The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England

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The most interesting parts to me were the glimpses of the impact on every day people, and I do wish that we had learnt a bit more about what the government of the day was doing outside of the various plots to get either Protestants or Catholics in power - e.g how was healthcare provided, how was literacy going? Etc… but maybe that would have made it a ridiculously long book.

The seventeenth century was a revolutionary age for the English. It started as they suddenly found themselves ruled by a Scotsman, and it ended in the shadow of an invasion by the Dutch. Under James I, England suffered terrorism and witch panics. Under his son Charles, state and society collapsed into civil war, to be followed by an army coup and regicide. For a short time—for the only time in history—England was a republic. There were bitter struggles over faith and Parliament asserted itself like never before. There were no boundaries to politics.In fiery, plague-ridden London, in coffee shops and alehouses, new ideas were forged that were angry, populist, and almost impossible for monarchs to control. The political world we live in today, with regular Parliaments and elections, ideologically defined parties, a vibrant press and mass campaigns [centered] on large protests and petitions, was born in the seventeenth century,” asserts Healey. “For this, as well as so much else, the story told here remains fascinating and vital to this day.” Archival issues aside, Healey’s 17th century is one comprised of incidents great and small – it is in some ways less a grand narrative than a patchwork of narratives, each one of which fascinates as it elucidates his primary theme. It is into this patchwork creation of a world turned upside down that Margaret Cavendish’s 1666 utopian fiction – the source of Healey’s title – ought to slide effortlessly. In her Blazing World, the Duchess of Newcastle describes another planet, ESFI, which contemporaries would have recognised as the Stuart kingdoms of England, Scotland, (France) and Ireland. An absolutist monarchy, ESFI remains both attached to, and an integral part of, Earth. Healey’s Blazing World, however, describes the Stuart kingdoms (primarily England) as if they existed in a vacuum until Cromwell’s rise to prominence: so detached, indeed, that Healey describes the pan-European conflict that raged from 1618-48, which was fought by Swedes, Danes, French, Dutch, Spanish, English, Scots and Irish among others, and featured a Stuart princess at its heart, as a ‘German war’. I read Devil Land last year and thought it was excellent (I would have given it four stars out of five, the same as this book review) but didn't review it at the time as I was a bit occupied with other things (moving house). ↩︎ To Cromwell we come then. His influence arose from his successful military leadership of the "New Model" Army under Charles, new as in its national scope with central government funding (p. 196) and its disciplined professional soldiers. As in so many other factional disputes like enumerated above, officers and fighting men often had different political and religious viewpoints, which may explain why no military coup was attempted through the revolutionary century. In fact when Charles finally surrendered it was "Not to Parliament [and its New Model Army]. . . but to the [Scottish] Covenanters." (p. 208). The path from surrender to execution (p. 256) was political not military, as was the selection of Cromwell as leader: "The new regime had toppled the monarchy and established the power of the Commons, but they had done so without rooting the new government in actual popular consent." (p. 258). Cromwell was the executive of the government, and "there was no doubt that Cromwell was the leading political figure of the nation" (p. 280) but he still ruled through Parliament and other councils of state. In his own words, "I am ready to serve not as a King, but as a Constable" (p. 306), to which Healey offers the assessment that "one of the great tragedies of Cromwell was that he prevented the Republic being so much more. He was, at heart, a conservative East Anglian landowner." (p. 310)What’s heartening is the story’s suggestion that the long arc of history tends to bend, however slowly, toward improvement. Charts th[e] extraordinary course from the Tudors to the Hanoverians. . . . Healey channels the inquiring spirit which came to define this revolutionary age, creating his own survey as rich and wide-ranging as the pioneering work of the seventeenth-century characters he so admires.” —Miranda Malins, The Critic

He, like many who grew up during the wars, was profoundly shaped by the experience: “I no sooner perceived myself in the world ,” he wrote, “but I found myself in a storm .” Healey has a keen eye for the context which moulds generations, explaining with sympathy that the revolutionaries who came to power after Parliament’s victory over the king had grown up in a world of rising population, social stress and a crime wave, so it was “no wonder they wanted to reform society ”. The political arrangements of the reigns of William and Mar y as the c entur y drew to a close would have been “unthinkable” to James I at its start and were a closer approximation to the political system under Elizabeth II than Elizabeth I. Through 100 years of turbulence arose a “remarkable new world, one which — for better or worse — was blazing a path towards our own ”. To the extent there is any overarching theme emerging from the book, it is that the Civil War wasn't just about religion – people were also motivated by deeply held beliefs about the constitution and the accountability of those in power to those they ruled. In that sense, the book is a subtle nod towards the original Whig interpretation of events in seventeenth century England (but with due regard given to the importance of religion). One thing I took from this book was how ideas that were quite radical for the time (such as suffrage for all adult males, or something close to it) were discussed and taken seriously (by some within the Parliamentarian side) during the Civil War (for example, at the Putney Debates of 1647). Dross and dungA sparkling account of a period that is crucial for any understanding of the history of the UK, Europe and the world beyond.” —Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads The similarities between those times and our own (on both sides of the Atlantic) are impossible to ignore. At the beginning of the 1600s, harvests were good, so England experienced a period of increased prosperity. Due to improving schools, literacy swelled and publications proliferated, creating a better-informed middle class. For perhaps the first time, those beneath the gentry engaged with new ideas and had the confidence to take their debates out of the taverns and into Parliament.

