Download or read book Lorenzo Magalotti at the Court of Charles II written by conte Lorenzo Magalotti and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 1980-11-10 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1660s the English court received a visitor from Florence--Lorenzo Magalotti, an intelligent, sensitive writer and diplomat with a passion for observation and description. Magalotti had come from a state governed by an absolute grand duke to a kingdom engaged in a fierce struggle for political liberty, and from a society in which the sexual behaviour of women was closely controlled by law and custom, to one of unexampled licentiousness among the upper classes. This cultural shock produced fascinating portraits by Magalotti of Charles II and his court, accounts of their amorous intrigues, and percipient if sometimes biased observations on politics. There is also substantially accurate account of the armed forces of the kingdom, and a good deal about its intellectual and artistic life. W.E. Knowles Middleton has provided a clear and elegant translation of this document, along with an informative introduction and supplementary notes.
Download or read book Culture and Politics at the Court of Charles II 1660 1685 written by Matthew Jenkinson and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2010 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The reconstitution of the royal court in 1660 brought with it the restoration of fears that had been associated with earlier Stuart courts: disorder, sexual liberty, popery and arbitrary government. This volume illustrates the ways in which court culture was informed by the heady politics of Britain between 1660 and 1685.
Download or read book Charles II and the Politics of Access written by Brian Weiser and published by Boydell Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles II's use of access to his person as a political tool was a feature of his reign. At first he believed this access was an important part of uniting the kingdom, but later he controlled it as a means of manipulation, of both supporters & opponents.
Download or read book The Last Royal Rebel written by Anna Keay and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-05-24 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The absorbing tale of how this legendary rogue became the champion of parliamentary monarchy and changed the course of English history. At first light on July 6, 1685, the last battle ever fought on English soil was almost over. On one side of the watery pasture at Sedgemoor was the dashing thirty-six-year-old Duke of Monmouth, the charismatic son of Charles II, adored by the people. A reformer, a romantic, and a Protestant, he was fighting the army he had once commanded, in opposition to his uncle, King James II. Yet even before he launched his attack, Monmouth knew he would die. Born in the backstreets of Rotterdam in the year his grandfather Charles I was executed, Monmouth was the child of a turbulent age. His mother, the first of Charles II's famous liaisons, played courtesan to the band of raw and restless young royalists forced abroad by the changing political current. Conceived during a revolution and born into a republic, Monmouth, by the time he was twelve, was the sensation of the most licentious and libertine court in Europe. Adored by the king and drenched in honors, he became the greatest rake and reprobate of the age. On his path to becoming "the last royal rebel," Monmouth consorted with a spectacular list of contemporaries: Louis XIV was his mentor, William of Orange his confidant, Nell Gwyn his friend, the future Duke of Marlborough his pupil, D'Artagnan his lieutenant, John Dryden his censor, and John Locke his comrade. Anna Keay expertly chronicles Monmouth's life and offers splendid insight into this crucial and dramatic period in English history.
Download or read book Tudor and Stuart Consorts written by Aidan Norrie and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-07-20 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the lives and tenures of all the consorts of the Tudor and Stuart monarchs of England between 1485 and 1714, as well as the wives of the two Lords Protector during the Commonwealth. The figures in Tudor and Stuart Consorts are both incredibly familiar—especially the six wives of Henry VIII—and exceedingly unfamiliar, such as George of Denmark, the husband of Queen Anne. These innovative and authoritative biographies recognise the important role consorts played in a period before constitutional monarchy: in addition to correcting popular assumptions that are based on limited historical evidence, the chapters provide a fuller picture of the role of consort that goes beyond discussions of exceptionalism and subversion. This volume and its companions reveal the changing nature of English consortship from the Norman Conquest to today.
Download or read book The Orders of Knighthood and the Formation of the British Honours System 1660 1760 written by Antti Matikkala and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2008 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: `Sheds considerable new light on the nature, development and functions of the orders in a key phase of their history, and goes a long way to explaining how such archaic institutions could flourish in a culture that is commonly thought anti-traditional and especially hostile to the "middle ages"'. Professor JONATHAN BOULTON, University of Notre Dame. This is the first comprehensive study to set the British orders of knighthood properly into the context of the honours system - by analysing their political, social and cultural functions from the Restoration of the monarchy to the end of George II's reign. It examines the revival of the Order of the Garter and the proposals to establish the Orders of the Royal Oak and the Esquires of the Martyred King at the Restoration, the foundation (1687) and the revival (1703-4) of the Order of the Thistle as well as the foundation of the Order of the Bath (1725). It establishes just how central a part the orders played in the British high political life and its comprehensive and multidimensional approach carefully contrasts the idealistic discourse of virtue and honour to the real workings of the honours system; it also makes the case for the 'Chivalric Enlightenment'. The 'orders over the water', the Garter and the Thistle conferred by the Jacobite claimants, are discussed for the first time in the context of the established British honours system. Overall, the comparison between the socially very restricted British and the increasingly meritocratic Continental orders highlights the isolation of the British honours system from the European tendencies.
