Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England
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In order to understand the English Revolution and Civil War we need to understand Puritanism. In this classic work of social history, Professor Hill shows Puritanism as a living faith, one that responded to social as well as religious needs. It was a set of beliefs that answered the hopes and fears of yeomen and gentlemen, merchants and artisans in the tribulations of early modern Britain, a time of extraordinary turbulence. Over this period, Puritanism, he shows, was interwoven into daily life. He looks at how rituals such as oath-taking, the Sabbath, bawdy courts and poor relief, became ways to order the social upheaval. He even offers an explanation for the emergence of the seemingly paradoxical - the Puritan revolutionaries.
Christopher Hill (1912-2003), born in York, was a historian and academic specializing in seventeenth-century English history. As a young man he witnessed the growth of the Nazi party firsthand during a prolonged holiday in Germany, an experience he later said contributed to the radicalization of his politics. He was master of Balliol College, University of Oxford, his alma mater, from 1965 to 1978. His celebrated and influential works include Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution; The World Turned Upside Down; and A Turbulent, Seditious and Fractious People: John Bunyan and His Church.