The Stuarts
The Stuarts lost the family business twice in a century, saddling them with a tarnished reputation as historical bankrupts. In this biography of the Restoration Stuarts (Charles II and James II), Miller says that opinion is too harsh and overly colored by the contrast with the supposedly more glorious preceding dynasty, the Tudors. Holding forth a more positive assessment of the Stuarts' century-long run on, and occasionally from, the throne, Miller tacks their fortunes to the two principal political problems of seventeenth-century England. From James I's ascension in 1603 to the death of Queen Anne in 1714, the Stuart monarchs did better or worse depending on how they handled parliamentary erosions of their power and in cajoling and often forcing Scotland and Ireland into the English orbit to form the polity of Britain. An academic at the University of London, Miller covers this material fluidly, enthusiastically, and without clouding central points with scholastic trivia. For newcomers to such Stuarts as Charles I, Miller exhibits the invaluable quality of readability infused with fairness of tone.Gilbert TaylorCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved