This chapter provides essential historical and theological background for the emergence of Cambridge Platonism. It traces the fortunes of the Calvinist or Reformed (or less accurately ‘Puritan’) theological community in England, of which the Cambridge Platonists were members, through the civil wars and Interregnum, with a particular focus on controversy about predestination. It presents the major outlines of the Reformed doctrines of double predestination, election and reprobation, along with the rise of anti-Calvinist currents of thought like Arminianism and Laudianism, with a view to exploring the ways in which these theological disputes contributed to political tensions that gave rise to the civil wars. Finally, it explores the central role played by the Cambridge Platonists’ colleges of Emmanuel and Christ’s in the training of Reformed preachers and the dissemination of Reformed doctrine, with particular attention paid to Reformed attitudes to the study of philosophy and pagan thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle.

This chapter provides a basic introduction to Cambridge Platonism and its four central figures: Benjamin Whichcote (1609–83), Ralph Cudworth (1617–88), John Smith (c. 1618–52) and Henry More (c. 1614–87). Beginning with brief biographies of the Cambridge Platonists and an outline of the Civil War background to their intellectual development, the chapter then moves to a consideration of the contested nature of Cambridge Platonism in contemporary scholarship. Were Whichcote, More, Cudworth and Smith aligned enough biographically and intellectually to warrant grouping them together as architects of a shared philosophical school of thought? After reviewing several recent arguments to the contrary, the main argument of the book is laid out: Anthony Tuckney’s 1651 correspondence with Whichcote contains important evidence that Whichcote, Cudworth, Smith and More were known to their Cambridge contemporaries as proponents of a distinctive set of philosophical positions clearly inspired by Platonism.

This chapter provides important background for the 1651 correspondence between Anthony Tuckney and Benjamin Whichcote via an examination of a local Cambridge controversy sparked by the radical anti-Calvinist preacher John Goodwin, drawing especially on a little-known satirical account of Ralph Cudworth’s 1651 Commencement Disputation. When the disruptions of the civil war propelled the anti-Calvinists Whichcote, Cudworth, Smith and Worthington to new positions of authority in the university alongside their Calvinist teachers such as Anthony Tuckney, Thomas Hill and John Arrowsmith, a theological fault line emerged that split the university leadership down the middle. Primary sources around the Goodwin controversy at Cambridge indicate that Cudworth, Smith and Whichcote were widely known in the university community as close theological allies of Whichcote, who shared his anti-Calvinist convictions. These sources demonstrate that the Cambridge Platonists were part of a broader anti-Calvinist network at Cambridge, providing essential context for the distinctive Platonic anti-Calvinism which this book argues they developed in tandem.

The prologue to Part II synthesizes the major causes of the resilience of early modern states despite their limited capacities. It explores the conditions that led to the collapse of state–society collaboration in pursuit of good governance. Big historical events – the English Civil War, the Meiji Restoration, and the Taiping Rebellion – forced the state in each case to search for new institutions to safeguard various dimensions of the public interest in the new socioeconomic circumstances and so reestablish its legitimacy.

Fortified as a Parliamentarian stronghold under Oliver Cromwell, Cambridge emerged from the English Civil War intact, and flourished under the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. A great age of science and architecture at Cambridge followed, inspired by Trinity fellow Isaac Newton and architect-mathematician Christopher Wren. Stephanie Boyd explains why the building of college courts, chapels and libraries boomed in this period, and classical masterpieces such as the Wren Library at Trinity sprung up. Comparison is drawn between the fine Cambridge colleges and the squalor of the town, and the impact of the Great Plague on townspeople and scholars. The contributions of individuals such as Francis Bacon and Pepys are included, along with local businessman Thomas Hobson, originator of both fresh water to the town from Nine Wells and the expression ‘Hobson’s Choice’.

Armies prepare to fight the last war, or so the adage goes. Napoleon, for instance, won great battles attacking with tight formations of troops, and mid-nineteenth-century military leaders emulated his tactics, even as advances in bullet and rifle technology rendered them increasingly ineffective. This became brutally apparent in the American Civil War as defenders capable of shooting more quickly and accurately at longer distances decimated charging formations. The problem of predicting the nature of future wars by looking to past conflicts can be more generally summed by another adage, this one traceable to Søren Kierkegaard in 1843: life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.1

This chapter examines how Hobbes tempers apocalyptic thought to advance his political philosophy. What troubles Hobbes about such thought is its potential to spur continuous upheaval. Apocalyptic thought anticipates perfection – a divine kingdom that will wipe away corruption. The failure to realize utopian hopes breeds endless dissatisfaction, disruption, and instability in politics. But rather than abandon apocalyptic ideals, Hobbes co-opts them. Specifically, he reinterprets the doctrine of the kingdom of God to make it safe for politics. He arrives at an interpretation that denies, at present, all claims to represent God’s kingdom by prophets and sects challenging the sovereign’s authority. For now, the kingdom of God can only take one form – what Hobbes calls the natural kingdom of God. Importantly, the Leviathan-state is a manifestation of the natural kingdom of God. By identifying God’s kingdom with the Leviathan-state, Hobbes transforms a Christian doctrine used to justify rebellion into one bolstering the sovereign’s authority.