Download or read book Letters of Sir Robert Moray to the Earl of Kincardine 1657 73 written by David Stevenson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir Robert Moray (1608-1673) was one of the most active of the twelve founding members of the Royal Society, and as a close friend of King Charles, was a key figure in obtaining the royal patronage that was crucial to its status and growth. Whilst not an active or original researcher, Moray's role as enthusiastic and widely read participant in, and inspirer of, the Society's activities, place him at the centre of the seventeenth-century British scientific scene. As well as being an active member of the Royal Society, Moray was a prolific letter writer, sending a steady stream of news and correspondence to his friend Alexander Bruce, Earl of Kincardine, whose ill-health often kept him away from events. Providing a complete modern edition of the letters written between 1657 and 1673, this collection offers a unique insight into the attitudes and aspirations of the early scientific community. Ranging widely across a broad range of subjects, including medicine, magnetism, horology, politics, current affairs, the coal and salt industries, fishing, freemasonry, literature, heraldry and symbolism, the letters display Moray's knowledge of a formidable range of subjects and authors. As well as being a lively example of the letter writers art, they are a rich source for anyone with an interest in early modern medical and scientific history, as well as those investigating the broader social and cultural milieu of Restoration society.
Download or read book Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II 1660 1685 written by Alan Marshall and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-11-13 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A balanced portrait of the dark byways of Restoration politics.
Download or read book The King s Bed written by Don Jordan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To refer to the private life of Charles II is to abuse the adjective. His personal life was anything but private. His amorous liaisons were largely conducted in royal palaces surrounded by friends, courtiers and literally hundreds of servants and soldiers. Gossip radiated throughout the kingdom.Charles spent most of his wealth and his intellect on gaining and keeping the company of women, from the lowest sections of society such as the actress Nell Gwyn to the aristocratic Louise de Kérouaille. Some of Charles' women played their part in the affairs of state, coloring the way the nation was run.The authors take us inside Charles' palace, where we will meet court favorites, amusing confidants, advisors jockeying for political power, mistresses past and present as well as key figures in his inner circle such as his 'pimpmasters' and his personal pox doctor.The astonishing private life of Charles II reveals much about the man he was and why he lived and ruled as he did. The King's Bed tells the compelling story of a king ruled by his passion.
Download or read book A Gambling Man written by Jenny Uglow and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2010-11-23 with total page 853 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Restoration was a decade of experimentation: from the founding of the Royal Society for investigating the sciences to the startling role of credit and risk; from the shocking licentiousness of the court to failed attempts at religious tolerance. Negotiating all these, Charles II, the "slippery sovereign," laid odds and took chances, dissembling and manipulating his followers. The theaters may have been restored, but the king himself was the supreme actor. Yet while his grandeur, his court, and his colorful sex life were on display, his true intentions lay hidden. Charles II was thirty when he crossed the English Channel in fine May weather in 1660. His Restoration was greeted with maypoles and bonfires, as spring after the long years of Cromwell's rule. But there was no way to turn back, no way he could "restore" the old dispensation. Certainty had vanished. The divinity of kingship had ended with his father's beheading. "Honor" was now a word tossed around in duels. "Providence" could no longer be trusted. As the country was rocked by plague, fire, and war, people searched for new ideas by which to live. And exactly ten years after he arrived, Charles would again stand on the shore at Dover, this time placing the greatest bet of his life in a secret deal with his cousin, Louis XIV of France. Jenny Uglow's previous biographies have won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and International PEN's Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History. A Gambling Man is Uglow at her best: both a vivid portrait of Charles II that explores his elusive nature and a spirited evocation of a vibrant, violent, pulsing world on the brink of modernity.
Download or read book Swordsmen written by Roger Burrow Manning and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2003 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based upon a wide range of historical and literary sources, Swordsmen is a scholarly study of the military experiences of peers and gentlemen from the British Isles who volunteered to fight in the religious and dynastic wars of mainland Europe from the English intervention in the Dutch war of independence in 1585 to the death of the soldier-king William III in 1702. This apprenticeship in arms exposed these aristocrats to the chivalric revival, the military revolution and the values of neostoicism, and revived the martial ethos of the English aristocracy and reinvigorated the martial traditions of the Irish and Scots.
