A Freeborn People, Politics and the Nation in Seventeenth-Century England

Oxford: Clarenden Press / Oxford University Press, 1996. A beautiful, pristine copy -- bright, shiny, clean, square, tight, and unmarked. Sharp corners. Obviously never read. Not a book club edition. No owner's name or bookplate. From the Dust Jacket: "A FREEBORN PEOPLE is a provocative exploration of the ways in which the political cultures of the elite and of common people intersected during the seventeenth century. David Underdown shows that the two worlds were not as separate as historians have often thought them to be; English men and women of all social levels had similar expectations about good government and about the traditional liberties available to them under the 'Ancient Constitution.' Throughout the century, both levels of politics were also powerfully influenced by prevailing assumptions about gender roles, and, especially in the years before the civil wars, by fears that the country was threatened by evil forces of satanic inversion. This dramatic reinterpretation of the Stuart period, based on the author's acclaimed 1992 Ford Lectures, begins a new chapter in the continuing debate over the historical meaning of Britain's seventeenth-century revolutions." Has sections on the Gentry politics before 1640; Popular politics after 1640; the English Revolution; Loyalty and Libel; Restoration politics; etc. List of chapter notes/sources. Index. Original blue cloth . First Printing of the First Edition. Hardcover. As New condition/As New dust jacket. 8vo. xiii, 174pp.