Penguin history
2 total works
To understand the English (or Puritan) Revolution and Civil War, the struggles which tore England apart in the mid 17th century, one needs to understand Puritanism. This book cuts through the misconceptions to show Puritanism as a living faith answering the hopes and fears of yeomen and gentlemen, merchants and artisans. Professor Hill looks at all the major i ssues of the time - oath-taking and the Sabbath, bawdy courts and poor relief - and considers Puritan stress on the household (rather that the parish) and the dignity of labour. The author also wrote "The World Upside Down".
The period 1530-1780 witnessed the making of modern English society. Under the Tudors, England was a society of subsistence agriculture, in which it was taken for granted that a fully human existence was possible only for the landed ruling class. By 1780, England was a national market on the threshold of industrial revolution, and the ideology of self-help had permeated into the middle ranks. A universal belief in original sin had been supplanted by the romanticism of "man is good". And the first British Empire had already been won and lost. In this study, the author analyzes the complex interaction of economic, political and cultural change that went into this transformation in British society.