Seeking background information on 1600s English history

[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.

Comments

[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.