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HIST 251 - Lecture 24 - Refashioning the State, 1688-1714

In this lecture, Professor Wrightson discusses the transformation of the English state in the twenty years following the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He examines the ambiguities of the Revolutionary Settlement which placed authority in William III and Mary II following the deposition/abdication of James II, and the manner in which parliamentary government was strengthened through responses to the demands of the wars precipitated by the revolution, culminating in the constitutional provisions of the Act of Settlement of 1701.

HIST 251 - Lecture 23 - England, Britain, and the World: Economic Development, 1660-1720

Professor Wrightson discusses the remarkable growth of the British economy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He examines the changed context of stable population and prices; regional agricultural specialization; urbanization; the expansion of overseas trade both with traditional European trading partners and with the Americas and the East; the growth of manufacturing industries which served both domestic and overseas markets, and the intensification of internal trade.

HIST 251 - Lecture 22 - An Unsettled Settlement: The Restoration Era, 1660-1688

In this lecture Professor Wrightson discusses the Restoration settlement of 1660 and the reigns of Charles II and James II. He highlights the manner in which tensions between the crown and the political nation slowly escalated during Charles’s reign (as a result of his attempts to grant religious toleration, unpopular wars against the Dutch and diplomatic alliances with France).

HIST 251 - Lecture 21 - Regicide and Republic, 1647-1660

In this lecture Professor Wrightson considers the events leading to the execution of Charles I in 1649, and the republican regimes of 1649-60 (the Commonwealth and the Protectorate), with particular attention to the role of Oliver Cromwell. He begins with the unsuccessful attempts to negotiate a settlement with Charles I after the civil war, the intervention of the army in 1647 and the outbreak of the second civil war in 1648, which culminated in Pride’s Purge and the trial and execution of Chares I.

HIST 251 - Lecture 20 - Constitutional Revolution and Civil War, 1640-1646

Professor Wrightson begins his examination of the major events of the English Civil Wars which culminated ultimately with the defeat of the royalist forces and the execution of King Charles I in 1649. He describes how Charles was forced to end his personal rule and call a parliament in 1640 in order to defend England against invading Scottish armies. The events of the Short Parliament and the first sessions of the Long Parliament are examined, culminating in the outbreak of war in 1642.

HIST 251 - Lecture 19 - Crown and Political Nation, 1604-1640

Professor Wrightson reviews the events leading up to the outbreak of the English civil wars and assesses the various historiographical interpretations that have been advanced to explain the war. He notes that while it is essential to appreciate the various long-term causes of the conflict, we must also recognize the role of contingency in the period leading up to the war.

HIST 251 - Lecture 18 - Street Wars of Religion: Puritans and Arminians

Professor Wrightson reviews the conflicts which developed within the Church of England in the early seventeenth century and played a role in the growing tensions which led to the English civil wars. Wrightson begins by describing the “Jacobethan consensus” which largely prevailed throughout the reign of James I, characterized by broad-based conformity and adherence to Calvinist doctrine. However, this consensus was strained by the local activism of Puritans in many areas.

HIST 251 - Lecture 17 - Education and Literacy

Professor Wrightson begins by assessing the state of education in the late medieval period and then discusses the two cultural forces (Renaissance humanism and the Reformation) which lie behind the educational expansion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. While there were distinct hierarchies of learning in the period (with women and the lower orders having far fewer educational opportunities open to them than other members of the social order), this was genuinely a revolutionary period in terms of education.

HIST 251 - Lecture 16 - Popular Protest

Professor Wrightson reviews the basic structures and aims of popular protest: notably food riots and agrarian disturbances. He notes that such disturbances were often surprisingly orderly affairs, rather than chaotic expressions of discontent. They aimed to defend traditional rights (rooted in custom) that participants felt were being threatened, either by food shortages or by agrarian changes such as enclosure. The forms taken by such events reveal a coherent moral order.

HIST 251 - Lecture 15 - Crime and the Law

In this lecture Professor Wrightson examines the problem of order in early modern society, focusing on crimes of violence and upon property crime. In examining violence, he notes the existence of special cases geographically (the borderlands) and socially (aristocratic violence) before looking at the lower (and gradually declining) levels of homicide in general. He then considers property crime, distinguishing the various categories of theft and the manner in which cases were brought to, and handled in, the courts.

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