Anglicans and Puritans?: Presbyterianism and English conformist thought from Whitgift to Hooker

Lake, Peter

London ; Boston : Unwin Hyman

Bad Queen Bess? analyses the back and forth between the Elizabethan regime and various Catholic critics, who, from the early 1570s to the early 1590s, sought to characterize that regime as a conspiracy of evil counsel. Through a genre novel - the libellous secret history - to English political discourse, various (usually anonymous) Catholic authors claimed to reveal to the public what was "really happening" behind the curtain of official lies and disinformation with which the clique of evil counsellors at the heart of the Elizabethan state habitually cloaked their sinister maneuvers. Elements within the regime, centred on William Cecil and his circle, replied to these assaults with their own species of plot talk and libellous secret history, specializing in conspiracy-driven accounts of the Catholic, Marian, and then, latterly, Spanish threats. Peter Lake presents a series of (mutually constitutive) moves and counter moves, in the course of which the regime's claims to represent a form of public political virtue, to speak for the commonweal and true religion, elicited from certain Catholic critics a simply inverted rhetoric of private political vice, persecution, and tyranny. The resulting exchanges are read not only as a species of "political thought," but as a way of thinking about politics as process and of distinguishing between "politics" and "religion." They are also analyzed as modes of political communication and pitch-making - involving print, circulating manuscripts, performance, and rumor - and thus as constitutive of an emergent mode of "public politics" and perhaps of a "post reformation public sphere." While the focus is primarily English, the origins and imbrication of these texts within, and their direct address to, wider European events and audiences is always present. The aim is thus to contribute simultaneously to the political, cultural, intellectual, and religious histories of the period.

Bad Queen Bess?: Libels, Secret Histories and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I

History

Europe

Oxford University Press

All Hail to the Archpriest revisits the debates and disputes known collectively in the literature on late sixteenth and early seventeenth century England as the 'Archpriest controversy'. Peter Lake and Michael Questier argue that this was an extraordinary instance of the conduct of contemporary public politics and that, in its apparent strangeness, it is in fact a guide to the ways in which contemporaries negotiated the unstable later Reformation settlement in England. The published texts which form the core of the arguments involved in this debate survive, as do several caches of manuscript material generated by the dispute. Together they tell us a good deal about the aspirations of the writers and the networks that they inhabited. They also allow us to retell the progress of the dispute both as a narrative and as an instance of contemporary public argument about topics such as the increasingly imminent royal succession, late Elizabethan puritanism, and the function of episcopacy. Our contention is that, if one takes this material seriously, it is very hard to sustain standard accounts of the accession of James VI in England as part of an almost seamless continuity of royal government, contextualised by a virtually untroubled and consensus-based Protestant account of the relationship between Church and State. Nor is it possible to maintain that by the end of Elizabeth's reign the fraction of the national Church, separatist and otherwise, which regarded itself or was regarded by others as Catholic, had been driven into irrelevance.

All Hail to the Archpriest: Confessional Conflict, Toleration, and the Politics of Publicity in Post-Reformation England

Questier, Michael

Short, cheap pamphlets with catchy titles and crude woodcuts lured readers in early modern England. The pamphlets described notorious murders and the sometimes providential means by which the culprit was captured and condemned to the scaffold. In this extraordinary book, Peter Lake examines how various groups-protestant, puritan, and catholic, the press, and the popular stage-sought to enlist these pamphlets for their own ideological and commercial purposes in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The book explores print shops, book stalls, and theaters, then proceeds to the pulpits, prisons, and public executions of post-reformation England, tracing the impact of the popular pamphlets and their gory tales. The pamphlets were deployed to attract paying audiences to theaters and customers for book sellers. At the same time they were exploited by clerics seeking to attract the same broad congregation. While the godly attacked the depravity of the pamphleteers and the theaters, the popular press and stage retaliated with anti-puritan stereotypes and stories. This is a major work of religious, social, and cultural history-a book that redraws the intellectual map of early modern England. Lake goes beyond the exploration of popular literature and the way it was used to offer wider insights into contemporary notions of politics, religion, gender, and social order, and into the tensions of the time.

