Also that it will help to correct a tendency to generalize based on the shortage of information I'm experiencing.
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'Militant Protestantism and British Identity, 1603-1642'.
Focusing on the impact of Continental religious warfare on English, Scottish and Irish Protestantism, this study is concerned with the way in which British identity developed in the early Stuart period. Still debated today, the question of British national identity first emerged in 1603 when James VI of Scotland succeeded to the thrones of England and Ireland, uniting the three kingdoms under one monarch. What followed was conflict between the dynastic vision of a Britain defined by loyalty to the king, and a new collective identity, characterized by military ambition and anti-popery.
White examines what militant Protestants in England, Scotland and Ireland thought about ‘Britain'. British identity and foreign policy are studied as one, allowing a greater understanding of the role of religious fervour on national and international politics of the time; the focus being on what brought British Protestants together, rather than what kept them apart.
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Dissertation 2008
Jason C. White
"Your Grievances are Ours": Militant Pan-Protestantism, the Thirty Years' War, and the Origins of the British Problem, 1618-1641
Examines the domestic impact of Stuart foreign policy during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) focusing on politics, religion and culture. The war on the continent had a divisive effect on politics and religion in Britain and this division is placed within a British context, showing how those opposed to Stuart foreign policy could be found in both England and Scotland where shared religious and political ideals fostered an alternative sense of British identity to the one proffered by the British king. On one side the king, and his closest advisors, believed that the conduct of foreign policy should ensure, through alliances and diplomacy, the strength and stability of the Stuart dynasty. This meant that the Stuart monarchs were willing to engage in friendly relations with Catholic powers, such as during the early 1620s when a marriage between Prince Charles and a Spanish princess was proposed, if they believed it would benefit the dynasty. This clashed with an alternative British identity that was militant, pro-Protestant, and stridently anti-Catholic. These individuals, such as Thomas Scott, Simonds D'Ewes, Samuel Rutherford, and others, labeled "militant pan-Protestants" in the dissertation, believed that the international Protestant cause should trump the needs and desires of the dynasty. The ideas of the militant pan-Protestants are explored through their diaries, printed polemics, and letters. In this way the dissertation seeks to offer new insights into both the origins and the outbreak of the British civil wars, showing that the international situation created deep divisions between the Stuarts and their subjects in both England and Scotland. Previous historians may have labeled these individuals "Puritans" and would have noted that their interest in the Protestant cause was ancillary to their concerns about domestic religion. The dissertation argues that the concern for the Protestant cause was primary in the thoughts of those typically labeled "Puritan" and that this concern for international Protestantism informed their opinions on the domestic political situation.
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Abraham Holland makes it crystal-clear that the 18th Earl Henry de Vere may have been his father's son in 'letter' - but not in spirit:
...The soft inticements of the Court, the smiles
Of Glorious Princes the bewitching wiles
Of softer Ladies, and the Golden State
That in such places doth on Greatnesse waite
And all the shadie happinesse which seemes
To attend Kings and follow Diadems
Were Boy-games to his minde: to see a Maske
And sit it out, he held a greater taske
Than to endure a Siege: to wake all Night
In his cold armour, still expecting fight
And the drad On-set, the sad face of feare,
And the pale silence of an Army, were
His best Delights; among the common rout
Of his rough Souldiers to sit hardnesse out
Were his most pleasing Delicates: to him
A Batter'd Helmet was a Diadem:
And wounds, his Brauerie: Knowing that Fame
And faire Eternitie could neuer claime
Their Meeds without such Hazards:
from (AN ELEGIE VPON THE DEATH OF THE RIGHT NOBLE and Magnanimous Heroë, HENRY Earle of Oxford, Viscount Bulbec, Lord Samford, and Lord great Chamberlaine of England.
