Description
Book SynopsisIn the period between 1575 and 1625, civic peace in England, Scotland, and Ireland was persistently threatened by various kinds of religiously inspired violence, involving conspiracies, rebellions, and foreign invasions. Religious divisions divided local communities in all three kingdoms, but they also impacted relations between the nations, and in the broader European continent. The challenges posed by actual or potential religious violence gave rise to complex responses, including efforts to impose religious uniformity through preaching campaigns and regulation of national churches; an expanded use of the press as a medium of religious and political propaganda; improved government surveillance; the selective incarceration of English, Scottish, and Irish Catholics; and a variety of diplomatic and military initiatives, undertaken not only by royal governments but also by private individuals. The result was the development of more robust and resilient, although still vulnerable, states
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1: Religion, Dynastic Politics, and Public Discourse: The Anjou Match and its Contexts 2: The Containment of English Catholicism 3: An Ambiguous Dynastic Threat: James VI and Scotland to 1589 4: Entrepreneurial Violence and the Protestant State 5: Defending the State in Ireland 6: The Earl of Leicester, the Protestant Cause, and the Failure of English State Building in the Netherlands 7: War, Virtue, and the State: Political Culture and the Essex Circle 8: The Battle over Erastian Episcopacy in Two British Kingdoms, 1587-1603 9: King James's Peace, the Laws of the Realms, and the Forging of a United Kingdom? 10: The Stuart State and its Peripheries 11: Peace Without: The European Policies of James I 12: Dynastic Politics, Confessional Polarization, and the Challenge of New Religious Wars 13: The Problem of Religious War and the Structure of Politics at the Accession of Charles I
