Westminster 1640–60 : A Royal City in a Time of Revolution

Explores the history of the royal city during the civil war and interregnum This book examines the varied and fascinating ways that Westminster – traditionally home to the royal court, the fashionable West End and parliament – became the seat of the successive, non-monarchical regimes of the 1640s and 1650s. It first explores the town as the venue that helped to shape the breakdown of relations between the king and parliament in 1640–42. Subsequent chapters explore the role Westminster performed as both the ceremonial and administrative heart of shifting regimes, the hitherto unnoticed militarisation of local society through the 1640s and 1650s, and the fluctuating fortunes of the fashionable society of the West End in this revolutionary context. Analyses of religious life and patterns of local political allegiance and government unveil a complex and dynamic picture, in which the area not only witnessed major political and cultural change in these turbulent decades, but also the persistence of conservatism on the very doorstep of government. This study examines the varied and fascinating ways in which the series of non-monarchical regimes of England's civil wars and interregnum interacted with the unique locality and community of Westminster. Westminster (as opposed to London) was traditionally viewed as the 'royal' city - the site of Whitehall Palace and the royal courts of justice, its Abbey reputed to be the 'house of kings', and its inhabitants assumed to be instinctive followers of the monarch and the royal court. Westminster emerges in this study as a site of extraordinary ambiguities and juxtapositions Front matter Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction The eye of the storm? Westminster, 1640–42 ‘The perpetual marching of troops, the ceaseless noise of drums and trumpets’: the militarization of Westminster Westminster and the state: sites and rites, 1642–60 Allegiance and government, 1643–60 Fashionable society in ‘these our cloudy days’ Religion, politics and society in revolutionary Westminster Conclusion Bibliography: selected manuscript sources Index