Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688

by Clare Jackson

This dazzling, original and hugely engaging book tells the story of a nation in a state of near continual crisis. To many foreigner observers, seventeenth-century England was 'Devil-Land': a country riven by political faction, religious difference, financial ruin and royal collapse.

As an unmarried heretic with no heir, Elizabeth I was regarded with a horror by Catholic Europe, while her Stuart successors, James VI & I and Charles I, were seen as impecunious and incompetent: unable to manage their three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. The traumatic civil wars, regicide and a republican Commonwealth were followed by the floundering, foreign-leaning rule of Charles II and his brother, James VII & II, before William of Orange invaded England with a Dutch army, and a new order was imposed.

Devil-Land reveals England as, in many ways, a 'failed state': endemically unstable and constantly rocked by devastating events from the Gunpowder Plot to the Great Fire of London. Catastrophe nevertheless bred creativity, and Jackson makes brilliant use of eyewitness accounts - many penned by stupefied foreigners - to dramatize her great story. 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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, European History, Politics, Audiobook, British Literature, Tudor Period

684 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2021

About the author

Clare Jackson lectures in the history of political thought at the University of Cambridge.

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a mammoth volume which tells, in great detail, the story of what is (for me) a less familiar period of British History- the 17th Century.
I have a reasonable knowledge of the causes, key events and consequences of the Civil War but am ashamed to say my understanding of the later Stuarts is rudimentary, to say the least.
No more! Thanks to Clare Jackson's book, the intricacies of Anglo- European relations, the significance of the Rhine Palatinate and the rivalries of France, Spain and the Netherlands are a lot clearer.
As well as ironing out some of the more general themes of the period, Jackson gives excellent portraits of some of the key players of the period, including Charles II, James II and William of Orange among many. I'm pleased to say I now have a pretty good grasp of the machinations which led to crucial, but perhaps overlooked, events in British history including the Restoration of the monarchy and 'the Glorious Revolution'.
Though at times I felt a little swamped by the detail, this is an invaluable book for anyone who wants to know about the upheavals of 17th century Britain.

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admit that I had a very murky view of post Elizabethan, 17th century British history. Now that I’ve read Clare Jackson’s excellent book, I can forgive myself for not having had a clear picture of what could accurately be considered England’s most turbulent and difficult to describe time period. It was one that was characterized by instability, religious extremism, power jockeying, violent rebellions, regime changes, fickle and duplicitous diplomacy, and general dysfunction - enough to make anyone’s head spin but very ably handled by Jackson.

The period is bookended at one end by the beheading of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots and Englands’s 1588 narrow escape from the Spanish Armada. At the other end is the “Glorious Rebellion,” which deposed James Il and Vll and replaced him with his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange. The centerpiece of the era is the violent and destructive English civil war resulting in the regicide of Charles I, something that caused tidal waves around Europe.

Jackson uses dual lenses to look at English history during this period. The first is England’s involvement and interplay with European entities that were maneuvering for power and the second was the primacy and legacy of the Scottish Stuarts following the end of the Tudor line upon the death of Elizabeth I. Underlying the extreme turmoil at the time was the post-reformation struggles over religious beliefs and this is a big part of story as well.

Jackson relies heavily on correspondences among and between various ambassadors throughout the book. On one hand, these brought eye-witness accounts and color to the narrative. But it was a feat to try and keep track of the myriad of revolving names and titles of these emissaries and that slowed down the reading a bit. She effectively made use of the various forms of writing and publications that were rapidly flourishing at the time. These were in many forms: letters, manifestos, pamphlets, newspapers, declarations, proclamations, satires, and spoofs. These were often published in several languages and disseminated widely. In such uncertain and troubled times, they could be used for public debate of partisan issues and to promulgate conspiracy theories causing hysteria and panic. At a particular point in his succession crisis, James II and VII reportedly complained about partisan reporting and libelous pamphlets that promoted “false news”!

This book takes a time commitment, not because it’s unusually long, but because it’s very densely detailed, sometimes excessively so. Even so, Jackson manages to bring clarity to a fascinatingly complicated era in English history, making the book well worth the time and effort.

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really, this is a fairly old-fashioned top-down political history, covering the turbulent and unstable period from the execution of Mary Queen of Scots and the Spanish Armada to the Glorious Revolution, a period that "permanently altered our country's destiny and fundamentally explain[s] current constitutional arrangements within the British Isles as well as the nature of England's historical relations with its Continental neighbours." True enough, but I'm not sure the book lived up to its title or its subtitle. It may have been a "Devil-Land," but continental Europe was disordered and violent and turbulent during this century, too, and England's disorders don't seem unique when set against that background. And the subtitle--"England Under Siege." Under siege by whom? The country was variously at war with the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, and of course with itself, but none of that warfare seems particularly siege-like. A blurb on the cover from Andrew Marr calls the book "amazing, extraordinary, perception-changing"--but I can't really say that my perceptions were changed, either.

[Sean Farrell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tried really hard with this, the premise is very interesting and it's a time period that fascinates me, but unfortunately the writing itself is often so convoluted as to be almost deliberately impenetrable. Long, involved sentences with unnecessarily obscure language makes for very hard work, when all I actually wanted was to find out what the rest of Europe thought about the English when we appeared to be behaving as madly as we are now....

[Toby · Rating 3 out of 5]

The flyleaf of Devil-Land, which was picked up in most of the published reviews that I read, declares that seventeenth century England was in many ways a "failed state". This is the publisher's equivalent of click-bait and it certainly seems to have worked with many of the reviews picking this up and not (perhaps understandably) then reading through the 500+pages of text.

The 500+ pages don't really portray England as anything like a failed state with the exception of the mid-century civil war and then the eventual failure of James VII & II's reign. For the remainder of the period England, in common with the other European states, faced religious conflict, real and supposed plots, and threatened and actual wars. All of these were ultimately small beer compared with the catastrophe of the 30 years war that engulfed central Europe. Even so, England was the only country during this period that managed to execute two legitimate monarchs (Mary Queen of Scots being the other one) and evict a third. England was also the only country that managed a sustained experiment with republicanism, albeit a chaotic one.

