Reader: Gustave - 54 hrs
La Comtesse de Charny, écrit en 1853, fait suite à Ange Pitou (terminé abruptement, ce dont s’explique l’auteur) et termine donc la saga des Mémoires d’un médecin. Le roman raconte la Révolution française, des journées d’octobre 1789 à l’exécution de Louis XVI, et mêle à l’histoire les personnages de fiction : Ange Pitou, Olivier de Charny, dont la reine est éprise, sa femme Andrée et son cadet, amoureux de Catherine Billot. Cagliostro achève ici le travail de destruction entamé dans Joseph Balsamo, et bien peu de personnages, somme toute, survivront à ces terribles événements…

Reader: Gustave - 22 hr
Suite de la série Mémoires d’un médecin commencée avec Joseph Balsamo et Le Collier de la reine, Ange Pitou fut écrit en collaboration avec Auguste Maquet et parut dans La Presse en 1850-51. L’histoire commence à quelques jours de la Révolution où est entraîné Ange, brave garçon disgracié, amoureux et latiniste malheureux. Curieusement, il a moins à voir avec le journaliste royaliste de ce nom qu’avec Dumas lui-même, qui s’est inspiré de ses souvenirs pour créer le personnage, né comme lui à Villers-Cotterêts. En raison de mesures politiques prises contre les feuilletons, jugés responsables du relâchement des mœurs, le récit s’arrête abruptement, mais il s’enchaîne heureusement avec La Comtesse de Charny…

Reader: Gustave - 12.5 hr
Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, publié en 1846, s’inspire de la vie d’Alexandre Gonsse de Rougeville. Un feuilleton télévisé, avec Dominique Paturel et Michel Le Royer, en est tiré.
Paris, mars 1793. Marie-Antoinette est prisonnière au Temple. Les gardes nationaux redoublent de vigilance : le chevalier de Maison-Rouge, connu pour l’amour qu’il porte à la reine, est capable de tout pour la sauver.
Dumas conte là une belle histoire d’amour (Maurice préfère son amour à son honneur) et d’amitié, mais aussi bien triste, comme la période qui sert de toile de fond. Les lecteurs de La Comtesse de Charny espéraient dans ce roman le retour du chevalier Philippe de Taverney de Maison-Rouge, amoureux malheureux de la reine. Et bien ce n’est pas le cas…

Nelson E. "Patriot Royalism: The Stuart Monarchy in American Political Thought, 1769-75". The William and Mary Quarterly [Internet]. 2011;3rd ser., 68 (4) :533-596. With responses by Gordon S. Wood, Pauline Maier, and Daniel Hulsebosch, as well a reply to critics ("Taking Them Seriously: Patriots, Prerogative, and the English Seventeenth Century"). -- preliminary to his "Royalist Revolution" -- downloaded pdf to Note

John Kerrigan, Archipelagic English: Literature, History, and Politics 1603-1707 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). -- downloaded pdf to Note

Recorded on 22 September 2011 (transcript updated 2013) -- Dr Andrew Hopper, Lecturer in English Local History at the University of Leicester, discusses the practice of side changing and the role of treachery and traitors during the English Civil Wars -- gave the lecture a couple of weeks before he finished his Oxford University Press book of the same name -- downloaded as pdf to Note

Turncoats and Renegadoes: Changing Sides during the English Civil Wars - Oxford University Press, 2012, hardback ISBN: 9780199575855; 272pp.; - paperback 2014 - as of Jan 2015 no ebook -- 1st rate review essay, and looks like fascinating book that will be useful for notions of "treason" and, during and after "regime change", factional abuse of legal process against their opponents by tarring them with turncoat accusations - not just revolutions (English_Civil_War, French_Revolution, Russian Revolution) but also Glorious Revolution, Hanoverian Succession -- see also Pinboard bookmark for the lecture Hopper gave on the topic in 2011 at the National Army Museum -- downloaded as pdf to Note

Joyce Lee Malcom, The Struggle for Sovereignty: Seventeenth-Century English Political Tracts, 2 vols, ed. Joyce Lee Malcolm (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999). Vol. 2. 07/12/2014. <http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1824> -- Vol 1 covers 1603 to 1660, Vol 2 from the Restoration (starting with Vane's defense) through the flurry after the Glorious_Revolution, including Sherlock on the rule of William and Mary now settled, debates over loyalty oath and bill of rights. -- An entire literature of political discourse resulted from this extraordinary outpouring – and vigorous exchange – of views. The results are of a more than merely antiquarian interest. The political tracts of the English peoples in the 17thC established enduring principles of governance and of liberty that benefited not only themselves but the founders of the American republic. These writings, by the renowned (Coke, Sidney, Shaftesbury) and the unremembered (“Anonymous”) therefore constitute an enduring contribution to the historical record of the rise of ordered liberty. Each volume includes an introduction and chronology. -- downloaded pdf to Note

