WALSHAM, ALEXANDRA. — Providence in Early Modern England.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. 0198208871. An extensive study of the sixteenth and seventeenth century belief that God actively intervened in human affairs to punish, reward, warn, try and chastise. "Explores a range of dramatic events and puzzling phenomena in which contemporaries detected the divine finger at work: tragic accidents and sudden deaths, strange sights and mysterious portents, monstrous births and popular prophets, terrible disasters and raging epidemics. [Walsham} shows how providence helped forge a powerful myth of Protestant nationhood and how, simultaneously, it exacerbated the political and ecclesiastical tensions which culminated in the outbreak of the civil wars in 1642." Pp.xviii/387, 46 black & white plates. Paperback. VG.