Download or read book Masque and Opera in England 1656 1688 written by Andrew R. Walkling and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masque and Opera in England, 1656–1688 presents a comprehensive study of the development of court masque and through-composed opera in England from the mid-1650s to the Revolution of 1688–89. In seeking to address the problem of generic categorization within a highly fragmentary corpus for which a limited amount of documentation survives, Walkling argues that our understanding of the distinctions between masque and opera must be premised upon a thorough knowledge of theatrical context and performance circumstances. Using extensive archival and literary evidence, detailed textual readings, rigorous tabular analysis, and meticulous collation of bibliographical and musical sources, this interdisciplinary study offers a host of new insights into a body of work that has long been of interest to musicologists, theatre historians, literary scholars and historians of Restoration court and political culture, but which has hitherto been imperfectly understood. A companion volume will explore the phenomenon of "dramatick opera" and its precursors on London’s public stages between the early 1660s and the first decade of the eighteenth century.
Download or read book Scottish Soldiers in France in the Reign of the Sun King written by Matthew Glozier and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2004-05-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Journal of Muslims in Europe welcomes articles dealing with contemporary issues of Islam and Muslims in Europe from all disciplines and across the whole region, as well as historical studies of relevance to the present. The focus is on articles offering cross-country comparisons or with significant theoretical or methodological relevance to the field. Case studies with innovative approaches or under-explored issues and studies of policy and policy development in the various European institutions, including the European courts, and transnational movements and social and cultural processes are also welcome. The journal also welcomes book reviews.
Download or read book Restoration Scotland 1660 1690 written by Clare Jackson and published by Boydell Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amidst current interest in Scottish political and parliamentary history before 1707, this book emphasises the dynamic and characteristic cosmopolitanism of Restoration intellectual culture as revealed from a range of national, British and Continental perspectives."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book A Royal Passion The Turbulent Marriage of King Charles I of England and Henrietta Maria of France written by Katie Whitaker and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2010-08-17 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the story of how the Protestant English King Charles I, and his young, French, Catholic wife, Henrietta, found unexpected love and helped reign over an era of peace and prosperity until a war with Puritan Scotland risked their lives.
Download or read book Queen Anne written by Anne Somerset and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 990 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: She ascended the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1702, at age thirty-seven, Britain’s last Stuart monarch, and five years later united two of her realms, England and Scotland, as a sovereign state, creating the Kingdom of Great Britain. She had a history of personal misfortune, overcoming ill health (she suffered from crippling arthritis; by the time she became Queen she was a virtual invalid) and living through seventeen miscarriages, stillbirths, and premature births in seventeen years. By the end of her comparatively short twelve-year reign, Britain had emerged as a great power; the succession of outstanding victories won by her general, John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough, had humbled France and laid the foundations for Britain’s future naval and colonial supremacy. While the Queen’s military was performing dazzling exploits on the continent, her own attention—indeed her realm—rested on a more intimate conflict: the female friendship on which her happiness had for decades depended and which became for her a source of utter torment. At the core of Anne Somerset’s riveting new biography, published to great acclaim in England (“Definitive”—London Evening Standard; “Wonderfully pacy and absorbing”—Daily Mail), is a portrait of this deeply emotional, complex bond between two very different women: Queen Anne—reserved, stolid, shrewd; and Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, wife of the Queen’s great general—beautiful, willful, outspoken, whose acerbic wit was equally matched by her fearsome temper. Against a fraught background—the revolution that deposed Anne’s father, James II, and brought her to power . . . religious differences (she was born Protestant—her parents’ conversion to Catholicism had grave implications—and she grew up so suspicious of the Roman church that she considered its doctrines “wicked and dangerous”) . . . violently partisan politics (Whigs versus Tories) . . . a war with France that lasted for almost her entire reign . . . the constant threat of foreign invasion and civil war—the much-admired historian, author of Elizabeth I (“Exhilarating”—The Spectator; “Ample, stylish, eloquent”—The Washington Post Book World), tells the extraordinary story of how Sarah goaded and provoked the Queen beyond endurance, and, after the withdrawal of Anne’s favor, how her replacement, Sarah’s cousin, the feline Abigail Masham, became the ubiquitous royal confidante and, so Sarah whispered to growing scandal, the object of the Queen's sexual infatuation. To write this remarkably rich and passionate biography, Somerset, winner of the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, has made use of royal archives, parliamentary records, personal correspondence and previously unpublished material. Queen Anne is history on a large scale—a revelation of a centuries-overlooked monarch.
Download or read book Never Pure written by Steven Shapin and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steven Shapin argues that science, for all its immense authority and power, is and always has been a human endeavor, subject to human capacities and limits. Put simply, science has never been pure. To be human is to err, and we understand science better when we recognize it as the laborious achievement of fallible, imperfect, and historically situated human beings. Shapin’s essays collected here include reflections on the historical relationships between science and common sense, between science and modernity, and between science and the moral order. They explore the relevance of physical and social settings in the making of scientific knowledge, the methods appropriate to understanding science historically, dietetics as a compelling site for historical inquiry, the identity of those who have made scientific knowledge, and the means by which science has acquired credibility and authority. This wide-ranging and intensely interdisciplinary collection by one of the most distinguished historians and sociologists of science represents some of the leading edges of change in the scholarly understanding of science over the past several decades.
