Ebook: State and commonwealth: the theory of the state in early modern England, 1549-1640

In the history of political thought, the emergence of the modern state in early modern England has usually been treated as the development of an increasingly centralizing and expansive national sovereignty. Recent work in political and social history, however, has shown that the state - at court, in the provinces, and in the parishes - depended on the authority of local magnates and the participation of what has been referred to as 'the middling sort'. This poses challenges to scholars seeking to describe how the state was understood by contemporaries of the period in light of the great classical and religious textual traditions of political thought. 'State and Commonwealth' presents a new theory of state and society by expanding on the usual treatment of 'commonwealth' in pre-Civil War English history.