaves 315-363. / viii, 363 leaves : ill., port. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of History, 1994

A marriage between the English Prince and the Spanish Infanta was deemed desirable following the signing of the Anglo-Spanish peace treaty in London in 1604. After several years of tortuous negotiations, the match failed in 1624 and England declared war on Spain the following year. This thesis addresses the end of the Anglo-Spanish Match negotiations in the period 1617-1624 by placing reasons for its failure in the global context of European diplomacy and dynastic politics in the early seventeenth century. Traditional historiography has considered the failure of the marriage diplomacy as the inevitable consequence of religious differences and cultural misunderstandings between England and Spain. Consequently, scholars have only looked within Europe when investigating the end of the union. My research, however, depicts a more composite picture not only by expanding the geographical boundaries of the investigation but also by demonstrating the extent to which new imperial rivalries played a much greater role in the marriage diplomacy than has previously been recognised. In the first chapter, I discuss the notion of reason of state in the relationship between England and Spain at the beginning of the seventeenth century and I investigate the way in which the choice politically and/or economically most favourable was often taken regardless of religious considerations and increasingly in response to extra-European concerns. The body of the thesis is then dedicated to a few episodes when the imperial rivalry between England and the Iberian Peninsula influenced the end of the negotiations. In the second chapter, I look at Walter Raleigh’s second expedition to Guyana and the actions of the Spanish ambassador in London, Count of Gondomar, who asked that Raleigh should receive an exemplary punishment in order to maintain the marriage agreement after the English explorer had attacked Spanish settlements. In the following chapter, I move towards the East and analyse the taking of the Portuguese port of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf by the English East India Company in 1622. In doing so, I outline the complex dynamics underlying the union of the Iberian crowns (1580-1640) as well as the specific repercussions of this episode on the Infanta’s dowry to be given by Spain to England. The fourth chapter introduces a further key player in both European diplomacy and the imperial rivalry between Spain and England, which is to say the Dutch. By looking at the ‘massacre’ at Amboyna in 1623, I prove that the rivalry with the Dutch in the Spice Islands, and especially the executions at Amboyna, initially pushed King James to pursue the marriage alliance with the Spanish Habsburgs with even greater commitment. In the last chapter, I look back at Europe to discuss how the two composite monarchies reacted to the arrival at their respective courts of the news of recent episodes of conflict in the West and East Indies. This concluding chapter argues that the awareness in Madrid and London of what had happened in the Indies put additional burdens onto the already deteriorating marriage negotiations and fundamentally contributed to their failure. Thus, the thesis sheds light on a well-known episode of Anglo-Spanish relations by observing it through a new lens. As a result, I improve our traditional understanding of the end of Anglo-Spanish Match as well as of global connectedness in the early seventeenth century.

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 seeks to develop our understanding of ideas about political liberty in the English Revolution by way of focusing on the issue of property, a topic unduly neglected in the secondary literature. Most writers of the period conceived of liberty as absence of dependence, but what has been little examined is the extent to which it was believed that the attainment of this condition required not only a particular kind of constitution but a particular distribution of property as well. Here the central ideal became that of self-ownership, and the thesis is largely devoted to tracing the rise, eclipse and re-emergence of this way of thinking about the connections between property and liberty. Chapter 1 considers the emergence, in the ‘paper war’ of the early 1640s, of the radical Parliamentarian view that all property ultimately resided in Parliament. It was to oppose this stance, Chapter 2 argues, that the Levellers began to speak of ‘selfe propriety’, transforming the Parliamentarian notion of popular sovereignty into an individualist doctrine designed to protect subjects and their property from not only the king but also Parliament. Elements of both the Parliamentarian and Leveller discussions of property were taken up by John Milton and Marchamont Nedham (Chapter 3), while James Harrington offered an alternative theory that eschewed the notion of self-ownership (Chapter 4). After a chapter considering the relationship between property and freedom in Henry Neville and Algernon Sidney, the final chapter focuses on John Locke’s revival of self-ownership in his attempt to ground property rights in the individual’s ownership of his ‘person’. Although Locke is shown to offer a theory of private property, the Locke that emerges is not a proto-liberal defender of individual rights but a theorist of neo-Roman freedom whose aim was to explain the connection between property and non-dependence.

Warfare has long been associated with Scottish Highlanders and Islanders, especially in the period known in Gaelic tradition as ‘Linn nan Creach’ (the ‘Age of Forays’), which followed the forfeiture of the Lordship of the Isles in 1493. The sixteenth century in general is remembered as a particularly tumultuous time within the West Highlands and Isles, characterised by armed conflict on a seemingly unprecedented scale. Relatively little research has been conducted into the nature of warfare however, a gap filled by this thesis through its focus on a series of interconnected themes and in-depth case studies spanning the period c. 1544-1615. It challenges the idea that the sixteenth century and early seventeenth century was a time of endless bloodshed, and explores the rationale behind the distinctive mode of warfare practised in the West Highlands and Isles. The first part of the thesis traces the overall ‘Process of War’. Chapter 1 focuses on the mentality of the social elite in the West Highlands and Isles and demonstrates that warfare was not their raison d'être, but was tied inextricably to chiefs’ prime responsibility of protecting their lands and tenants. Chapter 2 assesses the causation of warfare and reveals that a recurrent catalyst for armed conflict was the assertion of rights to land and inheritance. There were other important causes however, including clan expectation, honour culture, punitive government policies, and the use of proxy warfare by prominent magnates. Chapter 3 takes a fresh approach to the military capacity of the region through analysis of armies and soldiers, and the final thematic chapter tackles the conduct of warfare in the West Highlands and Isles, with analysis of the tactics and strategy of militarised personnel. The second part of this thesis comprises five case studies: the Clanranald, 1544-77; the Colquhouns of Luss and the Lennox, 1592-1603; the MacLeods of Harris and MacDonalds of Sleat, 1594-1601; the Camerons, 1569-1614; and the ‘Islay Rising’, 1614-15. This thesis adopts a unique approach by contextualising the political background of warfare in order to instil a deeper understanding of why early modern Gaelic Scots resorted to bloodshed. Overall, this period was defined by a sharp rise in military activity, followed by an even sharper decline, a trajectory that will be evidenced vividly in the final case study on the ‘Islay Rising’. Although warfare was widespread, it was not unrestrained or continuous, and the traditional image of a region riven by perpetual bloodshed has been greatly exaggerated.

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.

No description available.

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.