About the book

“As this attractively produced, reasonably priced and cogently argued volume makes clear, Everitt still provides today's historians with a useful starting point for debate and further research. Never intended anyway to offer a ready-made formula that would fit all parts of the country, more than fifty years on Everitt's work still commands attention, not least for its pioneering 'environmental' approach to seventeenth-century politics.” R.C. Richardson, Southern History

This volume honours the memory of Professor Alan Everitt who, in a series of publications during the 1960s and 1970s, advanced the fruitful notion of the ‘county community’ during the seventeenth century.

Everitt’s The community of Kent and the Great Rebellion (Leicester, 1966) convinced scholars that counties were worth studying in their own right rather than merely to illustrate the national narrative. He emphasised the importance of local identities and allegiances for their own sake.

Taking into account over two decades of challenges to Everitt’s assumptions, the present volume proposes some modifications of Everitt’s influential hypotheses in the light of the best recent scholarship.

In so doing, this collection signposts future directions for research into the relationship between the centre and localities in seventeenth-century England.

The essays’ innovative interpretations of the concept of the ‘county community’ reflect the variety of approaches, methods and theories generated by Everitt’s legacy.