A team of experts view the relationship between rulers and their leading subjects across Europe and further afield. If God-derived authority legitimized a monarch’s rule, it did not necessarily prevent opposition to perceived arbitrary government as subjects put forward the counter-concept of consensual rule. The provincial elite might serve the ruler as advisors and officers at court but they also possessed an independent source of power based on their extensive estates. While monarchs wanted to perpetuate a system in which they could watch over members of the regional elite at court and keep them busy, they sought to make use of them as local and provincial administrators, that is, as long as they remained loyal: a fraught balancing act.
Contributors include: Hélder Carvalhal, Peter Edwards, Jemma Field, Cailean Gallagher, Pedro José Herades-Ruiz, Graeme S. Millen, Vita Malašinskiené, Tibor Monostori, Steve Murdoch, David Potter, Peter R. Roberts, Irene Maria Vicente-Martin, and Matthias Wong.
Peter Edwards is Professor Emeritus of Early Modern British Social and Economic History at Roehampton University, London. He has published books and articles on rural, equine and military history, as well as studies of members of the aristocratic Cavendish family.
Preface Abbreviations Notes on Contributors
Introduction Peter Edwards
Part 1: Personal Monarchy
1 A Renaissance King makes War: Francis I of France, His Counsellors and Strategic Decisions in an Era of Personal Monarchy David Potter
2 Heinrich Schlick, the Shadow First Minister of Emperor Ferdinand III: a New Model of Imperial Factional Politics in the 1630s–1640s Tibor Monostori
3 Charles I’s Execution and the Destiny of Monarchy in Britain and Europe Matthias Wong
4 The Scots-Dutch Moment? The Scots-Dutch Brigade and the Highland War, 1689–1691 Graeme S. Millen
5 Balanced on the Brink: Scottish Jacobite Histories of Stuart Absolutism Cailean Gallagher
PART 2: Rulers and the Provincial Elite
6 Henry VIII, Francis I and the Reformation Parliament, 1529–1539 Peter R. Roberts
7 Conflict or Cooperation between the Monarch and the Social and Political Elite?
Negotiating Power and the Political Balance in Sixteenth Century Portugal
Hélder Carvalhal
8 Governing at a Distance: Manuel Teles Barreto, Philip II’s First Governor-General in Brazil, and the Elites of Salvador da Bahia (c.1583–1587) Irene Maria Vicente-Martín
9 Tied up in Red Tape: the Failure to Establish Absolutism in the Elective Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th and 17th Centuries Vita Malašinskienė
Part 3: Government, Towns and the Economy
10 Conditional or Absolute? Representations of the King’s Power in Sixteenth Century Spanish and French Accounts Pedro José Herades-Ruiz
11 The Intersection between London and the Regions at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century
The Social and Political Life of William Cavendish, Baron Hardwick (Later 1st Earl of Devonshire)
Peter Edwards
12 Clothing the Royal Family: the Intersection of the Court and City in Early Stuart London Jemma Field
13 Crown Policy, Church Decrees and Civic Necessity: Non-Lutheran Migration to Scandinavia in the Early Modern Period Steve Murdoch
Conclusion Index
Scholars, students, and institutions interested in the political, social, economic, cultural, and military aspects of the early modern history of Europe and beyond, especially special subject students, post-graduates, lecturers and educated laymen. Keywords: Divine Right, absolutism, consensual rule, social elite, the Court, councillors, warfare, faction, parliament, religion, bureaucracy, ritual, conspicuous consumption, networks, migration.