Clare Jackson writes well, although the book remains a curious one. It is really a book about England's foreign relations and foreign policy although that would be far too dull a title. A hundred years is a lot to get through in 500 pages and we skim over the surface of many things. Readers coming to the period for the first time would be better reading a book about Stuart politics and religion first.

To what extent does Clare Jackson write with one eye on the present? All historians do this, consciously or unconsciously, and the flyleaf and reviewers certainly sense a sly wink at Brexit here. The protests against Bubonic Plague lockdown and the sybaritic incompetence of Charles II also have modern day resonances. Clare Jackson is thankfully too good a writer to make the suggestive explicit.

[Trinity Benstock · Rating 3 out of 5]

A viciously middling account of one of the most pivotal periods in British history. Perhaps my own pedantry damned this clip (500 pages hardcover) of a century, but it was froth off the top.
I recommend this book solely because of the delightful, though excessively used, quotes.

[Mathew Coombs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Initially this weighty history of Stuart England was daunting. But I am glad I stuck with it.
What I like about "Devil Land" is it brings into focus the European influences on the three Kingdoms the Stuarts ruled upon (England/Scotland and Ireland).
It was felt that England was delivered by divine forces from the Spanish invasion with the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 but it is clear that for a century after the Kingdom feared invasion from the two main Imperial powers in Europe The Hapsburg and Bourbon empires of Spain and France. This dictated much of the country political decisions, with suspicions from both domestic powers and European powers that Stuart kings were quick to form and break alliances as their whims or contingency dictated.
If you are after detailed accounts of the big events of the century like the Gunpowder Plot, The English Civil War, The Great Plague and the Great Fire of London, then you are better with a general history. The book touches on these events but it's focus is more on the alliances and marriages and relationships between the Kingdom and the European powers. It helped me understand some gaps in my knowledge in terms of why we ended up with a Scottish Stuart King in James the First, Why we ended up with Dutch King ruling in 1688 and finally in the Epilogue a German Prince in George the First after the death of the childless Queen Anne. The helpful family trees of the European dynasties in the front of the book is really a great addition.
As I said a detailed and heavy read not for the generalist but for the person who wants to dig deep into why the political headwinds of the time caused those seismic events during the century.

[Simon Mee · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable geopolitical-religious-diplomatic-familal hybrid that reflects the tensions faced by the Stuart dynasty in 17th century England.

Because the time period has been traversed by many authors, I see a place for a book that mainly looks at perceptions of kingship and England, particularly from the eyes of foreigners.

There's alot (deliberately) missing from this history so treat it as focussing on certain elements rather than a substantive coverage of the period. However I found myself learning alot of new information, especially the overseas portrayals.

The writing is good, rather than amazing, but it is an easy enough read. I think the below quote sums the book up well:

Devil-Land has explored both the complex geopolitical entanglements and the anxious precarity of life under England’s Stuart rulers, in order to make them better known.

[Christine Watts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bit of a slog to read but very detailed and wide ranging research covering the events from the Spanish Armada 1588 to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. It reveals an England that was endemically unstable, rebellious and subject to many catastrophic events such as the Great Fire and various plague outbreaks. The author makes good use of eyewitness accounts, many from foreign onlookers who found it difficult to comprehend this turbulent, radical era. A dramatic account.

[Farah Mendlesohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating book. I listened to it and must go back and actually read it, but the "through the eyes of foreigners" approach taught me all sorts of contextual tit bits I didn't know.

