1636: Court and State

A Yorkshire lawyer called John Bladen produced a tract called ‘Miscellaneous Observations of the Principal Matters in the Court and State as they consist at this present, August 1636’. Bladen’s ‘Observation’ evaluated the state-of-the-realm in 1636 to encourage discourse of the Establishment, resources of the country, its strengths and the merits of two of the most powerful men of the time. This previously unpublished piece of work has been transcribed in this short book as it produces an interesting account of the able men, armaments and shipping which could be mustered in the prelude to the English Civil War.