Review of Hugh Ross Williamson, Charles and Cromwell (London: Duckworth, 1946)

Wight notes that Williamson’s account of the English Civil War follows ‘the romantic view of history’ as ‘the relationship or interaction of characters’ in sometimes tragic circumstances. Williamson ‘shows a good dramatic sense’, Wight observes, in his narrative of events involving Cromwell and King Charles I of England; but the book fails to show insight on ‘the deeper dialectic of conservative and revolutionary psychology. It illuminates neither the particular clash between the Anglicanism of the King and the Independency of the Lieutenant-General, nor the general problem of political morals in a revolutionary situation.’ Cromwell and Charles were both ‘compelled to political methods which in private circumstances they would have condemned’. Owing in part to Williamson’s ‘life-long Cromwellian fervour’, the book does not attain ‘a high level of political literacy’, nor does it demonstrate deep discernment about the history of these conflicts.

Dreaming of Death and the Dead in the Stuart Political World Imaginary

William Laud played a critical role in the politics and religion in the reign of James I and especially that of his son, Charles I. There was great antagonism toward him by Puritans, and Laud’s close friendship with George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, made Laud even more controversial, as did his fight with the king’s jester, Archy Armstrong. Dreams were seen as having great significance at time of Laud, and Laud recorded his dreams in his journal. Dreams also played a role in the early Stuart political world. This essay examines how Laud’s enemies used his own dreams against him in the work of William Prynne, once Laud was arrested during the English Civil war. It also looks at how Laud was compared to also despised Thomas, Cardinal Wolsey in a number of political pamphlets that used dreams, such as Archy’s Dream and Canterburie’s Dream. Laud also appeared as a character in a dream of Charles I’s attendant Thomas Herbert the night before the king’s execution, where Laud came to comfort Charles.

The Fruits of the Reformation

The Reformation inaugurated great accomplishments. The Scientific Revolution depended on the biblical understanding of nature by Protestant scientists, and Protestantism led to the great arts of the age. These curricula discuss possible and actual New World explorers, all motivated by their desire to spread Protestantism. The textbooks argue that the Reformation brought not only religious but also political liberty. They cannot easily incorporate the period of the English Civil War into their tale of English post-Reformation virtue. Since the Reformation neither had political ramifications nor sanctioned political revolt, the English Civil War cannot be a political revolution; it is thus construed as a religious quest or a minor Parliamentary dispute. These curricula cannot recognize French power and influence during the seventeenth century. Instead, French economic policies, Catholicism, and immorality foretell the coming demise of the French Revolution. England, in contrast, was inexorably moving toward the Glorious Revolution.

Word-hoard

This chapter discusses Clark’s ‘Words in War-Time’ as a distinctive project in its own right. Beginning in 1914, it has an intellectual hinterland that reaches into Victorian Oxford, the philological revolution, and the making of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED1). Other models of historiography were, however, important, too. The chapter also explores the inspiration Clark drew from his own earlier work on the English Civil War writer Anthony Wood’s Life and Times and John Aubrey’s contemporaneous Brief Lives –especially in relation to their emphasis on the need to register living history with ‘minuteness’ in a process that directs particular attention to its incidental details. Clark’s work on language in World War One proves, in this light, intriguingly experimental, presenting both emulation and resistance in relation to earlier works on language and the narratives of time and change that might be made.

Gangraena i remedium, o herezjach i zwyrodnieniu religijnym w Anglii połowy XVII w.

Gangraena and its cure: on Heresies and Religious Perversions in mid-seventeenth century England The English Civil War saw an explosion in the production of printed material. Booklets, pamphlets, leaflets, and ballads of all types and covering all manner of subjects appeared in their thousands. Indeed, the number of titles printed during this period surpassed 2,000 per year. Among these we find a large category of prints denouncing religious heresy and perverse behaviors. The most elaborate of these was Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena, which ran to several thousand pages in length and spanned three consecutive volumes. In this article, the author looks at various religious sects in England and aspects of their beliefs and behaviors to examine how the Restoration England of Charles II tried to cure its population of unorthodox and perverse religious ideas.

Hobbes’s Political-Philosophical Project

The appropriate theory to guide interpretations of Hobbes’s philosophy is both intentionalist and historical. Intentionalism is the search for what he intended to communicate. What he meant to communicate was conditioned by his historical circumstances. Conceiving of his political philosophy as a science on the model of geometry, Hobbes identified its two methods and its goal. The first method consists of beginning with definitional causes and deducing their effects; the second consists of beginning with effects and hypothesizing possible causes. The goal of philosophy is to improve the quality of human life. As for his subversion, he wanted to subvert the mistaken religio-political views that led to the English Civil War, the belief in limited sovereignty, the practice of superstitions, and the pretension that religion should be independent of the sovereign.

Church and People in Interregnum Britain

The English Civil War was followed by a period of unprecedented religious toleration and the spread of new religious ideas and practices. From the Baptists, to the “government of saints”, Britain experienced a period of so-called ‘Godly religious rule’ and a breakdown of religious uniformity that was perceived as a threat to social order by some and a welcome innovation to others. The period of Godly religious rule has been significantly neglected by historians- we know remarkably little about religious organisation or experience at a parochial level in the 1640s and 1650s. This volume addresses these issues by investigating important questions concerning the relationship between religion and society in the years between the first Civil War and the Restoration.