[Dr G · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the face of it, Devil-Land. England Under Siege 1588-1688 is a slightly odd historical study in that, on the face of it, it is limited to a random hundred-year period in England, with diversions into Ireland and Scotland. However, when one ponders for a moment, and on the evidence of Clare Jackson’s book, the fact is that this particular century includes the latter half of Elizabeth I’s reign; the execution of Mary Queen of Scots; the arrival of the Stuarts with James I; the Gunpowder Plot; the accession of Charles I and his execution; the Scots Covenanters; the Civil War; Cromwell and the Protectorate; Cromwell and Ireland, and Drogheda; the Restoration and Charles II; the Great Fire of London; James II; the “Great Revolution” and William III; William and the Treaty of Limerick; Jacobitism and a variety of other matters.
In amongst all that, of course, were the labyrinthine intrigues, alliances, treaties, wars, and occasional peace, in relations between the various powers of Europe. It was a busy century and certainly deserves a composite study. And Jackson’s superbly thorough study does it justice.
My other opening thought, though, relates more generally to the human race and our study of history. For many years, the comment has been floating about that traditional history has focused too much on the kings, queens and aristocrats, overlooking the lives of the common people. I have ignored these complaints since the reality is that there is obviously far more documentation related to the former, and their actions and words have had an impact on vast numbers of people, whereas the same can very rarely be said about the underling classes.
I still adhere to that view. However, I must confess that my abiding conclusion from this history, even though it was not particularly pointed out by Clare Jackson, was of repugnance for the way the powerful within this hundred years carried on their luxurious, privileged, self-centred lives with little cognisance of the welfare of anyone else. When the lower classes were considered, it was in a context of those in power either planning how to deploy them for their own purposes, or knowing, omnisciently, what was good for them.
This is graphically demonstrated in the chapter covering 1678-1683, where the following information is provided.
Charles had already been alerted to the ambassador’s questionable loyalty by his former mistress Barbara Villiers, countess of Castlemaine, whose recent affair with Montague had soured after the ambassador had also seduced Castlemaine’s teenage daughter by the king, Anne, countess of Sussex.
It was, moreover, not only Charles and his ministers who were in receipt of covert foreign subsidies as Montague had himself been promised a French pension if he successfully engineered the anti-French Danby’s removal as Lord Treasurer.
The French government sanctioned subsidies to Charles’s court while simultaneously bribing republican factions in both London and Amsterdam, that sought to curb royal power of either Stuart or Orange hue.
That sums up quite helpfully the level of corruption and hypocrisy which seems to have been endemic in this group of people who believed their god had specially selected them to control the nation – unless, of course the opportunity arose to nudge someone else out of the way and move higher up the tree.
And, for the main players, we should remember Elizabeth I’s being bullied into pronouncing the death sentence on Mary Queen of Scots, then trying to bully Mary’s keeper into carrying out an extra-judicial killing, then being paralysed by the memory of it all; or there is James VI of Scotland and his reluctance to support his mother too much lest he jeopardise his chances of becoming James I of England. Or there was his, and all the Stuarts’, obfuscating over Catholicism; there were the O’Neills of Tyrone who were either friends or enemies of England according to what the arrangement would do for the family; we recall Charles I’s disastrous indulgence of his favourite, Buckingham; or the whole Stuart obsession with Parliament allowing them to war with or against whomever they chose; think of Cromwell and Drogheda, and his opposition to inherited power, but nomination of his son to succeed him; and Charles II’s serial adultery (although he did refuse to follow Parliament’s wish that he divorce Catherine of Braganza so as to facilitate the conception of an heir. And, during the Great Fire of London, he did not fiddle his cithera). He sent one illegitimate son overseas to curb the bounder’s popularity; he rescinded an Act to provide additional religious tolerance so as to get Parliament to fund war against the Dutch; he prorogued Parliament to prevent them passing a bill to exclude his son from royal succession; Finally, there was William III’s insistence that, with his wife, Mary, ahead of him for succession, “he was so made, that he could not think of holding anything by apron-strings”.
There were a number of incidents or situations for which Jackson provides no new insights: the Spanish Armada, and Spain’s leadership issues during it; the irony that, James I, while waiting for Elizabeth I’s funeral to conclude, would stay with one Oliver Cromwell, uncle of the man who would manage the execution of his son; that James I was so keen to create the entity, Great Britain; and the escapade to Spain by Buckingham and the future Charles I to check up on the Infanta. But they were entertainingly covered, nevertheless.
I think, however, her account of Scotland’s James VI’s intrigues to become England’s James I (and of Elizabeth I’s opacity on the matter of her successor) is more complete than anything I have read elsewhere.
One of Clare Jackson’s great attributes in this history is the thoroughness of her research, particularly amongst papers in international archives. I particularly enjoyed the following: Dispatched to London to congratulate James on his accession as king in 1603, the Protestant Huguenot Maximilien de Béthune, Marquis of Rosny, insisted that ‘no nation in Europe is more haughty and disdainful, nor more conceited in an opinion of its superior excellence’. Inclined ‘to adore all their own opinions, and despise those of every other nation’, the English, he speculated, had ‘contracted all the instability of the element by which they are surrounded’, namely water. For this reason, Rosny insisted that any French ambassador must be someone ‘of understanding and authority, who may compel them to hear him, and force them to be reasonable’. I suspect, however, that similar disparaging descriptions were offered by all of Europe’s nations about one another.
It is apparent that Cromwell was regarded as even more of a bumpkin by the courts of Europe: he had, after all, no connection to the high aristocracy and was apparently monolingual (although as a student of Sydney Sussex College, Cambridge, he must have had functional Latin).
At much the same time as these observations were being offered about the English unsophisticated inferiority, other observers expressed disdain that the common Englishmen, fed on a nutritious diet of newly published books and papers, digested in the many coffee shops, felt entitled to offer opinions on, and debate, the activities of their betters.
Mind you, the abuse could travel in both directions, and not necessarily over a great distance. Apparently there is a thing known as bdelygmia (my Shorter Oxford does not confirm it, but Wikipedia does), and apparently a good example was written about the Scots:
The English troops had … kept ourselves warm with the hopes of rubbing, fubbing and scrubbing those scurvy, filthy, dirty, nasty, lousy, itchy, scabby, shitten, stinking, slovenly, snotty-nosed, logger-headed, foolish, insolent, proud, beggarly, impertinent, absurd, grout-headed, villainous, barbarous, bestial, false, lying, roguish, devilish, long-eared, short-haired, damnable, atheistical, puritanical crew of the Scotch Covenant.
Finally, I was fascinated to read of the funeral arrangements of Prince Henry, the golden-haired eldest son of James I and Anna. During the body’s month of lying in state prior to the funeral, ten courtiers attended him throughout, bringing in three meals a day. All of which sounds remarkably like Bronze Age burials.
This book will not give its reader any reassurance on the nobility of mankind or the traditions of self-sacrifice in the leadership class, but for whoever can overcome those realities, it is a superb account of a weird century.

[Susan Peak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good overview of a key period of English history set clearly in a European context. Reading this explained at least some of why many European countries regard Britain with suspicion! - one queen causing another to be executed (Eliz. I and Mary, Queen of Scots) was greeted with horror.

There are a few infelicities. I don't think England could really be described as a failed state in the 1580s, for example. And when Charles II dies, his illness is mentioned - but not the fact that he died of it. So it's rather a jolt to start reading of the post-death issues in the next chapter.

But otherwise strongly recommended.

[Graham Catt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every paragraph in this book is packed with facts - dates, names, places. So much so that, for me, it was a little overwhelming. While all the main events are explained, sometimes in great detail, there is little sense of “story”. And the narrative jumps around so much that it often seems convoluted. The many, many historical characters are just names and dates, there is little sense of the actual person. Even someone like Oliver Cromwell remains one dimensional. I know when he died, and that he won a battle here and there, but little more.

This is obviously only a personal reflection. The work was obviously well researched, and other readers have been mainly complimentary.

[Alex Sarll]

A new history of England from 1588 to 1690, if you go by the chapter headings, though I can see why neater numbers would appeal for the cover. My first worry was whether it would be new enough, when I've been familiar with much of that period since school. But for one thing, the Spanish Armada is never not funny, and also, in many ways this is a book where it helps already to know the period. This is very much history of the kings and battles school, with Jackson's main innovation being also to draw on ambassadors for a fuller sense of the international picture, and extensively on the paper bullets of pamphleteers &c to record the shifting tides of public opinion. But a lot of other material has been jettisoned to make space for who said what to whom. If this was the first thing you'd read on the period, you'd never know that the closure of theatres and cancellation of Christmas may have played a part in the appetite for the Restoration. The monstrous hypocrisy of the Cromwell dynasty is evidenced in plenty of other ways, as how could it not be when they were a hereditary military dictatorship that betrayed the Parliament it affected to serve, but there's little mention of the atrocities in Ireland, or the Levellers, and none at all of the Diggers. The old-fashioned avoidance of certain issues goes further than textbooks which were tatty when I had them thirty years ago; witchcraft is nowhere to be seen, nor is there any hint of homosexuality or the possible connotations of a royal 'favourite', beyond one very muted line about Charles I's marital relations improving once that utter spanner Buckingham was off the scene. Hell, even Nell Gwyn doesn't get a look-in, despite "I am the Protestant whore!" surely speaking to the tensions over Charles II's (barely) covert Catholicism.

