Ellington, Huntingdonshire, a village belonging to the estates of the abbot of Ramsey from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries, was a typical East Midlands open-field village of 2,700 acres, with a largely villein population and a mixed farming economy. In these and other respects, Ellington was fairly representative of the rural settlements that housed the vast bulk of European populations throughout the Middle Ages. In the last several decades historians have intensified their efforts to understand the economy and society of these peasant communities, using records of local provenance, primarily the minutes of the semiannual manorial courts. The present article, based upon a larger socioeconomic study of the village community of Ellington from 1280 to 1600, examines the local response of that community to the long-term crises engendered by the arrival of plague in the mid-fourteenth century. Here, we are interested in examining the social underpinnings of village government, specifically, the dynamic complex of community standards or expectations that informed the selection of local leaders in the village.

Thanks to the evidence of court rolls, which begin in the thirteenth century, and other local records uniquely available for the English peasantry, we can study a number of indices of change in peasant communities and thus identify some of the aspirations and choices that constituted one dimension of the “mental world of the non-literate folk.” A study of village government through local leadership is a direct and significant avenue of investigation, first, because the surviving data allow us to identify the village's official leaders, both as individuals and as a group.

The assembly of the Long Parliament in November 1640 witnessed an outburst of passionate hostility toward recent royal policies in church and state. “The Common-wealth hath bin miserably torne and macerated,” declared Harbottle Grimston, “and all the proprieties and liberties shaken: the Church distracted, the Gospell and Professors of it persecuted, and the whole Kingdome over-run with multitudes and swarmes of projecting cater-wormes and caterpillars, the worst of all the Aegyptian plagues.” Yet, as Kevin Sharpe has recently reminded us, “to those on the road during the 1630s, the journey seemed far from a headlong rush towards conflict.” Sir Henry Wotton could write in 1633 that “we know not what a Rebel is; what a Plotter against the Common-weal: nor what that is, which Grammarian[s] call Treason: the names themselves are antiquated with the things.” To resolve this flat contradiction requires much further research into the politics and government of Charles I's Personal Rule. In particular, a clear picture of the political behavior, relationships, and attitudes of many public figures is still lacking. This article therefore presents a case study of one prominent individual: Edward Sackville, fourth earl of Dorset, privy councillor and lord chamberlain to Henrietta Maria. These offices gave Dorset an exceptional opportunity during the 1630s to “see more clearly into [the king's] intents and actions.” Moreover, both official sources and personal correspondence should reveal his activities during the Personal Rule and his attitudes toward it. What follows will examine in turn Dorset's duties as the queen's lord chamberlain, the political influence that this office conferred, his work as a privy councillor, his relations with various factions, and his private opinions of the regime and of Charles I and Henrietta Maria.

In recent years, historians of the Augustan period have done much to rehabilitate the posthumous reputation of Queen Anne, a monarch traditionally viewed as dull, weak, reactionary, and easily led. Beginning in the 1920s with the work of W. T. Morgan, continuing with that of G. M. Trevelyan and G. S. Holmes, and culminating in the definitive biography by Edward Gregg, Anne has gradually emerged as a figure to be reckoned with. We have come to see her as a tenacious and often skillful navigator, charting a middle course between the opposing shoals of the Whig and Tory parties, in an attempt to preserve freedom of maneuver for the postrevolutionary monarchy.

This article will explore a heretofore neglected aspect of the queen's political helmsmanship: the attempt to make her person and crown a focus for national (i.e., English) unity through the revival and exploitation of royal ritual and symbol. It will be argued below that Anne—alone among the later Stuarts—made extensive use of the arsenal of ceremonial paraphernalia, what David Cannadine has called “the theatre of power,” which is normally associated with her Tudor and early Stuart predecessors. This essay is thus intended not only to contribute to the ongoing reassessment of Anne's political role but also to help fill a gap between the wealth of fine work on pageantry at those earlier courts and the work Linda Colley and others have done on the reign of George III.