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Causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642
In this seminal work Lawrence Stone explores theories of revolution and traces the social and economic change that led to this period of instability. Now with a new introduction by John Brewer, this classic text is essential reading for all those fascinated by the fraught battle for power between Charles I and Cromwell.
185 pages, Paperback
First published January 28, 1972
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About the author
Lawrence Stone
30 books16 followersLawrence Stone was an English historian of early modern Britain. He is noted for his work on the English Civil War and marriage. Stone was a major advocate of using the methods of the social sciences to study history.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
May 20, 2023
In den 1520er Jahren hatten Kirchenvorsteher große Summen darangegeben, um auf die Kirchenwände biblische Szenen malen und neue Heiligenbilder hinzufügen zu lassen; 1549 tünchten sie alles weiß und entfernten die Lettneremporen; 1553 brachten sie sie hastig wieder an; und 1560 rissen sie sie wieder herunter.
September 27, 2025
3.5 - more later
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May 19, 2023A fun and engaging little book that apparently tore apart the English Civil War history community in the 1970s...
Stone's main claim to fame is introducing the use of social science tools (especially polisci theories of revolution and relative deprivation) to explain elements of 17th century English history. His focus on the English civil war is multi-factoral, divided generally into longterm, medium-term, and short term causes. He also gives a brief overview of the contemporary historiography, ranging from explaining the cause as the rise of yeomen vis a vis the gentry, bourgeois revolution, or the collapse of aristocratic military control. He notably rejects the Marxist position of scholars like Christopher Hill, arguing instead that class distinctions emerge clearly only later in the war and that in the lead up to the crisis it is hard to find clear patterns of allegiance.
This history has been apparently described as Whiggish (to the author's chagrin), with some focus on institutional/constitutional causes of the war and the dysfunctionality of 17th century politics. He pays particular attention to the relative drop in status/power/prestige of the gentry in this period, after a long period of rising influence. This is described as a precipitating factor of the war and the increasingly bombastic parliamentarian positions (and the crown's inability to foresee the changing political landscape when initiating its deeply unpopular religious & financial policies).
However, Stone lists several long and short term causes of the war, ranging from the land distribution policies of Henry VIII, the crown's ongoing reliance on parliament to fund itself (which was relatively less of an issue in France/Spain), population growth and the dissolving of traditional feudal structures, largescale social mobility, a fraying aristocratic class (no longer as united due to fears of foreign invasion, civil war, or popular uprisings), wealth shifts from the church and upper/lower classes to the middle class, divides between rural and court politics, the destabilizing effects of Puritanism (and equally importantly the royal reaction to it), the rise of education and literacy, increasing nationalism as well as increasing participation in local politics, civil law critiques of absolutism, the polarizing effects of London politics on the parliamentarian cause, the immediate crisis of the Bishop's wars (and subsequent crisis of military legitimacy), and individual courtly personalities.
All these causes tie neatly together into a nice little package. I'm not a historian and certainly am not nearly knowledgeable enough to test the claims, but I think most historians would agree that all these elements contributed in some way to the crisis, if not Stone's general thesis. The Revisionist historical school would claim that it smacks too much of grand narrative. For me it is pithy and full of insightful little nuggets. Good way to get acquainted with the historiography and grapple with the ultimate factors that led to the English crises of the 17th century.
Stone's main claim to fame is introducing the use of social science tools (especially polisci theories of revolution and relative deprivation) to explain elements of 17th century English history. His focus on the English civil war is multi-factoral, divided generally into longterm, medium-term, and short term causes. He also gives a brief overview of the contemporary historiography, ranging from explaining the cause as the rise of yeomen vis a vis the gentry, bourgeois revolution, or the collapse of aristocratic military control. He notably rejects the Marxist position of scholars like Christopher Hill, arguing instead that class distinctions emerge clearly only later in the war and that in the lead up to the crisis it is hard to find clear patterns of allegiance.
This history has been apparently described as Whiggish (to the author's chagrin), with some focus on institutional/constitutional causes of the war and the dysfunctionality of 17th century politics. He pays particular attention to the relative drop in status/power/prestige of the gentry in this period, after a long period of rising influence. This is described as a precipitating factor of the war and the increasingly bombastic parliamentarian positions (and the crown's inability to foresee the changing political landscape when initiating its deeply unpopular religious & financial policies).