So what do we get in exchange? Sometimes it's just snippets Jackson has dug up in what was clearly extensive research; I was particularly delighted to learn that, some time before he came in as King Billy, firm Protestants were angrily burning William of Orange in effigy as a probable Papist. More broadly, a sense of the wider sweep, in both time and space - the way, say, that Charles' execution was widely seen at the time not as unprecedented, but as decapitation recapitulation of what happened to his royal grandmother, that sad figure Mary, Queen of Scots. But also the European (and occasionally further) dimension of what can sometimes still be represented as simply Our Island Story. Now, I'm not as convinced as the blurbs that this is ever so revolutionary, and I'd further suggest that by reminding us of the near constant wars both between and within European countries during this period, Jackson calls her own title and subtitle into question; yeah, we were a basket case, but hardly uniquely so, or even particularly hard-pressed to make alliances. True, the Stuarts' tendency to try to play both sides while being incredibly bad at it* is uncomfortably reminiscent of 2020s Tory diplomacy, 'perfidious Albion' wheels within wheels as attempted by a juggler wearing oven gloves. And in fact, many of my notes are some variation on 'the absolute fucking state of the Stuarts' - though one question I hadn't considered in anything like the same depth before reading Devil-Land is whether that trajectory might have been otherwise had popular, martial Prince Henry lived, instead of his sickly, stammering brother Charles. Certainly the tension between Rome on one side and Puritans on the other would still have made for an impossible balancing act, but it's hard not to believe that Henry IX, starting with more political capital, might have made a bit less of a hash of it, especially when the long, slow build to the Civil War/s is laid out. And yes, the reader has the benefit of hindsight, but so did Charles II, and it doesn't seem to have done him much good; I would have shouted 'JUST DECLARE MONMOUTH LEGITIMATE' at the page at least four times had I not been reading in the woods and reluctant to disturb the sylvan serenity. Though of course, Monmouth demonstrates the same family grasp of the moment by rebelling too soon, rather than waiting for the surprisingly calm mood of James II's eventual accession to fade and the Catholic-tyrannical tendency to move to the fore under the guise of tolerance. William Penn playing the useful idiot, which I hadn't known about, but still far from useful enough enough to forestall the Glorious Revolution, something that could easily have been another civil war if only James hadn't been so pathetic: 'oooh, I can't defend my throne, I've got a nosebleed!' The epilogue gives us Chekhov's Palatinate finally fired, in more ways than than one, and modern Britain underway. If nothing else, the whole grisly business is enough to make you thankful that our own Elizabeth's succession was crushingly predictable decades in advance, and that the latest Charles isn't allowed near anything important.

*Honourable exception for Charles II who, while in many ways he turned into a reprise of his dad, at least managed to get paid by France even while they frequently weren't getting much for their money. A lesson to us all in the work ethic.

[Martin Henson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine a version of chess with multiple, rather than just two, players - where the red pieces sometimes team up with the green, and later with the blue (against the green) - and possibly played star-trek-like in multiple dimensions. This is something like the impression you get of Europe during the period covered by this book; and with England as a particularly awful example of chaos, perfidy, and imbecility among other dysfunctional nations and quasi-states.

The multiple players here are, most importantly, France, Spain, the Dutch, as well as the English; but with plenty of bit-parts involving countries like Denmark, Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, what was still surviving of the HRE, the papacy, not to mention Russia and the Ottomans.

Alongside this basic geopolitical dimension, there are are other major dimensions of contention: not least religion (Catholicism, Protestantism, of course - but also Presbyterianism, a little Orthodox, and even Islam). But there are also the complications arising from economics - which was variously a constraint on action, but also used to fuel support and agreements - and intermarriages that cut across, compromise and complicate the geopolitics and religious commitments: the Stuart kings were married in sequence with the countries of Denmark, France, Spain, and Italy, for example.

Every page of this book seethes and bubbles with shifting agreements, hostilities, broken promises, attacks, and retaliations - it’s too much for a mind to cope with, excepting those that surround the major events such as the execution of Charles I, the Restoration, and the Glorious Revolution.

What the book clearly does is undermine any sense that England was less dysfunctional than its continental neighbours. If anything, it was more chaotic, even if - maybe - less bloody than, say, the French who had been at one another’s throats for at least a century of religious conflict before Mary Queen of Scots’ execution, which is where the story told here begins.

While this is a story told mostly from the perspective of ambassadors’ correspondence - both incoming and outgoing - and so to a great extent from a continental perspective, I felt the economic and technological dimensions were left a little under rehearsed as a result. It is, perhaps, churlish to expect everything, but the references there are left me wondering on several occasions. How, for example, did England manage to build so many ships in a couple of years under Cromwell - evidently as many as it had managed in a couple of decades before? And, I think, the English ships were superior to continental rivals - what advantage did that give the dysfunctional Stuarts when faced by larger French and Spanish adversaries? Then again: towards the end of the story, there is reference to William’s spending 74% of the national budget on military expenses - and there are tantalising references to the establishment of the Bank of England and “deficit financing” at that time. I wish there was a little more on that.

Anyway, this whirlwind of a book, is a triumph; and as the book came to a close, I put on Purcell’s Funeral Sentences for the Death of Queen Mary, which actually got a mention in the epilogue.

[Katheryn Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Devil-Land walks the reader through a tumultuous period of English history, starting with the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots and ending with the ascension of William III and Mary II. What really makes this book worth reading for someone already familiar with this period of time, is the focus on non-English perspectives. This is an impressive piece of work, and I really enjoyed reading it.

