Endorsements

The Puritan Revolution of mid-seventeenth-century England produced an explosion of new and important political thinking. But while due attention has been given to the most famous thinkers, there are other important figures who have been relatively neglected, of whom Anthony Ascham is one. This book provides the first full-scale study of Ascham's political thought. During the crucial period between the Second Civil War and the aftermath of the abolition of monarchy and the establishment of the English Republic, when he served as official pamphleteer of the Parliament and the republican government, the arguments exposed in Ascham's works paved the way for much of contemporary political discussion. Ascham put forward a complex argument in support of Parliament's claims for obedience which drew on the political thought of Grotius, Hobbes, Selden, Filmer and Machiavelli. He combined ideas taken from these authors and turned them into a powerful instrument of propaganda to be deployed to the service of the political agenda of his Independent patrons in Parliament. Barducci's investigation of Ascham's works will bring together an intellectual analysis of his political thought and an analysis of the interaction between politics, propaganda and political ideas. The book as a whole will provide a careful and systematic analysis of Ascham's career and writings for the first time in English. It will be of interest to historians of early modern England and early modern print and propaganda, as well as to scholars of political thought, political science and intellectual history.