This is the first study of the navy during the English Revolution. It argues that the commonwealth navy did not, as is often assumed, stand back from domestic political controversies, but was deeply influenced by the revolutionary circumstances of its origins. The new regime saw a large and politically reliable fleet as essential to its survival, and the years after 1649 witnessed a rapid build-up and a drastic remodelling of the officer corps, with political and religious radicalism becoming major criteria in the selection of officers. The book charts the navy's central role in the struggle to win foreign recognition for the new regime, and in the wars which followed: the period saw England's first major war at sea, against the Dutch. The navy's response to political change at home, and its intervention in the Restoration crisis of 1659-60 are also examined. The social history of the navy is also considered in detail. This book provides a richly detailed insight into a neglected subject, and enhances our understanding of the Cromwellian period as a whole.

Following the execution of the king in 1649, the new Commonwealth and then Oliver Cromwell set out to drive forward a puritan reformation of manners. They wanted to reform the church and its services, enforce the Sabbath, suppress Christmas, and spread the gospel. They sought to impose a stern moral discipline to regulate and reform sexual behaviour, drinking practices, language, dress, and leisure activities ranging from music and plays to football.
England's Culture Wars explores how far this agenda could be enforced, especially in urban communities which offered the greatest potential to build a godly civic commonwealth. How far were local magistrates and ministers willing to cooperate, and what coercive powers did the regime possess to silence or remove dissidents? How far did the reformers themselves wish to go, and how did they reconcile godly reformation with the demands of decency and civility? Music and dancing lived on, in genteel contexts, early opera replaced the plays now forbidden, and puritans themselves were often fond of hunting and hawking. Bernard Capp explores the propaganda wars waged in press and pulpit, how energetically reformation was pursued, and how much or little was achieved. Many recent historians have dismissed interregnum reformation as a failure. He demonstrates that while the reforming drive varied enormously from place to place, its impact could be powerful. The book is therefore structured in three parts: setting out the reform agenda and challenges, surveying general issues and patterns, and finally offering a number of representative case-studies. It draws on a wide range of sources, including local and central government records, judicial records, pamphlets, sermons, newspapers, diaries, letters, and memoirs; and demonstrates how court records by themselves give us only a very limited picture of what was happening on the ground.

This book explores how women of the poorer and middling sorts in early modern England sought to make the best of their lives in a society that excluded or marginalized them in almost every sphere. It argues that networks of close friends ('gossips') provided invaluable moral and practical support, helping them to shape their own lives and to play an active role in the affairs of the local community.

A survey of a wide range of new research on many aspects of life at sea in the early modern period. Maritime social history is a relatively young and fertile field, with many new research findings being discovered on a wide range of aspects of the subject. This book, together with its companion volume The Social History of English Seamen, 1485-1649 (The Boydell Press, 2011), pulls together and makes accessible this large body of research work. Subjects covered include life at sea in different parts of the period for both officers and seamen, in both the navy and in merchant ships; piracy and privateering; health, health care and disability; seamen's food; homosexuality afloat; and the role of women at sea and on land. Written by leading experts in their field, the volumesoffer a nuanced portrait of seafarers' existence as well as an overview of the current state of the historiography. CHERYL A. FURY is Professor of History at the University of New Brunswick (Saint John campus) and a Fellow of the Gregg Centre for War and Society. Contributors: J.D. ALSOP, JOHN APPLEBY, JEREMY BLACK, B. R. BURG, BERNARD CAPP, PETER EARLE, CHERYL A. FURY, MARGARETTE LINCOLN, DAVID MCLEAN, N. A. M. RODGER, DAVID STARKEY

This is the first full study of a self-educated popular writer who carved out a pioneering role for himself as a `media celebrity' and became a national institution. Taylor chronicled his adventurous life and passed judgement on his age in a stream of shrewd and witty pamphlets, poems, and essays. His writings allow us to piece together the world of a London waterman over the space of forty years, from the reign of James I to the aftermath of the civil war. His ready wit, restless ambition and bonhomie soon made him a well-known figure in the Jacobean literary world and at the royal court. Claiming the fictitious office of `the King's Water-Poet', he fashioned a way of life that straddled the elite and popular worlds. Taylor published his thoughts - always trenchant - on everything from politics to needlework, from poetry to inland navigation, from religion and social criticism to bawdy jests. He was a more complex and contradictory figure than is often asumed: both hedonist and moralist, a cavalier and staunch Anglican with a puritanical taste for sermons and for armed struggle against the popish antichrist. He embodies many of the contradictions of a world that was soon to be, all to literally, at war with itself.

This book explores how women of the poorer and middling sorts in early modern England negotiated a patriarchal culture in which they were generally excluded, marginalized, or subordinated. It focuses on the networks of close friends ('gossips') which gave them a social identity beyond the narrowly domestic, providing both companionship and practical support in disputes with husbands and with neighbours of either sex. The book also examines the micropolitics of the household, with its internal alliances and feuds, and women's agency in neighbourhood politics, exercised by shaping local public opinion, exerting pressure on parish officials, and through the role of informal female juries. If women did not openly challenge male supremacy, they could often play a significant role in shaping their own lives and the life of the local community.

This is the first study of the navy during the English Revolution. It argues that the commonwealth navy did not, as is often assumed, stand back from domestic political controversies, but was deeply influenced by the revolutionary circumstances of its origins. The new regime saw a large and politically reliable fleet as essential to its survival, and the years after 1649 witnessed a rapid build-up and a drastic remodelling of the officer corps, with political and religious radicalism becoming major criteria in the selection of officers. The book charts the navy's central role in the struggle to win foreign recognition for the new regime, and in the wars which followed: the period saw England's first major war at sea, against the Dutch. The navy's response to political change at home, and its intervention in the Restoration crisis of 1659-60 are also examined. The social history of the navy is also considered in detail. This book provides a richly detailed insight into a neglected subject, and enhances our understanding of the Cromwellian period as a whole.

British Slaves and Barbary Corsairs is the first comprehensive study of the thousands of Britons captured and enslaved in North Africa in the early modern period, an issue of intense contemporary concern but almost wholly overlooked in modern histories of Britain. The study charts the course of victims' lives from capture to eventual liberation, death in Barbary, or, for a lucky few, escape. After sketching the outlines of Barbary's government and society, and the world of the corsairs, it describes the trauma of the slave-market, the lives of galley-slaves and labourers, and the fate of female captives. Most captives clung on to their Christian faith, but a significant minority apostatized and accepted Islam. For them, and for Britons who joined the corsairs voluntarily, identity became fluid and multi-layered. Bernard Capp also explores in depth how ransoms were raised by private and public initiatives, and how redemptions were organised by merchants, consuls, and other intermediaries. With most families too poor to raise any ransom, the state came under intense pressure to intervene. From the mid-seventeenth century, the navy played a significant role in 'gunboat diplomacy' that eventually helped end the corsair threat. The Barbary corsairs posed a challenge to most European powers, and the study places the British story within the wider context of Mediterranean slavery, which saw Moors and Christians as both captors and captives.

The family is a major area of scholarly research and public debate. Many studies have explored the English family in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on husbands and wives, parents and children. The Ties that Bind explores in depth the other key dimension: the place of brothers and sisters in family life, and in society. Moralists urged mutual love and support between siblings, but recognized that sibling rivalry was a common and potent force. The widespread practice of primogeniture made England distinctive. The eldest son inherited most of the estate and with it, a moral obligation to advance the welfare of his brothers and sisters. The Ties that Bind explores how this operated in practice, and shows how the resentment of younger brothers and sisters made sibling relationships a heated issue in this period, in family life, in print, and also on the stage.