Henry Neville and English Republican Culture in the Seventeenth Century

Henry Neville and English Republican Culture in the Seventeenth Century is the first full-length study of the republican Henry Neville as country gentleman, politician, political thinker, rebel and libeller. It traces the development of Neville’s political thought from the English Civil Wars to the Exclusion Crisis and beyond, while also challenging the way in which the history of ideas has been conceptualised in recent years by discussing political theory alongside cheap libels, shams and poetry.

While studies of early modern English republicanism tend to focus on the Interregnum, Neville’s Plato redivivus, which promoted a restructuring of the political order, was only published after the 1660 Restoration of the monarchy. This study therefore draws attention to long-term continuities in English republican thought and introduces the concept of anti-patriarchalism to focus on what Neville and other republicans writing before 1649 or after 1660 had in common.

This book will be of interest to students and academics of Early Modern studies