Early Modern England: Politics, Religion, and Society under the Tudors and Stuarts - Video

Keith E. Wrightson
  • 4.6 (17)
  • HISTORY
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Early Modern England: Politics, Religion, and Society under the Tudors and Stuarts - Video

This course is intended to provide an up-to-date introduction to the development of English society between the late fifteenth and the early eighteenth centuries. Particular issues addressed in the lectures will include: the changing social structure; households; local communities; gender roles; economic development; urbanization; religious change from the Reformation to the Act of Toleration; the Tudor and Stuart monarchies; rebellion, popular protest and civil war; witchcraft; education, literacy and print culture; crime and the law; poverty and social welfare; the changing structures and dynamics of political participation and the emergence of parliamentary government.

  1. 07/04/2011 · VIDEO

    16 - Popular Protest

    Professor Wrightson reviews the basic structures and aims of popular protest: notably food riots and agrarian disturbances. He notes that such disturbances were often surprisingly orderly affairs, rather than chaotic expressions of discontent. They aimed to defend traditional rights (rooted in custom) that participants felt were being threatened, either by food shortages or by agrarian changes such as enclosure. The forms taken by such events reveal a coherent moral order. Professor Wrightson reviews the tactics employed by protestors and the ways in which they constituted attempts to negotiate with authority. Official responses were often equally restrained (although the government was capable in some situations of displaying real severity). He concludes by noting that these forms of early modern popular protest were fundamentally political in nature, and that while agrarian resistance gradually subsided, these defenses of popular custom and rights influenced early forms of labor organization from the late seventeenth century onwards.

    2 sec

  2. 07/04/2011 · VIDEO

    15 - Crime and the Law

    In this lecture Professor Wrightson examines the problem of order in early modern society, focusing on crimes of violence and upon property crime. In examining violence, he notes the existence of special cases geographically (the borderlands) and socially (aristocratic violence) before looking at the lower (and gradually declining) levels of homicide in general. He then considers property crime, distinguishing the various categories of theft and the manner in which cases were brought to, and handled in, the courts. The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries witnessed a peak in prosecution, but while the law could be harsh and bloody in meting out punishment, it was also characterized by discretionary extension of mercy. Interpretations of the use of such discretion are compared and assessed -- as are the limits that existed on its use in a society that believed in the deterrent effect of 'exemplary punishment.'

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  3. 07/04/2011 · VIDEO

    13 - A Polarizing Society, 1560-1640

    Professor Wrightson reviews the consequences of the economic and population changes discussed in the last lecture. While economic shifts allowed some members of English society, especially members of the gentry and the land-holding classes, to increase their wealth, they also (coupled with an expanding population and price inflation) resulted in the growth of poverty and vagrancy. Professor Wrightson discusses the relative wealth and economic pressures faced by various segments of the early modern population (providing specific examples) and suggests that, while society was becoming increasingly polarized between the poor and the wealthy, there was also a third group, the 'middling sort,' who were expanding in numbers and influence. Professor Wrightson concludes by touching on the rising levels of poverty in the period and government responses to it (culminating in the passage of the Poor Laws), as well as very real human element in these larger social and economic processes.

    2 sec

  4. 07/04/2011 · VIDEO

    14 - Witchcraft and Magic

    In this lecture, Professor Wrightson discusses witchcraft and magic. He begins with the context of magic beliefs in this period, introducing the 'cunning folk' who had reputations as healers and were often consulted. He then considers the specific problem of witchcraft, the use of magic to do harm, and its identification by the late medieval church as a form of anti-Christian cult. He examines the distinctive nature of both witchcraft beliefs and the history of witchcraft prosecution in England (as compared with both Scotland and continental Europe), outlining the typical circumstances of a witchcraft accusation and what these might suggest about the rise and fall of concern with witchcraft. Finally he considers a number of unresolved problems in the history of witchcraft in England: the nature of the links between gender and witchcraft; the reasons behind the passage of the statutes defining witchcraft as a crime; and the exceptionally large number of trials conducted in the county of Essex.

