Elizabeth Politics: the Climatic Years, 1572-90

FAIN: FA-11214-75

Wallace T. MacCaffrey
President and Fellows of Harvard College (Cambridge, MA 02138-3800)

To complete a study of Elizabethan politics from 1558 to 1590. The first volume (1558 to 1572) dealt with the way political processes operated in a society of ambiguous character: a theoretically absolute monarch restricted by legal traditions and political practices of the time, a restless and opinionated aristocracy committed to a new religious faith which focused their views on matters of state in a novel way. The first volume emphasized these themes in the context of the new regime's struggle for survival. This was achieved by 1572, and the second volume will deal with the same themes from the context of foreign developments which threatened the security of state and religion.