Kenyon. English Revolution

Review: Revisionism and Post-Revisionism in Early Stuart History
Reviewed Work(s): Unrevolutionary England, 1603-1642 by Conrad Russell; The Causes of

the English Civil War by Conrad Russell; The Fall of the British Monarchies, 1637-1642 by
Conrad Russell; Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics, 1603-
1642 by Richard Cust and Ann Hughes; The Causes of the English Civil War by Ann
Hughes
Review by: John Kenyon
Source: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 64, No. 4 (Dec., 1992), pp. 686-699
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2124903
Accessed: 24-03-2020 08:35 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to The Journal of Modern History
This content downloaded from 117.240.50.232 on Tue, 24 Mar 2020 08:35:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Review Article
Revisionism and Post-Revisionism

in Early Stuart History*
John Kenyon
University of Kansas
The impact of "revisionism" on early seventeenth-century English history

already has been the subject of some discussion, in these pages and elsewhere
To summarize, in a series of books and articles beginning in 1973 Conrad Russell
argued that the accepted view of the coming of the English Civil War was
irredeemably old-fashioned and teleological. There was no steady buildup of
tension between Crown and Parliament from 1604 - or even 1621 - onward
attributable to long-term constitutional, economic, and religious factors and
leading inevitably to confrontation and rebellion. In fact, a close scrutiny of the
parliaments of the 1620s convinced Russell that the Crown's failure in this decade
was a simple failure in war and diplomacy, not in constitutional or ideological
conflict; he would not even allow an apposition of "Country" against "Court."
MPs were only "Country" in the sense that they were concerned primarily with
local problems and pressures; they had no appreciation of national, still less of
international, issues; they had no concept of the finance needed to prosecute
modern war. Worse still, far from flamboyantly rising toward a Whig apotheosis,
Parliament was an erratic, impermanent, and inner-directed survival, ill-equipped
to deal with the emergent problems of the seventeenth century and in serious
danger of being suspended permanently. Despite apparent triumphs like the
Petition of Right, no real advances were made in the 1620s, which were a quite
different milieu from the 1640s; arguments applied to the one did not necessarily
apply to the other, and the causes of the Civil War must be sought nearer to 1640.2
* The works reviewed in this article are Conrad Russell, Unrevolutionary England, 1603-
1642 (Hambledon: Hambledon Press, 1990), pp. xxx + 313, ?40.00 (hereafter, cited as UR), The
Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 1990),
pp. xv+236, ?35.00 (hereafter, cited as Causes), and The Fall of the British Monarchies,
1637-1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. xx+550, ?40.00
(hereafter, cited as Fall); Richard Cust and Ann Hughes, eds., Conflict in Early Stuart Englan
Studies in Religion and Politics, 1603-1642 (London: Longman, 1989), pp. x+271, ?8.95
(paper) (hereafter, cited as Conflict); and Ann Hughes, The Causes of the English Civil W
(London: Macmillan, 1991), pp. viii + 211, ?7.50 (paper) (hereafter, cited as Hughes).
1 Thomas Cogswell, "Coping with Revisionism in Early Stuart History," Journal of Modern
History 62 (1990): 538-51.
2 I trust that this is not too crude a summary of Conrad Russell, "Parliamentary Histor
Perspective," History 61 (1976): 1-27, The Origins of the English Civil War (London, 1973),
[Journal of Modern History 64 (December 1992): 686-699]

C 1992 by The University of Chicago. 0022-2801/92/6404-0003$01.00
All rights reserved.
Revisionism and Post-Revisionism in Early Stuart History 687
This provoked a howl of protest from committed Whig historians of the older
generation, though without producing further evidence they could do little more
than reassert their previous arguments.3 Younger scholars like Derek Hirst tried to
salvage a degree of Whiggish ideological commitment by blending it with
revisionist doctrine.4 Others accepted Russell's arguments with acclaim, even
relief, and strove to reinforce them through their own research.5 By 1987 Russell
might well conclude that he had "won" the debate by default.6
However, Russell also has spurred to further research a number of other
historians who accept his general principles and approach but differ from him in
important emphases as well as details. Thomas Cogswell, for instance, has argued
that while Russell stressed the importance of reconstructing the national milieu in
the 1620s, his work is almost entirely focused on political maneuvers at Whitehall
and Westminster.7 Yet, he points out, the Spanish marriage negotiations of
1622-24 provoked a reasonably well-informed reaction at the national level that
strongly influenced Parliament and the government. Moreover, if Parliament voted
inadequate taxation (one of Russell's main criticisms), this was mainly because it
was never asked to do more. Even so, it was not so inept that it could not exact
important financial concessions from King James in 1624.8 Similarly, Richard
Cust's reexamination of the Forced Loan of 1626 showed that local opposition or
protest was reinforced by a perception of constitutional issues that Russell still
was unwilling to allow;9 and in 1989, with Ann Hughes, Cust moved on to edit
a volume of essays, titled Conflict in Early Stuart England, that offers a reasoned
critique of the revisionist case, while still accepting its general conclusions. It is
difficult to know what to call this process except "post-revisionism," though
Hughes, for one, is uneasy with the term. 10
pp. 1-31, Parliaments and English Politics, 1621-1629 (Oxford, 1979), passim, and "The
Nature of a Parliament in Early Stuart England," in Before the English Civil War, ed. Howard
Tomlinson (London, 1983), pp. 123-50. See also his latest article, "Issues in the House of
Commons, 1621-1629: Predictors of Civil War Allegiance," Albion 23 (1991): 23-40.
