Popular culture in seventeenth-century England

Carl Schmitt emphatically rejected intermediate formations between peace and war. Analysing Schmitt's oscillation between the domestic and the international, the article suggests that the notion of ‘intermediate state’ provides a vital route to the core of Schmitt's political theory. The concept emerges in Schmitt's analysis of the Rhineland crisis, recurs in his vehement critique of Weimar pluralism, and, finally, reappears in his theory of modern war from the Third Reich to the Cold War. ‘Intermediate state’ has both qualitative and temporal aspects; it connotes not only categorical confusion and impurity but also instability and limited duration. Despite his criticism, Schmitt himself utilised the ambiguity, polysemy, and normative ambivalence of the intermediate state in his argumentation, finally giving it an open theological reinterpretation in his later work. Schmitt's theory of political conflict, consequently, is problematically bound to the vague intermediate state of perpetual conflict that he sought to avoid, and to the metaphorical aspects of the notion of battle that he explicitly rejected.     

Religion and revolution in seventeenth-century England

Religion’s centrality to the story of the political turmoils of seventeenth-century England has never been in doubt. This article reviews recent books in the field which offer a series of reflections on the mutual effects of religion and revolution on each other in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and overthrow of James II and VII.     

The haunting of Susan Lay: servants and mistresses in seventeenth-century England

At Easter 1650, Susan Lay, a servant in an Essex alehouse, saw the ghost of her mistress, who had been buried three days before. This article explores the history that lay behind her experience: of sexual relationships with both her master and his son, the births and deaths of two bastard children, and beneath it all, a relationship of antagonism, competition, and intimacy with her mistress. It uses this and other legal records to examine the relationship between women in early modern households, arguing that, while antagonisms between women are typically part of effective patriarchies, the domestic life and social structures of mid seventeenth-century England bound servants and mistresses peculiarly tightly together, giving servants licence to dream of replacing their mistresses and mistresses cause to feel threatened by their servants, and making the competitive relations between women functional to patriarchal order. It suggests, finally, that at this moment in time and in this context, seeing a ghost was the best, perhaps the only, way this servant had to tell a suppressed story and stake a claim to a household that had excluded her.     

Structures of feeling in seventeenth-century cultural expression

ABSTRACT

As the English church splintered during the mid-seventeenth century, the resultant religious diversity overwhelmed contemporary observers, who struggled to make sense of rapidly advancing theological, political, and cultural changes. This religious chaos has, in turn, produced a similar sense of disorientation among scholars attempting to understand it, and questions of how to best categorise radical religion have generated intense controversy. One of the most important, but perhaps most misunderstood, of these emerging religious expressions were the so-called General Baptists. This article reassesses the utility and coherence of “General Baptist” as an overarching conceptual category to describe historical actors between 1609 and 1660. Historians have traditionally applied this label to any religious dissenters who both rejected paedobaptism and embraced Arminian soteriology. This standard interpretation, however, is misleading and cannot account for the historical record. As the present article demonstrates, the label “General Baptist” had no coherent, stable historical referent during the first half of the seventeenth century.     

Navigation and the seventeenth-century draining of the Fens

Draining the Fens in the seventeenth century led to serious conflicts with navigation, conflicts which have not been properly understood in some important literature. Contrary to common belief, Vermuyden's scheme did incorporate navigation locks at Denver and elsewhere. Trade at King's Lynn and over the inland waterways did expand during the second half of the century. These facts lead to a re-assessment of the drainage/navigation interests, focussing on specific issues such as the funding arrangements for drainage and the damage to embankments by horses hauling vessels. Hence arise further questions about the understanding and motives underlying the public positions adopted by stakeholders.     

Infield-outfield farming on a seventeenth-century Scottish estate

Infield-outfield farming in pre-eighteenth-century Scotland has been dismissed as a uniformly extensive, low-yield system of cultivation forming an adjunct to a basically pastoral economy and incapable of improvement and evolution. There are, however, grounds for believing that this model is over-generalized and reflects a lack of detailed studies of the primary sources. A particularly well-documented example of a midseventeenth century field system is available for the Dundas estates near Edinburgh. The evidence for this estate indicates that infield-outfield farming had evolved into a relatively intensive system in which animal husbandry played a minor role and which concentrated on grain production. The ways in which this system evolved are then considered and the implications in terms of a re-evaluation of the traditional model of the development of Scottish field systems are explored.     

Paratexts and pornographic potential in seventeenth-century anatomy books

ABSTRACT

This article discusses paratexts in seventeenth-century anatomy books and their relation to contemporary concerns that these books might be read erotically. Suggesting that discussions of these concerns have hitherto neglected the material object of the book, I argue for the importance of paratexts (illustrations, legends, prefaces, running titles and marginal notes) as sites of negotiation over anatomy books’ pornographic potential. I examine these paratexts both as strategies by which writers and printers carefully and collaboratively attempt to frustrate erotic reading, and as devices that might simultaneously function to facilitate this mode of reading. The centrality of these concerns to the construction of anatomy books indicates, I suggest, a need to augment our characterisation of early modern readers, incorporating wilfully thoughtless and/or excessive reading alongside active and productive reading. My discussion focuses on Helkiah Crooke’s Mikrokosmographia, and is supplemented with analysis of other English anatomy books published throughout the seventeenth century.     

The royal confessor and his rivals in seventeenth-century France

The most memorable portraits of the French royal confessorsof any period are in Saint-Simon's memoirs, and his judgementsof them have survived relatively unscathed compared to thosehe delivered on Louis XIV's ministers generally. His accountassumes that royal confessors normally wielded huge influence,but in fact the situation that he describes applies only toLouis XIV's confessors. This essay attempts to put the riseof the confessor into its historical context from Henri IV'sreign onwards, primarily by attempting to analyse the rivalsand alternatives to the confessor—grand almoners, archbishopsof Paris, cardinal ministers. The solutions that emerged underLouis XIV were in no way inevitable, which may explain why theydid not survive him. The longevity of his confessors in officecontrasts sharply with the fragility of earlier generationsof confessors and reflects the shifts in the roles they playedwithin court and ecclesiastical politics.