sylvar

During the drive home from a doctor's appointment (about which I'll write more later), I listened to the podcast of a BBC In Our Time show about 17th-century print culture in England and how the rise of literacy and printed material affected the (English) Civil War.

segnbora will probably enjoy listening to the show, which is available here in mp3 format. (A complete podcast feed of In Our Time is here.)

I realized that, since European history was optional in high school, I am ignorant of some pretty basic facts about the period. While I'm sure I could look up individual facts, I'd like a recommendation from anyone who knows of a lively, readable book that would explain things like these:

Who were the Royalists, Roundheads, Cavaliers, Levellers, Diggers, etc.?
- Did they tend to come from specific geographical areas of Britain?
- Did commoners tend to identify with these groups or were they mostly factions within government and church?
- Who used these names to describe these groups, and did they call themselves the same things or were these unwelcome labels assigned by opponents or later historians?
- What were the concerns and interests of people we identify with these groups, and what did they do about it?

What was the Popish plot? For that matter, are we talking about the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church or Alexander Pope?

What have Dryden and other literary figures got to do with all this, if anything?

To paraphrase William S. Gilbert, precisely what is meant by the terms Commonwealth, Republic, and Restoration in this context?

How was organized religion involved in all of this? To what extent were religious factions concerned with theological and moral issues, and to what extent were they concerned with defending or promoting their church?

Were the groups involved in these changes political parties in anything like the current sense? Did political parties grow out of this period, or did that come later?

What was going on in Spain and France and other relevant places outside of Britain? What did people there think of all this? What did those governments want to happen within Britain, and did they get involved?

How did the lives of tradesmen, servants, farmers, etc. change during this time?

To what extent was this strictly an English affair, and to what extent were Wales, Cornwall, Scotland and Ireland involved?

If anyone feels like explaining this stuff, that's cool too, but I assume it will be most expedient to give me the title of a book.

Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: Alison Krauss & Union Station - Let Me Touch You For Awhile

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

elaine-brennan.livejournal.com

how about several book titles?

For a general introduction, I've always liked Christoper Hill:

The World Turned Upside Down or Puritanism and Revolution : Studies in Interpretation of the English Revolution of the 17th Century, both by Christopher Hill.

English Troubles in a European Context, by Jonathan Scott.

Heading into a more esoteric realm, you might try
Joyce Appleby's Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth Century England (1978) which tries to look at the larger intellectual context for a number of notions that worked themselves out in economic & political terms.

From:

sylvar.livejournal.com

Ooo. Thank you very much! I've requested The World Turned Upside Down from my public library system, and I see that England's Troubles (sic) is available at the university library. I might get into Appleby later on.

From:

segnbora.livejournal.com

For those questions of yours that can be answered fairly quickly:

The Royalists were also called the Cavaliers. They were the pro-King Charles (and pro-absolute monarchy, anti-Parliament) side of the English Civil War, and the Parliamentarians or Roundheads, so called because they cropped their hair short unlike the Royalists, were the other side; they were generally somewhat Puritan, socially and religiously. Oliver Cromwell was a Roundhead.

The English Civil War essentially went on throughout the 1640s, and King Charles I was captured by the Roundheads, tried, and executed in 1649. Oliver Cromwell and for a short period after Oliver's death, his son Richard, were the rulers of England until 1660 (this is called the Commonwealth) when Richard (who really didn't want to rule) and Parliament accepted King Charles II (Charles I's son, who had been in exile in France) back as King of England. This and the decade or so immediately after, when England was adjusting to having a monarchy again, is called the Restoration. (Socially and literature-wise, the Restoration is known as a time when the Puritanism of the Cromwell years was relaxed; theater was full of ribald comedies, etc.)

