Investigations of a Dog

This week I’m going through some anthologies of important articles about the English Civil War, still looking at definitions of war/revolution and approaches to allegiance. This post is a brief summary of some of the articles in Peter Gaunt’s The English Civil War: The Essential Readings (2000). Despite the title, Gaunt acknowledges in the introduction the problems of defining and naming whatever it was that happened in the 1640s and 1650s. However, he doesn’t pay much attention to the problems of defining when in 1642 war broke out, just asserting that it was the raising of the standard at Nottingham in August which marked the official start of the war. It’s interesting that Gaunt pays some attention to the neglected question of how and why the First Civil War ended as it did, attempting to redress the balance in the historiography which has been far more concerned with why it started.

John Morrill, Brian Manning, and David Underdown, ‘What Was The English Revolution?’, History Today, 1984.

History Today asked three big names to answer the eponymous question. The title clearly begs the question of whether there was a revolution or not, but not even John Morrill seems to be worried about that. While he rejected the idea of revolution in Revolt of the Provinces (1976), he had already come round to thinking there was a revolution by 1984. However, he doesn’t specify any particular revolutionary event, implying that it was the cumulative effects of the experience of civil wars and interregnum which brought about “the modern secular state” after the restoration. As you’d expect he finds religion to be the main thing which motivated militants to fight each other, but suggests that this kind of militancy had become irrelevant by 1660.

Brian Manning offers a clear, succinct and sensible definition of “revolution”: “A revolution involves the replacement by force or threat of force of one political or social system by another”. However, he maintains that this had not happened by 1642, whereas John Adamson’s recent work suggests that the political system had changed significantly in 1641, and that threat of force played a large part in these changes. Manning places a political, but not social, revolution in 1649. That can’t be argued with as the regicide and creation of the republic easily meet his criteria. On allegiance, he suggests that parliament had more popular support and the king more elite support, although he also points out that most members of all classes were neutral. Manning argues that the most important long-term effect of the revolution was the growth of capitalism, although he is a bit vague about the links between the two. There is no teleology here: “It would all have been very different if Charles I had not been obliged to summon that Parliament to meet at Westminster on November 3rd, 1640″.

David Underdown rejects the English Revolution, finding three revolutions rather than one: a moderate constitutional revolution in 1641, a violent republican revolution in 1648-9, and a failed democratic revolution. This raises the question of whether failed attempts at revolution count as revolutions, something which doesn’t seem to have been discussed very much. Underdown finds that even the violent republican revolution was limited and that the patriarchal order survived. He argues that the revolution was a moral battle between two cultures (something he expanded on in Revel, Riot, and Rebellion, which I haven’t posted about yet). Like Morrill he sees the ultimate outcome as a more secular society in which religion became more of a personal matter.

Both Morrill and Manning suggest that the power of the state was weakened but I think they’re both confusing the state with the king. It’s true that the royal prerogative was more limited in 1660 than it had been in 1640, but the state was arguably more powerful than ever. J. S. Wheeler’s The Making of a World Power (2000) suggests that new forms of taxation, a standing army, and efficient bureaucracy, all of which had their origins in the parliamentarian war effort, put the English state in a strong position in the 1660s and laid the foundations for world power status.

Mary Fulbrook, ‘The English Revolution and the Revisionist Revolt’, Social History, 1982.

More proof that revisionists and Marxists will never understand each other because they just don’t want to understand each other. Fulbrook points out that revisionists have misrepresented Marxist views without bothering to find out much about Marxist theory (fair enough), but falls into the same trap by misrepresenting revisionist views. She concludes that while the events of the 1640s were not inevitable and that teleology and determinism must be avoided, historians need to pay more attention to the structural conditions which determined what was possible. I don’t think anyone can argue with that and a lot of revisionist work has been along those lines, but Marxists and revisionists continue to hate each other. Incidentally, Fulbrook’s dichotomy between empirical revisionism and theoretical Marxism now looks quaint in the light of the subsequent influx of continental philosophy.

John Fielding, ‘Opposition to the Personal Rule of Charles I: the Diary of Robert Woodford, 1637-1641′, Historical Journal, 1988.

Woodford was an obscure member of the Northampton middling sort. Fielding’s discovery of his diary gave an exciting new insight into what non-elite people thought about the personal rule, throwing a big spanner into the revisionist view that Charles’s policies worked reasonably well without causing too much resentment. Woodford outwardly conformed to the personal rule but secretly hated it and agonized about it in his diary. This is a perfect illustration of James Scott’s “hidden transcript”, a concept which Steve Hindle and Andy Wood have made good use of. My only reservation is that Fielding assumes Woodford to be a typical example. This was acceptable 20 years ago but the idea of typicality is now looking more dubious.

Conrad Russell, ‘Why Did Charles I Fight the Civil War?’, History Today, 1984.

Russell points out a dangerous consequence of using the word “revolution”: “Revolutions are thought of as things done to the head of state and not by him”. He reminds us that it takes two sides to start a civil war. Since this article is entirely about why civil war broke out in 1642, Russell has no more to say about revolutions (but the constitutional changes of 1641 were done to the king, so Russell’s reservations don’t preclude a revolution there). The main argument is that it was Charles who made the running towards war. While I agree that the king was repeatedly prepared to use force (the Bishops’ Wars, the Army Plot, the Incident, the Five Members) I think Russell understates the extent to which his opponents also relied on force or the threat of force and were prepared to take unprecedented steps, whereas John Adamson makes the ruthlessness of both sides very clear, particularly the threat from the Scots army. To say that raising the standard at Nottingham legally began the war is a bit of an oversimplification which ignores the Militia Ordinance, the raising of a parliamentarian army and commissioning of the Earl of Essex as Lord General (and on the king’s side the attempt on the five members, the Commissions of Array, and the raising of a “bodyguard” at York).

