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1. Tyranny, manhood, and the study of history -- 2. A chase Virginia: tyranny and the corruption of law in Jacobean England -- 3. 'And thus did the wicked sonne murther his wicked mother': Nero and the tyrannical household in late Jacobean England -- 4. Neronian corruption in Caroline England -- 5. John Milton, marriage, and the realisation of Republican manhood -- 6. 'Begin now to know themselves men, & to breath after liberty': Marchamont Nedham and the Republican Empire -- 7. 'So much power and piety in one': Oliver Cromwell and the Masculine Republic. "Desiring to deepen his understanding of the present world by turning to the past, between 1644 and 1652 the Cambridge student William Bright filled a small book with notes and commonplaces gleaned from political, historical, and religious writings. In 1648 he recorded political and military observations drawn from an anonymous pamphlet by 'D. P. Gent', listing five 'chiefe Causes of the mutations of Monarchies': 'Wants of Issue', 'Ambition', 'Lust', 'Effeminacy', and 'Taxes'. The original pamphlet, entitled Severall politique and militarie observations (1648), had listed six causes of the mutations of monarchy, with the first being the 'crying sinnes of a Nation'. Bright, however, only copied into his notebook those causes which could be illustrated by historical and contemporary rather than by divine example"--
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