Atherton and Sanders 2006

Atherton, Ian and Julie Sanders. The 1630s: Interdisciplinary Essays on Culture and Politics in the Caroline Era. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006.

Introducing The 1630s: questions of parliaments, peace and pressure points, by Julie Sanders and Ian Atherton (1-27)

identifiable moment between dissolution of parliament in March 1629 and meeting of the Short Parliament in April 1640

shift from war to peace

death of George Villiers led to greater access to the king, more marital harmony

"Laudianism or Arminianism -- prelacy to its enemies -- is seen as one of the hallmarks of the decade. The grip of the anti-Calvinist faction on church and king was made manifest by three acts in 1628-29: the translation of Laud to London in July 1628; the royal declaration for the peace of the church composed in December 1628; and the proclamation of the following January. The last two actions forbade the debate of predestination that were used quite effectively to clamp down on Calvinism. The Laudian triumph seemed complete by the beginning of the 1630s -- Peter Heylyn ended his account of the rise of 'Anti-Calvinians' in 1629 for by then they had become 'considerable both for power and number'." (4)

rise in miscellanies and commonplace books; "the politicisation of both genre and practice is inescapable in any reading of cultural production at this time"; "increasing Flemish influence on artistic tastes at court, and the dominance o fAnthony Van Dyck's court portraiture" (5)

"intensification of regional identity" in response to nationally imposed policies (5)

"The risk involved in reading either the political debate or literary productions of this period from such a perspective is that it appears as if all 1630s roads necessary lead this way [to C1's beheading]. Thinking in terms of a 'field of enquiroy', as this introduction has already proposed we might do, shifts us away from a linear reading that subjects all events and text to a teleological interpretion pointing towards 1642, or even 1649 and the execution of Charles I." (6)

crisis moments:

• late 1632 to early 1634, with publication of Prynne's Histriomastix", criticizing women on stage -- targeted at Henrietta Maria and the court masques; and progress on coronation trip to Edinburgh, with entertainments by Jonson; and reissue of Book of Sports, James's 1618 declaration, and rise of rural sports again (7)
• "As the reissue of the Book of Sports suggests, 1633 was a crucial turning point in the King's religious policy not so much for the making of new policy, but for the making public of already established trends and ideas. In June Charles's coronation in Edinburgh was carried out with the use of English vestments, ceremoneis and ornaments, some of which were then enforced upon the whole of the Scottish church, to the constermation of many. That same year the first copies of the Scottish prayer book (modelled on the English one and a project set in train by Laud in 1629) were printed." (8)
• and 1637; heightened paranoia about popish plots; expected that King would enter 30 Years War

"Metropolitan concerns are important, then, to any account of the 1630s, and yet there remains a need to register important shifts of balance away from the centre to the provinces. Simple binary demarcations are rarely sufficient in accounting for the cultural dynamics of early Stuart culture. We need to track a complex matrix of interplay and influence between metropolitan and provincial domans, and beyond that with literary tradition and generic convention." (15)

"The significance of networks (often but not exclusively familial) and regional coteries in the 1630s is a defining feature of the period's political exchanges and its literary practice." (17)

'From his Matie to me with his awin hand': the King's Correspondence during the Period o Personal Rule, Sarah Pynting (74-91)

"Documents written in the King's hand, as endorsements by a number of recipients referring to 'his Majesty's own hand' make clear, were regarded as especially significant. Such documents are, with the exception of 1638-9, rarer during the 1630s than at any other period during Charles's adulthood. However, it is not the number of records on any given subject that is significant, so much as the fact that he chose to write them at all. With bureaucratically competent Secretaries of State, councillors and lerks, there was no necessity for Charles to write his own letters -- still less official letters or drafts of documents. The concomitant significance placed on them by their recipients was shared by their author: Charles wrote himself when he had a particular interest in the subject of the letter, when he wanted to keep it private, and when he wanted to express individual praise or displeasure. These documents provide information about the subjects that particularly exercised him, and his personal and working relationships, rather than a balanced cross-section of the key issues of the period." (74-5)

King's regular practice of apostiling (making marginal responses to) Windebank's letters (75)

"The formal 'we =' used in scribal letters, signalling the full weight and authority of his majesty, is exchanged for 'I', suggestive of a private relationship and apparently a substitution of distance by intimacy, however temporary." (77)

Henrietta Maria in the 1630s: Perspectives on the Role of Consort Queens in Ancien Regime Courts, Caroline Hibbard (92-110)

recuperating Henrietta Maria as a powerful force, whose power emerged from her connection to France and which was different than Charles's