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The accompanying thesis forms a study of the General Assembly as an influence not only upon Scottish Politics but upon Scottish Representative Institutions. The majority of writers upon the history of the Scottish Church stress the private influence of individuals, which while interesting in itself was in many cases extraneous to the general movements both in the Kirk and in the development of the representative principle both as applied to Kirk institutions and to Parliament and Conventions. Several writers have seen in the General Assembly a thoroughly democratic institution, which represented all classes of social life and which prepared the way for the ideal of a universal franchise. I have endeavoured to show that the General Assembly for the greater part of its development had little of this universal character and was rather the expression of an "Opposition" which was no more democratic in actual composition than the Parliament itself. The period 1560-1618 represents only part of the period upon which I originally began investigation. To cope with the century 1560-1660 I found that it would have been necessary to omit much manuscript material which was valuable for purposes of detail. I therefore limited the present thesis to the 58 years after the Reformation which saw the rise of the Assembly to full power 1592-96 and its subsequent decline, both as a political force and as a representative institution.

The main theme of my thesis is the city administration of Prachatice as a seigniorial town between the years 1622 and 1699. I've focused my attention primarily on the functioning of the town hall in Prachatice. I've tried to reconstruct its staff structure and I've also been engaged in the renewal of the autonomy town authority related with it town hall, elders and the town reeve. The primary sources for my work were the town councillor manuals, lists of renewals, wedding contract books and testament books stored in the state regional archive in Prachatice, in stock Archive of the Prachatice town. I used sources, which were created during the renovation process, stored in the state regional archive in Třeboň, workplace Český Krumlov, and register books stored in the state regional archive in Třeboň. In the opening chapters I've tried to generally familiarize with the essential literature, the towns autonomy and town laws. I've compared the Prachatice autonomy with studies engaged in autonomy authorities of other towns.

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This thesis addresses some of the extant gaps in law and literature criticism using an historical cultural criticism of law and literature that focuses on the Jacobean female legal subject in cases of divorce and adultery. It examines the intellectual milieu that constructs law and literature in this period to contribute to research on female subject formation, and looks specifically at how literature and law work to construct identity. This thesis asks what views Jacobean literature presents of the female legal subject, and what do those views reveal about identity and gender construction? Chapter one offers some essential historical contexts. It establishes the jurisprudential conditions of the period, defines the ideal female legal subject, touches on recent historical scholarship regarding women and law, explores how literature reveals law's artificiality, and links the Inns of Court to the theatres. Chapter two focuses on women and divorce. The first sections discuss the theology and ideology which impacted on divorce law. The latter sections examine Elizabeth Cary's Tragedy of Mariam, ca. 1609, and two manuscript accounts of Frances Howard's 1613 divorce trial, William Terracae's poem, A Plenarie Satisfaction, ca. 1613, and The True Tragi-Comedie Formarly Acted at Court, a play by Francis Osborne, 1635. These texts reveal the legal construction and frustrations of married women, and illustrate a gendered divide in attitudes towards women's legal position. Chapter three examines women and adultery law. It then juxtaposes representations of women justly accused of adultery, like the real-life Alice Clarke, and the fictional Isabella in John Marston's The Insatiate Countess, 1613, and unjustly accused, like the virtuous wives in Marston's play. This chapter reveals how male anxiety creates the stereotypes that constrain the female legal subject within systems of patrilineal inheritance. As a whole, this thesis uses literature to explore the Jacobean female legal subject's relationship to her husband and to the law, and, in some cases, it challenges the assumption that women were effectively constrained by legal dictates which would keep them chaste, silent and submissive. Literature, in some cases, works alongside law to sustain constructed identities, but radical literature can undermine law by challenging the stereotypes and identities law works to maintain.

In seventeenth-century France a new type of theatre was established to correspond to the ideals and taste of the dominant social group. As part of the process a particular ideal was forged for the new-style actor. Moulded by classical writings on acting and actors which suggested that the; style of serious, cultured acting operated within the same aesthetic as that of oratorical delivery, this ideal similarly identified refined acting with principles of pronuntiatio and the bienséance acceptable in contemporary formal discourse As a result of this identification no separate art of acting was considered necessary in seventeenth-century France, the rules and principles of expression of emotion in oratorical delivery being accepted as valid for serious acting. It is to these rules and. principles therefore that recourse must be made if the style of seventeenth-century acting and the approach of the actor at this period are to be appreciated. Study of seventeenth-century French treatises on oratorical delivery indicates the extent to which expression of emotion was considered to require study and practise of basic principal which would enable the speaker to evoke a particular passion by appropriately moving tones and accompanying gesture, and yet at the same time remain within a socially-acceptable range. Interpretation of seventeenth-century writings Oil actors and acting in light of these principles highlights the declamatory nature of serious acting of this period. The actor was understood to approach his role with a view to representing and thus exciting passions through effective vocal variation and suitably decorous accompanying gesture (body-language). Attention was focused upon the actor's voice, upon his moving tones and cadences, and upon the grace with which he used his body to reinforce such emotional portrayal. During the eighteenth century this conception-of acting and the style it had produced were called into question. Acting began to evolve its own aesthetic, an aesthetic based upon impersonation of character through personal identification and experience of the effects of emotion in real life. Study of rules to regulate emotional expression and imitation of the best models were abandoned in favour of cultivation of artistic sensibility: recourse to the imagination and personal sensitivity. In the process emphasis shifted from the voice to non-linguistic ways of showing feeling on the stage, and gestural expression released itself from subjection to social bienséance and enriched its range and potential. Evidence of these trends as well as fidelity to or reaction against principles of bienséance may be traced in writings on acting and delivery of the first half of the eighteenth century. At the beginning of the century acting theory was still rooted in and patterned on the model of pronuntiatio. By 1750 it had established its worth as an independent art with principles more directly based upon the dramatic experience.

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Divided into three parts, this thesis maps a cultural history of Barbary captivity; concentrating on the early 17th century leading up to the Civil Wars; an aspect of British-Muslim contact within which the West Country is overrepresented in the archives. However, this wealth of material contrasts sharply with the paucity of popular and public-facing representations. Situating these accounts within wider contexts, this thesis investigates this contrast, exploring the social, cultural, emotional and economic impact of Barbary captivity upon understandings of place and identity. The first part examines representations of being taken captive, the terror and distress of West Country inhabitants, and the responses and concerns of the authorities. The on-going failure to protect the region and its seafarers exacerbated this distress, producing marginalised geographies of fear and anxiety. The second part explores the themes of memory and identity, arguing that how captives were remembered and forgotten had implications for localised and national identities. For those held in Barbary, families and communities petitioned and undertook ransom collections to redeem the captives, providing reminders to the authorities and appealing for wider remembrance as part of the processes of Christian compassion. Nevertheless, the majority of captives were ‘forgotten’, neither ransomed nor leaving their individual mark within the historical record. This part concludes with a discussion of the role of memory in managing and articulating the ‘trauma’ of captivity. The final part examines mobile and fluid identities, concentrating on returning captives and Islamic converts. Early modern theories of identity situated the humoral body of the captive as susceptible to ‘turning Turk’, contributing to wider negotiations of national, ethnic and religious identities. Cultural anxieties were preoccupied with the ill-defined borders of the geographically displaced material body, generating mutable, hidden and shameful identities. In conclusion, sites of cultural trauma are produced, indicated by the subsequent silence regarding this aspect of localised history.