3 Theodore K. Rabb, "Revisionism Revised: The Role of the Commons," Past and Present,
no. 92 (1981), pp. 55-78; Christopher Hill, "Parliament and People in Early Seventeenth-
Century England," Past and Present, no. 92 (1981), pp. 100-124; and J. H. Hexter, "The
Early Stuarts and Parliament: Old Hat and Nouvelle Vague," Parliamentary History 1 (1982):
181-215, and "The Birth of Modem Freedom," Times Literary Supplement (January 21,
1983).
4 Derek Hirst, "Revisionism Revised: The Place of Principle," Past and Present, no. 92 (1981),
pp. 79-99, and "Parliament, Law and War in the 1620s," Historical Journal 23 (1980): 455-61.
5 Notably, Kevin Sharpe, in Faction and Parliament (Oxford, 1978), pp. 1-42, "Crown,
Parliament and Society: Government and Communication in Early Stuart England," English
Historical Review 101 (1986): 321-50, and "The Personal Rule of Charles I," in Before the
English Civil War, ed. Howard Tomlinson (London, 1983), pp. 53-78.
6 Thomas Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War,
1621-1624 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 2-3.
7 Ibid., pp. 3-4.
8 Ibid., pp. 260-61, 309-12, 321-22.
9 Richard Cust, The Forced Loan and English Politics, 1626-1628 (Oxford, 1987). See
Cogswell's appreciation in his "Coping with Revisionism in Early Stuart History," pp. 549-51.
10 Hughes, p. 6. But it is so called by Russell in UR, p. xxvi.
688 Kenyon
Cust and Hughes acknowledge that "there were long-term ideological and
social tensions in England, but we do not thereby assume that these led inevitably
to the type of conflict that emerged in 1642; the moves to war were complex,
hesitant and contradictory" (pp. 16-17). This is echoed by Johann Sommerville,
in a moderate summary of the thesis he put forward in 1986 in his monograph,
Politics and Ideology in England, 1603-1640, which reasserted the crucial
importance of opposed and contradictory constitutional ideas in this period. As he
admits, "the idea that the Civil War was fought between advocates and opponents
of arbitrary rule has little to recommend it" (Conflict, p. 65). This is not the pla
to criticize Sommerville's work in detail, but to my mind he places too much
emphasis on absolutist doctrine as propagated by the clergy-just as other
historians have placed too much emphasis on the messianic ravings of some
Puritan ministers.11 One need not invoke 1689 to demonstrate the flimsiness of
such divine right dogma.
However, Cust's and Hughes's main grievance is Russell's attempt to play
down Court versus Country apposition, "to concentrate on the mechanics and the
practical functioning of the political system rather than how people perceived
politics," and to make no allowance "for the possibility that 'court' and 'country'
could operate as an ideological framework within which people viewed politics"
(pp. 13-14). Here and in his article later in the volume, "Politics and the
Electorate in the 1620s," Cust, following Cogswell, argues that the crisis of the
Spanish Match fostered a "country" attitude among MPs and their quite
well-informed constituents, based on antipopery, anti-Spanish chauvinism, sus-
picion of corruption and mismanagement in high places, and (less certainly) fear
for the continuance of parliaments. Men as powerful in their localities as Sir
Thomas Wentworth and Sir Robert Phelips had to bend to this wind, and this was
equally evident in 1628 (pp. 28-29, 141, 155-59). Hughes, in her article "Local
History and the Origins of the Civil War," tells much the same tale (pp. 235-37).
As for parliaments in general, they agree that it is teleological to suggest that
Parliament was "rising" in any way and that its legislative role was much less
important than it had been under the Tudors, but they argue that Russell has gone
too far in downplaying its importance. It was an important focus for national
opinion, and inadequate as its subsidies were, Charles and his ministers still thought
they were worth bargaining for, a point already made by Cogswell (Conflict, p. 30).
In the 1630s especially, they also argue that the revisionists (particularly John
Morrill and Kevin Sharpe) have been much too ready to employ the ex silentio
argument: because opposition to royal policy was not openly voiced, or not voiced
in constitutional or ideological terms, it did not exist (pp. 13, 32). They even
denounce the revisionist case as a mirror image of whig parliamentarianism, with
strong echoes of seventeenth-century royalist prejudice, in that it criticizes
Parliament as pandering to "popular" ideas and surrendering to religious
extremism (pp. 14-15).
