In particular, further reformation had opened up the boundary problem – the attack on the authority of bishops removed the umpire of questions of theological error and decency in worship. The ensuing debate operated on both levels – where were those limits (fought out using popery and sectarianism) and, more fundamentally, who should decide, and how? The two archetypes which drove polemic during 1640–42 – anti-popery and anti-Puritanism – were well-established world views, religious in tone, but embracing visions of social and political relationships too. But they expressed fears about the edges of the reformed faith rather than certainties about its core.
Regicide did not answer this uncertainty and the 1650s saw an unresolved debate about the nature of the Christian community. On what basis should Christians be gathered into communities, and who should decide the boundaries of acceptable belief and practice? Here the regime was minimalist – allowing latitude but marking the outer limits with draconian measures. Acts against adultery and blasphemy set the fundamental limits of decency: unquestioned sins were markers of unacceptable belief and practice. The question of authority and conscience settled on the issue of toleration – what could be tolerated? When James Naylor rode into Bristol on a donkey, his followers laying leaves before him, he was performing his belief – that each of us has the spark of the divine within us. For many others, though, this was a demonstration of the dangers of toleration: the claim to be Christ himself. Naylor was prosecuted for ‘horrid blasphemy’ and Parliament spent some time discussing which physical punishments might fit this awful crime. Toleration, in a post-Laudian world, still did not mean freedom of belief and expression; nor does it now.
Redress of secular grievances about the limits of the prerogative was transformed into quite novel claims for the powers of Parliament over armed force, and the composition of the executive. In a kind of analogy with the religious arguments a practical boundary question – about the powers of the monarch – gave way to a more fundamental question about how to decide the issue. The claims of custom, law and tradition gave way before arguments about sovereignty (of parliaments and even the people); claims for sacred or divine kingship were challenged by arguments about a providential mandate for a clean slate. An escalating public debate about the meaning of key words, and about fundamentals, gave rise to considerable creativity.
Some of the most exotic products of the creative chaos belong on the wilder shores of Reformation thought, and some were constructive attempts to apply traditions of communal demonstrative politics to the new situation. But some belong with the Enlightenment rather than the Reformation – dealing with the relationship between the individual and the state, rather than with the proper relationship between traditional powers and liberties. The Levellers and Thomas Hobbes (whose masterpiece, Leviathan, was first published in 1651) were not typical voices, and nor were their arguments the ones that were necessarily at stake, but they indicate the beginnings of a passage from the world of reformation to the world of enlightenment. Going into the 1640s the political crisis was being driven by the politics of reformation; by 1649 something like enlightenment politics can be observed close to the centres of power. It was this, rather than the constitutional experiments of the 1650s, that was the really revolutionary product of the crisis of the 1640s.
Much of this was faltering, anxious and, for many, reluctant – amidst the trauma of war those with creative solutions to sell were not all pursuing these forward-looking arguments, and those doing so were often regarded as beyond the pale. The pursuit of a settlement was a practical question, but it had to be tackled against the background of these anxious, creative, chaotic politics; and support had to be mobilized among diverse and often incompatible constituencies. Nonetheless intellectual ferment was at least as visible as a creative power.
On these questions the civil war and regicide spawned arguments which rumbled on for generations. Sovereignty and toleration were at the heart of argument into the nineteenth century, and no workable settlement was achieved, arguably, before 1715. Cromwell, it is often said, was torn between an inspirational, exhilarated godliness, which spurred him to imagine new worlds, and a more pragmatic desire for healing and settlement. He is often accused of abandoning or betraying the dream, but others certainly did not, not in the 1650s and not under Charles II either. And their legacy was important in the wider British Atlantic world and beyond, long after England’s eleven-year interregnum had been legally annulled. This revolution, the challenge of new visions of the good (Christian) political community, was a long one, resonating in our own time. How to reconcile groups with conflicting transcendent visions within a single political community is a question which has not lost its edge. The Covenanters had an answer for a united society confronted with an ungodly ruler; the English grasped for answers in more plural conditions.