    2 sec

  5. 07/04/2011 · VIDEO

    12 - Economic Expansion, 1560-1640

    Professor Wrightson traces the major economic expansion of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Despite occasional crises of mortality, population levels rose steadily, particularly in urban areas. Increased population levels resulted in enhanced agricultural and industrial output. Professor Wrightson reviews the extension of the cultivated area, forms of agricultural improvement and trends in enclosure. He then examines urban growth, the expansion of traditional industries such as cloth-making, and the development of new ones such as coal production. He ends by discussing the intensification of internal commerce and the expansion in foreign trade which took place during the Despite economic expansion and a greatly increased national income, however, prices continued to rise, real wages remained depressed, and the problem of poverty appears to have grown.

    3 sec

  6. 07/04/2011 · VIDEO

    11 - The Elizabethan "Monarchical Republic": Political Participation

    In this lecture Professor Wrightson provides an overview of central political issues of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. He discusses the Queen's personal character and identity-forming experiences (and the challenges posed by her gender), the manner in which she interacted with her political advisors (notably William Cecil) and addresses the foreign and domestic crises which impacted her rule (such as the ongoing threat posed by the claims of Mary, Queen of Scots to the English throne and England's increasingly tense relationship with Spain). In particular, Professor Wrightson highlights the shifts in political culture which occurred during the period, as ideas concerning political participation and the role of institutions such as Parliament expanded. He introduces Patrick Collinson's notion of the Elizabethan regime as something of a "monarchical republic," with the Queen exercising power in cooperation with political stakeholders whose ideas about governance were informed by both their Protestant convictions and classical political principles.

    2 sec

  7. 07/04/2011 · VIDEO

    10 - The Elizabethan Confessional State: Conformity, Papists and Puritans

    Professor Wrightson discusses the Elizabethan settlement of religion and the manner in which it was defended from both 'Papist' and 'Puritan' opponents. The settlement of religion achieved in 1559 (and enforced through the Act of Uniformity) restored the royal supremacy, but was in some respects deliberately ambiguous, combining moderately Protestant doctrine with traditional forms of worship and church government. It was designed to minimize the danger of religious conflict by appealing to traditionalists as well as convinced Protestants. From the 1570s, however, the settlement came under attack from both Catholics and Puritans (the "hotter sort of Protestants" dissatisfied with the limits of the Elizabethan reformation). Wrightson describes how both threats were countered and defeated, while the Church of England gradually became normalized and accepted by the population as a whole.

    3 sec

  8. 07/04/2011 · VIDEO

    09 - "Commodity" and "Commonwealth": Economic and Social Problems, 1520-1560

    Professor Wrightson surveys the changing economic landscape of early modern England in the early sixteenth century. He notes that, throughout the period, population levels rose and, at the same time, inflation caused a rise in prices, and real wages fell. While many landowners were able to raise rents on their lands and profit from enclosing land, and many yeoman farmers prospered, these trends also resulted in a measure of social dislocation and a growth in poverty and vagrancy. Moral outrage at these developments was voiced by the so-called Commonwealth's Men, and popular discontent resulted in large scale rebellions, such as the Pilgrimage of Grace and Kett's Rebellion. Professor Wrightson ends by discussing the economic thought of Sir Thomas Smith, which influenced government initiatives to combat these problems.

    2 sec
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This course is intended to provide an up-to-date introduction to the development of English society between the late fifteenth and the early eighteenth centuries. Particular issues addressed in the lectures will include: the changing social structure; households; local communities; gender roles; economic development; urbanization; religious change from the Reformation to the Act of Toleration; the Tudor and Stuart monarchies; rebellion, popular protest and civil war; witchcraft; education, literacy and print culture; crime and the law; poverty and social welfare; the changing structures and dynamics of political participation and the emergence of parliamentary government.

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