In all this there is some confusion as to which Russell is under attack, the
Russell of today or the Russell of yesteryear, or whether it is Russell at all or some
" See Cogswell's review ("Coping with Revisionism in Early Stuart History," pp. 548-49).
of his associates (though both "sides" agree that there is no such thing as a
revisionist "school"). This is particularly evident in the crucial sphere of
religion, in the editors' general remarks, and in Peter Lake's fine paper
"Anti-popery: The Structure of a Prejudice," where it seems that Russell's matur
opinions do not differ significantly from theirs (Conflict, pp. 21-26, 72-106).
For Russell, too, has been far from idle, and he has now produced two major
studies on the origins of the Civil War, to which his work on the 1620s must now
be seen as a prologue. He has also republished a substantial selection of his earlier
essays, provocatively titled Unrevolutionary England, 1603-1642, with an
introduction commenting on the debate so far.
It is a strangely incestuous debate. Cust is a former graduate student of Russell,
and many of the other contributors to Conflict in Early Stuart England owe him
some sort of allegiance; in fact, many of their papers here printed were first read
at his seminar at the Institute of Historical Research. In writing his two latest
books Russell clearly has drawn on their ideas at times, and perhaps they on his
along the road -it is difficult to say. In his introduction to Unrevolutionary
England, 1603-1642 he gently deflects or tries to defuse their criticism.
Russell (UR, pp. xxvi-vii) blandly agrees that "conflict and division" were
perfectly possible within an accepted political structure, as Cust and Hughes say:
"This is a proposition I have never denied, but . . . I did not assert it as loudly
and clearly as . . . I should have done" (cf. Conflict, p. 18). He readily admits
their argument for "the force of attachment to parliaments, the rule of law, and to
the principle of taxation by consent." Here again he admits that he had not spoken
"loudly and clearly." However, he rejects the idea that there was a "Country"
opposition creed - "There is need here for a course correction, but there is also
substantial common ground" (UR, p. XXVii). 12 He also agrees that the Crown was
prepared to make concessions in return for parliamentary taxes, even if they were
inadequate: "I was not aware that I had ever denied that this was so. What I was
concerned to deny was a proposition they are not advancing, that parliamentary
refusal of supply had any coercive effect on a Crown determined to stand and
fight." He concludes urbanely that there is "no substantial ground for disagree-
ment, once both cases are adequately understood" (UR, pp. xxvii-viii; cf.
Conflict, p. 30, and chaps. 4 and 6, by Thomas Cogswell and Christopher
Thompson, respectively). He still rejects the concept of a Court versus Country
dichotomy and trusts that his critics "would not wish to go back to the world of
the 1960s," when such terms were used as party-political labels. He accepts the
examples they adduce, but how far they are evidence of a general trend "we can
safely leave to be resolved by future research" (UR, p. xxviii; Conflict, pp. 14,
19-22, 152-56).
The issue of localism versus centralism similarly calls for more research,
though he hopes that "what is needed is a better understanding rather than a
course correction" (UR, p. xxviii). He goes on to disembarrass himself of
"suggesting that the word 'localism' implies a general indifference to national
12 In Fall, however, he remarks that "belief in the rule of law, taxation by consent, and future
meetings of Parliament are not necessarily marks of a future Parliamentarian [in the Civil War] " (p. 13).
690 Kenyon
issues." 13 "I have no difficulty," he says, "with material . .. w

to assert the existence of an informed public opinion, nor with the d
the concern of that public opinion with national issues" (UR, p. xxix;
pp. 28-29, 107-30, passim [Cogswell]). He can see no cause for disagreement
between himself and the post-revisionists on the issue of religion and the church,
which seems to me fair enough. He admits the danger of the argumentum ex
silentio, but he also cautions against the opposing argument, "the tip-of-the-
iceberg hypothesis, which assumes that every recorded example of discontent is
a type of many more. Silence is silence, and can only be circumvented by a
persistent search for more sources" (UR, p. xxix).
