ABSTRACT
Political space in early modern Europe thus possessed multiple dimensions. Its formal sites extended from the royal court, through representative assemblies and town halls, to humble parish vestries. The Emperor Charles V governed a very different political entity, an agglomeration rather than a conventional state, and frequently appears as the archetypal peripatetic ruler of Renaissance Europe. Any survey of non-royal political sites would probably begin with those institutions closely linked to the crown: councils and representative bodies such as the French Estates, the Spanish Cortes, and German diets, English, Scots and Irish Parliaments. In the wake of the civil wars there was a general recognition that political and religious opinion was deeply divided, and would remain so for the indefinite future. If churches and law courts were political sites intended to reinforce the established order of government, there were others, more informal, which stood in far more ambivalent relationships towards it.
