Daniel > Recent Status Updates

Finished ch 18 about societal advances and positive trends of the 1670s. Seemed like good times compared to the first 70 years of the century. Economic booms, famine and plagues ending for good, healthy population growth, lots of scientific and mathematical advances.

Late century. One theory as to why young women were not marrying as much, was that they were enjoying life too much with so many consumer goods to buy

Author is slightly libtarded and goes on about patriarchy.

The great london fire of 1661 flattens the city but somewhat helps the new king by destroying london’s walls and gates, making them less likely to be defiant in the future

People discover that the constellations change, they make progress on ideas about the spread of disease, they develop thermometers, microscopes. Literate people discuss these in coffee and tobacco smoking houses. Also the bubonic plague hits hard in 1665. Crazy that the plague came over and over for 300 years.

Under Charles II, they start executing the old parliamentarians still alive who had a major hand in killing Charles I and they posthumously dug up the graves of the rest of them, hung their long decayed bodies and threw them in a pit. If Oliver Cromwell accepted kingship when it was offered to him twice, this would have been avoided. He couldve stepped down when all royalists were crushed.

The majority royalist parliament votes to restore the King and most of England rejoices.

Onto Part Four, 1658-1689

Under Cromwell, the quaker Naylor is brutally punished for dressing up as Jesus in a small Quaker parade & acting like a prophet. He is pilloried, whipped hundreds of times walking through London, his tongue his bored through, he is branded on his forehead with a B for blasphemy, and sentenced to brutal hard labor in prison for 3 years. Puritans are nutcases

Ch 14 done. Oliver cromwell invades ireland, goes scorched earth. Not much detail on it in this chapter. At the end of the chapter he is made lord protector of england. Book mostly discusses sweeping trends while mentioning significant events here and there, like a war against the dutch or irish invasion.

The newfound protestant religious freedom following the abolition of the monarchy causes all sorts of oddball protestant heresies, and ideas similar to modern new age-ism, to spring up.

After the civil war, ideas such as religious freedom and freedom of speech (from john milton) start slowly being discussed in society

Both sides murdered and mutilated the camp following women that they captured. Horrible

Given that this book is really a history of almost a century, he does skim over 3 years of brutal civil war in a few chapters so far. So i should find a different detailed book if i want to learn the nitty gritty of it