The only aspect of the post-revisionist case he rejects outright-and with some
asperity-is Sommerville's attempt to substitute constitutional and legal ideology for
practical politics and impractical prejudice as the motor for rebellion (see "Ideology,
Property and the Constitution," in Conflict, pp. 47-71). He holds to a line he drew
in 1983, when he wrote, "Strongly held beliefs there certainly were, but these were
not two rival bodies of beliefs. They were one shared body of beliefs, whose application
was frequently in dispute" (UR, p. 21). Promising a full rebuttal later, he contents
himself with the remark that acceptance of such a view "would imply that most men
ignored their own ideas when it came to the point of action, or that my own account
of the politics of this period is fundamentally wrong" (UR, p. xxx). Otherwise his
attitude is that of Cromwell at Putney: "I cannot but see that we all speak to the same
end, and the mistakes are only in the way."'14
On the other hand, if Russell is aware of his critics' ongoing arguments, so are
they of his. The closing chapter of Parliaments and English Politics, 162 1-1629
in 1979 gave a broad outline of his thinking on the causes of the Civil War, and
this was backed up by a number of detailed articles, notably on the British
problem, the Irish Rebellion, and the First Army Plot, published between 1984
and 1988 (reprinted in UR, pp. 231-302). This has enabled some of the
contributors to Conflict in Early Stuart England to leapfrog him, as it were,
criticize his approach before it has reached its conclusion; it has even allowed
Hughes to produce a short teaching manual, appearing only a few months after
Russell's volume of the same name, The Causes of the English Civil War, giving
a brief but trenchant summation of the post-revisionist view.
This does not make for clear and logical criticism, nor does Russell's mode of
presentation. Clearly, he had drafted The Fall of the British Monarchies before he
received an invitation to give the Ford Lectures at Oxford in 1989. He and his publishers
then decided to hold back the major study to make way for The Causes of the English
Civil War, which we must suppose is the text of the lectures. It is difficult to see what
else could have been done, assuming that he was to be allowed two bites at the cherry.
In fact, there is very little in his Causes that is not also in Fall;'5 they draw upon
the same evidence, and many passages are repeated verbatim from one to the
13 But it is difficult to see what else it might imply. Note also the cautious adjective "general."
14 A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty (London, 1938), p. 104.
15 The exception is a detailed account of James I's ecclesiastical policy, Causes, pp. 44-55,
which is only summarized in Fall, pp. 31-32.
other. However, the one is not just a summary of the other. Fall is a detailed,
blow-by-blow narrative of high politics over the years 1637 to 1642, as in
Parliaments and English Politics. In other words, Russell unrepentantly confines
himself to events centering on Whitehall and Westminster, with brief outings to
Edinburgh and Dublin. His standpoint is thus very far from that of Anthony
Fletcher, whose The Outbreak of the English Civil War was concerned to bring out
the interaction between the center and the provinces. 16 To Russell, however, "The
English Civil War was not the result of an outburst of anger in the localities, but
of a failure of the political process at the centre." 17 Causes is a broader analysis
intended to bring out the basic arguments buried in Fall. In what follows I shall
focus on the former, drawing upon the latter for supplementary detail and
amplification. If this is not what Russell intended, he has only himself to blame.
First, it must be said that, despite previous d6mentis, his account of the 1630s
is cursory and by implication leans heavily on the argument ex silentio: "England
in 1637 was, no doubt, a country with plenty of discontents, some of them
potentially serious, but it was also still a very stable and peaceful one, and one
which does not show many visible signs of being on the edge of a major
upheaval" (Fall, pp. 1-2, 377, 525; Causes, p. 216). Whether this is true or not
is difficult to say. Sharpe's brief view of the 1630s endorses Russell's view. Esther
Cope approached the problem from a more whiggish angle, expecting to find
major discontent, but she did not get very far.'8 Further enlightenment must await
Sharpe's major study of the Personal Rule, promised soon.
To Russell, then, the crisis was one of central organization: how to control the
three kingdoms in a war situation; how to solve the church problem when each
nation had a majority espousing a different faith from the other two, each with a
substantial minority inclined toward the faith of another kingdom; and how to
secure a financial settlement adequate for early modern government. The effect
was to create a bewildering number of new axes of division. Russell has never
allowed that this was a struggle between social classes, between constitutionalism
and absolutism, between Court and Country, or between "government" and
"opposition"; but if not, then 1642 saw a completely new alignment, and in this
context "the Royalists come to stand in need of as much explanation as the
Parliamentarians" (Causes, p. 7). Subsidiary questions are: Why was there no
settlement in May 1641, perhaps on medieval lines, "with scapegoats and an
afforced council"? (Causes, p. 13). Why was Parliament not prorogued, by
agreement, in September? Why was war so long in coming after the king left
London in January 1642?
16 Anthony Fletcher, The Outbreak of the English Civil War (London and New York, 1981).
Fletcher distances himself from the revisionist debate, but the structure of his book does not
suggest that he sees long-term causes for the outbreak. See also his intervention (against
Christopher Hill) in his "Parliament and People in Seventeenth Century England," Past and
Present, no. 98 (1983), pp. 151-55, esp. p. 151.
17 Causes, p. 14, repeated on p. 59: "The English Civil War did not begin with a great
uprising in the country; it began with a breakdown of government at the centre."
18 Sharpe, "The Personal Rule of Charles I," (n. 5 above); Esther Cope, Politics without
Parliaments, 1629-1640 (London, 1987).
