Examines a selection of Charles I's people, exploring their aspirations and discontents, their engagement with kindred and colleagues, and central authority, in an age they recognized as 'troubled'.


This book examines the lives and circumstances of a variety of English men and women in the decades before the English Civil War, and follows some of them to the Restoration. It introduces a selection of Charles I's people, some of them previously undocumented, and explores their aspirations and discontents, their engagement with their kindred, their colleagues and central authority. These were members of the clerical, professional and commercial classes or from the minor gentry and aristocratic fringe - the backbone of the political nation - engaged, in various ways, with military, governmental, ecclesiastical or commercial affairs.

Most feature little in previous historical studies, but key moments in their lives are reconstructed here from scattered references or rare collections. They are shown negotiating the shoals of ambition and opportunity, kinship and patronage, religious anxiety and personal distress, in an age they recognized as 'troubled'. Preoccupied by their own careers and comforts, and driven by personal anxieties and ambitions, Charles I's subjects coped with the pressures of public occurrences and the business of church and state. In that regard they shared some stresses with our own age, though theirs eventuated in civil war and revolution.