The Devil's Book: The Battle over Festive Culture in Early Stuart England

Event description: In this illustrated talk, Dr Alistair Dougall will explore how serious divisions emerged in early modern England between those who valued traditional festivity and those who tried to suppress it, and how attitudes to traditional festive pastimes and celebrations became a major factor in determining people’s allegiance in the English Civil War. The talk will include some examples from Hampshire but will not focus on the county but look instead at events and issues across England. It will look at the types of sports and pastimes enjoyed by people in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, and at how and why attitudes to festive traditions changed in the late sixteenth century. With events like the Olympics, we are today used to sports bringing people together but, far from uniting people, sports and their celebration had become hugely divisive by the early seventeenth century. The talk will look at the “Book of Sports” - the name commonly given to a declaration that James I issued which explicitly licensed the playing of certain sports and leisure activities on Sundays and which his son, Charles I then tried to enforce. Its enforcement was extremely contentious.