692 Kenyon
The solution is not to regard this as the culmination of a submerged crisis that
had been brewing for some years, even for so short a time as a decade-though
some factors, notably religion, had a long prehistory-but, rather, as an
intermittent series of short-term crises, each with its own causes, each (unre-
solved) intensifying the next crisis in line- rather like a "concertina" auto crash.
Or, as Russell puts it:
A large part of the logical confusion on this subject results from taking the coming of the
English Civil War as a single event, whereas in fact it was a somewhat unpredictable
sequence of events and non-events. Since the war was the result, not merely of these
events and non-events, but of the fact that they came in the order they did, it is hard to
build up an orderly sequence of long-term causes.... However, if we think of explaining
a sequence of events, we make the welcome discovery that different events in this
sequence may be the results of different causes. It thus becomes possible to match cause
to effect with a precision impossible in tackling such a diffuse happening as the outbreak
of the Civil War. [Causes, p. 10]
Scotland, he argues, was Charles I's shirt of Nessus; once involved there he
could never disengage short of total surrender to "the Scottish imperial vision of
the Church" (Causes, pp. 31-42). Nothing happened in England or Ireland to
make civil war likely; the Irish Rebellion of 1641 was in direct imitation of Scots
resistance. That resistance, backed by the only effective military force in the three
kingdoms, soon moved from the defensive to the offensive as the Scots strove not
only to reject the English (or Caroline) vision of the Church but also to impose
their own presbyterian solution. 19 Unfortunately, the English and Scots churches
now had diverged so far (even without Laudianism) that "each . . . constituted a
standing threat to the ideals of the other" (Causes, p. 35; Fall, p. 193). The Scots
invasion of 1640, forcing Charles to summon the Long Parliament and stay with
it, destabilized English politics and set up a "constant billiard ball effect," each
kingdom colliding with the other to and fro, and soon with Ireland as well
(Causes, p. 27). Those Englishmen who opposed Charles now were bound hand
and foot to the Scots, yet coercion by the Scots was widely resented, especially
when it impinged on the anticipated church settlement; thus "the royalist party
was an anti-Scottish party before it was a royalist party" (Causes, p. 15). This
dragged out the negotiations for a final "peace treaty" between the two kingdoms
into the summer of 1641 and brought the problem of religion to the forefront. It
was always in Charles's interest to reach a quick and conclusive agreement with
the Covenanters, but he could only buy their support by a presbyterian church
settlement deeply offensive to him and almost equally offensive to a majority of
his countrymen.
It is significant that Russell devotes three chapters of Causes (chaps. 3-5) to
religion, the church, and politics, including a long excursus on the Church of
England from 1558 to 1625. Nevertheless, he is insistent that "To say the parties
were divided by religion is not the same thing as to say religion caused the Civil
'9 See David Stevenson, "Scotland Revisited: The Century of the Three Kingdoms," History
Today 35 (March 1985): 28-33.
War" (Causes, p. 59).2o Nor was it an issue on which Charles's opponents could
agree. Yet it was an issue that inflamed the political situation throughout the crisis,
and it was an issue on which Charles was not prepared to compromise (Fall,
p. 527). In his formulation of policy for Scotland Charles was not advised by his
English Council, nor in practice by any council at all, and the issue of new Canons
and a prayer book for Scotland was based simply on the Royal Supremacy, which
really applied only to England (Causes, pp. 30, 114; Fall, pp. 39-42). The Earl
of Rothes's remark, that to comply were "fitter for the servants of a person than
a state," is deeply significant, and it foreshadowed the attempt in 1642 to separate
the regal person from the office (Causes, pp. 118, 157-59; Fall, pp. 405 ff.).21
However, to Charles this was "the one point of all others where he was most
inflexible: where his religious commitment and his sense of his own authority
met" (Causes, p. 121).
This continued to be a stumbling block through the winter and spring of 16
while opposition to Scots presbyterianism mounted and the Commons quarr
among themselves and with the Lords over church discipline, the future of
episcopacy, and the prayer book. An adroit politician might have played on th
differences, but all else apart, Charles was hampered by his espousal of wh
was at this stage a minority religion. In a searching and subtle examination of
Church of England under Elizabeth and James I, Russell argues that
Arminianism was not just an exotic foreign import and that it rode on the
shoulders of a broad tradition of churchmanship embraced by Whitgift and
Bancroft, best described as "un-Puritan" (and which was to triumph in 1662)
(Causes, pp. 100-104).22
The problem was that it was all too easy to equate Arminianism with pop
It has been recognized for some years that antipopery was a prime destabili
factor in this crisis, and Russell argues that men like Pym and his attenda
"godly" extended the meaning of "popery" far beyond its normal semantic
limits. To embrace, as Charles I and Laud did, any of the principles of
Catholicism, or to imitate, however distantly, any of its practices, was to be a
papist. There was an "unconscious popery," just as there could be "papists in
spirit, even if they were unaware of the fact." At its most extreme, this concept
held that anyone who was not a staunch Calvinist was a papist (Causes,
pp. 75-80; Fall, pp. 23-24, 65n., 420). This goes far to explain the suspicion
with which Charles was regarded by many MPs, as well as their approach to the
Irish Rebellion. In fact, Russell remarks that "Parliament's handling of the Irish
Rebellion . . . shows exactly the same sublime blindness as Charles's handling of
the Covenanters" (Causes, p. 129).