However, Stone lists several long and short term causes of the war, ranging from the land distribution policies of Henry VIII, the crown's ongoing reliance on parliament to fund itself (which was relatively less of an issue in France/Spain), population growth and the dissolving of traditional feudal structures, largescale social mobility, a fraying aristocratic class (no longer as united due to fears of foreign invasion, civil war, or popular uprisings), wealth shifts from the church and upper/lower classes to the middle class, divides between rural and court politics, the destabilizing effects of Puritanism (and equally importantly the royal reaction to it), the rise of education and literacy, increasing nationalism as well as increasing participation in local politics, civil law critiques of absolutism, the polarizing effects of London politics on the parliamentarian cause, the immediate crisis of the Bishop's wars (and subsequent crisis of military legitimacy), and individual courtly personalities.
All these causes tie neatly together into a nice little package. I'm not a historian and certainly am not nearly knowledgeable enough to test the claims, but I think most historians would agree that all these elements contributed in some way to the crisis, if not Stone's general thesis. The Revisionist historical school would claim that it smacks too much of grand narrative. For me it is pithy and full of insightful little nuggets. Good way to get acquainted with the historiography and grapple with the ultimate factors that led to the English crises of the 17th century.
November 18, 2022
Stone's Causes of the English Revolution is an academic account proposing various interlinking causes of the revolution that culminated in the outbreak of civil war in mid-17th century England and Wales, interesting and strong in some ways, but definitely not an introductory book, as Stone pre-assumes a lot of knowledge and familiarity with the subject.
The book begins with a heavy historiographic overview that only has limited bearing on the discussion that follows, documenting various shifts in writing about the pre-civil war period, before arriving essentially at a conclusion that could have been boiled down to a couple of pages at most that: 'Though hideous errors have been exposed, though disagreement continues, the whole level of the debate has been raised to a higher plane by the introduction of new, and potentially more empirical, evidence' (p.32) and that many of the theories bear their own strengths but none can be considered conclusive on its own. The historiographic section concludes with a look at Marxist writing on the civil war, and Stone takes particular aim at Marx and Engels' supposed equation of 'nobles and gentry into 'bourgeois landlords', and thus made it possible to regard the Revolution as a 'bourgeois upheaval' (p.39). I'm not entirely sure Marx and Engels' writing justifies this charge, unless I'm misunderstanding Stone's criticism, as The German Ideology in particular frames the conflict as 'bourgeois' precisely because the bourgeois merchant class were in conflict with the landed classes, not because the landed classes were themselves bourgeois. Further, Stone portrays Marx as an economic determinist (p.40) and contrasts him with Tawney who 'took a far more sophisticated view of the relationship between ideas and interests' (p.40), but again I don't think this is entirely fair and is more a reflection of the determinism of later Marxists rather than necessarily the man himself.
The ambivalence towards Marxist historiography continues later but it comes off as weak. For example, when Stone argues the 'class war theory of the Marxists has only limited applicability to the seventeeth century [...] a society with a relatively large population of persons undergoing high mobility is likely to be in an unstable condition. The revolution was certainly not a war of the poor against the rich' (p.54), he seems unaware this is the exact argument Marx and Engels put forward (again in abstract form in The German Ideology and more specifically elsewhere). This is not the only instance in which he seems to actually support Marxist writing on the period (on page 117, for instance, he argues 'the individual political leader is severely circumscribed in his freedom of action by the objective conditions in which he finds himself. Moreover the leader is moulded in his values and opinions by the socialization process he has undergone'. That is perhaps even more stringently deterministic than dialectical materialism).
But there are strengths amongst these drawbacks. He rightfully locates the revolution firstly in a 'crisis within the regime, the alienation of very large segments of the élites from the established political and religious institutions' (p.57), and he draws together a myriad of different explanations - material and symbolic - into a compelling narrative. The sections discussing the emergence and importance of Puritanism are particularly enlightening.
But too often Stone falls into the trap also of conflating the aims of the elites with those of the country in general: His use of the term 'national identity' is extremely problematic, but typical of the period in which he wrote; and in the afterword, whilst he rightly points out he underestimated the role of peasantry and ordinary people in the conflict, it is still necessary to caveat that the motivations of ordinary people cannot be conflated entirely with those of the elites (ie. while the peasantry and local communities did apparently engage in the constitutional debates, it would be erroneous to assume their motives were purely ideological).
Perhaps a book worth revisiting after obtaining greater familiarity with the topic at hand.