The Stewarts ruled Scotland from 1371 and England from 1603 and experienced magical threats to their rule from the fifteenth century onwards. King James VI and I’s historical reputation as a demonologist obsessed with witchcraft conceals what was a subtle approach to magic and witchcraft, to which James responded with an equal mixture of fascination and scepticism. Attacked by witches in his homeland, James’s accession to the English crown in 1603 saw James became conspicuously more circumspect in his dealings with supernatural claims south of the border. Whatever his personal views, magical scandals at James’s court and at the court of his successor Charles I inflicted immense reputational damage on the Stuart monarchy between 1613 and 1628. Beginning with the Overbury Plot, these scandals culminated in the accusations levelled against the duke of Buckingham and his ‘wizard’, John Lambe and ultimately undermined the credibility of the monarchy as a guardian of godliness in the nation. The outbreak of Civil War in England in 1642 unleashed pent-up anxieties about the political use of magic in the form of lurid allegations from both sides that their enemies were making use of sorcery and witchcraft to influence the outcome of the conflict.

Alison Searle examines the formal procedures connected to compassion in James Shirley’s The Sisters (licensed 26 April 1642). She focuses on the problems posed by outsiders: the compassion of bandits dwelling as an anti-society in the woodlands, the recurring trope of the vagrant/beggar/gypsy/actor used to interrogate histrionic techniques deployed to evoke compassion and the complexities of policing the performance of compassion within the early modern Protestant state. Shirley’s play elucidates the ways in which compassion could create new, dangerous communities, as well as exposing the limits of existing groups. By postulating the ruler as a potential object of compassion, the play proleptically examines one of the most pressing political questions of the English Civil War: can the monarch be an object of compassion? The play’s invitation to feel pity for the plight of the king creates a political space for subversive action. If one can empathise with the king, is he a potential peer?

This chapter demonstrates the importance of Paul de Rapin-Thoyras (1661–1725) for subsequent discussion of political parties in the eighteenth century. Before his famous Histoire d’Angleterre (1724–7), the Frenchman had already made a name for himself by writing a pamphlet entitled Une Dissertation sur les Whigs et les Torys (1717), which is the chief focus of this chapter, although the Histoire is also briefly surveyed and contextualised. The chapter examines Rapin’s intervention against the backdrop of his expulsion from France along with other Huguenots in 1685, the Glorious Revolution of 1688–9, and the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. By focusing on Rapin’s Dissertation, this chapter demonstrates the centrality of religion and religious denominations in the construction of political parties. In political theory, Rapin’s Dissertation can be regarded as an intellectual milestone, as it was the first clear expression of the idea that balance between parties, as distinct from Machiavelli’s social orders, is recommendable as a way to achieve proper balance in a mixed constitution.

This chapter examines a group of closely related pamphlets published in the late 1650s around the time of Oliver Cromwell’s death that stage a dramatic dialogue in the crypt of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, between the ghosts of Henry VIII and the freshly interred Charles I. A Messenger from the dead (to give these anonymous English and Latin texts a collective title) advances the extraordinary claim that the recent civil wars, the regicide and the nation’s descent into political turmoil represent God’s delayed punishment for Henry VIII’s alleged crimes against the Catholic Church several generations earlier. I argue that this unorthodox thesis is not unique to Messenger but enjoyed a wider circulation in seventeenth-century culture. In asking who promoted and stood to benefit from such an explanation of recent events, I explore the significant differences among the various texts of the pamphlets, including their place of publication and ideological motivation.

The Introduction sets out the ‘problem’ and ‘paradox’ of counsel in regard to the ‘monarchy of counsel’ in England between the end of the Wars of the Roses and the English Civil War. On the one hand, it was a long-standing requirement that monarchs receive counsel in order to legitimize their rule. On the other, this condition had the potential to undermine their authority if the monarch was required to act on the counsel given. In other words, if counsel is obligatory, it impinges upon sovereignty. If it is not, it then becomes irrelevant and futile. The Introduction also provides justification of the scope of the study by providing some classical and medieval background.

The early Stuarts had a difficult and uncomfortable relationship with counsel. Whereas both James VI/I and Charles I increasingly relied heavily on close favourites to advise them, this mode of counsel was, in a sense, outdated and seen to be suspicious. In response, counsel was increasingly vested in the parliament over and above the Privy Council, encroaching upon kingly authority. If one accepts the Machiavellian/reason of state assumption that all counsellors are self-interested, and that this conflicted with advice-giving in the interests of the state, then – many reasoned – the obvious solution was to rest the responsibility of giving counsel in an institution wherein self-interest was synonymous with the interests of the state. The Stuarts, however, resisted this conclusion, seeing themselves as the state, and the choice of counsellors solely resting with themselves. This debate had the effect of reinforcing a focus on sovereignty: parliamentarians made the argument that the central conciliar institution was in fact a locus of sovereignty; royalists sought to reduce the power and relevance of counsel. For this reason, the English Civil War sees the end of the ‘monarchy of counsel’ and the turn to a politics focused on theories and expressions of sovereignty.