Monarchies, States Generals and Parliaments

Monarchies, States Generals and Parliaments
Author: H. G. Koenigsberger
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 412
Release: 2001-11-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521803304

This 2001 book charts the history of the States General - the parliament - of the Netherlands and its relations with two phases of monarchical rule in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Unlike the English parliament, the States General was a composite body, representing the local estates of the separate provinces which were anxious to keep their autonomy. The history of the States General was determined by this structure, and by its relations with the monarchy: dukes of Burgundy in the fifteenth century, and Spanish Habsburgs in the sixteenth. Ideally, everyone was meant to cooperate. In practice, there was already a major crisis by the 1480s, and divisions from the 1560s led to decades of civil war. By 1600 the Netherlands had split between the United Provinces - a parliamentary regime, governed as a republic by the States General - and the Spanish Netherlands.

The Role of Monarchy in Modern Democracy

The Role of Monarchy in Modern Democracy
Author: Robert Hazell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2020-09-17
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1509931031

How much power does a monarch really have? How much autonomy do they enjoy? Who regulates the size of the royal family, their finances, the rules of succession? These are some of the questions considered in this edited collection on the monarchies of Europe. The book is written by experts from Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the UK. It considers the constitutional and political role of monarchy, its powers and functions, how it is defined and regulated, the laws of succession and royal finances, relations with the media, the popularity of the monarchy and why it endures. No new political theory on this topic has been developed since Bagehot wrote about the monarchy in The English Constitution (1867). The same is true of the other European monarchies. 150 years on, with their formal powers greatly reduced, how has this ancient, hereditary institution managed to survive and what is a modern monarch's role? What theory can be derived about the role of monarchy in advanced democracies, and what lessons can the different European monarchies learn from each other? The public look to the monarchy to represent continuity, stability and tradition, but also want it to be modern, to reflect modern values and be a focus for national identity. The whole institution is shot through with contradictions, myths and misunderstandings. This book should lead to a more realistic debate about our expectations of the monarchy, its role and its future. The contributors are leading experts from all over Europe: Rudy Andeweg, Ian Bradley, Paul Bovend'Eert, Axel Calissendorff, Frank Cranmer, Robert Hazell, Olivia Hepsworth, Luc Heuschling, Helle Krunke, Bob Morris, Roger Mortimore, Lennart Nilsson, Philip Murphy, Quentin Pironnet, Bart van Poelgeest, Frank Prochaska, Charles Powell, Jean Seaton, Eivind Smith.

The English Parliaments of Henry VII 1485-1504

The English Parliaments of Henry VII 1485-1504
Author: P. R. Cavill
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2009-08-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0191610267

P.R. Cavill offers a major reinterpretation of early Tudor constitutional history. In the grand 'Whig' tradition, the parliaments of Henry VII were a disappointing retreat from the onward march towards parliamentary democracy. The king was at best indifferent and at worst hostile to parliament; its meetings were cowed and quiescent, subservient to the royal will. Yet little research has tested these assumptions. Drawing on extensive archival research, Cavill challenges existing accounts and revises our understanding of the period. Neither to the king nor to his subjects did parliament appear to be a waning institution, fading before the waxing power of the crown. For a ruler in Henry's vulnerable position, parliament helped to restore royal authority by securing the good governance that legitimated his regime. For his subjects, parliament served as a medium through which to communicate with the government and to shape - and, on occasion, criticize - its policies. Because of the demands parliament made, its impact was felt throughout the kingdom, among ordinary people as well as among the elite. Cooperation between subjects and the crown, rather than conflict, characterized these parliaments. While for many scholars parliament did not truly come of age until the 1530s, when - freed from its medieval shackles - the modern institution came to embody the sovereign nation state, in this study Henry's reign emerges as a constitutionally innovative period. Ideas of parliamentary sovereignty were already beginning to be articulated. It was here that the foundations of the 'Tudor revolution in government' were being laid.

Monarchy Transformed

Monarchy Transformed
Author: Robert von Friedeburg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2017-08-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316510247

"Until the 1960s, it was widely assumed that in Western Europe the 'New Monarchy' propelled kingdoms and principalities onto a modern nation-state trajectory. John I of Portugal (1358-1433), Charles VII (1403-1461) and Louis XI (1423-1483) of France, Henry VII and Henry VIII of England (1457-1509, 1509-1553), Isabella of Castile (1474-1504) and Ferdinand of Aragon (1479-1516) were, by improving royal administration, by bringing more continuity to communication with their estates and by introducing more regular taxation, all seen to have served that goal. In this view, princes were assigned to the role of developing and implementing the sinews of state as a sovereign entity characterized by the coherence of its territorial borders and its central administration and government. They shed medieval traditions of counsel and instead enforced relations of obedience toward the emerging 'state'."--Provided by publisher.