Nevertheless, on January 25, 1641, Charles told Parliament that he was ready
"to reduce all matters of religion and government to what they were in the purest
20 Later (p. 62) he makes a distinction between fighting because of religion and fighting for
religion.
21 The prosecution in Strafford's case also made a distinction between treason against the
governor and against the government (Fall, p. 290).
22 Un-Puritan is my term, not Russell's.
694 Kenyon
times of Queen Elizabeth's days," and Russell concludes that at this early stage
Charles was "persuaded that the stability of his authority depended on regular
parliaments" (Fall, p. 244). Against current expectation, he also passed the
Triennial Act in February. Given all this, it is surprising that Charles did not
succeed in forming a new government, based on this program, which might have
brought over to his side a sizable party in Parliament. Clarendon gives the
impression of complete supineness or mute obstinacy at Whitehall,23 but Russell's
patient day-to-day reconstruction of events in March and April 1641 shows a king
willing to consider a variety of options, including that of a new government
grouped around a number of leading peers -Bedford, Hertford, Essex, Saye and
Sele, Bristol, and Mandeville-who were admitted to the Privy Council on
February 19. But the Scots riposted by issuing an ultimatum demanding the death
of Strafford and the abolition of episcopacy. Under their pressure the new
coalition broke and the Scots again triumphed (Fall, pp. 263, 268-70; Causes,
pp. 14-15). When the king turned to other courses, the Scots again took a
decisive role; it was their demand on March 6, successfully pressed, that ?25,000
earmarked for the English army be diverted to theirs, which so enraged the
English officer corps as to encourage Charles to go ahead with the First Army
Plot, with disastrous results (Fall, p. 292). The death of the Earl of Bedford on
May 9 and the execution of Strafford on the 12th merely set up a tombstone on the
grave of conciliation. The language of the Commons' Protestation of May 3
looked to an appeal to arms, so much so that a year later some used it as a
justification for rebellion, and the military dispositions taken by both houses to
meet the threat of the plot were another foretaste of things to come. Russell
comments: "The fact that civil war did not come for another fifteen months is a
deep tribute, both to the stability of English society, and to the skill of English
politicians" (Fall, pp. 294-95, 298-99, 302).
Unfortunately, Russell then goes back on his tracks by arguing that in
September 1641 there was an "overwhelming balance of probability" dthat
Parliament would agree to a prorogation for a cooling-off period of six months or
so, perhaps even a dissolution. He thinks this "window of opportunity" failed
because Charles insisted on going to Edinburgh to woo, or cfircumvent, the
Covenanters -another example of the Scots' malign influence on English affairs
(Causes, pp. 16- 17, 187; Fall, p. 331). But the evidence for this seems to consist
only of four letters from two lovesick MPs to their wives, a letter from the Earl
of Essex saying that an adjournment was needed-which was in fact voted for
September 9-October 20-an outbreak of plague near Westminster, and the fact
that a General Pardon, which usually heralded the end of a session, was under
consideration in August (Fall, p. 332; Causes, p. 17). But Russell himself
acknowledges that when Charles left for Scotland on August 10 "he was no
longer in a position in which he could easily contemplate the prorogation or
dissolution of parliament." In fact, by this time it was clear that a long-term
financial settlement was as far off as ever, and the best he could hope for was a
short adiournment (Fall. nn. 348-49. 359- 361- 362. 406- 407)_
23 B. H. G. Worrnald, Clarendon (Cambridge, 1951), pp. 6-7.
This financial settlement was indeed crucial and may be said to form the spine o
Russell's thesis. He argues that Charles's income was so reduced by the persistent
failure of Parliament to settle the customs duties and by its abolition in the summer of
1641 of the extraparliamentary fiscal devices of the 1630s that by the end of that year
there was a shortfall of ?285,340 in the Crown's annual income, so that in 1642 war
was his only hope of achieving solvency (Causes, pp. 161-62).24 He devotes a long
chapter (Causes, chap. 7) to the deteriorating financial position of the Crown from the
1590s on, the "painful death" of a system devised in 1369: the ever-falling yield of
the subsidy, the growing irrationality of its assessment, the worsening economic
climate, skyrocketing prices, and the ultimate ineffectuality of prerogative taxation
(Causes, pp. 166 ff.). These are arguments he has employed before, but he brings
them up-to-date with a long look at the Bishops' Wars and the Short Parliament. And
he is as severe as ever on Parliament's "fiscal illiteracy": its reluctance to be taxed
at a realistic level and its sheer inability to contemplate the sums involved (Causes,
p. 179; Fall, pp. 7, 14; UR, p. xix).
