EMH EarlyModernHistory

 

  The Framework of the Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558-1641 The contribution made by Professor Stone to the study of the economic and social history of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has been one of the outstanding features of post-war scholarship. Ever since the publication in 1965 of his major work, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558-1641 , we have been indebted to him for a new account of the fortunes of the landed elite in this period. The complex crisis which he detected in the affairs of the peerage helped to explain why the outbreak of the English Civil war became possible. The book was rightly recognised as one of the most important to appear on early modern English history for many years and the qualities of mind it displayed won widespread admiration. Professor Stone’s control over a mass of evidence, his willingness to employ the most up-to-date methods of enquiry and the striking insights to be found throughout his text together made the ...

  PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY IN THE 1620s: IN OR OUT OF PERSPECTIVE?         The debate about the origins of the English Civil War is as old as the conflict itself. The view taken by S.R.Gardiner and C.H.Firth  that it was largely the result of the constitutional and religious struggles between the early Stuart kings and their subjects long ago ceased to be regarded as adequate. The focus of investigation switched to economic and social causes and beyond to the examination of urban and county history. Such has been the pace at which these enquiries were conducted that no new orthodoxy or synthesis commanding widespread assent has emerged. The seminal influence of Wallace Notestein and his colleagues and pupils in the United States ensured that the importance of Parliamentary proceedings in this period was not forgotten. Our debt to the work of American scholars in this field has grown considerably in the last decade and a half with th...