Alterations Of State: Sacred Kingship In The English Reformation; Author: Mccoy, Richard C.; Hardback; Book

Author: Mccoy, Richard C.
Hardback; Book; 43 Photographs
192 pages
Published: August 2002
University Presses of California, Columbia and Princeton
ISBN: 0231126166

During the English reformation, writers like John Skelton, Shakespeare, John Milton, and Andrew Marvell grappled with the idea of kingship and royalty, its real presence and figurative power. McCoy explains why religious devotion to the royal person became both more acute and more problematic during Englands turbulent seventeenth century. The reformation involved the suppression of the Mass and the host and the elevation in their stead of royal icons, beginning a religious controversy that would lead to wars of conquest abroad and civil war at home, and to regicide, restoration and ultimately revolution.Sacred Kingship in the literature of the English Reformation. This work explains why religious devotion to the royal person became both more acute and more problematic during England's turbulent 17th century. As religious iconography was replaced by elevated royal icons, controversy led to wars, regicide, restoration and revolution.