The Rule of Moderation
Violence, Religion and the Politics of Restraint in Early Modern England

This important book exposes the subtle violence in early modern England, showing that moderation was paradoxically an ideology of control.

Ethan H. Shagan (Author)

9780521135566, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 29 September 2011

396 pages, 9 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.3 x 1.8 cm, 0.63 kg

'A profound and important book, which deserves to be widely discussed and debated. Shagan issues a provocative challenge to complacent acceptance of claims about the intrinsic or relative 'moderation' of England's church, system of government, and empire, from pre-modern into modern times.' Peter Marshall, University of Warwick

Why was it that whenever the Tudor-Stuart regime most loudly trumpeted its moderation, that regime was at its most vicious? This groundbreaking book argues that the ideal of moderation, so central to English history and identity, functioned as a tool of social, religious and political power. Thus The Rule of Moderation rewrites the history of early modern England, showing that many of its key developments – the via media of Anglicanism, political liberty, the development of empire and even religious toleration – were defined and defended as instances of coercive moderation, producing the 'middle way' through the forcible restraint of apparently dangerous excesses in Church, state and society. By showing that the quintessentially English quality of moderation was at heart an ideology of control, Ethan Shagan illuminates the subtle violence of English history and explains how, paradoxically, England came to represent reason, civility and moderation to a world it slowly conquered.

Part I. Moderate Foundations: Introduction
1. The bridle of moderation
Part II. Moderate Churches: 2. Violence and the via media in the reign of Henry VIII
3. Conformist moderation
4. Puritan moderation
Part III. Moderate Rule: 5. English expansion and the empire of moderation
6. Social moderation and the governance of the middle sort
7. Moderate freedom in the English Revolution
8. Toleration became moderate in seventeenth-century England
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]