Oliver St. John and the Middle Group in the Long Parliament, 1643-1645: A Reappraisal

1982 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
William G. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Middle Group ◽  
Military Commander ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Civil War Era ◽  
Earl Of Essex

Since the publication of J.H. Hexter's Reign of King Pym in 1941 the idea of a middle group has been a lynchpin of English Civil War historiography. Before Hexter historians believed that with the coming of the Civil War members of Parliament split into two factions, the war party and the peace party. Hexter, however, demolished this crude dualism by demonstrating the existence of a middle party in the early days of the Long Parliament, a group of hybrid of M.P.s who seemingly defied classification. Members such as John Glynn and John Clotworthy supported measures from both the war and peace parties.While the composition of the middle group, especially on the fringes, shifted periodically, it maintained a basic core of members and a discernible ideology. Its outlook was moderate and best expressed in the Grand Remonstance and the Nineteen Propositions. The members identified with this middle group steadfastly upheld the constitution and the monarchy, but believed that specific limitations on the monarch must be implemented to preserve the constitution.Perhaps inspired by the work of Hexter, other historians approached the Civil War era in similar fashion. Hexter believed that the middle group collapsed with Pym's death in 1643; yet Valerie Pearl has argued that it lingered oh through 1644 under the leadership of Oliver St. John. Following Pym's death, Pearl contended, St. John followed the moderate path prescribed by Pym in supporting measures from both the war and peace parties and by supporting the earl of Essex, the consensus choice for military commander.

Frontier Politics, Providentialism, and “Hobbism” in Bacon’s Rebellion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander B. Haskell
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
The Other ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Civil War Era ◽  
Bacon's Rebellion ◽  
Measured Response

Bacon’s Rebellion (1676–1677) was an uprising in the Virginia colony that its participants experienced as both a civil breakdown and a period of intense cosmic disorder. Although Thomas Hobbes had introduced his theory of state sovereignty a quarter century earlier, the secularizing connotations of his highly naturalized conceptualization of power had yet to make major inroads on a post-Reformation culture that was only gradually shifting from Renaissance providentialism to Enlightenment rationalism. Instead, the period witnessed a complicated interplay of providential beliefs and Hobbist doctrines. In the aftermath of the English civil war (1642–1651), this mingling of ideologies had prompted the Puritans’ own experimentation with Hobbes’s ideas, often in tandem with a Platonic spiritualism that was quite at odds with Hobbes’s own philosophical skepticism. The Restoration of 1660 had given an additional boost to Hobbism as his ideas won a number of prominent adherents in Charles II’s government. The intermingling of providentialism and Hobbism gave Bacon’s Rebellion its particular aura of heightened drama and frightening uncertainty. In the months before the uprising, the outbreak of a war on the colony’s frontier with the Doeg and Susquehannock peoples elicited fears in the frontier counties of a momentous showdown between faithful planters and God’s enemies. In contrast, Governor Sir William Berkeley’s establishmentarian Protestantism encouraged him to see the frontiersmen’s vigilantism as impious, and the government’s more measured response to the conflict as inherently godlier because tied to time-tested hierarchies and institutions. Greatly complicating this already confusing scene, the colony also confronted a further destabilizing force in the form of the new Hobbist politics emerging from the other side of the ocean. In addition to a number of alarming policies emanating from Charles II’s court in the 1670s that sought to enhance the English state’s supremacy over the colonies, Hobbes’s doctrines also informed the young Nathaniel Bacon Jr.’s stated rationale for leading frontiersmen against local Indian communities without Berkeley’s authorization. Drawing on the Hobbes-influenced civil war-era writings of his relation the Presbyterian lawyer Nathaniel Bacon, the younger Bacon made the protection of the colony’s Christian brotherhood a moral priority that outweighed even the preservation of existing civil relations and public institutions. While Berkeley’s antagonism toward this Hobbesian argument led him to lash out forcibly against Bacon as a singularly great threat to Virginia’s commonwealth, it was ordinary Virginians who most consequentially resisted Bacon’s strange doctrines. Yet a division persisted. Whereas the interior counties firmly rejected Bacon’s Hobbism in favor of the colony’s more traditional bonds to God and king, the frontier counties remained more open to a Hobbesian politics that promised their protection.

