Description
Book SynopsisThis text examines how the political cultures of the elite and of the common people intersected during the 17th century in England. It looks at politics at all social levels and investigates how it was affected by expectations about women's roles in politics.
Trade Reviewit is when we come to the relation between elite and popular culture during the Interregnum that the strengths of Underdown's approach - and the freshness of his conclusions - are most apparent ... A Freeborn People is stimulatingly and... courteously argued. * Times Literary Supplement *
This is a book full of insights and fertile connections, based on a lifetime of research in the field. * David L. Smith, Selwyn College, Cambridge, Journal of Ecclesiastical History *
Underdown's crisply written, stimulating volume takes the agenda one step further to challenge the compartmentalization of elite and popular politics ... an impressive survey of a century of English politics and culture, including the place of England's revolution in this period of change and continuity ... no one has advanced the argument before with such range and scholarly panache. * Barry Reay, University of Auckland, History *
Underdown is incapable of writing uninterestingly ... the book suggests and stimulates * Blair Worden, History Today, January 1998 *
This fine book provides an excellent brief summary of the thinking of David Underdown, one of the foremost living scholars of early modern English history ... In elegant and lucid prose, he presents compelling arguments against fashionable modern views about central questions in seventeenth-century English history and outlines his own interesting interpretation ... This is an excellent brief analysis of Stuart political life and its links with the social, cultural, and regional history of the period. * Johann P. Sommerville, American Historical Review *