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In the same elegy, Oxford's son Henry de Vere's spirit is crowned in Elysium by his father's mighty opposite Sir Philip Sidney:
Nor came he to the Elysium with shame
That the old VERES did blush to heare his Name
Brighter than theirs: where his deserts to grace
His Grand-fathers rose up and gave him place,
And set him with the Heroës, where the Quire
Of ayrie Worthies rise up, and admire
The stately Shade: those Brittish Ghosts which long
Agoe were number'd in th'Elysian throng
Ioy to behold him; SYDNEY threw his Bayes
On OXFORDS head, and daign'd to sing his praise;
While Fame with silver Trumpet did keepe time
With his high Voice, and answered his rime.
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Shakespeare, Oxford, The Academ Roial and the Suppression of Deformitie:
Of the Academ Roial:
[Bolton's] 'earliest version of this proposal was directed to King James through the mediation of the Duke of Buckingham, to whom Bolton was distantly related; the pages reproduced in Plate 21 capture the spirit of the entire venture. The primary function of the new Academy - the proposal grandly, if somewhat vaguely promised - was to be the promotion of ORDER, DECORUM, and DECENCIE (words emphatically described in large upper-cased letters) and the suppression of Confusion and Deformitie. As Bolton's thoughts developed, he proposed more specific functions to the Academy: that it should control the licensing of all non-theological books in England, for example, keep a constant register of 'public facts', monitor the translation of all learned works, hold meetings every quarter and annually on St. George's Day. (Donaldson, Ben Jonson, a Life, p.366)
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Shakespeare - born and died on St. George's Day.
...The soft inticements of the Court, the smiles
Of Glorious Princes the bewitching wiles
Of softer Ladies, and the Golden State
That in such places doth on Greatnesse waite
And all the shadie happinesse which seemes
To attend Kings and follow Diadems
Were Boy-games to his minde: to see a Maske
And sit it out, he held a greater taske
Than to endure a Siege: to wake all Night
In his cold armour, still expecting fight
And the drad On-set, the sad face of feare,
And the pale silence of an Army, were
His best Delights; among the common rout
Of his rough Souldiers to sit hardnesse out
Were his most pleasing Delicates: to him
A Batter'd Helmet was a Diadem:
And wounds, his Brauerie: Knowing that Fame
And faire Eternitie could neuer claime
Their Meeds without such Hazards:
from (AN ELEGIE VPON THE DEATH OF THE RIGHT NOBLE and Magnanimous Heroë, HENRY Earle of Oxford, Viscount Bulbec, Lord Samford, and Lord great Chamberlaine of England.
**********************************
In the same elegy, Oxford's son Henry de Vere's spirit is crowned in Elysium by his father's mighty opposite Sir Philip Sidney:
Nor came he to the Elysium with shame
That the old VERES did blush to heare his Name
Brighter than theirs: where his deserts to grace
His Grand-fathers rose up and gave him place,
And set him with the Heroës, where the Quire
Of ayrie Worthies rise up, and admire
The stately Shade: those Brittish Ghosts which long
Agoe were number'd in th'Elysian throng
Ioy to behold him; SYDNEY threw his Bayes
On OXFORDS head, and daign'd to sing his praise;
While Fame with silver Trumpet did keepe time
With his high Voice, and answered his rime.
**********************************
Shakespeare, Oxford, The Academ Roial and the Suppression of Deformitie:
Of the Academ Roial:
[Bolton's] 'earliest version of this proposal was directed to King James through the mediation of the Duke of Buckingham, to whom Bolton was distantly related; the pages reproduced in Plate 21 capture the spirit of the entire venture. The primary function of the new Academy - the proposal grandly, if somewhat vaguely promised - was to be the promotion of ORDER, DECORUM, and DECENCIE (words emphatically described in large upper-cased letters) and the suppression of Confusion and Deformitie. As Bolton's thoughts developed, he proposed more specific functions to the Academy: that it should control the licensing of all non-theological books in England, for example, keep a constant register of 'public facts', monitor the translation of all learned works, hold meetings every quarter and annually on St. George's Day. (Donaldson, Ben Jonson, a Life, p.366)
************************************
Shakespeare - born and died on St. George's Day.
