Charles I and the People of England - Tapa dura

An invaluable case study in the evolution of historical scholarship, popular memory, and national mythology. (Renaissance Quarterly)

Cressy is the author of several delightful books on the social history of Tudor and Stuart England that draw on curious material buried in the archives (Tony Barber, Books of the Year 2015: Best Books 2015 History, Financial Times)

Cressy writes evocatively, giving fluent snapshots of individual reactions to particular issues or events... illuminating aspects of what it was like for people of various sorts to live in these turbulent times. (Times Literary Supplement, Michael Braddick)

lively new study (TES)

Cressy's eye for vivid detail ... remains undimmed ... readable and highly engaging (Journal of British Studies)

the sort of book written on the basis of a lifetime's exploration of the sources... t is never less than fascinating (Church Times)

wonderful (Open Letters Monthly)

Cressy has done sterling work showing how popular discontent magnified the restiveness of the gentry like a vast echochamber. His is the best book on the Civil War that I've read for a while. (BBC History Magazine)

This is a rich account, brimming with details culled from a huge range of original sources (Telegraph, Noel Malcolm)

David Cressy's lively new study ... leaves aside the elite narrative of this troubled reign and focuses instead on the beliefs, expectations, actions, and reactions of the vast majority of the King's subjects. (R. C. Richardson, Times Higher Education)

The story of the reign of Charles I - through the lives of his people.

Prize-winning historian David Cressy mines the widest range of archival and printed sources, including ballads, sermons, speeches, letters, diaries, petitions, proclamations, and the proceedings of secular and ecclesiastical courts, to explore the aspirations and expectations not only of the king and his followers, but also the unruly energies of many of his subjects, showing how royal authority was constituted, in peace and in war - and how it began to fall apart.

A blend of micro-historical analysis and constitutional theory, parish politics and ecclesiology, military, cultural, and social history, Charles I and the People of England is the first major attempt to connect the political, constitutional, and religious history of this crucial period in English history with the experience and aspirations of the rest of the population. From the king and his ministers to the everyday dealings and opinions of parishioners, petitioners, and taxpayers, David Cressy re-creates the broadest possible panorama of early Stuart England, as it slipped from complacency to revolution.