Covenanting Citizens throws new light on the origins of the English civil war and on the radical nature of the English Revolution. An exercise in writing the 'new political history', the volume challenges the discrete categories of high and popular politics and the presumed boundaries between national and local history. It offers the first full study of the Protestation, the first state oath to be issued under parliamentary authority. The politics behind its introduction into Parliament, it argues, challenges the idea that the drift to civil war was unintended or accidental. Used as a loyalty oath to swear the nation, it required those who took it to defend king, church, parliament, and England's liberties. Despite these political commonplaces, the Protestation had radical intentions and radical consequences. It envisaged armed resistance against the king, and possibly more. It became a charter by which parliament felt able to fight a civil war and it was used to raise men, money, and political support. Requiring resistance against enemies that might include a king himself contemplating the use of political violence, the Protestation offered a radical extension of membership of the political nation to those hitherto excluded by class, age, or gender. In envisaging new forms of political mobilisation, the Protestation promoted the development of a parliamentary popular political culture and ideas of active citizenry. Covenanting Citizens demonstrates how the Protestation was popularly appropriated to legitimise an agency expressed in street politics, new forms of mass petitioning, and popular political violence.

About the Author
Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Essex, John Walter mainly carries out research in the fields of popular political culture and the politics of the crowd in early modern society. He has been described by Tim Harris as 'the finest social historian of crowd action and popular politics in early modern England'. Walter's publications include Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution, which was awarded the 1999 Royal Historical Society Whitfield Prize, and a collection of essays entitled Crowds and Popular Politics in Early Modern England. He has contributed to radio and television documentaries, and articles of his have inspired both an award-winning beer and a recent film (Robinson in Ruins, Patrick Keiller, 2010).

Reviews
There can be no mistaking the immense contribution of this exceptional study: it is unlikely to be surpassed. * Marcus Nevitt, The Seventeenth Century *
John Walter's tightly argued and richly detailed Covenanting Citizens: The Protestation Oath and Popular Political Culture in the English Revolution is a significant contribution to English Revolution scholarship, and in particular to the scholarship on the outbreak of the Civil War...It is a landmark study. * Gary Rivett, Journal of British Studies *
absorbing, well-written, astonishing in its range of sources, often surprising ... It is an exceptional achievement. * Dr Richard Luckett, judging panel of the Samuel Pepys Award 2017 *
I would recommend this book for anyone interested in the history of early modern British politics, print, and religion, especially for those wanting to study the impact of how print was used as a tool to promote the oath. * Eilish Gregory, Reviews in History *
Here is a monograph which is absolutely fundamental for all of us still chasing the origins of the English civil war, written in limpid prose through which shines his mastery of the discipline ... This may be the most satisfying account, in a mere 266 pages, of how civil war broke out in England that has yet been written. * Anthony Fletcher, History *
Covenanting Citizens is a welcomed contribution to our understanding of early modern oath-taking and political engagement on the eve of the Civil War. Walter's detailed and balanced research into manuscripts, diaries, and print culture, shows that the Protestation was much more than an act by Parliament; it was a sacred promise, taken in every county, to defend a reformed Protestant nation ... a substantial contribution to seventeenth-century scholarship. * Brett F. Parker, Seventeenth-Century News *


Awards
Winner of Winner of the Samuel Pepys Award 2017.



Book Information
ISBN 9780199605590
Author John Walter
Format Hardback
Page Count 278
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 164mm * 21mm