I would say it’s a book that requires concentration, but I also found it a gripping read. My only caveat is that I think the title is a little misleading. Although Clare Jackson makes a convincing case for why this book focuses on what it does, the idea of England as “Devil-Land” never seemed to me to be comprehensively argued.

[Samuel Jolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting new angle to the history of early modern british history. Unfortunately, it seems to retread the typical dynastic politics of the period without much expansion upon the angle proposed. It does do a good job of presenting the dynastic history atleast.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Devil-land' is a narrative history of England (and to a much lesser extent Scotland and Ireland) from 1588 to 1688 told largely through the dispatches of diplomats to or sent overseas by the English Court (or the Protectorate) and through the propaganda pumped out as pamphlets and other works.

Jackson's diligence is not in question. As solid research, its status as winner of the Wolfson History Prize (2022) has been reasonably earned but we should not see it as the whole story by any means. It is certainly low on analysis and interpretation.

We are speaking here of a hundred years between the Armada when the Spanish Empire was a material threat and the invasion of the Dutch Prince of Orange, invited by much of the British Establishment to 'defend their liberties'.

One virtue of the book is the way it pinpoints something easily lost - the centrality of the execution (effectively judicial murder) of Mary, Queen of Scots, in defining foreign outrage at English political pragmatism and in setting a precedent for the execution of Charles I.

Ideology is important. Elizabeth had introduced an ideology of ruthless power that flummoxed a European political culture that placed a greater premium on the sanctity of the royal and the identification of that sanctity with such nations as existed.

This difference might be said to have been inherent in English political culture in light of the struggles between Yorkists and Lancastrians and Henry VIII's abandonment of a dynastic marriage and of the universal Catholic Church. The mystique was more in power than blood.

The Stuarts, from a stronger line of blood in their own estimation as Kings of Scotland, possessed a more European notion of the divinity of Kingship. It is the clash and management of the clash between these pragmatic and ideological visions of rule that destabilise England.

If we add in religion where High Anglicanism and then Catholicism offer more security of tenure for the divine monarch than the more demotic Low Anglican and Non-Conformist world-views then the struggle becomes national and cultural.

It would have taken highly skilled and sensitive monarchs to have preserved their prerogatives and the total allegiance of their populations (which means a popular blind eye to brutal repression of dissent). The Stuarts were self-evidently not up to that mark after James I died.

Cromwell was given a hospital pass in that respect. He could not claim 'divine' prerogative except through the providence (a sort of fatalism) of having acquired power - pragmatism justified after the fact - and his allegiances were 'Trumpian' (that half of the nation that had triumphed).

Jackson's tale of diplomatic manipulations and frustrations shows us how the political failures of the regime brought into play the foreign powers who presented themselves as threats to or allies of the differing world views in the England of the day.

We have to start with the stake of the ruling order in Protestantism which created two kinds of threat. The first was from Catholicism backing the claims of Spain and then of monarchs who might re-catholicise the country through edict over the heads of the Protestant majority.

The fear was visceral and very much overdone except that the burnings of martyrs under Mary, massacres in the French Wars of Religion and the massacres of Protestants in Ireland all created a popular fear that Catholics and invading troops would take lives and property.

The other threat was of embroilment in foreign wars at huge expense where picking one side or the other - the Dutch and the Protestant Princes or the Catholic Powers - had huge internal implications whether of high taxation, standing armies, commercial costs or alien threat.

There is no point in going through the constant shifting of influence and alliances in which five dynasties - [Spanish] Hapsburgs (initially), Stuarts, the Elector Palatines, Bourbons and the House of Orange (latterly) - played for high stakes since that is what you should read the book to understand.

Suffice it to say that part of the 'English problem' was that the interests of a dynasty - a sort of family firm - and of a self-perceived nation became almost impossible to bring into line in the eyes of both parties. Dynasticism and nationalism are often hard to reconcile under early modern conditions.

This tale of international relations and continual attempts at regime change from within and without is played out between just a few dynastic States (plus the Republican Netherlands) who saw England as of great strategic importance in their own games of continental hegemony or survival.

Although there are walk on parts for the Baltic, Russia, the Austrian Hapbsburgs, the Ottomans, the Poles and the Italians, this is a game largely played in North Western Europe between the Spanish Empire, France, the United Provinces, the German Princes, Denmark and the United Provinces.

Half way through the period, signs of future imperial struggle appear with conflicts in far away Indonesia, acquisitions through marriage and the Cromwellian raid on the Caribbean (as Elizabethans had raided the Spanish Empire before) but this is a European story and only part of it at that.

Where I would depart from Jackson (and one wonders if she was driven to this by publicists and publishers) is the attempt to make England into more of a basket case than it probably was since, barring a few years of civil war, some central authority was always present.

If we think of the state of France during the Wars of Religion and right up to the 1590s (and the Fronde and continuing tensions until Louis XIV finally stamped his authority on France), then England seems less unique. France appears a nation but is, in fact, a dynastic possession.

We can then add the disgusting warfare of the Thirty Years War before the Peace of Westphalia, the crumbling of Spanish Habsburg authority with revolts in Iberia and the constant struggle between the House of Orange and the Republic in the Netherlands.

Given that English disorder and disorders between England and Scotland and in Ireland (rather than just free and open political disagreement) were intermittent to say the least, to paint England as an extreme exception in being an example of disorder simply does not stand up.

And if it was unstable, it was unstable because it was relatively free and rarely distracted by the sort of continental adventurism that the Monarchy could ill afford and that the modern British State, though it seems not to know it, can ill afford today.

There is a confusion here of lively debate with political instability. If anything, once breakdown had been experienced in the 1640s and 1650s as a series of accidents under what must count as one of the stupidest of British monarchs matched only by his son James, elites tended to work to stability.

The problem here is not with the rambunctious English whose only fault seems to be that they were partial to the Anglican Church settlement, reducing competition for office, low taxation and their property rights and 'liberties' but with ideological monarchs trying to preserve magical beliefs.

Still, the book is excellent at giving something like real time accounts of the puzzlement of foreign aristocratic observers at this propensity of the English for individualism and excitable politics which seems to have lasted well into this century despite every elite effort to contain it.

