This module will explore the spiritual landscape of early modern England following the Protestant Reformation, and how the tensions caused by a period of profound religious change led to political and military conflict. It will consider how and why a group of religious radicals, known as the Reformers or the Puritans, were dissatisfied with the religious settlement in England, and how this sense of unease grew into a much broader-based set of movements.
The module will explore in close detail changing ideas about religious identity during the early modern period, as well as themes of republicanism and kingship, what they meant to people in Stuart England and how such ideas were fought out between competing factions. The module will develop students’ understanding of the importance of belief in early modern England, and how ‘radical’ ideas had so significant an impact on the cultural, political and social events of the period.
The module will explore post-Reformation culture in Elizabethan and Stuart England. It will consider how contestation between groups of Protestants over the nature of the English Church came to have such an impact the English politics, culture and society? We will explore the circumstances that led to the outbreak and continuation of war; the attempts to reach a settlement between the parties; and the factions which shaped the post-war period, from the regicides to the Restoration. The module will also offer students the opportunity to consider how these histories have been written by succeeding generations – how various historians have understood and represented the war and the beliefs that powered it.