Britain In Revolution, 1625-1660

by Austin Woolrych

This is the definitive history of the English Civil War, set in its full historical context from the accession of Charles I to the Restoration of Charles II. These were perhaps the most turbulent years of British history with reverberations down the centuries. Austin Woolrych captures the
drama and the passion, the momentum of events and the force of contingency. He brilliantly interweaves the history of the three kingdoms and peoples, gripping the reader with the fast-paced yet always balanced story.

Genres: History, British Literature, English Civil War, Nonfiction, War, Politics, 17th Century

842 pages, Hardcover

First published November 14, 2002

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

What happened in the mere space of twenty years was a King who went to war with his own people, twice, and who was defeated, twice. And the people finding him to be a pestilential recalcitrant rogue and a man of blood, cut off his head, with the Crown upon it, and were horrified at their own actions. And kings were abolished, and England was a republic. But they found that they could not figure how to prevent Parliament itself becoming as great a tyrannical power as the King had been, especially since Parliament refused to call any new elections. So the Army turned Parliament out into the street, and a single man, the Army’s great general, Cromwell, became Lord Protector, a thing that had never been in England. He tried various types of councils and parliaments and found them to be as trying as ever King Charles did. And a few years later, he died, and the nation, not finding any sufficiently great man to take his place, called back the King, and restored him, and lit bonfires.

This series of violent upheavals was minutely described by contemporaries in every twist and turn, using the beautiful language of the time.

And appearing on the historical stage for the first time came a motley of strangely named rebels – Levellers, Fifth Monarchy Men, Ranters, Quakers, True Levellers, or Diggers – all with their millenarian dreams, and all thinking that now was the time, when the old world was running up like parchment in the fire.



Here are some favourite quotes which tell a little of this complex story.

October 1647, from Putney Debates where the Army discussed what kind of government there should now be.

Colonel Thomas Rainborough:

I think that the poorest he that is in England has a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it's clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he has not had a voice to put himself under… insomuch that I should doubt whether he was an Englishman that should doubt of these things.

October 1647, from a Royalist pamphlet – a summary of events:

The King raysd a Parliament he could not rule, the Parliament raysd an Army it could not rule, the Army made Agitators they cannot rule, and the Agitators are setting up the people whom they will be as little able to rule!

Perhaps the single event which led to the civil war was when King Charles attempted to arrest five MPs who had been fulminating against him.

17 January 1642 : A declaration of the House of Commons touching a late breach of their privileges

Many soldiers, Papists and others, to the number of about five hundred, came with His Majesty on Tuesday last to the said House of Commons, armed with swords, pistols and other weapons, and divers of them pressed to the door of the said House, thrust away the door-keepers, and placed themselves between the said door and the ordinary attendants of His Majesty, holding up their swords, and ' some holding up their pistols ready cocked near the said door and saying, ' I am a good marksman; I can hit right, I warrant you,'… afterwards some of them being demanded what they thought the said company intended to have done, answered that, questionless, in the posture they were set, if the word had been given, they should have fallen upon the House of Commons and have cut all their throats.

So the King was at war with his own people. But Parliament was still ruling in his name. A paradox? Here’s how they solved it:

6 June 1642 – declaration of Parliament

It is acknowledged that the King is the fountain of justice and protection, but the acts of justice and protection are not exercised in his own person, nor depend upon his pleasure, but by his courts and by his ministers, who must do their duty therein, though the King in his own person should forbid them

The King saw this headlong revolutionary rush as disastrous:

Charles I on the end result of democracy, 18 June 1642

at last the common people (who in the meantime must be flattered, and to whom licence must be given in all their wild humours, how contrary soever to established law, or their own real good) discover this arcanum imperii, that all this was done by them, but not for them, and grow weary of journey-work, and set up for themselves, call parity and independence liberty, devour that estate which had devoured the rest, destroy all rights and proprieties, all distinctions of families and merit, and by this means this splendid and excellently distinguished form of government end in a dark, equal chaos of confusion, and the long line of our many noble ancestors in a Jack Cade or a Wat Tyler.

The King’s opponents were not happy

The Earl of Manchester, 1644

If we beat the king 99 times he is king still, and so will his posterity be after him; but if the king beat us once, we shall be all hanged, and our posterity be made slaves.

