A team of experts view the relationship between rulers and their leading subjects across Europe and further afield. If God-derived authority legitimized a monarch’s rule, it did not necessarily prevent opposition to perceived arbitrary government as subjects put forward the counter-concept of consensual rule. The provincial elite might serve the ruler as advisors and officers at court but they also possessed an independent source of power based on their extensive estates. While monarchs wanted to perpetuate a system in which they could watch over members of the regional elite at court and keep them busy, they sought to make use of them as local and provincial administrators, that is, as long as they remained loyal : a fraught balancing act.

Contributors include : Hélder Carvalhal, Peter Edwards, Jemma Field, Cailean Gallagher, Pedro José Herades-Ruiz, Graeme S. Millen, Vita Malašinskiené, Tibor Monostori, Steve Murdoch, David Potter, Peter S. Roberts, Irene Maria Vicente-Martin, and Matthias Wong.

Table des matières

Introduction
Author : Peter Edwards
Pages : 1–13

Part 1 Personal Monarchy

Chapter 1 A Renaissance King Makes War : Francis I of France, His Counsellors and Strategic Decisions in an Era of Personal Monarchy
Author : David Potter
Pages : 17–36

Chapter 2 Heinrich Schlick, the Shadow First Minister of Emperor Ferdinand III : a New Model of Imperial Factional Politics in the 1630s–1640s
Author : Tibor Monostori
Pages : 37–53

Chapter 3 Charles I’s Execution and the Destiny of Monarchy in Britain and Europe
Author : Matthias Wong
Pages : 54–72

Chapter 4 The Scots-Dutch Moment ? The Scots-Dutch Brigade and the Highland War, 1689–1691
Author : Graeme S. Millen
Pages : 73–95

Chapter 5 Balanced on the Brink : Scottish Jacobite Histories of Stuart Absolutism
Author : Cailean Gallagher
Pages : 96–115

Part 2 Rulers and the Provincial Elite

Chapter 6 Henry VIII, Francis I and the Reformation Parliament, 1529–1539
Author : Peter R. Roberts
Pages : 119–140

Chapter 7 Conflict or Cooperation between the Monarch and the Social and Political Elite ?
Negotiating Power and the Political Balance in Sixteenth Century Portugal
Author : Hélder Carvalhal
Pages : 141–157

Chapter 8 Governing at a Distance : Manuel Teles Barreto, Philip II’s First Governor-General in Brazil, and the Elites of Salvador da Bahia (c.1583–1587)
Author : Irene Vicente-Martín
Pages : 158–186

Chapter 9 Tied up in Red Tape : the Failure to Establish Absolutism in the Elective Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th and 17th Centuries
Author : Vita Malašinskienė
Pages : 187–206

Part 3 Government, Towns and the Economy

Chapter 10 Conditional or Absolute ? Representations of the King’s Power in Sixteenth Century Spanish and French Accounts
Author : Pedro José Herades-Ruiz
Pages : 209–224

Chapter 11 The Intersection between London and the Regions at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century
The Social and Political Life of William Cavendish, Baron Hardwick (Later 1st Earl of Devonshire)
Author : Peter Edwards
Pages : 225–246

Chapter 12 Clothing the Royal Family : the Intersection of the Court and City in Early Stuart London
Author : Jemma Field
Pages : 247–271

Chapter 13 Crown Policy, Church Decrees and Civic Necessity : Non-Lutheran Migration to Scandinavia in the Early Modern Period
Author : Steve Murdoch
Pages : 272–292

Conclusion
Pages : 293–296

Back Matter
Index