Monarchs look weaker and a tad more stupid in this account although James I strikes us as wise in avoiding foreign entanglements and a skilled politician in keeping his ship of state on an even keel. Cromwell, of course, is one of the great men of history but still a failure in the end.

Kings were still being judged on their ability to maintain national security but national security was often interpreted in emotional and ideological ways. Parliaments were always wary of handing over resources not merely for the wrong war but to be used against themselves.

The story could be twisted into an argument against 'democracy' but this would be absurd. Regime instability was what it says on the tin. It only becomes national instability for a very short period of extreme violence from which lessons are learned. Trade generally continued regardless.

For much of this period, instability was there but superficial much like it is in the US today. The core of the regime (monarchical with attempted parliamentary restraint centred on getting cash) remained the same as different monarchs came and went. Cromwell ended up monarchical in effect.

Bursts of extreme violence did not recur very often outside the 1640s. Rebellions were generally crushed swiftly. Monarchical change in 1660 and 1689 avoided bloodshed. This is nothing like what had happened in the Thirty Years War or French Wars of Religion (Ireland excepted).

Monarchical repressions may have involved the quasi-extrajudicial murders of Stafford, most infamously of Charles I and of republicans involved in the Rye House Plot or the Monmouth rebels but killing was highly localised. There were no mass purges or slaughters in England outside the 1640s.

In other words, excepting the 1640s and the brutalities in Ireland, in general, regimes and elites were simply playing a high stakes game to stabilise the country around two competing narratives that eventually would become sanitised in a civilised way around Whigs and Tories.

We might better see the process as one of maturation in which an Anglican establishment tamed its own extremist high church, presbyterians and non conformists and the Catholic tendencies of the dynasty itself and built the capacity for peaceful regime change.

The fruits of this were the facts that the 1688 Revolution was England's last revolution (unlike in Europe), that English identity was cultural and not political so that it did not matter if Germans were monarchs and that ideological struggle could be turned into an elite game for advantage.

We see this today in the twenty first century with England 'revolting' only to get back on track with its identity in 2016, existing around a mythic monarchy with marginal power and seeing a centre-left government control the state on a ridiculously undemocratic vote without fighting in the streets.

The value of this book is not in telling the truth of England between the Armada and the Glorious Revolution but in allowing us to see just how confusing England had become to the rest of Europe, simultaneously unmanageable and expensive in attempts to influence it.

What struck this reader was that the French in particular had poured the equivalent of billions into trying to sustain a sympathetic Stuart Dynasty after 1660 (much like we pour billions into Ukraine) only to see it becoming a money pit that merely held the line against the inevitable.

In short, the England that Elizabeth created and the England that happily took on a Dutch chancer with no interest in the country shows a strong cultural and political continuity - that of a lively nation of individuals that could often get out of hand but which always veered back to the centre.

In this interpretation, the brutal Civil War of the 1640s and the republican experiment of the 1650s are still the focus of attention as necessary 'mistakes' that lance the boil of divine right dynasticism and permit the 'nation' to emerge in partnership with a more pragmatic monarchy.

In this interpretation, rather than the one implied in the book, England was only superficially unstable and the struggle to become a nation a slow process with a very bad decade or so rather than an example of a 'failed State'. England was rather a 'new-state-in-the-making'.

Still, 'Devil-land' remains an important source text for understanding this period better. Only one side of the story but a previously neglected one. The diplomats and scribblers offer insights unavailable elsewhere even if we cannot take their analytical skills for granted.

[Andy West · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could tell that this was really well researched, well written book, but I used it to get me to sleep at night, which it did very quickly

[Carlton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am torn in rating this book, as it is insightful and makes unexpected connections. However, even as a general reader who has already read half a dozen histories of similar or shorter periods during this broadly seventeenth century period, I found this book hard going at times, as so many names are bandied about. I suspect that it is a specialist book dressed up as a general history.

Jackson sets herself the unenviable task of providing sufficient general historical background (with which readers about the period are probably already aware), before providing the impressions of external courtiers, ambassadors, clerics and businessmen into primarily English politics.
Following an introductory chapter foreshadowing the alleged incomprehension with which English politics was viewed by foreign ambassadors and visitors in the period from 1588 to 1688, the first chapter discusses the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587 after nineteen years’ imprisonment in England. This is described as the first regicide by royalty, with Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I both being granddaughters of Henry VII, and Mary being a Scottish queen and widow of a French king, but considered ineligible to succeed to the English throne as she was Roman Catholic. I also had not taken on board (or remembered) that the king of Scotland, James VI, was Mary’s son (but Protestant) and that it had been agreed that he was to succeed Elizabeth upon her death (which he did in 1603). Elizabeth was reviled abroad as “an immoral, heretic bastard, responsible for Mary’s death.”

I would consider Devil-Land a supplementary book about this hundred year period, as it necessarily only offers brief insights from a foreign perspective into the major events, with which I have a little familiarity, as I have read several histories of the period recently. Devil -Land was interesting, but not essential.

However, because it looks at English history from a foreign viewpoint I did find that some of the observations recorded were surprising or unexpected. For example, I found the discussion of the German Palatinate [based in Heidelberg, where Elizabeth Stuart (daughter of James I of England) had married Frederick, the Elector of the Palatinate] very interesting in explaining how early Stuart England/Great Britain was viewed from the European perspective. Also due to political concern to ensure Catholic Spain and France did not unite against the Protestant Protectorate, England entered into an alliance with Catholic France rather than fellow Protestant Netherlands (United Provinces).

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where to start? Well, if you are looking for an eminently readable reference work that takes you through the turmoil of English politics from the doomed invasion of the Spanish Armada during the reign of Elizabeth I, all the way through to the ushering in of a new era under William and Mary following the Glorious Revolution, then this is the book you need on your reading pile. Don't be put off by its heft, because I promise you will find this very engaging - perhaps not for a cover to cover read in one fell swoop, but certainly as something to lap up in big gluts of compelling historical detail.

