Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688

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Along the way we learn a great deal about England's relationships with its European neighbours; Scotland, which remained a separate country albeit with a shared monarch for most of the 100 year period, France, Spain and the Netherlands - with whom England intermittently fought wars, shared alliances, plotted and schemed.

Given the scope of the subject matter, there was a lot to fit into circa 500 pages, but there is a good balance between depth of coverage and narrative pace.Clare Jackson's dazzling, original account of English history's most turbulent and radical era tells the story of a nation in a state of near continual crisis. It might also be said that, as an objective account of this period of British history (and after 1603 it is Britain, not England, that we need to consider), the book is somewhat lacking in nuance. Starting on the eve of the Spanish Armada’s descent in 1588 and concluding with a not-so ‘Glorious Revolution’ a hundred years later, Devil-Land is a spectacular reinterpretation of England’s vexed and enthralling past.

Jackson does a skilful job of delineating different alliances, tensions and conflicts, and how they contributed to political events and popular perceptions alike. Elizabeth did defeat the Spanish Armada and, after some time and effort, the uprising in Ireland too. The author, Clare Dawson, has built this book on the basis of a very thorough study of primary sources - the notes and sources lists take up well over 100 pages attesting to the scholarship involved.The Devil Land of the title was of course England - as it was perceived by the ambassadors and diplomats posted to England or who worked with England's representatives overseas. As I concluded, to many of their seventeenth-century English subjects, the Stuarts appeared an alien, imported dynasty that could not be securely relied upon to promote the national interest. England was Anglican, Scotland was Calvinist and Ireland was Catholic, in a time when they shared a king who was supposed to be appointed by God. In the case of early modern England, the knife usually falls around 1603, between the flamboyance of the Tudor era and the dysfunction and disaster of the Stuarts.

This Stuart-centred view from across the Channel of the years 1588-1688 offers a fresh, provocative and highly readable take on one of the most formative centuries of English history. As an unmarried heretic with no heir, Elizabeth I was regarded with horror by Catholic Europe, while her Stuart successors, James I and Charles I, were seen as impecunious and incompetent, unable to manage their three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. The book looks at England from the perspective of its continental enemies (and sometime allies, depending on the geopolitical shifts).

It does cover the key events in passing, as it needs to, but you have to be familiar with these before reading this book. A book to be savoured by students, history aficionados, and anyone who enjoys seeing a scholar at the top of her game diving into stories we think we know well, only to emerge with all manner of surprises. Take, for example, the Spanish Jesuit whose history of England painted it as ‘a nest of vipers, a den of thieves, a ditch and cesspit of poisons and noxious vapours’. As an unmarried heretic with no heir, Elizabeth I was regarded with horror by Catholic Europe, while her Stuart successors, James I and VI of Scotland and Charles I, were seen as impecunious and incompetent, unable to manage their three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland.

As one of these observers notes, James VI came to the throne ‘as quietly as could possibly be desired’. It was a Dutch pamphleteer who suggested in 1652 that England, according to the fable the land of angels, should instead be christened ‘Devil-land’. Clare Jackson’s dazzling account of English history’s most radical era tells the story of a nation in a state of near continual crisis. The title to be read and discussed is sign-posted and on sale for the whole of the previous month (with a discount for those who make it known they intend to come) and everybody is welcome, whether first-timer, part-timer or regular-timer.It reminds us that states are not inevitabilities, and that they're formed out of chaos and may go back to the conditions of their formation. This is a turbulent period during which the English executed two crowned monarchs, one of them not even their own (and they executed the second without much reference to his subjects in his other kingdoms), lived without a monarch for over a decade and then finally deposed one king on little obvious legal precedent other than a dislike of his religion.