Böcker av Lloyd Bowen

What the fascinating life of Edward Vaughan reveals about the politics of early modern England and Wales. This book tells the remarkable story of Welshman Edward Vaughan. Born in 1600, he was the fifth son of a landed gentleman and could not have expected much in life beyond a career as a lawyer. However, by fair means and foul (mostly foul) he managed to gain possession of one of the largest estates in seventeenth-century Wales. His tenure was not to be a quiet one, however, as the Protestant Vaughan endured a bruising legal contest with a powerful Catholic magnate over these lands. Vaughan's case was then swept up in the politics of the civil wars. A moderate parliamentarian, during the 1640s and 1650s Vaughan fought new battles with local radicals to secure his patrimony. The trials of Edward Vaughan reveal much about the confrontational and sometimes bloody nature of law, politics, and faction in early modern England and Wales. Rich with accusations of attempted murder, treason, and a lengthy legal battle with one of the most powerful Catholic families in the country, this is a surprising story and one that has yet to be told.

This book assimilates new scholarship and deploys a wealth of original archival research to present a fresh picture of Wales under the Tudor and Stuart monarchs. It adopts novel perspectives on Welsh identity and allegiance to examine epochal events, such as the union of England and Wales under Henry VIII; the Reformation and the break with Rome; and the British Civil Wars and Glorious Revolution. It argues that Welsh experiences during this period can best be captured through widespread attachments to a shared history and language and to ideas of Britishness and monarchy. The volume looks beyond high politics to examine the rich tapestry of early modern Welsh life, considering concepts of gender and women's experiences; the role of language and cultural change; and expressions of Welsh identity beyond the principality's borders. --

Throws much new light on questions of gentry honour, the nature and prevalence of early modern elite violence, and the process of judicial investigation in Shakespeare's EnglandThis book offers an analysis of Jacobean duelling and gentry honour culture through the close examination and contextualisation of the most fully documented duel of the early modern era. This was the fatal encounter between a Flintshire gentleman, Edward Morgan, and his Cheshire antagonist, John Egerton, which took place at Highgate on 21 April 1610. John Egerton was killed, but controversy quickly erupted over whether he had died in a fair fight of honouror had been murdered in a shameful conspiracy. The legal investigation into the killing produced a rich body of evidence which reveals in unparalleled detail not only the dynamics of the fight itself, but also the inner workingsof a seventeenth-century metropolitan manhunt, the Middlesex coroner's court, a murder trial at King's Bench, and also the murky webs of aristocratic patronage at the Jacobean Court which ultimately allowed Morgan to secure a pardon. Uniquely, a series of dramatic Star Chamber suits have survived that also allow us to investigate the duel's origins. Their close examination, as Lloyd Bowen shows, calls into question the historiographical paradigm which sees early modern duels as matters of the moment and distinct from, as opposed to connected to, the gentry feud. The book throws much new light on questions of gentry honour, the nature and prevalence of early modern eliteviolence, and the process of judicial investigation in Shakespeare's England. LLOYD BOWEN is Reader in Early Modern History at Cardiff University.

This book provides the first discussion of the most steadfast supporter of parliament in Wales during the British Civil Wars (1642-9), who was eventually executed for his decision to switch sides and support the king in 1648.