FINANCE, LOCALISM, AND MILITARY REPRESENTATION IN THE ARMY OF THE EARL OF ESSEX (JUNE–DECEMBER 1642)

2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 879-898 ◽  
Author(s):  
AARON GRAHAM
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Cultural Representation ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
National Strategy ◽  
War Effort ◽  
History Of ◽  
Financial Consequences ◽  
Earl Of Essex

ABSTRACTWork on the ‘county community’ during the English Civil War, and tensions between centre and periphery, has focused exclusively upon forms of political and cultural representation. However, this article argues that local communities also sought to achieve agency within the wider war effort by lobbying for military representation. In return for financial contributions, supporters wanted an ‘interest’ in the units they raised, mainly through control over the nomination of officers. The history of the army of the earl of Essex between June and December 1642 indicates the financial consequences of neglecting such military representation. Its structure dissolved particularist interests, orientating the army towards the pursuit of a national strategy, but this gave local supporters no confidence that their concerns were being represented. The result was an assertion of localism, a decline in donations, and a financial crisis within the army.

The ‘Royal Independents’ in the English Civil War

1968 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 69-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Pearl
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Public Safety ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
New Model ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Rump Parliament

Few historians of the Long Parliament would regard the form of Church government as the first concern of the parliamentary leaders in their negotiations with the king. Contemporary historians considered that the early struggle was not about religion. The royalist Clarendon, the parliamentarian Thomas May, even Richard Baxter, a deeply religious Puritan, were unanimous. To the aristocracy and gentry, it was essentially a conflict over political power and public safety. Religious fervour would inspire the New Model Army, rouse the London citizens, and stimulate the printing presses. But how many members of Parliament or of the gentry in 1640 supported fundamental religious change? Sir Edward Dering told the Commons on 20 November 1641 that he had heard no one there declare themselves for either Presbyterianism or Independency. When Baxter described the composition of the Rump Parliament, he did not see it as the culmination or fulfilment of a religious movement, the expression of Independency.

Presidents and the Dissolution of the Union

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred I. Greenstein ◽  
Dale Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Organizational Capacity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
George Washington ◽  
Personal Strengths ◽  
History Of ◽  
Civil War Era ◽  
American Leader ◽  
Policy Vision

The United States witnessed an unprecedented failure of its political system in the mid-nineteenth century, resulting in a disastrous civil war that claimed the lives of an estimated 750,000 Americans. This book assesses the personal strengths and weaknesses of presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama. The book evaluates the leadership styles of the Civil War-era presidents. The book looks at the presidential qualities of James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Abraham Lincoln. For each president, the book provides a concise history of the man's life and presidency, and evaluates him in the areas of public communication, organizational capacity, political skill, policy vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence. The book sheds light on why Buchanan is justly ranked as perhaps the worst president in the nation's history, how Pierce helped set the stage for the collapse of the Union and the bloodiest war America had ever experienced, and why Lincoln is still considered the consummate American leader to this day. The book reveals what enabled some of these presidents, like Lincoln and Polk, to meet the challenges of their times—and what caused others to fail.

Excavations at Basing Grange, Basing House, Hampshire, 1999–2006

2020 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 323-378
Author(s):  
David Allen ◽  
Briony A. Lalor ◽  
Ginny Pringle
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Historical Society ◽  
Tobacco Pipes ◽  
House Site ◽  
Early 18Th Century

This report describes excavations at Basing Grange, Basing House, Hampshire, between 1999 and 2006. It embraces the 'Time Team' investigations in Grange Field, adjacent to the Great Barn, which were superseded and amplified by the work of the Basingstoke Archaeological & Historical Society, supervised by David Allen. This revealed the foundations of a 'hunting lodge' or mansion built in the 1670s and demolished, and effectively 'lost', in the mid-18th century. Beneath this residence were the remains of agricultural buildings, earlier than and contemporary with the nearby Great Barn, which were destroyed during the English Civil War. The report contains a detailed appraisal of the pottery, glass and clay tobacco pipes from the site and draws attention to the remarkable window leads that provide a clue to the mansion's date of construction. It also explores a probable link with what was taking place on the Basing House site in the late 17th and early 18th century.

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