The Anti-Christ`s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England

Lake, Professor Peter

Yale University Press

A masterful, highly engaging analysis of how Shakespeare’s plays intersected with the politics and culture of Elizabethan England With an ageing, childless monarch, lingering divisions due to the Reformation, and the threat of foreign enemies, Shakespeare’s England was fraught with unparalleled anxiety and complicated problems. In this monumental work, Peter Lake reveals, more than any previous critic, the extent to which Shakespeare’s plays speak to the depth and sophistication of Elizabethan political culture and the Elizabethan imagination. Lake reveals the complex ways in which Shakespeare’s major plays engaged with the events of his day, particularly regarding the uncertain royal succession, theological and doctrinal debates, and virtue and virtù in politics. Through his plays, Lake demonstrates, Shakespeare was boldly in conversation with his audience about a range of contemporary issues. This remarkable literary and historical analysis pulls the curtain back on what Shakespeare was really telling his audience and what his plays tell us today about the times in which they were written.

How Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage: Power and Succession in the History Plays

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

<div>An illuminating account of how Shakespeare worked through the tensions of Queen Elizabeth's England in two canon-defining plays Conspiracies and revolts simmered beneath the surface of Queen Elizabeth's reign. England was riven with tensions created by religious conflict and the prospect of dynastic crisis and regime change. &nbsp; In this rich, incisive account, Peter Lake reveals how in Titus Andronicus and Hamlet Shakespeare worked through a range of Tudor anxieties, including concerns about the nature of justice, resistance, and salvation. In both Hamlet and Titus the princes are faced with successions forged under questionable circumstances and they each have a choice: whether or not to resort to political violence. The unfolding action, Lake argues, is best understood in terms of contemporary debates about the legitimacy of resistance and the relation between religion and politics. Relating the plays to their broader political and polemical contexts, Lake sheds light on the nature of revenge, resistance, and religion in post-Reformation England.</div>

Hamlet's Choice: Religion and Resistance in Shakespeare's Revenge Tragedies

Dramas & Plays

Anglicans and Puritans?: Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (Routledge Library Editions: Puritanism)

Routledge

Originally published in 1988, this was the first full and scholarly account of the formal Elizabethan and Jacobean debates between Presbyterians and conformists concerning the government of the church. This book shed new light on the crucial disagreements between puritans and conformists and the importance of these divisions for political processes within both the church and wider society. The originality and complexity of Richard Hooker’s thought is discussed and the extent to which Hooker redefined the essence of English Protestantism. The book will be of interest to historians of the late 16th and 17th Centuries and to those interested in church history and the development of Protestantism.

Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church

This book is an examination of the puritanism of a series of divines, including Dering, Cartwright, Whitaker and Chaderton, all of whom passed through the University of Cambridge between 1560 and 1600. Dr Lake gives a detailed analysis of their careers and opinions. The personal and ideological links between them are established and in the process some idea of the range of opinions current among puritan divines in this period is built up. The aim of the work is to arrive, through this process of comparison and juxtaposition, at the kernel of shared attitudes and beliefs that justify the inclusion of all these men within a coherent puritan tradition.

Cambridge University Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lake, Peter. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Lake, Peter

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lake, Peter. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Anglicans and Puritans?: Presbyterianism and English conformist thought from Whitgift to Hooker

Bad Queen Bess?: Libels, Secret Histories and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I

All Hail to the Archpriest: Confessional Conflict, Toleration, and the Politics of Publicity in Post-Reformation England

The Anti-Christ`s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England

How Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage: Power and Succession in the History Plays

Hamlet's Choice: Religion and Resistance in Shakespeare's Revenge Tragedies

Anglicans and Puritans?: Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (Routledge Library Editions: Puritanism)

Anglicans and Puritans?: Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (Routledge Library Editions: Puritanism)

Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church

Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church