Though “an absolutist by nature”, James was canny enough to realise the limits of ambition in his wealthy new kingdom. His son, Charles – the spare who became the heir following the death of his glamorous brother Henry in 1612 – was less flexible. Healey is scathing in his judgment (and, refreshingly, never afraid to judge) about this “man of blood” who in the 1640s led his country into two needless civil wars, describing him as a “stuffy authoritarian… never ruthless enough to be a successful tyrant”, though he concedes, as did Rubens, that the king had a good eye for a painting. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? Yet, in Cromwell’s time, certain moral intuitions and principles appeared that haven’t disappeared; things got said that could never be entirely unsaid. Government of the people resides in their own consent to be governed; representative bodies should be in some way representative; whatever rights kings have are neither divine nor absolute; and, not least, religious differences should be settled by uneasy truces, if not outright toleration. What happened in the English Revolution, or civil wars, took an exhaustingly long time to unfold, and its subplots were as numerous as the bits of the Shakespeare history play the wise director cuts. Where the French Revolution proceeds in neat, systematic French parcels—Revolution, Terror, Directorate, Empire, etc.—the English one is a mess, exhausting to untangle and not always edifying once you have done so. There’s a Short Parliament, a Long Parliament, and a Rump Parliament to distinguish, and, just as one begins to make sense of the English squabbles, the dour Scots intervene to further muddy the story.

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Not that this book wasn’t interesting or worthwhile. For one thing, it reminded me how Protestant views changed the world. These ideas eventually led to the belief that a government should serve at the behest of the people. If you could select your own pastor rather than accept an appointed bishop, then why not select your own ruler as well? If your king is a heretic, isn’t it your duty to resist rather than to obey? One can easily understand the simple progression from battling against hierarchies within a church to fighting against hierarchies anywhere. Conversely, Catholics tended to support royal absolutism. A continuous thread runs from the accession of England’s first Stuart king, James I, in 1603, to the dynasty’s fall in the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688-89. Yet historians often balk at telling the tumultuous, ideologically charged story in one go. Often it is divided into three chunks. First come increasing resistance to absolutism and religious intolerance, civil war, the parliamentary army’s victory, the execution of Charles I, and the establishment of the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell. Next, the monarchy’s restoration under Charles II; finally, the disastrous reign of James II and invitation to William of Orange to take his place and establish a proto-constitutional monarchy. A zesty and gripping account of England’s ‘century of revolution.’” —Edward Vallance, Literary Review

Many other books I have read concentrate on only one of these events/periods – or often even only certain aspects/sub-periods of them – so where this book really works is in bring the whole period into one cohesive account. A fresh, exciting, “readable and informative” history ( The New York Times) of seventeenth-century England, a time of revolution when society was on fire and simultaneously forging the modern world. •“Recapture[s] a lost moment when a radically democratic commonwealth seemed possible.”—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker I get a sense that Jonathan Healey thinks that the royals can be thankful that Oliver Cromwell made such a hash of running Britain as a republic following victory in the Civil War, thereby allowing for the return of monarchy.It wasn't made any easier by whoever was sitting on the throne either side of the republic. James I, a Protestant with a Catholic mother, had to deal with the aftermath of the Catholic terrorist Gunpowder Plot early in his reign which set the anti Catholic tone for years to come. However, Protestant Charles I was married to a Catholic and as Jonathan Healey writes, veered towards Catholic tradition, wanting parishioners to "stand for the Creed and the Gloria, kneel at the sacrament and bow at the name of Jesus." The restoration king - Charles II, for all his public upholding of Protestantism, was baptised a Catholic shortly before his death. His brother James II was already a Catholic but promised to "defend and support" the church of England. Protestants hoped the king and queen's tragic inability to produce a child who would live long enough to become monarch would mean the throne returning to a Protestant after his death. But such hope was confounded with the birth of James, who by rights should have become the next king of England and restoring a Catholic succession. It was something the fledgling Protestants could not stomach, hence the Glorious Revolution and the invitation to William and Mary to invade England from the Netherlands. James II ended up deposed and a law passed that never again will the king or queen be a Catholic. Despite that act still law today, Britain's leading Catholic, Cardinal Vincent Nichols was still happy to pay homage to Charles III at his coronation. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. The 1600's gave us so much else entertainingly and so interestingly written about by John Healey in The Blazing World. I was keen to read about the Levellers, a group so ahead of its time and its aspirations still in the 21st century a pipe dream in a country still defined by its class system and elite with the royals at the top.