Four great magnalia of government. La riforma istituzionale di Henry Neville: un machiavelliano inglese alla corte di Cosimo III de’ Medici

Abstract

The tumultuous phase running from the beheading of Charles I to the Glorious Revolution is the time frame in which England goes through the crucial phases that will put an end to royal absolutism. One of the most authoritative intellectual figures of that founding historical moment of modern constitutionalism is Henry Neville, author of political and satirical pamphlets who, taking up the lesson of the ancients with the experience of “modern things”, published in 1680 the Plato Redivivus, a work that will consecrate him as a Republican political thinker. The treaty, written and published in the context of the Exclusion crisis, exhort Charles II to reduce his powers. The disease suffered by the State, the causes of which Neville investigates by seeking remedies, arose precisely from the extension of the king's power and his arbitrariness.