The book begins with a heavy historiographic overview that only has limited bearing on the discussion that follows, documenting various shifts in writing about the pre-civil war period, before arriving essentially at a conclusion that could have been boiled down to a couple of pages at most that: 'Though hideous errors have been exposed, though disagreement continues, the whole level of the debate has been raised to a higher plane by the introduction of new, and potentially more empirical, evidence' (p.32) and that many of the theories bear their own strengths but none can be considered conclusive on its own. The historiographic section concludes with a look at Marxist writing on the civil war, and Stone takes particular aim at Marx and Engels' supposed equation of 'nobles and gentry into 'bourgeois landlords', and thus made it possible to regard the Revolution as a 'bourgeois upheaval' (p.39). I'm not entirely sure Marx and Engels' writing justifies this charge, unless I'm misunderstanding Stone's criticism, as The German Ideology in particular frames the conflict as 'bourgeois' precisely because the bourgeois merchant class were in conflict with the landed classes, not because the landed classes were themselves bourgeois. Further, Stone portrays Marx as an economic determinist (p.40) and contrasts him with Tawney who 'took a far more sophisticated view of the relationship between ideas and interests' (p.40), but again I don't think this is entirely fair and is more a reflection of the determinism of later Marxists rather than necessarily the man himself.
The ambivalence towards Marxist historiography continues later but it comes off as weak. For example, when Stone argues the 'class war theory of the Marxists has only limited applicability to the seventeeth century [...] a society with a relatively large population of persons undergoing high mobility is likely to be in an unstable condition. The revolution was certainly not a war of the poor against the rich' (p.54), he seems unaware this is the exact argument Marx and Engels put forward (again in abstract form in The German Ideology and more specifically elsewhere). This is not the only instance in which he seems to actually support Marxist writing on the period (on page 117, for instance, he argues 'the individual political leader is severely circumscribed in his freedom of action by the objective conditions in which he finds himself. Moreover the leader is moulded in his values and opinions by the socialization process he has undergone'. That is perhaps even more stringently deterministic than dialectical materialism).
But there are strengths amongst these drawbacks. He rightfully locates the revolution firstly in a 'crisis within the regime, the alienation of very large segments of the élites from the established political and religious institutions' (p.57), and he draws together a myriad of different explanations - material and symbolic - into a compelling narrative. The sections discussing the emergence and importance of Puritanism are particularly enlightening.
But too often Stone falls into the trap also of conflating the aims of the elites with those of the country in general: His use of the term 'national identity' is extremely problematic, but typical of the period in which he wrote; and in the afterword, whilst he rightly points out he underestimated the role of peasantry and ordinary people in the conflict, it is still necessary to caveat that the motivations of ordinary people cannot be conflated entirely with those of the elites (ie. while the peasantry and local communities did apparently engage in the constitutional debates, it would be erroneous to assume their motives were purely ideological).
Perhaps a book worth revisiting after obtaining greater familiarity with the topic at hand.
August 29, 2024
Having to read lots of books on the English Civil War for a grad seminar...
Stone is very much challenging the Marxist interpretation of the conflict by historians like Christopher Hill and divides what he sees as its causes into three categories: "pre-conditions," going back to the reign of Henry VIII; "precipitants," beginning with the dissolution of Parliament by Charles; and "triggers."
Stone is very much challenging the Marxist interpretation of the conflict by historians like Christopher Hill and divides what he sees as its causes into three categories: "pre-conditions," going back to the reign of Henry VIII; "precipitants," beginning with the dissolution of Parliament by Charles; and "triggers."
August 25, 2010
This is a historian's history book. Part one is devoted to historiography; the first chapter gives a critical overview of revolution theory, looking at the hypotheses and defects of various paradigms, frames of reference that might be fruitful for the analysis of change in government, in regime and/or society effected by the means of violence (one definition of revolution). The second chapter gives a revealing account of an acrimonious historians' spat of the post-war years regarding the English Revolution: once it was realised that neither the Victorian political narrative nor the Marxist clear-cut conflict between bourgeoisie and decaying feudal classes would really do for the seventeenth century, and the social aspect as well as the political and religious entered the arena, there was rather a lot of wild speculation with not a lot of hard evidence. Stone is very frank about his own role in this dispute, admitting mistakes, but also licking his wounds and quite prepared to place the well-aimed shot in retaliation.
Not everyone may necessarily be fascinated by somewhat arcane academic infighting, but this part is only 40 pages. Part 2 does start with a little bit of theory again, but only enough to justify calling the events of 1640-1642 a revolution. Admittedly there was only modest and limited social change, but it cannot be denied that the King was beheaded, and not merely to be replaced by someone more popular: he was put on trial in the name of the people of England, on a charge of high treason: violation of the 'fundamental constitutions of this kingdom'. The House of Lords was abolished, along with some legal institutions, and the Established Church was virtually swept away, episcopal properties seized.
