This collection of essays, presented as a tribute to the career of Lois Green Schowerer, the highly-esteemed scholar of early modern British history, explores the several topics which have been central to her interests: politics,political thought, and the role of women in later Stuart Britain. Through two related sections, on the politics of violence and revolutions, and on the play of political imagination, American and British scholars address ProfessorSchowerer’s pioneering brief for the role of radicalism in the three decades spanning the Restoriation and the Revolution: Professor Schwoerer offers her own view and summary of that wicked and turbulent era in response. Throughout, the articles are ultimately concerned with the underlying issue of sovereignty, coming to terms with the contradictions and continuing tensions between a desire for monarchichal stability and the fear of an emerging absolutism an issue not unique to the Restoration era. Whether looking back to the early career of Thomas Hobbes, the antecedents of patriarchalism and ancient constitutionalism, or the trial and execution of Charles I, they see the Restoration and Revolution in the broader context of the whole seventeenth century.

Professor HOWARD NENNER teaches in the Department of History, Smith College.

Contributors: Mark Goldie, Janelle Greenberg, Tim Harris, Howard Nenner, Linda Levy Peck, J.G.A. Pocock, Gordon Schochet, Hilda L. Smith, Steven Zwicker, Melinda Zook, Lois Green Schwoerer.