Nathaniel Butter and Nicholas Bourne, editorializing on a report of a spectacular volcanic eruption in the Azores in July 1638, wrote: ‘Let the speculative ponder, and the philosopher search out the cause of so portentous an effect, in as much as the mathematician seeks rects for his judgement, and the historian knowledges for his discourse’.15 It was no easy task to discover the meaning of meaningful events.
For those who lived through the civil wars it was no easier, and many continued to feel betrayed by the cause they had felt they were fighting for. At the same time, opportunities were taken up by networks of activists, creating effects that were not at first thought of, or aimed at. Experiences of these portentous events were confused and diverse: startling creativity arose alongside great trauma. It had no single voice and no single significance; it transcended the immediate practical problems of political settlement, and was not definitively expressed in any of the subsequent constitutional solutions. This story, of creative confusion, was relevant not only to the 1640s and not only to the English – it inflected the revolutions in America and France, fostered the rise of a great power, was significant to the history of European republicanism and to the roots of the Enlightenment. Experiences of these conflicts were plural, ambiguous, divided and contrasting; their potential meanings equally diverse. In the end, events so portentous as the sufferings of the 1640s, and the multiple responses to them, deserve to be remembered not for a single voice or consequence, but because they provide many knowledges for our discourse.
Acknowledgements
In a profession marked by generosity and collegiality it is not possible to acknowledge all debts, but it is important to try. How this book is written owes a lot to Peter Lake, whose mark is on both the overall approach and much of the detail; Ann Hughes, a generous colleague whose work in this field exercises a much greater influence on my approach than is evident simply from the footnotes; John Walter, once teacher and now colleague, whose example and advice have informed and improved everything that I have written, particularly on popular politics; John Morrill, under whose supervision I first studied this period; and Mark Greengrass, with whom I taught and thought about the Hartlib circle for several years.
Karen Harvey, as booster and helpful critic, has no equal and she has read or talked about almost everything in this book. Ann Hughes, Tom Leng, Anthony Milton and Simon Winder all read the manuscript, which was much improved as a result. For their generosity with advice, references and their own work in progress I am particularly grateful to Alastair Bellany, Katherine Braddick, Dan Beaver, Bill Bulman, Ann Carmichael, Justin Champion, Tom Cogswell, David Como, David Cressy, Brian Cummings, Richard Cust, Barbara Donagan, Carol Gluck, Julian Goodare, Genevieve Guenther, Ariel Hessayon, Steve Hindle, Andrew Hopper, Sean Kelsey, Linda Kirk, Mark Kishlansky, Irving Lavin, Tom Leng, Keith Lindley, Jason McGelligot, Anthony Milton, John Morrill, Marcus Nevitt, Jason Peacey, Jill Pritchard, Joad Raymond, Steve Renshaw, Gary Rivett, Mary Robertson, Quentin Skinner, Nigel Smith, Laura Stewart, Alex Walsham, John Walter, Laura Weigert and Phil Withington. Some of my central arguments were first trailed as papers or lectures at the universities of Leicester
, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Sheffield and Yale, at University College London, the School of East European Studies, University of London, the European University Institute in Florence, the Semin´rio de História do Instituto de Ciěncias Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, the Université Paris IV, Sorbonne, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. I am very grateful for those opportunities to try to clarify my thoughts and for the many helpful questions and suggestions that I received on those occasions. That I wrote this book at all is due to Felicity Bryan and I am very grateful to Simon Winder, whose advice and enthusiasm have been invaluable throughout.
It would not have been possible to write this book without the award of a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust, for which I am profoundly grateful. During the academic year 2005-6 I held an Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth Fellowship as a Member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship at the Huntington Library, San Marino. My work benefited immeasurably from the opportunities provided in those admirable institutions. I am also grateful to my department at the University of Sheffield for the long period of special leave which allowed me to take up these fellowships. The shifting population of that excellent department, both staff and students, has continually stimulated my thoughts on this and all other historical subjects and for that I am also very grateful. Throughout the time I have worked on this book my research has been admirably supported by the staff of the Sheffield University Library.