1647 – the King is arrested by the Army.

King Charles : You cannot do without me. You will fall to ruin if I do not sustain you.

Colonel Ireton : Sir, you have an intention to be the arbitrator between the Parliament and us; and we mean to be it between your Majesty and the Parliament.

The Parliament had freed the people from the King, but who would free the people from the Parliament?

January 1948, from a pamphlet:

O you members of Parliament, and rich men in the City, that are at ease, and drink wine in Bowls, and stretch your selves upon Beds of Down, you that grind our faces, and flay off our skins, will no man behold our faces black with Sorrow and Famine?... What then are your russling Silks and Velvets, your glittering Gold and Silver Laces? Are they not the sweat of our brows, and the wants of our backs and our bellies?

Perhaps it could be Oliver Cromwell, the greatest general? Some said yes, some said no :

21 March 1649, Leveller pamphlet

You shall scarce speak to Cromwell about anything but he will lay his hand on his breast, elevate his eyes and call God to record; he will weep, howl and repent even while he doth smite you under the fifth rib.

After the King’s head was cut off, there were to be no more Kings :



17 March 1649 : Act of Parliament abolishing the Monarchy

And whereas it is and hath been found by experience the office of a King in this nation and Ireland, and to have the power thereof in any single person, is unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous to the liberty, safety, and public interest of the people, and that for the most part, use hath been made of the regal power and prerogative to oppress and impoverish and enslave the subject; and that usually and naturally any one person in such power makes it his interest to incroach upon the just freedom and liberty of the people, and to promote the setting up of their own will and power above the laws, that so they might enslave these kingdoms to their own lust; be it therefore enacted and ordained by this present parliament that the office of a King in this nation shall not henceforth reside in or be exercised by any one single person; and that no one person whatsoever shall or may have or hold the office, style, dignity, power or authority of King of the said kingdoms and dominions

By the abolition of the kingly office provided for in this act a most happy way is made for this nation to return to its just and ancient right of being governed by its own representatives

But many months later, after Parliament itself turned into a burdensome, useless government, Oliver Cromwell turned them out into the streets on 20 April 1653 :

You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately ... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

Which left England with no government at all. But English people shrugged and carried on. In reaction to Oliver’s coup, he remarked “there was not so much as the barking of a dog”. Indeed, a couple of days later, some wag pinned a notice on the door of the Parliament building :

This House is to be Let, now unfurnished

It was a vertiginous tumble into the politically unknown, perhaps the most exciting point of English history. It looked like a carte blanche. But it wasn’t. An egalitarian earthly paradise was not then constructed upon our green and pleasant land. It turns out that when you have got rid of kings and Lords and have got a government of the people, you still have to ask “what sort of people”, and the answer mainly is that the lords and royalists have slithered back into government because they know how to. So the story of 1640-1660 is a of a Noble Attempt Doomed to Failure, and no less fascinating for that.


Oliver Cromwell, warts and all. They pleaded with him to be King. He said no.


I recommend this vast volume to anyone who wants to get away from the froth and babbles of the 21st century for a week or so, and find how altogether similar were the troubles of 350 years ago, and how much better expressed they were.

All men have stood for freedom... and now the common enemy has gone you are all like men in a mist, seeking for freedom and know not where nor what it is: and those of the richer sort of you that see it are ashamed and afraid to own it, because it comes clothed in a clownish garment.... For freedom is the man that will turn the world upside down, therefore no wonder he hath enemies.

Gerrard Winstanley, 1949

[Mike Rodent · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are really very few books of scholarship about the English Revolution, so this is welcome. What more serious works exist, by people like Christopher Hill, are often trying to shoehorn ideological views of their 20th Century authors into the events.
This book is strong-ish on details (although the author, perhaps forgiveably, assumes too much familiarity with key moments and events) and for that reason I was happy to read it. There is so much detail, to do with the religion, Charles' personality, the (New Model) army, the various different wars, the events in all three kingdoms, the balance of Presbyterians and "Independents" in the Long Parliament, etc. etc. etc., that I shall probably reread this book quite soon.