In the Long Parliament there is every sign that the hard core of "godly"
opposition used the hope of a generous, permanent financial settlement to coerce
Charles into accepting a radical church settlement, and Charles put himself in their
hands when he told them on January 23, 1641: "What parts of my revenue shall
be found illegal or grievous to the public I shall willingly lay down." The main
issue was the customs duties and the need to draw up a new Book of Rates. Russell
traces the painfully slow progress made in this matter through to early August,
when the Commons rejected the new Book drawn up in committee and the
question was deferred indefinitely. In fact, a satisfactory Book was not brought
back to the Commons until January 1642, after the king had left London, and in
March the prospect of its acceptance was still being used to coerce him- this time
to pass the Militia Ordinance. It was not finally approved until June 1642, too late
(Fall, pp. 247, 256, 346-48, 354, 357-60, 474, 483, 516).
But for the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion, however, and Charles's attempts
a military coup d'etat at the turn of the year, it is possible to visualize a pro
of hard bargaining ending in a tight financial settlement, probably voted fo
years at a time to work in tandem with the Triennial Act, and even a comprom
church settlement. As it was, the Attempt on the Five Members and Charles's
withdrawal from London in January 1642 made any further "bridge building"
impossible and direct confrontation highly probable, perhaps inevitable.
The fact that war was delayed another eight months, right over the usual
campaigning season, testifies to the country's conservatism and its lack of
stomach for the fight. It also testifies to the lack of any compelling, or even useful
ideological theory of resistance. This gives Russell another opportunity to contest
Sommerville's thesis that politics from 1603 to 1642 were governed by contrast-
ing theories of absolutism and "popularism." He points to the universality of
divine right theory: "It was . . . perfectly possible to believe in divine right, and
24 See also Conrad Russell, "Charles I's Financial Estimates for 1642," reprinted in UR,
pp. 165-76, and "Why Did Charles I Fight the Civil War?" History Today 34 (June 1984):
31-34.
696 Kenyon
yet to believe at the same time that the law by which, and the political order within
which, the King ruled, enjoyed the same right." In the event, Charles had to
disembarrass himself of such absolutist theories as he had in order to recruit a
party at all, and "Royalists are even less persuasive as absolutists than
Parliamentarians are as resistance theorists" (Causes, pp. 144-53).
The truth is, as Russell argues in a key passage, the opposition to Charles "never
formed any plans for regular 'parliamentary government.' " "They could only see
power as existing under the King, and, while he lived, under that king," and
"whatever ascending element may have crept into their theories of authority durin
the next few years, it was never enough to allow them to envisage a legitimate title
to power which did not emanate from royal grant" (Fall, pp. 274-75). Thus their
only policy was one of coercion, leading not to "popular" or "parliamentary"
government but most probably to the formation of an aristocratic council to manage
and control the king according to sound medieval precedent; thus, the names of
Henry III and Simon de Montfort, Edward II and the Lords Ordainers, Richard II
and the Lords Appellant flit in and out of these pages, reaching a climax in the
summer of 1641, when there was a tense debate whether to seek the appointment
of a single custos regni during the king's absence in Scotland (Fall, pp. 207-8,
210, 333, 365-67, 472, 479, 515; Causes, pp. 119, 121; UR, p. 12). Unfortu-
nately, it never proved possible to secure the person of the king, and the only
alternative was to put up a pretender. Russell thinks this is why Charles took such
care to keep his nephew, the Elector Palatine, close to him and to associate him
with his policies (Fall, pp. 209, 299, 316, 318, 429, 449-51, 458, 477, 503).
In these circumstances it is not surprising that the public exchanges between the
two parties in the spring and summer of 1642 were "intended for recrimination
more than persuasion '- "more characteristic of a matrimonial quarrel than of the
pure ideal of revolution" (Fall, pp. 478, 487). Parliament found itself resorting
to a kind of legalistic pragmatism, "making up their theoretical justifications as
they went along, and forming theories to justify what they had already done"
(Fall, p. 482). There was also a root problem of vocabulai'y, which to Russell
shows "the price which had been paid for the absence of plain speaking in the
political, and especially the courtly, world for a generation" (Fall, p. 487). In the
end Parliament had to fall back on the medieval fiction that the king was so
deluded by his "evil counsellors" that he was incapable of lawful government,
which must be exercised by others on his behalf.