The dedication of this book is a poor recompense to my family. They have, it is true, given me some insight into the creative potential of chaos, but the daily and abiding lesson has been (mercifully) in the virtues of harmony, co-operation and civil order. For that, and everything else, I am more grateful than I can say.
Picture Credits
The following images are published with permission of ProQuest; further reproduction is prohibited without permission: 1, 16, 19, 39, 47 (Copyright © British Library Board, all rights reserved. Wing T2705, TT, E.116[49], E.173[13], E.388[2], Wing T2705; images produced by Pro-Quest as part of Early English Books Online. Inquiries may be made to [email protected]); the following items are reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California: 2, 5, 9, 10, 25, 26, 27, 28, 33 (John Vicars, True information of the beginning (1648)), 18 (Anon., A damnable treason (1641)), 31 (Thomas Goodwin et al., An Apologeticall Narration (1644)), 32 (John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)), 34 (George Wharton, An Astrologicall Judgement (1645)), 38 (Humphrey Willis, Times whirligig (1647)), 40 (Thomas Edwards, The first and second part of Gangraena (1646)), 41 (Anon., Strange newes from Scotland (1647)), 42 (John Taylor, The world turn’d upside down (1647)), 43 (A declaration of the engagements (1647)); the following items are reproduced by permission of The Royal Collection: 3, 4 (Copyright © 2007 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II); the following items are reproduced by permission of Guildhall Library and Art Gallery, City of London: 6, 11, 12, 13, 14, 50, 52 (Collage image numbers 7221, 31774, 20680, 24830, 1902, 29448, 22112); the following item is reproduced by permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London: 7; the following items are reproduced by permission of the Bridgeman Art Library: 8 (Copyright © Museum of London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library, image number MOL226448), 29, 30, 36 (Copyright © British Library Board, all rights reserved. TT, 669.f.8 [22]/The Bridgeman Art Library, image number BAL242575 [details]), 49 (Copyright © Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library, image number XJF97556); the following items are reproduced by permission of the British Library: 15, 17, 20, 24, 35, 51 (Copyright © British Library Board, all rights reserved. TT, E.168[12], E.1175[3], E.116[49], G.3287, 9512.f.7, C.118.d.136); the following items are reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford: 21, 22, 23, 44 (LG.7.2(29), Ashm. 1034 (5), G. Pamph. 1678 (3), C 15.3(2) Linc.); the following item is reproduced by permission of the University of Cambridge Air Photo Library: 37 (Copyright reserved Cambridge University Collection of Air Photographs); the following items are reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth settlement trustees: 45, 46 (Chatsworth 66 and 85, copyright © Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth); the following item is reproduced by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library: 48 (Wing D1378A); and the following item is reproduced by permission of English Heritage National Monuments Record: 53 (CC97/01086).
Abbreviations
A&O C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait (eds.), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–60, 3 vols. (London, 1911)
AHR American Historical Review
BL British Library
Bod. L Bodleian Library, Oxford
CJ Journals of the House of Commons
Clarendon W. Dunn Macray (ed.), The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England by Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1969 edn)
CSPD Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series
Culpeper Letters Michael J. Braddick and Mark Greengrass (eds.), ‘The Letters of Sir Cheney Culpeper, 1641–1657’, Camden Miscellany xxxiii: Seventeenth-Century Political and Financial Papers, Camden 5th series, 7, Royal Historical Society (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 105–402
EEBO Early English Books Online (http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home)
EcHR Economic History Review
EHR English Historical Review
ESTC English Short Title Catalogue (http://estc.bl.uk/)
Gardiner S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, 4 vols. (Moreton-in-Marsh, 1991 edn)
Gardiner, CD S. R. Gardiner (ed.), The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution 1625–1660, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1906)
Gough, Myddle David Hey (ed.), Richard Gough, The History of Myddle (Harmondsworth, 1981)
HEH Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino
HJ Historical Journal
HLQ Huntington Library Quarterly
HR Historical Research
JBS Journal of British Studies
LJ Journals of the House of Lords
ODNB H. C. G. Matthews and B. Harrison (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 61 vols. (Oxford, 2004) (available online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/)
OED The Oxford English Dictionary
PP Past and Present
TNA The National Archives
TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
TT Thomason Tracts
More and more primary sources are available online without subscription, some of them as this book was going to press. As I write A&O, CJ and LJ are available at http://www.british-history.ac.uk/ and Gardiner, CD, at http://www.constitution.org/.
