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

In "The Fifth Monarchy Men "(Faber, 1972), Professor Capp places the movement in the context of the rise of millenarian thought in Europe from the Reformation and its rapid spread in England during the Civil Wars. For many radicals, the execution of King Charles cleared the way for King Jesus, and heralded the establishment of a revolutionary millennium. The apparent apostasy of the Rump Parliament and Oliver Cromwell channelled part of the wave of millenarian feeling into the formation of a specific sect. This first comprehensive study of the Fifth Monarchists movement traces its history and examines its social, political, legal and religious proposals.

Although it had the support of some gentry and army officers, it was essentially an urban movement of artisans, apprentices, and even labourers, reaching lower down the social scale than any contemporary radical movement, with the possible exception of the Diggers. Professor Capp discusses its structure, and its relationship to other revolutionary sects, notably the Levellers and Quakers. He analyses the social, political and economic programmes of the self-styled saints which, though revolutionary, were elitist rather than equalitarian. The Fifth Monarchists' militant foreign policy was shaped by the twofold consideration of exporting the revolution and of strengthening the position of English trade. Their much-derided call for the re-establishment of the Mosaic Code is the culmination of a long tradition of such thinking amongst Puritan and earlier writers.

Appendices provide biographies of almost 280 Fifth Monarchists and the location of all known Fifth Monarchist groups.

Apart from the Bible, almanacs were the most influential and widely dispersed for of literature in Tudor and Stuart England. At their zenith in the later seventeenth century, they sold at a rate of 400,000 copies a year. They were read by many people who read little else, and the works of Shakespeare and Jonson, among others, have numerous references to them. Professor Capp's fascinating book (Faber, 1979) is the first to study their history in depth. It is full of vivid detail, and shows clearly how relevant they were to almost every aspect of life, social, intellectual, religious, political. As well as being a powerful force in revolutionary times, they played a central part in spreading scientific progress and medical learning, and in the development of popular journalism and printing. Possessing some of the characteristics of both pocket encyclopaedia and sermon, they conveyed information and/or moral commentary on such diverse topics as attitudes to rich and poor, agriculture, gardening, weights and measures, food , drink, sex, sleep, dress, bodily cleanliness, games, fairs, holidays, the weather, the state of the roads, posts, freemasonry, omens, witchcraft, will-making and even the sale of wives - in addition to making dramatic astrological prophecies about the likelihood of plague, famine and war in the year ahead.

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.