Stone organizes his analysis into three categories; long-term pre-conditions, medium-term precipitants and short-term triggers. The other organizing principle for him is the idea of relative deprivation; the idea that frustration arises when people have enjoyed a period of growth and progress which then takes a downturn, so that their expectations streak ahead of perceived reality. This works equally well for privilege and social status as for economic prosperity, and is obviously a factor in his analysis of the prevarication and weakness of the reign of Elizabeth as one of the elements in long-term structural instability, in that it made the task of the Stuart kings much trickier: there was a lot of political ground lost for the monarchy, and religious dissent ignored or swept under the carpet and yet at the same time her reign was idealized as the Golden Age of Good Queen Bess.
I did like the idea of a multi-causal approach, as anything else is bound to be one-sided, but the problem lies in marshalling the material into some kind of manageable form, and although the idea of the different time-lines was helpful, it is nevertheless insufficient to really clear a path through the jungle of the various gradations of upper and lower gentry, grandees, courtiers, yeomen, aristocrats, county/parish gentry and the wealth of other categorisations, some of them economic, some of them social. This is probably par for the course, as there is little clear-cut structure in how these differing categories fall along Royalist or Parliamentarian lines. One little factlet that did really stick in my mind was the question of age. I've read a fair bit recently about the French Revolution, and especially in the Mantel novel it struck me again and again how young the revolutionary leaders were, Danton and Robespierre only in their early thirties when they were executed. An interesting cross-section of the Lower House in 1642 shows that M.P.s in their twenties were Royalist rather than Parliamentarian by a factor of 2 to 1, and conversely, M.P.s in their fifties were Parliamentarians rather than Royalist by a factor of 2 to 1. The older men were radical, the younger conservative. Odd and strangely puzzling, but indicative of how Stone uses statistical data to explode prevailing myths.
BTW, goodreads has the title wrong: mine is called 'Causes of the English Revolution'. I don't get the impression that Lawrence Stone was overly modest, but he was certainly not so arrogant as to claim he had made the definitive list.
Not everyone may necessarily be fascinated by somewhat arcane academic infighting, but this part is only 40 pages. Part 2 does start with a little bit of theory again, but only enough to justify calling the events of 1640-1642 a revolution. Admittedly there was only modest and limited social change, but it cannot be denied that the King was beheaded, and not merely to be replaced by someone more popular: he was put on trial in the name of the people of England, on a charge of high treason: violation of the 'fundamental constitutions of this kingdom'. The House of Lords was abolished, along with some legal institutions, and the Established Church was virtually swept away, episcopal properties seized.
Stone organizes his analysis into three categories; long-term pre-conditions, medium-term precipitants and short-term triggers. The other organizing principle for him is the idea of relative deprivation; the idea that frustration arises when people have enjoyed a period of growth and progress which then takes a downturn, so that their expectations streak ahead of perceived reality. This works equally well for privilege and social status as for economic prosperity, and is obviously a factor in his analysis of the prevarication and weakness of the reign of Elizabeth as one of the elements in long-term structural instability, in that it made the task of the Stuart kings much trickier: there was a lot of political ground lost for the monarchy, and religious dissent ignored or swept under the carpet and yet at the same time her reign was idealized as the Golden Age of Good Queen Bess.
I did like the idea of a multi-causal approach, as anything else is bound to be one-sided, but the problem lies in marshalling the material into some kind of manageable form, and although the idea of the different time-lines was helpful, it is nevertheless insufficient to really clear a path through the jungle of the various gradations of upper and lower gentry, grandees, courtiers, yeomen, aristocrats, county/parish gentry and the wealth of other categorisations, some of them economic, some of them social. This is probably par for the course, as there is little clear-cut structure in how these differing categories fall along Royalist or Parliamentarian lines. One little factlet that did really stick in my mind was the question of age. I've read a fair bit recently about the French Revolution, and especially in the Mantel novel it struck me again and again how young the revolutionary leaders were, Danton and Robespierre only in their early thirties when they were executed. An interesting cross-section of the Lower House in 1642 shows that M.P.s in their twenties were Royalist rather than Parliamentarian by a factor of 2 to 1, and conversely, M.P.s in their fifties were Parliamentarians rather than Royalist by a factor of 2 to 1. The older men were radical, the younger conservative. Odd and strangely puzzling, but indicative of how Stone uses statistical data to explode prevailing myths.
BTW, goodreads has the title wrong: mine is called 'Causes of the English Revolution'. I don't get the impression that Lawrence Stone was overly modest, but he was certainly not so arrogant as to claim he had made the definitive list.
February 9, 2014
Questo di Stone è il primo saggio che negli anni '70 cercò di fare un po' d'ordine in quella questione un po' spinosa che è la Rivoluzione Inglese, un avvenimento talmente complesso da non essere stato ritenuto per lungo tempo neppure una vera e propria rivoluzione ma solo una serie di scontri inseriti nel contesto più ampio della guerra dei Tre regni.
