This book provides a fresh synthesis of relationships between cultural history and politics, from the eve of the Armada to the death of Charles II in 1685. It rejects whiggish and Marxist teleologies that have shaped previous accounts of this subject and emphasises instead the diversity of cultural perspectives available in the period; the role played by concepts of honour, law, divine providence and humanist scholarship; the profound importance of religious tensions in shaping political imagination; and the growing cultural importance of conflict and partisanship during and after the Civil War.