Treason and the State
Law, Politics and Ideology in the English Civil War

A study of the fundamental change in the meaning of treason in the 1640s.

D. Alan Orr (Author)

9780521037334, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 28 May 2007

248 pages
22.9 x 15.3 x 1.5 cm, 0.384 kg

'… readable and engaging … Treason and the State is a worthy addition to the 'Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History' series. It opens up significant questions about the nature of the revolution against Charles I and reveals how the revolutionaries struggled to free themselves from precedent and to the re-fashion their conceptions of treason and state.' Alan MacDonald, Journal of Continuity and Change

This study traces the transition of treason from a personal crime against the monarch to a modern crime against the impersonal state. It consists of four highly detailed case studies of major state treason trials in England beginning with that of Thomas Wentworth, first Earl of Strafford, in the spring of 1641 and ending with that of Charles Stuart, King of England, in January 1649. The book examines how these trials constituted practical contexts in which ideas of statehood and public authority legitimated courses of political action that might ordinarily be considered unlawful - or at least not within the compass of the foundational statute of Edward III. The ensuing narrative reveals how the events of the 1640s in England challenged existing conceptions of treason as a personal crime against the king, his family and his servants, and pushed the ascendant parliamentarian faction towards embracing an impersonal conception of the state that perceived public authority as completely independent of any individual or group.

Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction
Part I. Concepts: 1. The statutory basis of English treason law
2. Sovereignty and state
Part II. Practice: 3. Thomas Wentworth, First Earl of Strafford
4. William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury
5. Connor Lord Maguire, Second Baron of Enniskillen
6. Charles Stuart, King of England
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Constitutional & administrative law [LND], Political science & theory [JPA], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]