Stone, uno dei primi storici a capire l'importanza delle nuove scienze sociali e antropologiche nel lavoro dello storico per comprendere le trasformazioni del mondo, fa una lunga digressione sugli strumenti che lo storico può prendere in prestito dai sociologi per cercare di dipanare al meglio delle sue capacità l'intricato intreccio di cause a lungo, medio e breve termine che hanno portato nel 1642 a una ribellione contro i tre pilastri fondanti di un paese di lunga tradizione conservatrice come l'Inghilterra: il re, la Chiesa e i Lords.
Molto viene detto a riguardo di Chalmers Johnson, sociologo degli anni '40 a cui deve tutta l'impostazione di questo volume e gran parte delle sue analisi. Segue un breve excursus del dibattito storiografico fino a quel momento, perchè Stone, professore e storico, non dimentica(va) mai di ricordare a chi legge (principalmente suoi studenti) che la storiografia è lungi dall'essere immobile, e che bisogna essere sempre consapevoli di tutto ciò che è stato scritto fino a quel momento senza lasciarsi inibire dai cosiddetti professoroni.
Anche loro possono sbagliare.
Stone compreso.
La lunga introduzione in effetti può risultare un ostacolo difficile da digerire per chi non ha interesse nella storiografia, penalizzando il godimento di un libricino ottimo, impostato con lo stile semplice e scorrevole che caratterizza l'ormai defunto Stone e che me lo fa sempre apprezzare molto come studioso.
In più il libro è molto breve e deve per forza dare molto per scontato, quindi non lo consiglierei se non si ha una conoscenza un pelo più approfondita di quella che viene fornita al liceo. Consiglio anche di leggere prima "La crisi dell'Aristocrazia", saggio decisamente più lungo e completo che permette di fare mente locale sulle profonde trasformazioni sociali, economiche e religiose che hanno attraversato il paese dal Regno di Elisabetta all'arrivo di Cromwell.
Stone, uno dei primi storici a capire l'importanza delle nuove scienze sociali e antropologiche nel lavoro dello storico per comprendere le trasformazioni del mondo, fa una lunga digressione sugli strumenti che lo storico può prendere in prestito dai sociologi per cercare di dipanare al meglio delle sue capacità l'intricato intreccio di cause a lungo, medio e breve termine che hanno portato nel 1642 a una ribellione contro i tre pilastri fondanti di un paese di lunga tradizione conservatrice come l'Inghilterra: il re, la Chiesa e i Lords.
Molto viene detto a riguardo di Chalmers Johnson, sociologo degli anni '40 a cui deve tutta l'impostazione di questo volume e gran parte delle sue analisi. Segue un breve excursus del dibattito storiografico fino a quel momento, perchè Stone, professore e storico, non dimentica(va) mai di ricordare a chi legge (principalmente suoi studenti) che la storiografia è lungi dall'essere immobile, e che bisogna essere sempre consapevoli di tutto ciò che è stato scritto fino a quel momento senza lasciarsi inibire dai cosiddetti professoroni.
Anche loro possono sbagliare.
Stone compreso.
La lunga introduzione in effetti può risultare un ostacolo difficile da digerire per chi non ha interesse nella storiografia, penalizzando il godimento di un libricino ottimo, impostato con lo stile semplice e scorrevole che caratterizza l'ormai defunto Stone e che me lo fa sempre apprezzare molto come studioso.
In più il libro è molto breve e deve per forza dare molto per scontato, quindi non lo consiglierei se non si ha una conoscenza un pelo più approfondita di quella che viene fornita al liceo. Consiglio anche di leggere prima "La crisi dell'Aristocrazia", saggio decisamente più lungo e completo che permette di fare mente locale sulle profonde trasformazioni sociali, economiche e religiose che hanno attraversato il paese dal Regno di Elisabetta all'arrivo di Cromwell.
March 7, 2017
As the author writes, referring to a portion of this methodical and structured presentation, "The essential thrust of this historical analysis has been to stress the interconnection of forces and events, to demonstrate the way everything affects, and is affected by, everything else."
March 21, 2016
establishment historian with distrust of leftist narratives. still has its uses.
Read
December 27, 2012Used for H429: Stuart England
February 17, 2015
Historiographically important explanation of the social causes of the English Revolution.
October 13, 2015
Excellent brief account of the English Revolution. Quite a surprising emphasis on the exact nature of its revolutionary violence.
August 16, 2012
Pretty heavy on the theory.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews