Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Texts used and a concordance for the ‘Politica’
- List of abbreviations
- PART I Historiographical And Biographical Preliminaries
- PART II An Exposition Of Lawson's Politica
- PART III An Examination Of The Politica
- PART IV The Fate Of The Politica From The Settlement To The Glorious Revolution
- 11 Lawson and Baxter
- 12 Lawson and Humfrey
- 13 The Politica and the Allegiance Controversy
- 14 Aftermath
- PART V Conclusions
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History
11 - Lawson and Baxter
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Texts used and a concordance for the ‘Politica’
- List of abbreviations
- PART I Historiographical And Biographical Preliminaries
- PART II An Exposition Of Lawson's Politica
- PART III An Examination Of The Politica
- PART IV The Fate Of The Politica From The Settlement To The Glorious Revolution
- 11 Lawson and Baxter
- 12 Lawson and Humfrey
- 13 The Politica and the Allegiance Controversy
- 14 Aftermath
- PART V Conclusions
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History
Summary
At the end of his life Baxter, like Cephalus paying his debts, lavished extravagant and lengthy praise on Lawson, ‘the ablest man of almost any I know in England … a man of great skill in politics, wherein he is most exact’. Indeed, Baxter maintained that Lawson was one of the greatest influences on his life and political judgements. Such praise takes us back to before the publication of the Politica, and to an extent to one side of it, for despite criticisms (A Treatise of Episcopacy) it was the Theo-Politica Baxter most admired, and in A Holy Commonwealth, Lawson's Examination is taken as a sufficient argument against Hobbes. With respect to the Politica, however, I suspect that Baxter's attitude was a good deal more ambivalent; indeed that Lawson may even have been a nameless target in the Commonwealth, Looking at these two works will reveal the full force and the partial disingenuousness of Baxter's remarkable valedictory tribute to George Lawson.
On the surface my thesis here looks perverse, for there has certainly been no reason to regard the Politica as a context for the Commonwealth; after all, the chronology of publication is simply wrong. But when Underhill, who had printed Lawson's Examination, printed Commonwealth in 1659, Lawson and Baxter had known each other for a number of years.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- George Lawson's 'Politica' and the English Revolution , pp. 137 - 142Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990