John Morrill, ‘Sir William Brereton and England’s Wars of Religion’, Journal of British Studies, (1985).

Like Fielding on Woodford this is an examination of one man, in this case the Cheshire MP who took the lead in the parliamentarian war effort in the county, but Morrill presents this case study as a single instance. While it demonstrates his hypothesis that religion was then main motivation of militants, he doesn’t claim that he can generalise from one example or that this example is definitive proof. Morrill argues that Brereton cared far more deeply about religion than about the constitution and that this is what led him to take up arms. The evidence of his activities in the Long Parliament (lots of involvement in religious issues, on which he took a radical position, but not much apparent interest in constitutional issues) seems convincing. However, Morrill makes too much of the fact that Brereton conformed to Charles I’s policies during the personal rule. Fielding’s subsequent work on Woodford’s diary raises potential problems with this.

Christopher Hill, ‘A Bourgeois Revolution?’, (1980).

This essay illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of Christopher Hill. He could tell a really good story, and his writing is bursting with enthusiasm which carries you along, but if you stop and think for a few seconds you notice that he’s being a bit careless with the evidence (to put it politely). Sometimes these are minor points, such as putting Sir William Brereton in charge of the wrong county, but some have bigger implications for his argument. It’s hard to see the Self Denying Ordinance as introducing promotion by merit rather than birth. “The war was won by artillery (which money alone could buy) and by the disciplined morale of Cromwell’s yeomen cavalry”. Although Cromwell’s cavalry were important, “disciplined morale” and “yeomen” are just clichés. Goring’s cavalry seem to have been just as disciplined at Marston Moor, and nobody really knows enough about the social background of cavalry troopers to make any generalisations. As for artillery, it wasn’t quite as important as Hill implies, and the bit about money is a half-truth as most other things that armies needed could only be bought with money. Hill twice stresses the importance of a standing army and bureaucracy for absolutism but this undermines his argument that the revolution made absolutism impossible. As Wheeler has stressed, Charles II had the standing army and bureaucracy which Charles I lacked. James II did try to move towards absolutism and it was a Dutch invasion that stopped him, not the legacy of the 1640s. The assertion that church courts had ceased to matter by the 1680s couldn’t be more wrong: they kept control of probate until the 19th century, something which probably mattered a great deal to capitalists.

But anyway… Hill at least defines what he means by bourgeois revolution (it’s interesting that it’s usually the Marxists who are willing to give an explicit, testable definition of “revolution” while revisionists are notoriously vague about it). He makes it clear that his “bourgeois revolution” does not have to be consciously willed by the bourgeoisie, does not have to be carried out wholly or mainly by the bourgeoisie, and does not have to result in bourgeois capitalists directly taking control of the government. The crucial point is that the revolution created conditions which were more conducive to bourgeois capitalism. Hill is surprisingly close to John Morrill’s position described above, that the revolution wasn’t a single point but a process lasting 20 years whose unintended consequences only became fully apparent after the restoration. He emphasises the end of feudal tenure and the Court of Wards, the passing of the Navigation Acts (supported by a strong navy), and the breakdown of guilds and monopolies as the main economic effects, and also points to increased rationalism at the expense of superstition.

England after the Restoration certainly looks very different to England before the civil wars, but I’m not convinced that all of the changes Hill points to are consequences of the wars. Some trends were already in evidence before the wars, such as the breakdown of guild control. Peter Edwards’s work on the horse trade shows that while the demands of war accelerated the decline of markets and fairs, this was already underway. The strong navy had its origins in Charles I’s ship money fleet, something emphasised in Wheeler’s work. Hill cites the Navigation Acts and Adam Smith as examples of modernity but he can’t have it both ways. Smith opposed mercantilism and was proved right in the aftermath of the American Revolution, when the British government accepted that you didn’t have to rule a country in order to trade with it. Ultimately changes in economy, society and culture might just have had economic, social and cultural causes (although the way they interacted might well have been very complicated). Do we really need a revolution to explain them?

1. John Adamson, The Noble Revolt (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, March 2007).
2. John Fielding, ‘Opposition to the Personal Rule of Charles I: the Diary of Robert Woodford, 1637-1641’, Historical Journal, 31 (1988).
3. Mary Fulbrook, ‘The English Revolution and the Revisionist Revolt’, Social History, 7 (1982).
4. Peter Gaunt (ed.), The English Civil War: The Essential Readings (Blackwell Publishers,: Oxford ;, 2000).
5. John Stephen Morrill, The Revolt of the Provinces (Allen and Unwin: London, 1976).
6. J. S Morrill, ‘Sir William Brereton and England’s Wars of Religion’, Journal of British Studies, 24 (1985), pp. 311-32.
7. J. S Morrill, Brian Manning, and David Underdown, ‘What was the English Revolution?’, History Today, 34 (1984).
8. Conrad Russell, ‘Why Did Charles I Fight the Civil War?’, History Today, 34 (1984).
9. David Underdown, Revel, riot, and rebellion (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1985).
10. James Scott Wheeler, The Making of a World Power (Sutton: Stroud, 1999).