Mainly a record of the proceedings in Parliament.

The latter half of the seventeenth century saw the Puritan families of England struggle to preserve the old values in an era of tremendous political and religious upheaval. Even non-conformist ministers were inclined to be pessimistic about the endurance of `godliness' - Puritan attitudes and practices - among the upper classes. Based on a study of family papers and other primary resources, Trevor Cliffe's study reveals that in many cases, Puritan county families were playing a double game: outwardly in communion with the Church, they often employed non-conformist chaplains, and attended nonconformist meetings.

This examination of republicanism in an Anglo-American and European context gives weight not only to the thought of the theorists of republicanism but also to the practical experience of republican governments in England, Geneva, the Netherlands, and Venice.

Christopher Durston's full-scale study ambitiously documents the history behind what remains today, a powerful symbol of military rule. He explores the motivations behind the decisions to appoint the major-generals, looking at their careers and personalities. Durston pays particular attention to the collection of the decimation tax, the attempt to improve the security of the regime, and the struggle to build a godly nation. He concludes with an investigation of the 1656 election and the major-generals' subsequent fall from power.

The Rump Parliament was brought to power in 1648 by Pride's Purge and forcibly dissolved by Oliver Cromwell in 1653. This book is a detailed account of the intervening years. Dr Worden concentrates particularly on the Rump's policies in the contentious fields of legal, religious and electoral reform; its attempts to live down its revolutionary origins, to disown its more radical supporters, to conciliate those Puritans alienated by the purge and the King's death, and to re-create the Roundhead party of the 1640s. He examines the Rump's struggles for survival in the face of the Royalist threat between 1649 and 1651, and its fatal quarrel with the Cromwellian army thereafter. A concluding chapter deals with the Rump's forcible dissolution. This novel and challenging interpretation of the most dramatic phase of the English Revolution will interest all specialists in seventeenth-century political and constitutional history.

This book makes an important contribution to the ongoing debate over the emergence of an early modern ‘public sphere’. Focusing on the petition-like form of the loyal address, it argues that these texts helped to foster a politically aware public by mapping shifts in the national ‘mood’. Covering addressing campaigns from the late-Cromwellian to the early Georgian period, the book explores the production, presentation, subscription and publication of these texts. It argues that beneath partisan attacks on the credibility of loyal addresses lay a broad consensus about the validity of this political practice. Ultimately, loyal addresses acknowledged the existence of a ‘political public’ but did so in a way which fundamentally conceded the legitimacy of the social and political hierarchy. They constituted a political form perfectly suited to a fundamentally unequal society in which political life continued to be centered on the monarchy.