The problem with this book is that it essentially presents an alien world for us but doesn't make much of an attempt to try and explain it. We tend to think, OK, 17th C, just after Shakespeare, with whom we're familiar, yes, we know Protestant England and Scotland were very twitchy about the threat of a return to "popery". But the events of 1625 to 1660 can only really be understood if one can really get to the bottom of the passions. People in Edinburgh in 1637 were *passionate* about not having a common prayer book imposed on them. Charles was, if anything, more passionate about imposing it. The soldiers of the New Model, both officers and men, were *passionate* about imposing a new social order (of some kind) on England, but they were also reluctant, until the last moment, about actually getting rid of Charles (and his successors: a matter actually only decided by the Rump Parliament, after "purging" by the New Model, on the morning of Charles' execution!).

When I say "passionate", I mean more than that. Woolrych points out, as has been pointed out by others, that the English Civil Wars of the 1640s killed a higher proportion of England's male population than World War I (and much higher than WW2). One reads with a mixture of bafflement and horror about how Prince Rupert, after taking Bolton (I think it was), then summarily slaughtered 1600 people in that town. NB Woolrych points out that a town which failed to surrender when offered terms by an attacking/besieging army could expect little mercy if it finally fell, but the savagery of this and other events is amazing, and must inevitably have had a huge psychological impact.

In a way there are perhaps too many disparate forces (all of them individual people) for one to get one's head around: what about the "apprentices" of London? What about the grandees of the City of London, who held the purse strings, but failed to pay the New Model soldiers for years at a time? Was that because they feared the army? Were they pro-Presbyterian? What about the fact that England was essentially not a Presbyterian country by inclination? How come the Presbyterian "party" in the Commons then came to be one half of the "religio-ideological" divide in the Commons?

All this... and yet at the same time, and this strikes me as almost more incredible than the savagery and the passion, there were constant "councils" (of the Army, notably) and "committees" (of Parliament) and impassioned debates (in Putney, in Westminster Hall), and printing of "remonstrances" and "agreements", which then had to be submitted to another council for discussion, before then being submitted to Parliament. Somehow, within the apparent collapse of order throughout the country, there was a sense of how things must be done, and things never once even began to descend into what we might call dictatorship. The sensitivity to the army's physical proximity to London (and thus to Parliament) was intense, and it was only just before Pride's Purge that the New Model did in fact move inside London.

Another thing that struck me as still to be explained is the significance of the calling of Parliament in 1640, after the 11-year period of Charles' "personal rule". This was the year of the Short Parliament and then the Long Parliament. But it's difficult to see why Charles couldn't simply have cancelled the second one of 1640 given that he had cancelled the first without difficulty. At some point in Charles' reign Parliament decided that it had a crucial role in the power structure of the country, and that it was outside the monarch's power to reduce that role. Aspects like this remain mysterious to me.

I hope one day to find a book which really explains the emotions and psychology of this alien society, where the great societal struggles and arguments which define modernity were nonetheless perhaps born, in greater depth.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply put: The best overview of the English Civil War (and before and after) that I've read. Anyone interested in this period should start here. Woolrych is a terrifically erudite historian who knows how to tell a story. I mean, if you can keep me interested through the Bishop's Wars and the Long Parliament, you're doing something right.

[sube · Rating 4 out of 5]

800 pages detailing the origin and end of the civil war - pretty in-depth and well-written. Found the critique of Marxist approaches interesting, makes me want to read these myself. Sadly does not discuss the restoration settlement of Charles II.

[Richard Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I start with a degree of bias since Austin Woolrych was my History Professor at Lancaster so I looked forward to reading the book with a great deal of anticipation. It did not disappoint. It is a masterly survey of the complexities of the period of Charles I's reign and the Commonwealth and can be recommended both a book for the general reader who might wish to learn more about the times as well as to those who have read history and would wish a new overview. For my part if on a desert island I was allowed only one history of the period, this would be it.

[imngrer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would give this book 5 stars if only for it having the best opening paragraph of any book on English history I have ever come across.

Naturally the rest of the (extremely large) book is wonderful too.

And you can get it at a really reasonable price as an e-book.

The only shame is that he decided not to cover some of the historiography too.