It's worth noting that the title of this book Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688 very much implies a focus on the action of outward pressures on England during this period, and how it affected the wheels within wheels of court politics and international relations. This is precisely what Clare Jackson deftly examines here, navigating through these complex times and urging you to consider the many happenings, motivations and scheming that influenced how history played out. For me, one of the most significant events of this period is the impact of Scotland changing its status from a foreign power to a front and centre 'united' partner under James I, so I found this section particularly interesting. This is something that I have been looking at in quite a different way since reading K.M Maitland's excellent, albeit fictional, Daniel Pursglove series, so it was great to read something that looks at the factual events of the time in such an easily digestible way.

Religion arguably dominates events between 1588 and 1688, and Jackson explores this in detail, but she also looks into many other aspects of what made this time so turbulent, including the never-ending machinations of the game of thrones, the attitudes of the populace, and military power - all very pertinent considering this period incorporates the English Civil War too.

I think you do need to have a good handle on the social and political happenings of the years covered by this fascinating book to get the best out of it, but it is one to treasure if you love to delve into the past. The depth of knowledge Jackson shows in her writing makes this an impressive work on an epic scale. I found myself getting lost down many a rabbit hole while absorbing what she has to say about the momentous events that mark these years as so stormy, which is exactly what I want from a book of this kind.

This is a beautiful quality book, with vivid colour illustrations, maps, and extensive family trees, all of which make me very happy indeed. There are a number of appendices, with a wealth of information and references to explore once you have finished with this book too. This is one which I will be drawn back to time and time again, which makes it a winner for me, whether or not it wins the coveted Wolfson History Prize this year or not. Highly recommended!

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to admire Clare Jackson's tour de force in lacing together research into such a multitude of contemporary accounts of that turbulent century .... but, as Christine Watts writes in her review, you should be warned that the book is a "bit of a slog".

The book spans the period from the execution of Queen Mary, via the regicide of King Charles, to the "Glorious Revolution" instigated by William of Orange. This C17 England had a "maverick propensity to sudden and erratic upheaval". As explained in the final lines, Devil-Land explores in detail "both the complex geopolitical entanglements and the anxious precarity of life under England's Stuart rulers in order to make them better known". In this it succeeds. A reader like me will come away with a deeper despair at the atrocities committed by humans in the name of religion by those insatiably pursuing power.

The writing flows easily enough, and some of the cited texts showcase amusingly flowery and inventive use of language that we rarely see in formal communications today. Yet the thicket of characters, and the way their recorded views pop up at different times whilst being referred to interchangeably by name or by their familial relationships, make the whole seem more like homework even for the dedicated historian.

If you are such a historian, I recommend starting with the Epilogue, which is the shortest and most lucid framing of the book. The actual Introduction is twice as long, half as lucid, and reads like it was written last by an author who by then was herself perhaps exhausted by the whole effort (a feeling I know!).

The book on Audible is structured as 21 chapters, each covering sequential chunks of 5-10 years, each an hour long. These are sandwiched by an equally long introduction and epilogue. Even at 1.1x speed you are facing a commitment of 22 hours. The paper book may (?) be aided by what was most lacking in the e-book: some maps of the shifting boundaries and, most of all, a family tree of this rather small, exclusive and inter-married pan-European aristocracy.

The final chapter and Epilogue take us beyond 1688 and briefly sketch the Union with Scotland and describe William's redesign of Britains's financial, fiscal, and legal institutions as well as its pan-European alliances.

[Salisbury · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can see why this book, which appeared in 2021 while Remainer fury at Britain leaving the EU was still bubbling furiously, attracted such favourable reviews and won prizes. Its central conceit - that 17th century Britain was a "failed state", mistrusted and ridiculed in equal measure by continental Europe - fitted nicely with the anti-Brexit narrative of the time. One could pardon, perhaps, such an egregious attempt to manipulate emotion if the author had come anywhere near to proving her thesis. But she doesn't. The "Devil-Land" proposition is laid out in the Introduction and re-visited in the Epilogue; in-between are 500 pages of pretty dull prose that take us through what happened, but fail to provoke even much interest, let alone the outrage and shame we are supposed to feel at a country that had shamed itself in the eyes of foreigners.

Jackson is no doubt a thorough historian but she is not an entertaining writer. Her approach of viewing events in Britain through the eyes of its continental cousins is essential to what she is trying to achieve; but in practice it translates into an endless caravan of ambassadors and envoys, whose names you have forgotten long before you reach the end of another of the author's elongated sentences. She struggles to make the politics of either Britain or of the continent comprehensible, and would perhaps rather we don't focus too much on the European side of the equation, lest our desired assumption that things were (and are) so much better organised and enlightened on the other side of the Channel be derailed by little things like the Thirty Years War.

Of course, it would be ridiculous not to acknowledge that Britain in the 1600s was beset by political turmoil and worse. We killed a King and fought an extremely bloody civil war among other things. But the century also saw the peaceful transition from Tudor to Stuart rule, a civilised Restoration after the republican aberration and a Revolution that so fitted certain temperaments that people have since labelled it "Glorious". It is not that Jackson ignores these events - how could she. But she doesn't seem to draw any lessons from them, as she labours unsuccessfully to show that Britain is crap.

[Anne Tucker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well this is not the kind of detailed history I ever read - and it really was far too much detail for me!

The general story of the Stuarts and their connections across Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries was very informative and I learned quite a lot more than I knew before (my only history of this that Ive retained was: Mary Queen of Scots wearing red knickers when she was beheaded to show shec was a martyr, Charles ! being beheaded at the end of the Civil War, "the Cavaliers and the Roundheads" (cavaliers with attractive beards and fancily dressed, the roundheads boring and drab!!!) and Charles !! returning with the theatres, opera and parties all being revived .....)
So the context I have fitted all this into has been very illuminating - ~I had never really iunderstood quite how much marriage was the poliutics of the day and that was how European politics were so enmeshed both sides of the Channel. Also how the issue of Protestant and Catholic reverberated for so many more generations. I do remember reading Dickens' Barnaby Rudge and being surprised that there were still so many killings of Catholics as late as 1800 ....
The other very interesting points for me were
a) the interconnection with colonial exploitations by European nations and that different treaties 'swapped' colonial territories between countries
b) the links (by marriage of course) of England and its throne with Holland and Germany - which explains the Hanoverians arriving and I suppose Prince Philip etc etc; since they were Protestant whereas France and Spain were Catholic
However, the detail was completely beyond me .... and Im afraid I skimmed quite a lot of it as i couldnt retain so many names (especially as they were often the same names for different people).
Quite pleased to have read it however ....

