Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations and Brief Titles
- Introduction
- Prologue: Machiavelli in the English Revolution
- PART I MACHIAVELLI'S NEW REPUBLICANISM
- PART II REVOLUTIONARY ARISTOTELIANISM
- PART III MACHIAVELLIAN REPUBLICANISM ANGLICIZED
- PART IV THOMAS HOBBES AND THE NEW REPUBLICANISM
- 8 Thomas Hobbes's Republican Youth
- 9 The Making of a Modern Monarchist
- 10 The Very Model of a Modern Moralist
- 11 The Hobbesian Republicanism of James Harrington
- Epilogue
- Index
11 - The Hobbesian Republicanism of James Harrington
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations and Brief Titles
- Introduction
- Prologue: Machiavelli in the English Revolution
- PART I MACHIAVELLI'S NEW REPUBLICANISM
- PART II REVOLUTIONARY ARISTOTELIANISM
- PART III MACHIAVELLIAN REPUBLICANISM ANGLICIZED
- PART IV THOMAS HOBBES AND THE NEW REPUBLICANISM
- 8 Thomas Hobbes's Republican Youth
- 9 The Making of a Modern Monarchist
- 10 The Very Model of a Modern Moralist
- 11 The Hobbesian Republicanism of James Harrington
- Epilogue
- Index
Summary
As a landed gentleman and a private scholar, James Harrington was everything that Marchamont Nedham and Thomas Hobbes were not. Like John Milton, he possessed a competence. He was independent in spirit as well, and his pen was always his own. Since he was never a hireling, he could always speak his mind. Prior to the autumn of 1656, it would have been easy to take him for a royalist. He was not a member of Parliament before or after Pride's Purge, and he made his first undoubted appearance on the public stage when he was appointed gentleman of the bedchamber to Charles I in the time of latter's captivity, less than two years before the Stuart monarch's execution. That he came to be personally favorable to the captive monarch there can be no doubt. He left the king's company only when barred from further attendance by the commissioners in charge, who thought him too partial to Charles.
We are told two stories concerning the genesis of James Harrington's most famous work. According to John Toland, Harrington fell prey to melancholy after the death of the king; found consolation in pursuing his studies, especially as they pertained to the causes of the English monarchy's demise; and then began to write.
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- Against Throne and AltarMachiavelli and Political Theory Under the English Republic, pp. 321 - 346Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008