Orthodoxies and Heterodoxies in Early Modern German Culture

Orthodoxies and Heterodoxies in Early Modern German Culture
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2007-11-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 9047431642

This interdisciplinary collection of essays about early modern Germany addresses the tensions, both fruitful and destructive, between normative systems of order on the one hand, and a growing diversity of practices on the other. Individual essays address crucial struggles over religious orthodoxy after the Reformation, the transformation of political loyalties through propaganda and literature, and efforts to redefine both canonical forms and new challenges to them in literature, music, and the arts. Bringing together the most exciting papers from the 2005 conference of Frühe Neuzeit Interdisziplinär, an international research and conference group, the collection offers fresh comparative insights into the terrifying as well as exhilarating predicaments that the people of the Holy Roman Empire faced between the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Contributors include: Claudia Benthien, Robert von Friedeburg, Markus Friedrich, Claire Gantet, Susan Lewis Hammond, Thomas Kaufmann, Hildegard Elisabeth Keller, Benjamin Marschke, Nathan Baruch Rein, and Ashley West.

Orthodoxies and Heterodoxies in Early Modern German Culture

Orthodoxies and Heterodoxies in Early Modern German Culture
Author: Randolph Conrad Head
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004162763

Interdisciplinary essays on early modern Germany that address orthodoxy and its challenges in religion, politics, and the arts. Confronting the transformation of normative canons after the Reformation, the essays investigate authority and knowledge in an era of shifting cultural foundations.

The Founding of the Dutch Republic

The Founding of the Dutch Republic
Author: James Tracy
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2008-01-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199209111

James D. Tracy offers a major re-evaluation of the Dutch Revolt and its role in the creation of a new Republic. He draws extensively on State records to illuminate the dominant influence of provincial towns in formulating a coherent strategy for the war.

Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542

Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542
Author: Amy Blakeway
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2022-02-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 3030893774

This book, based on a fresh understanding of Scottish governmental records rooted in extensive archival research, offers the first study of these important institutions in a period of revived royal authority. The regime which emerges from these records is one which understood the power of consultation, adroitly using a range of groups from full parliaments to conventions of specialists and experts selected to deal with the matter in hand. Policies were crafted through not one single meeting but several types of gathering, ranging from small groups when secrecy was of the essence or complex details required to be hammered out, to elaborate large gatherings when the regime employed a performative strategy to disseminate information or legitimise its policies. Still more impressively, much of this was managed in the King’s absence – James remained at a distance from many of these gatherings, relying on key officials such as the Chancellor or Clerk Register to relay counsel and the royal will. This emphasis on specialised, frequent consultation reflects concurrent developments in the council, whilst relocating debate surrounding the development of state and administrative structures in Scotland traditionally located in the late sixteenth-century into the 1530s. In tackling the development of parliament in Scotland and placing it in its proper context amongst many different forms of consultative meeting this book also speaks to subjects of European-wide concern: how far early modern Parliaments were used to impose or resist religious change, the pace of state formation, monarchical power and relations between monarchs and their subjects.

Sacral Kingship Between Disenchantment and Re-enchantment

Sacral Kingship Between Disenchantment and Re-enchantment
Author: Ronald G. Asch
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2014-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1782383573

France and England are often seen as monarchies standing at opposite ends of the spectrum of seventeenth-century European political culture. On the one hand the Bourbon monarchy took the high road to absolutism, while on the other the Stuarts never quite recovered from the diminution of their royal authority following the regicide of Charles I in 1649. However, both monarchies shared a common medieval heritage of sacral kingship, and their histories remained deeply entangled throughout the century. This study focuses on the interaction between ideas of monarchy and images of power in the two countries between the execution of Mary Queen of Scots and the Glorious Revolution. It demonstrates that even in periods when politics were seemingly secularized, as in France at the end of the Wars of Religion, and in latter seventeenth- century England, the appeal to religious images and values still lent legitimacy to royal authority by emphasizing the sacral aura or providential role which church and religion conferred on monarchs.