Revel, Riot, and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603-1660Clarendon Press, 1985 - 324 pages What do maypoles, charivari processions, and stoolball matches have to do with the English civil war? A great deal, argues Underdown in this provocative reinterpretation of the English Revolution. Underdown uses case histories of three western countries to show that the war was, above all, the result of profound disagreements amond people of all social levels about the moral basis of their communities--that commoners as well as rulers held strong opinions about order and governance. Through an original synthesis of social history and popular culture, Underdown links these regionally diverse political opinions to cultural diversity and shows that local differences in popular allegiance in the civil war strikingly coincided with regional contrasts in the traditional festive culture. This pioneering study offers a new understanding of the relationship between society, politics, and culture in 17th-century England. |
Contents
List of Maps XV | 15 |
Cultural Conflict | 44 |
Regional Cultures | 73 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
Act Book alehouses arable army AS/ABO Aubrey B/ABO BL Add BL TT Blackmore Vale Bristol Bruton Cavaliers chalk country Charles cheese country Chippenham Christopher Hill church ales churchwardens Churchwardens accounts civil clergy clothing districts Clubmen Committee Court CSPD cultural customs dancing David Underdown Devizes disorder Dorchester Dorset downlands Earl élite enclosure England English English Civil War Essex example feasts festive Fletcher gentry Gloucestershire godly inhabitants John Kent King King's Laudian less levels Lord maypole middling sort minister moral Morrill neighbours north Somerset numbers officers Outbreak parishioners Parliament parliamentarian pasture pensioners petition places poor population Protestant Puritan Quakers Records reformers regions resistance revel Revolution rioters riots rituals Roundheads royalist rural seventeenth century Sherborne Ship Money skimmington social society soldiers Somerset levels SQSR STAC stoolball survived tenants Thomas Towns and villages traditional troops Underdown western counties William Wilts Wiltshire women wood-pasture