Background
Underdown, David Edward was born on August 19, 1925 in Wells, England. Son of John Percival and Ethel Mary (Gell) University.
(What do maypoles, charivari processions, and stoolball ma...)
What do maypoles, charivari processions, and stoolball matches have to do with the English civil war? A great deal, argues Underdown in this provocative reinterpretation of the English Revolution. Underdown uses case histories of three western counties to show that the war was, above all, the result of profound disagreements among people of all social levels about the moral basis of their communities--that commoners as well as rulers held strong opinions about order and governance. Through an original synthesis of social history and popular culture, Underdown links these regionally diverse political opinions to cultural diversity and shows that local differences in popular allegiance in the civil war strikingly coincided with regional contrasts in the traditional festive culture.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0192851934/?tag=2022091-20
(Written by one of the world's most distinguished historia...)
Written by one of the world's most distinguished historians of early modern history, A Freeborn People is a provocative exploration of the ways in which the political cultures of the elite and of the common people intersected during the seventeenth century. David Underdown shows that the two worlds were not as separate as historians have often thought them to be; English men and women of all social levels had similar expectations about good government and about the traditional liberties available to them under the "Ancient Constitution". Throughout the century, both levels of politics were also powerfully influenced by prevailing assumptions about gender roles, and, especially in the years before the civil wars, by fears that the country was threatened by evil forces of satanic inversion. This dramatic reinterpretation of the Stuart period, based on the author's acclaimed 1992 Ford Lectures, begins a new chapter in the continuing debate over the historical meaning of Britain's seventeenth-century revolutions.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0198206127/?tag=2022091-20
( Dorchester—the west-country town immortalized by Thomas...)
Dorchester—the west-country town immortalized by Thomas Hardy as Casterbridge—was two hundred years before Hardy's time the most fervently religious town in England. The catalyst that turned a provincial backwater into a "godly community" was a great fire in 1613 that devastated much of the town and enabled the new pastor, John White, to lead the town in a kind of spiritual mass conversion that lasted for fifty years. In this book David Underdown describes the transformation of Dorchester, placing it in the context of national events (the English Civil War, Cromwell's rule, and the restoration of the monarchy) and events across the sea (the settling of similar godly communities in New England). Portraying the everyday lives of the townspeople—both the high-minded reformers and the boisterous characters they attempted to reform—Underdown recreates a seventeenth-century English town in all its vitality and richness. Underdown describes how Dorchester became a community with advanced systems of charitable giving, education, and assistance for the sick and needy. He paints a picture of Dorchester residents: Matthew Chubb, chief representative of the jovial, paternalist town oligarchy that preceded the Puritans; Chubb's friend Roger Pouncey, "godfather to the unruly and unregenerate of the town"; diarist William Whiteway, one of a group of Puritans who earnestly tried to reform their neighbors; and many other less gentrified men and women who spent their leisure time drinking and swearing, fornicating and repenting, striving to live up to the new ideals of their community or rejecting them with bitter anger and mocking laughter. Underdown's subtle and witty exploration of these characters and events casts a refreshing new light on a bygone era.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300059906/?tag=2022091-20
Underdown, David Edward was born on August 19, 1925 in Wells, England. Son of John Percival and Ethel Mary (Gell) University.
Bachelor, University Oxford, 1950. Master of Arts, University Oxford, 1951. Master of Arts, Yale University, 1952.
Bachelor of Letters, University Oxford, 1953. Doctor of Literature honorary, University of South, 1981.
Born at Wells, Somerset, Underdown was educated at the Blue School and Exeter College, Oxford. After retiring from Yale in 1996, Underdown wrote a well-received book about the history of cricket in the Hambledon era, Start of Play. "A Case Concerning Bishops" lands: Cornelius Burges and the Corporation of Wells", Engineer H.R.lxxviii (1963) 18-48 "The Chalk and the Cheese: Contrasts among the English Clubmen", P&Pno.85 (November 1979), 25-48 Pennington and Thomas, pp.
186–205.
"The Problem of Popular allegiance in the Civil War", TRHS5th Ser., xxxi (1981), 69-94. "The Taming of the Scold: The Enforcement of the Patriarchal Authority in Early Modern England", in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, educated Anthony Fletcher and John Stevenson, Cambridge (1985), ch.4.
(Written by one of the world's most distinguished historia...)
(What do maypoles, charivari processions, and stoolball ma...)
( Dorchester—the west-country town immortalized by Thomas...)
(, 229 pages, with maps)
("Honest and precise... everything about writing for child...)
(History)
Fellow Royal History Society, British Academy (correspondence). Member American History Association (award for scholarly distinction 2005), Conference British Studies.