A new perspective on two seminal themes in English political thought before the Civil War.

Introduction: classical humanism and republicanism in England before the Civil War; 1. Classical humanism restated; 2. Classical republicanism in the margins of Elizabethan politics; 3. Civic life and the mixed constitution in Jacobean political thought; 4. Francis Bacon, Thomas Hedley and the true greatness of Britain; 5. Thomas Scott: virtue, liberty and the 'mixed Gouernement'; 6. The continuity of the humanist tradition in early Caroline England; Epilogue; Bibliography.