Cambridge University Transactions During the Puritan Controversies of the 16th and 17th Centuries

First published in 1854, this is the second of a two-volume collection of historical sources relating to the University of Cambridge during the religious upheavals from the Elizabethan period to the Restoration. This volume covers the period 1590-1661, and documents the long-running debate between the Puritans in the University Senate and their more liberal opponents. It also reveals other areas of concern which still resonate today, including smoking and the treatment of ‘vagrants’. Letters and diary entries provide additional insights into less contentious aspects of ‘the manners and pursuits of the University’ at the time. The book will be of interest to historians of the seventeenth century and its turbulent religious currents, the English Civil War and its aftermath, and to historians of education.