Regicide and Republicanism

Download or read book Regicide and Republicanism written by Barber Sarah Barber and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of seventeenth-century monarchy suggests that the arguments which were used to attack the potentially absolutist monarchy of Charles I were not all that different from those used against the constitutional monarchy of today. The seventeenth-century arguments were based on the fiction that the person who fulfilled the office could be distinguished from the office itself. Personal morality and behaviour were vital factors in assessing the value of government. From 1646 onwards there developed two parallel strands of thought. Those who believed in government by laws developed a republican response to the crisis of the 1640s. Those who believed that people made laws attacked Charles I rather than the monarchy itself, supported the regicide and subsequently approved of the rule of Cromwell.