[J.A. Ironside · Rating 3 out of 5]

This had an interesting premise but was weighted far too much in favour of examining court gossip and accounts from ambassadors etc. Which might have worked for me if it had been lashed more firmly to the events of the time but all of those things - the Great Plague, the English Civil War etc - were just skimmed over in favour of looking at various opinions of the time. I can definitely get lost in the ephemera of a historical period - I have a two week gap in my life where I was obsessed with Henry IV's book of household accounts - but when I pick up a book about a specific time period, I want a slant on that time period if not a general history of it. There was something very lacking in the pieced together snippets of court gossip and propaganda. The author clearly has her own biases in history - don't we all? - but fails to consider other sources of information, in some cases outright ignoring important letters in conjunction with specific actions and mores of the time. For example, Elizabeth I sending her cousin Mary Queen of Scots a christening font made of gold as a face-saving and thoughtful way of handing the beleaguered and impoverished queen a ready source of cash, something Mary sorely needed since her own court was turning against her. (I really get sick of the binary viewpoint that Elizabeth hated and was jealous of her cousin and wanted her dead. It was far more complicated and nuanced than that. As queens neither of them had the luxury of comporting themselves as private individuals who could act solely on their own inclinations, for a start.)
Added to which, the actual text was pretty dry. I'm sure it's partly my fault for not realising what the angle was before I picked up the book, but overall this wasn't for me.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed exploration of a turbulent 100 years in English History. Clare Jackson starts with the events leading up to the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588) and concludes with the repercussions of The Glorious Revolution (1688). This period saw the Stuarts become monarchs of England and Ireland in addition to their long established rule over the Scots. They temporarily lost their crowns when Charles I was beheaded and Oliver Cromwell governed as Lord Protector before the Restoration re-established Stuart rule in the form of Charles II. The title Devil-Land reflects how the Dutch viewed England during this period. In fact, throughout the book, Clare Jackson provides many insights into how England was viewed abroad. This is achieved by interweaving the narrative with quotes from primary sources. As a result, this would not be the best book for someone new to the period but is a must for someone wanting to find out more about this turbulent century. Arguably, the story of the Stuarts is even more dramatic than that of their predecessors, the Tudors. The book makes clear the extent to which England was impacted by events on continental Europe and also how interested the rest of Europe was in events in Britain and Ireland - sometimes they even sought to shape those events to suit their own purposes.

[Hamid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essentially a readable account of England and Scotland (for the most part; read 'Britain') under the various Stuart monarchs (through to Anne). The focus is very much on James I - Charles II, occupying the bulk of the work, with the book noticeably taking more of a skim over James II - Anne. It's good, throughout, particularly excellent on taking a view of England in the context of being *a European state* and not an isolated Britannia equal to the rest of Europe combined in ambition and scope. Some reviewers take umbridge at the idea that Britain is described in the blurb/publicity as a 'failed state' during this time - well it was, more than once. It went through cycles of being on the stage and being subject to the stage. Of pre-eminence and the distinct possibility of becoming a backwater colony. The book fundamentally makes the European case for clear lines of succession under monarchic systems of government.

Given the period it covers, the book works at a bird's-eye level, diving down to catch some historical thematic fish before rising back up on the thermals of dramatic change to soar, once again. It's accessible but not quite as deep as the Titanic's final resting place. Enjoy.

[Benj · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting view of a very turbulent time in (mainly) English history, from the viewpoint of our European neighbours. Spoiler alert - they mainly regarded the country as being chaotic and ungovernable.

Several points stood out:
When it came to international relations, religion didn't matter. Oh, everyone spoke about defending their co-religionists, when when it came down to it, if Catholic France felt that an alliance with Protestant England was necessary, or Protestant Holland wanted an alliance with Catholic Austria, then they went for it.

The decline of Spain during this period was marked. At the beginning the Hapsburgs were the rulers of both Spain and Austria, and that was an extremely powerful combination. Over the following century the two kingdoms drew apart, and by the end Spain was very much a second-rate power. This decline was never explained, or even really discussed.

I was surprised at how much Latin was still used as the international language of choice. I had assumed by this time is was mainly a vehicle for Catholic writers, but you'd still get Puritans writing anti-papal pamphlets in Latin. Or if it was written in the vernacular, then translating it into Latin (and the other main languages) for wider distributions.

[Nss2108 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked a lot about this book--I think it is more effectively a diplomatic history of Stuart England, since it prioritizes setting the decisions of monarchs in the diplomatic, religious, and political context of contemporaenous Europe; one of the decisions that is made in the book is to let events unfold and happen without a ton of description or causality; eg the actual course of the civil war, battles and all, is only a few pages, there's a lot more discussion of the various reactions to it of other power players. I think this is a good rewrite, because of how marginal the British kingdom was compared to the rest of Europe, and this book does a good job of centering that. The other part of the book that struck me is how chaotic everything was, and how events that are fairly normal seeming (since British history is so well known) were actually deeply disruptive and contingent, eg, how glorious was the so called 'Glorious Revolution', and how much has 19th century notions of British history been incorporated into popular narratives about British events.

[Adrian]

Jackson's thesis is that England during this period was seen as a failed state by much of Europe due to the regular instance of revolt, regicide and disease. Jackson's collection of the views of foreign ambassadors on what transpired in England for much of this era shows what she means. The trouble starts with Elizabeth's killing of Mary Queen of Scots which shocked the European world. Under James I/VI and Charles I the country was seen as untrustworthy and something of a soft touch. James refused to support Protestants in the Palatinate and let Scottish and Irish revolt fester. Of course smoldering beneath it all was the Protestant/Catholic divide. England couldn't abide Catholic leadership which meant the fairly mild (Catholic) reign of James II/VII was never going to hold. England preferred a foreigner (William of Orange) as king to a Catholic deemed to be in the pocket of France. This is a brute of a book which traces the four-cornered world of power between England, Spain, France and Netherlands very thoroughly. Excellect section on the plague and fire of London, too.