For at least two centuries after its first appearance in 1573 Hotman's Francogallia influenced the way in which men regarded the European past and appraised the validity of political institutions. The intricate collation of the variorum Latin readings by Professor Giesey here demonstrates that nearly half the complete work consists of material added by Hotman to later editions in such a manner as substantially to modify the argument and balance of the original Francogallia. This definitive Latin edition contains a facing English translation by Professor Salmon, and a joint introduction in which the editors discuss the genesis and development of the text, which can no longer be regarded as written in response to the massacre of St Bartholomew. The editors analyse the discordant elements in Hotman's thought as his Calvinist background, his fundamentalism in both constitutional and religious doctrine and his ambivalent attitude to his profession as an eminent jurist.

These essays examine the thought and works of a series of writers on political thought, religion, historiography and literature, from the 16th century to the 19th. Throughout, the author is concerned to situate individual thinkers in the context of their times and, in many of the essays, to illuminate the links between intellectual currents in France and England. Particular topics include Gallicanism, Neostoicism, the historical novel, and constitutionalism, while the figures dealt with range from Bodin and Hotman in the Renaissance, to Descartes and La Rochefoucauld in the Grand Siecle and Condorcet and Diderot in the Enlightenment. Less familiar figures include the Oxford historian, Degory Wheare, and the French constitutional theorist, Henrion de Pansey. Among the topics treated in the Romantic era are comparisons between the French and English revolutions, and the French obsession with Oliver Cromwell.