Note on Authorship and Dating of Pamphlets
Most pamphlets have a place and date (year) of publication. Using the bibliographical data of ESTC or EEBO, searchers can trace shifts in the numbers of titles each year with a narrow margin of error. Pamphlets from the largest individual collection, that assembled by George Thomason, can usually be dated much more precisely. Thomason often noted a precise date on the covers of pamphlets: this has been noted below as the ‘Thomason date’. Where no Thomason date exists, I have relied on the ‘Fortescue date’ derived from G. K. Fortescue (ed), Catalogue of the Pamphlets, Books, Newspapers, and Manuscripts Relating to the Civil War, the Commonwealth and the Restoration, Collected by George Thomason, 1640–1661, 2 vols. (London, 1908). In general Thomason’s collection was bound in date order, although in several different series according to format. Thus, an undated pamphlet with no date appended by Thomason can be given an approximate date by reference to pamphlets bound with it that are dated. Fortescue catalogued the entire collection chronologically largely on this basis, although he did not follow Thomason’s binding precisely, often dating a pamphlet according to the events it describes. In neither case is the date absolutely precise, therefore – the Thomason date might indicate a date of publication, acquisition or cataloguing, for example; and Fortescue dates may relate to the events that they refer to, rather than publication date. Dates for individual pamphlets are not
entirely reliable, therefore, although aggregate numbers of titles per month are likely to be broadly accurate. For the problems of dating pamphlets see Stephen J. Greenberg, ‘Dating Civil War Pamphlets, 1641–1644’, Albion, 20 (1988), 387–401; and Michael Mendle, ‘The Thomason Collection: A Reply to Stephen J. Greenberg’ and Greenberg, ‘The Thomason Collection: Rebuttal to Michael Mendle’, Albion, 22 (1990), 85–98.
I have in general followed the attribution of authorship in EEBO and ESTC.
Note on Dates and Quotations
Dates are given old style but with the New Year beginning on 1 January. Spelling and punctuation have been modernized where that aids comprehension.
Notes and References
Preface
1. For the Reformation and the problem of reliable knowledge see Richard Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle, rev. edn (Oxford, 2003), esp. ch. 1. Benbrigge was a Sussex minister of no great fame or distinction. He may have been a relative of Joseph Benbrigge, the Puritan mayor of Rye in 1629: Anthony Fletcher, A County Community in Peace and War: Sussex 1600-1660 (London, 1975), p.239. Sussex, too, had an unexceptional experience of warfare – neither spared nor ravaged. The pamphlet was dedicated to Captain Thomas Collines, another obscure figure, a relatively unknown member of Parliament’s county committee. Benbrigge’s pamphlet has attracted little, if any, attention from modern historians, although he is discussed by J. Sears McGee, The Godly Man in Stuart England: Anglicans, Puritans, and the Two Tables, 1620–1670 (Yale, 1976), esp. p. 22n. Benbrigge’s parliamentary sympathies are clear: he thought those labelled Puritan or Roundhead were ‘the flower of [god’s] people’, ‘howsoever the world despises them’. See also J. Sears McGee, ‘Conversion and the Imitation of Christ in Anglican and Puritan Writing’, JBS, 15:2 (1976), 21–39, at p. 25. Benbrigge had an unspectacular publishing career, which seems to have lasted less than a year. In October 1645 he had published a sermon, Christ above all exalted, as in justification so in sanctification. Wherein severall passages in Dr Crisps sermons are answered, a response to Tobias Crispe, Christ alone exalted (London, 1643, and subsequent editions). In September 1646 Benbrigge published a pamphlet about the regulation of usury, his third and final publication.
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