Download England's Culture Wars: Puritan Reformation and It's Enemies in the Interregnum, 1649-1660 AudioBook Free
Following the execution of the king in 1649, the new Commonwealth and then Oliver Cromwell set out to drive forward a puritan reformation of manners. They wanted to reform the cathedral and its services, enforce the Sabbath, suppress Holiday, and pass on the gospel. They looked for to impose a stern moral discipline to modify and reform sexual behaviour, drinking routines, vocabulary, dress, and leisure activities which range from music and plays to sports. England's Culture Wars explores what lengths this agenda could be enforced, especially in metropolitan areas which offered the best potential to build a godly civic commonwealth. How far were local magistrates and ministers prepared to cooperate, and what coercive powers did the regime have got to silence or remove dissidents? How far do the reformers themselves desire to go, and how do they reconcile godly reformation with the needs of decency and civility? Music and dancing lived on, in genteel contexts, early opera substituted the plays now forbidden, and puritans themselves were often fond of hunting and hawking. Bernard Capp explores the propaganda wars waged in press and pulpit, how energetically reformation was pursued, and how much or little was achieved. Many recent historians have dismissed interregnum reformation as a failure. He demonstrates that as the reforming drive mixed enormously from destination to place, its impact could be powerful. The booklet is therefore structured in three parts: setting out the reform agenda and challenges, surveying standard issues and patterns, and finally offering a amount of representative case-studies. It attracts on a wide range of sources, including local and central authorities records, judicial information, pamphlets, sermons, newspapers, diaries, words, and memoirs; and demonstrates how court public records by themselves give us only a very limited picture of what was happening on the floor.
