The introduction starts by showing how the Swallowfield Articles, the famous record of the early modern ‘politics of the parish’, reveal the persistent importance of the ‘medieval’ manorial court leet to local governance. It then provides an overview of both the medieval and early modern historiography, showing how a newer set of contributions has emphasised continuity between these eras by revealing the importance of manor courts after 1500, a long-run connection between state and locality stretching back into the Middle Ages, and the existence of a medieval local elite. It shows that a flaw in the literature remains the lack of cross-period studies which this book tackles by exploring the functions of manorial offices, who filled these offices, and the ways in which officeholding systems changed in response to the decline of lordship and the process of state formation using a long-run time frame stretching from 1300 to 1650. Next, the key features of the case-study manors (Horstead, Cratfield, Little Downham, Worfield and Fordington) are discussed. The final section provides a plan of the book.

This chapter examines the impact of state formation, in the form of the rise of the civil parish, on manorial governance structures. Through examining churchwardens’ accounts, it demonstrates that these officials at Worfield and Cratfield transformed from being local managers in the parish to being important agents of the state. However, comparison of the identities of churchwardens and manorial officials reveals that, throughout this transformation, the same individuals continued to hold both manorial and parochial roles. Moreover, qualitative evidence reveals that the powers of churchwardens and manorial officials were combined to meet the same objectives by these individuals, helping them meet their obligations to the lord and the crown. This questions a model of replacement of manor by parish which has been put forward by some early modernists, instead suggesting that the local parochial elite that state formation is often argued to have created was deeply rooted in the governing structure of the medieval manor.

This chapter investigates the impact of state formation, through the rise of the quarter sessions and the new responsibilities this gave village constables, on manorial governance structures. A county-wide case study of manors and quarter sessions’ records in Norfolk for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reveals that constables were fulfilling important roles for JPs in serving warrants, enforcing labour legislation and policing vagrancy. However, constables continued to be chosen in manorial courts and to be subject to the oversight of, and directed by, officials of courts leet. Examining the identities of constables at the case-study manors further shows that these individuals continued to serve in manorial office into the early modern period. Moreover, manorial courts since the fourteenth century ensured that constables fulfilled the requirements owed by vills to the crown, meaning that new obligations of constables to the state were underpinned by manorial structures. Therefore, the incorporation of constables into new county-wide structures of law and order was made possible through the local authority given to them via the manor court.

This chapter examines the extent to which service in manorial office was characterised by relative inclusion of all members of the community or whether official positions were controlled by a narrow elite, and how this changed over time. Through examining the systems by which officials were selected, it finds that communities of tenants had significant power over who was chosen for office owing to traditions of collective liability. A further quantitative analysis of selection patterns reveals a two-tier system. While a significant proportion of the adult male tenant population likely served in office across their lifetimes, an elite dominated office through repeat service across a number of different roles. These findings demonstrate that a single designation of ‘participatory’ or ‘restrictive’ cannot be applied to manorial officeholding, as patterns of selection encompassed both elements. It also reveals little change into the early modern period, challenging a narrative of the rise of the ‘middling sort’.

A dreary overstuffed catalogue of bygone orators or a magnificent intellectual achievement? A swan song for public speech or an apology for the art of eloquence? A timid retreat into academic leisure or a brazen challenge to civil war and Caesar? Despite the divergent viewpoints of these questions, it is hard to come away from Cicero’s Brutus without seeing merit in each of them. There is some of almost everything in Cicero’s stunning dialogue, and for that reason its seeming hodgepodge of intellectual curiosity, political statement, and documentary diligence has spurred modern observers to widely differing interpretations.

Beginning with an account of a late Victorian collection of Wordsworth’s poems, and the paper and botanical ephemera that were included in a copy of this edition, the introduction assesses Wordsworth’s daisy poems to pave the way for a broader discussion of the poet’s early interest in the poetics and politics of peace and how this interest was modified over the course of his career. Works examined in the Introduction include sonnets composed during the Peace of Amiens (1802–1803) and the ‘Immortality Ode’ from Poems, in Two Volumes (1807). The Introduction locates Wordsworth’s poetry on peace and war within the broader social, cultural, and political contexts of the period and also outlines the book’s conceptual framework.

The Introduction outlines crucial intellectual contexts and frameworks for thinking about how Cicero's Brutus is a crucial intervention in the the civic crisis and the writing of literary history. It also surveys the scholarship to date and examines how Cicero's project reflects general trends in academic inquiry and civic government.

In this chapter, attention turns to The White Doe of Rylstone, a poem arising out of familial grief whose engagement with the melancholic afterlife of war was brought into sharp relief following its publication in the year of Waterloo. Whether encountered in the love between the human and the non-human, in the slow effacement of Rylstone Hall, or in the merging of the sacred and the profane, the chapter argues that The White Doe offered a way for post-war readers to imagine peace as a form of aesthetic play that, even as it risks jettisoning actually existing peace to the realm of transcendental inaccessibility, discovers in the comingling of absence and presence, lack and plenitude, finitude and infinitude the preconditions for a life no longer marked by the struggle for self-definition.