[J M-B · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is useful and one to which i will return for reference. It is a major work, in the tradition of grand historical narratives of earlier times, but it is (perhaps inevitably given its conservatism) weak on the historiography of the English civil wars. He attempts to locate his own work in the prologue where he discusses the problems of naming the events of 1642 onwards without conveying an historiographical standpoint - Grand rebellion or English revolution. He rejects interpretation based on analysis of socio-economic causative factors (determinism, Marxism - see p. 4) and claims, for himself, to write "without ideological preconceptions" and with a focus on the "personal and contingent" including "failures of statesmanship" (ibid.). Accordingly, the work is rather a top down history which treats of phenomena of contested religious beliefs but with no investigation of how those beliefs contributed to construction of identity, including national identity.

[Jordan Dallas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comprehensive; gives you a strong grounding in what the conflicts were about.

Lots of names of people and places makes for slow reading if you want to completely follow the events and understand who's who. Woolrych often names many of the minor individuals involved without reminding you who they are or why they're important. It takes some work to keep sight of the forest and not get lost in the trees.

I spent a lot of time looking at maps and consulting Wikipedia. Especially during the military parts, it would have been a lot easier to follow with a few more maps included.

The Ireland sections tend to be confusing because it's a complicated situation and he tries to cover it too quickly. If you want to follow it you'll have to either have a remarkable memory or spend time looking up the numerous protagonists. This is somewhat true for the Scottish sections as well.

This is very much a top-down history. You won't have much of a sense of what living through any of this was like for the average person, but you will get a strong understanding of the politics and military history.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re the kind of person who likes reading 800 page books on history, this is a good one. It is directed at British people, so you should know the basics (Charles I & II, James I & II, Cromwell). (For a good 800 page history book to start with try The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age. You don’t need to know anything beyond basic history).

Normally when I’m reading a history book I notice parallels with our society today. With this one I realized how differently Americans view this period. There are many parallels, but to America of the 1600s and 1700s.

To most English people the killing of Charles I was regicide, whether or not it was legal. Woolrych continues to specify the jury and prosecutor as ‘regicides’ throughout the book. I think to most Americans this is not a huge moral dilemma. To me, Charles I had it coming. He had taken a mostly harmonious country and created a civil war.

I also noted how many “American’ concepts actually arose during this time. Most of the Yankees came to America during this time, especially during Charles I’s reign. (I use the term ‘Yankees’ to distinguish where most of them settled. There were other English and Scottish immigrants who went further south. They wanted to improve their worldly wealth, not their heavenly wealth.) At the beginning of Charles reign, most of these dissenting groups were tolerated although they were officially illegal. Tolerance ended and religious behavior became more strictly controlled. Each emigrating group wanted to practice their religion only, but when the separate settlements merged to become colonies (then states) tolerance became the only practical solution (1st Amendment).

Because the return of Charles II essentially revoked any reform done during the interregnum, most people think of this time as a blip, not showing underlying trends. However, the ‘Glorious Revolution’ which ejected James I and brought in William and Mary reinstated many of these reforms (although some took hundreds of years to accomplish). These concepts were raised and debated. Over here they became part of the Constitution: one person, one vote; voting districts according to population not geography, and districts regularly reapportioned; no king, but a definite central leader; no housing the army at the locals expense (3rd Amendment); separation of powers. (No particular order)

[Windsor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, in my opinion, was not worth finishing for me. Maybe I walked into it with too high of expectations. The first 300 pages of this book are about the most boring 300 pages of literature ever. I found myself skimming about 20 pages at a time because they had nothing to do with the chapter or were way too detailed to relate to his thesis or any analysis. I gave it three starts, however, because the author, when he does make good points, makes them EXTREMELY well. However, it takes about 30-40 pages to get anywhere interesting. I will be hard pressed to have someone convince me to read anything else by Woolrych. Just too dense for me. I have only quit reading 2 books in my life. I guess this is the third. On a lighter note, if you do like Cromwell, or want to learn more about him, the author seems to be an expert political historian on Cromwell. VERY worth reading that section.

[Nicola Bugg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided not to finish this, as although it was well written, the subjec is no longer of sufficient interest for me to make myself read all 800 pages!

[Diana Thayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well-written, interesting book.