Anthony Ashley Cooper, First Earl of Shaftesbury, was a giant on the English political scene of the later seventeenth century. Despite taking up arms against the king in the Civil War, and his active participation in the republican governments of the 1650s, Shaftesbury managed to retain a leading role in public affairs following the Restoration of Charles II, being raised to the peerage and holding several major offices. Following his dismissal from government in 1673 he then became de facto leader of the opposition faction and champion of the Protestant cause, before finally fleeing the country in 1681 following charges of high treason. In order to understand fully such a complex and controversial figure, this volume draws upon the specialised knowledge of nine leading scholars to investigate Shaftesbury's life and reputation. As well as re-evaluating the well-known episodes in which he was involved - his early republican sympathies, the Cabal, the Popish Plot and the politics of party faction - other less familiar themes are also explored. These include his involvement with the expansion of England's overseas colonies, his relationship with John Locke, his connections with Scotland and Ireland and his high profile public reputation. Each chapter has been especially commissioned to give an insight into a different facet of his career, whilst simultaneously adding to an overall evaluation of the man, his actions and beliefs. As such, this book presents a unique and coherent picture of Shaftesbury that draws upon the very latest interdisciplinary research, and will no doubt stimulate further work on the most intriguing politician of his generation.

Ian Gentles provides a riveting, in-depth analysis of the battles and sieges, as well as the political and religious struggles that underpinned them. Based on extensive archival and secondary research he undertakes the first sustained attempt to arrive at global estimates of the human and economic cost of the wars. The many actors in the drama are appraised with subtlety. Charles I, while partly the author of his own misfortune, is shown to have been at moments an inspirational leader. The English Revolution and the Wars in the Three Kingdoms is a sophisticated, comprehensive, exciting account of the sixteen years that were the hinge of British and Irish history. It encompasses politics and war, personalities and ideas, embedding them all in a coherent and absorbing narrative.

This cultural history challenges the standard depiction of the 1660s as the beginning of a new age of stability, demonstrating that the decade following the Restoration was just as complex and exciting as the revolutionary years that preceded it.

Despite his significant influence as a courtier, diplomat, playwright and theatre manager, Thomas Killigrew (1612-1683) remains a comparatively elusive and neglected figure. The original essays in this interdisciplinary volume shine new light on a singular, contradictory Englishman 400 years after his birth. They increase our knowledge and deepen our understanding not only of Killigrew himself, but of seventeenth-century dramaturgy, and its complex relationship to court culture and to evolving aesthetic tastes. The first book on Killigrew since 1930, this study re-examines the significant phases of his life and career: the little-known playwriting years of the 1630s; his long exile during the 1640s and 1650s, and its personal, political and literary repercussions; and the period following the Restoration, when, with Sir William Davenant, he enjoyed a monopoly of the London stage. These fresh accounts of Killigrew build on the recent resurgence of interest in royalists and the royalist exile, and underscore literary scholars' continued fascination with the Restoration stage. In the process, they question dominant assumptions about neatly demarcated seventeenth-century chronological, geographic and cultural boundaries. What emerges is a figure who confounds as often as he justifies traditional labels of dilettante, cavalier wit and swindler.