This article presents a reinterpretation of James Harrington's writings. It takes issue with J. G. A. Pocock's reading, which treats him as importing into England a Machiavellian `language of political thought'. This reading is the basis of Pocock's stress on the republicanism of eighteenth-century opposition values. Harrington's writings were in fact a most implausible channel for such ideas. His outlook owed much to Stoicism. Unlike the Florentine, he admired the contemplative life; was sympathetic to commerce; and was relaxed about the threat of `corruption' (a concept that he did not understand). These views can be associated with his apparent aims: the preservation of a national church with a salaried but politically impotent clergy; and the restoration of the royalist gentry to a leading role in English politics. Pocock's hypothesis is shown to be conditioned by his method; its weaknesses reflect some difficulties inherent in the notion of `languages of thought'. -- downloaded pdf to Note

This article contributes to the debate over the value of petitions for the recovery of 'public opinion' in early modern England. It argues for a greater attentiveness to the politics and processes in their production. An analysis of a hitherto unknown draft Essex 'prayer book' petition explores the construction of contrasting royalist and parliamentarian confessional politics. A reading of the content of the petitions offers evidence of the popular response to the Laudian ceremonialism; a reconstruction of the politics of its production provides evidence of the attempt to construct a political alliance in support of the crown around defence of the prayer book; a reconstruction of the occasion for the petition - the capture of the Essex grand jury by the godly and well affected - suggests a very different, and ultimately more successful, confessional parliamentarian politics. In identifying the critical role played by the middling sort - translating their role in the politics of the parish to the politics of the state - the article argues that a marriage of the research strategy of the social historian with the agenda of a 'new political history' will help to establish the enlarged social depth to the public sphere in early modern England. -- huge bibliography -- downloaded pdf to Note

According to a virtual consensus in modern scholarship on the abolition of slavery, this event marked a historic victory for nonconformist, radical, or otherwise antiestablishment elements in British culture. A recent historian has connected the rise of antislavery with "Wilkite" tendencies in the British middle class, and others have located abolitionism in a "reform complex" devoted to the radical overhaul of the British political system. It has been widely assumed that British slavery was generally excused by the established Anglican church and that the abolitionist movement was dominated by "Quakers, evangelicals and Rational Dissenters." -- This scholarship exemplifies a "Whig" historiography that routinely looks for the sources of social change in the attack of peripheral or nontraditional groups on the center. -- the most resonant voices against slavery during the 18thC belonged to men and women with strong backgrounds in the Anglican Church and conservative views on social and political issues in Britain. These include Samuel Johnson, William Warburton, Edmund Burke, ... -- we find that these humanitarian objections emerged from within the groups and ideologies that conceived of Britain as fundamentally Anglican, royal, and hierarchical. -- it is, in fact, inaccurate to identify mainstream British values with the merchants and colonists who controlled the slave-trade. As I will contend, antislavery took shape amidst an essentially ideological conflict about the very nature of "Britain" between proponents of unbridled free-market capitalism and the essentially conservative and traditionalist outlook of those who wished to contain capitalism within the constraints of morality, religion, and their patriotic image of Britons as a freedom-loving people. -- copy 1st 2 pages in Simple Note

Royalists of the Civil War period readily employed the English legal system to recover lost estates, even at the nadir of their political fortunes, namely the years just after the king's defeat. Rather than accept the verdict of a war lost, royalist and Catholic `delinquents' successfully sought their own verdicts at law against former tenants for rents on lands that had been confiscated by parliament. The radical MPs staffing the Indemnity Committee respected the principles of due process of law and, ironically, given the fact that the committee's purpose was to protect parliament's supporters, upheld royalist claims to confiscated lands, thereby assisting the law courts in thwarting parliament's plan to repay war debts with rents collected from losers' property. So pervasive was the legalistic mindset in both the courts and the Indemnity Committee that royalists received favourable rulings against many on the winning side of the conflict, including famous leaders such as Sir William Brereton. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Spurlock. Review of Prior, Charles W. A.; Burgess, Glenn, eds., England's Wars of Religion, Revisited The significance of Coffey's paradigm is that it offers a model capable of reconciling Morrill's emphasis on religion and Quentin Skinner's on liberation from servitude, and can also be applied to the other "British revolutions" of 1641, 1688, and 1776. Together, the essays of Coffey, Foxley, Mortimer, and Worden make a solid contribution to enhance the ways that religious ideas shaped notions of liberty and liberation. Jeffrey Collins grants much greater significance to anti-Catholic sentiments and argues for a lasting legacy beyond the Interregnum. He disputes the claims of John Locke and others--all too frequently accepted by historians--that the possibility of tolerating Catholics in Restoration England depended wholly on the distinction between political Romanism and religious Catholicism. McGee shines light on an important reality that for D'Ewes, as well as the vast majority of his fellow English men and women, their world as they understood it did not depend on the actions of men. Instead they interpreted past, present, and future events as dependent on the will of God, and, therefore, their theologies profoundly shaped how they interpreted events.