Dynastic Politics and the British Reformations, 1558-1630

During the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, it was usual to consolidate power through lines of royal succession and marriage into other royal and princely families. Michael Questier shows that while this secured political power, it also caused a lot of religious upheaval in this period of already-fraught western Christendom.

Format: Hardback
Length: 528 pages
Publication date: 31 January 2019
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Dynastic Politics and the British Reformations, 1558-1630, revisits a once mainstream topic in the historiography of the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: the relationship between royal dynastic politics and the outcome of the Reformation. As we all know, managing the crown's dynastic rights, through the line of royal succession and particularly by marrying into other royal and princely families, was the primary means of transacting public political activity in the early modern period, particularly in securing political obedience and stability. Dynastically, the states of Europe resembled a vast sexual chessboard, where the trick was to preserve, advance, and then match (to advantage) one's most powerful pieces. This process and practice were not unique to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but the changes in religion generated by the discontents of western Christendom during the Reformation period made dynastic politics ideologically fraught in ways that had not been the case previously. Certain modes of religious thought were now taken to reflect on, critique, and hinder this mode of exercising monarchical authority, sometimes even to the extent of defining who had the right to be king or queen.

Dynastic Politics and the British Reformations, 1558-1630, revisits a once mainstream topic in the historiography of the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: the relationship between royal dynastic politics and the outcome of the Reformation. As we all know, managing the crown's dynastic rights, through the line of royal succession and particularly by marrying into other royal and princely families, was the primary means of transacting public political activity in the early modern period, particularly in securing political obedience and stability. Dynastically, the states of Europe resembled a vast sexual chessboard, where the trick was to preserve, advance, and then match (to advantage) one's most powerful pieces. This process and practice were not unique to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but the changes in religion generated by the discontents of western Christendom during the Reformation period made dynastic politics ideologically fraught in ways that had not been the case previously. Certain modes of religious thought were now taken to reflect on, critique, and hinder this mode of exercising monarchical authority, sometimes even to the extent of defining who had the right to be king or queen.

Weight: 900g
Dimension: 240 x 168 x 32 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780198826330