The Popish plot was definitely in reference to the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, and efforts to restore Roman Catholicism to England. While there were numerous plots, real and made up by anti-Catholic people, to try and get a Catholic back on the throne of England, "the Popish plot" refers specifically to one announced to have been discovered by one Titus Oates (and probably made up by him) in the late 1600s, after the Restoration, which supposedly had French support. In general, French and Spanish support came for Catholic risings, and Dutch and German-speaking countries were seen as English allies in Protestantism. Anglicans (the English majority) and Dissenters (non-Anglican Protestants) agreed that Catholicism was REAL BAD.

From:

creases.livejournal.com

Hacked up the order a bit.

When the king was impeached and it was determined that the country would henceforth be a republic, the "Kingdom of England" was renamed the "Commonwealth of England". There were two periods where England had this name; the first was '49-'53. "Commonwealth" at that time was roughly synonymous with "republic" or "democracy", and was meant to suggest rule whose ultimate justification was the benefit of the people, not the benefit of the Crown.

As Cromwell consolidated his power, he started asserting more and more authority. Finally England was effectively a military dictatorship. In 1653 they passed a new constitution that made him absolute ruler, with the title Lord Protector. (It's alleged that, later in his career, the public offered him the title of King, which he refused.) He passed England on to his son Richard in this state. This lasted roughly from '53-'59, and was called the Protectorate.

Richard Cromwell wasn't as effective a leader as Oliver had been; he abdicated, precipitating a leadership crisis. The Protectorate reverted to being a Commonwealth again, and then when security and stability problems persisted, the English invited Charles Stuart, son of the executed King Charles, to become Charles II. Charles accepted, and in May of 1660, he was crowned and the English monarchy was restored. The transition period that followed is called the Restoration.

Can't comment on how organized religion factored in, except to say: The Crown had been Anglican, but there were movements (both domestically, and in France and Spain) to put a Catholic on the throne. Parliament was largely supported by the Presbyterian churches, and the Army was full of Dissenters (Protestants of many stripes) and a hotbed of Puritan radicalism.

Political parties as we know them came later, in the 18th century.

The rest of the world generally looked on in horror as one of the leading countries of Christendom descended into civil war the likes of which no European country had ever experienced, slaughtered their sovereign under questionable charges, and descended into military control. Keep in mind that Cromwell basically invented the professional army as we know it. Before the Civil War there had been no professional citizen armies with uniforms and drills and all that. Cromwell called it the New Model Army. In effect, Cromwell created a whole new institution, which then destroyed the government and absorbed its powers. Feudal Europe basically shit their pants.

I couldn't say how the Civil War affected the man on the street, but this period in history is regarded as transformative for the West. It created the dream of secular democratic government with universal franchise; it also created the nightmare of a totalitarian society run like a drill camp. It was the first war fought for secular political ideas, rather than religion or aristocratic bickerings. It's part of a time when literacy rates were on the rise, and so a greater portion of the population was taking sides in a way they'd never done in any conflict between feudal houses. And it was a time when small arms were proliferating on a mass scale for the first time in history.

Wales, Scotland, and Ireland were involved when Cromwell decided to occupy them. His new kind of army made that possible. The Civil War also affected what was going on in the Carribean at the time.

Don't know about Dryden's role in particular, but many of the literateurs of the time were involved in the politics of it all. In particular, John Milton was an unflinching republican.

From:

sylvar.livejournal.com

Oh, you're Cletus. Hiya!

And... wow! Thanks! Do you have any books to recommend? (Maybe you should write one, if you haven't already!)

From:

creases.livejournal.com

I am! Hiya!

No, I don't have any particular books. What I know comes from long-forgotten snippets of history classes, from picking up incidental stuff from prefaces and footnotes of contemporary stuff (I have a professional interest in 17th century political philosophy), from combing Wikipedia and from picking [Noung]'s brain.

From:

sylvar.livejournal.com

PS: I am, in retrospect, appalled that I didn't realize why Baruch Spinoza was Benedictus de Spinoza. I bloody knew the English meaning of those words. I say "baruch" at least once a year. (But usually not much more often...)