The blame? Russell is unsparing in his criticism of Charles, though not as
unsparing as some younger historians in recent years.25 Much that can be said
about his obstinacy, his inflexibility, and his lack of a sense of reality has been
said, is said again here, and can be taken as read. His main handicap, as Russell
sees it, was his habit of regarding politics not as the art of the possible but as a
strict matter of conscience; therefore, his "political method consisted of discov-
ering what his conscience demanded, and asserting it." Yet in others he regarded
loyalty to principles rather than persons as "inherently subversive," and he
25 See L. J. Reeve, Charles I and the Road to Personal Rule (Cambridge, 1989), chap. 6
passim.
passionately rejected any idea of conditional loyalty, though, as Russell dryly

remarks, "In normal human affairs conditional loyalty is the only loyalty there
is." The future of the Church of England was an obvious stumbling block, but
"the area of Charles's deepest inflexibility was not that of mere religion, it was
the area where religion and his authority met. His definition of the Royal
Supremacy was one which made this area unusually large" (Causes, pp. 198,
201-2; Fall, pp. 51, 53, 207). Strangely enough, his deficiencies were recog-
nized by acute observers in the first few months of his reign, and by 1640 he was
suffering seriously from a defect that Russell calls "diminished majesty." Worse
still, he was himself acutely conscious of the fact that he could not wield the same
authority, exact the same obedience, as his father, let alone Queen Elizabeth
(Causes, pp. 23, 204-5). But this only intensified what we might call his streak
of "petulant perversity."
Yet Russell will not allow that Charles was stupid, nor did he show more bad
faith than most long-serving politicians. Arguably he would have been more
successful if he had been willing to dissimulate (Causes, pp. 187-88, 191-94).
And if he was inflexible and bigoted, so were his opponents, in full measure.
Neither side ever realized that a substantial part of the other's case was
"non-negotiable"; each believed that in the last ditch the other would compro-
mise, even on religion. In the propaganda war of 1642 Russell notes "the
continuing amazement of both parties in the absence of any significant concessio
from the other. Both seem to have believed that the traditional habits of
compromise would re-assert themselves, but would do so in the other party"
(Causes, p. 201; Fall, pp. 479, 487). However, "neither could wholly give way
to the other without building up a party of discontented larger than it was safe to
leave behind" (Causes, p. 187). In fact, compromise only came, in an unexpected
form, in January 1649.
Incidentally, I wonder whether the prominence given to John Pym in these pages,
and in Fletcher's Outbreak, is entirely justified. Sheila Lambert has cast cold water
on the idea that Pym was the acknowledged leader of the opposition in the first three
months of this parliament, and elsewhere Russell himself shows that his attempt
at a structured financial settlement in the summer of 1641 was frustrated by the men
he was supposedly leading.26 Russell allows for the fissiparous nature of the
opposition, for instance, in the "parti-colored" vote for and against Strafford's
attainder (Fall, pp. 289-91), but the sweep of his narrative, and the repetitive use
of Pym's name, does give the impression of a manichaean struggle between him
and the king typical of more old-fashioned accounts.
Nevertheless, this work is a monumental achievement, the culmination of
twenty-eight years' research, drawing in all the available evidence, much of it
new. It is written with grace, elegance, and wit, as well as an organizational power
26 Sheila Lambert, "The Opening of the Long Parliament," Historical Journal 27 (1984):
265-87; Conrad Russell, "Parliament and the King's Finances," in his Origins of the English
Civil War (n. 2 above), pp. 111-16; Fletcher (n. 17 above), pp. 29, 49-51, 408. See also Blair
Worden's remarks in London Review of Books (January 21/February 3, 1982), reviewing
Fletcher.
698 Kenyon
and a literary skill that carry the reader effortlessly through a 200-page
closely argued analysis, followed by more than 500 pages of dense narrative.
Some will think it maimed by its refusal to cover England as a whole, but in
compensation no one has more skillfully or perceptively woven together the
threads of power spun in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, and it is to be
applauded as the first truly British account of any seventeenth-century crisis.
Because of the overlapping deployment of the revisionist and post-revisionist
forces noted earlier, we have a reply to Russell already before us. It would be a
pity if Hughes's The Causes of the English Civil War were to be taken as a mere
appendage to this article; it is a remarkably efficient, lucid, and forthright
exposition of the whole controversy to date in a very small compass. It has
obvious potential as a teaching book, but it is more than this.
It is flagged as "a partisan attempt to construct a coherent interpretation while
showing respect for the arguments and research of other scholars, . . . based on
the conviction that the Civil War did have long-term origins" (Hughes, pp. 6-7).
The use of the word "conviction" is perhaps significant; it seems that some of the
post-revisionists react passionately against Russell's nihilism. Hughes, a distin-
guished local historian herself, resents his attempt to relegate local issues to a
backwater, to sever any apparent links between them and the history of the nation
(pp. 20-22). She makes a strong case for regarding England as the only completely
unified country in Europe, with a centralized legal system based on one code of
law and a national taxation system, both linked to a common structure of local
administration and reinforced by a national culture and a national education system
common to the elites (pp. 33-35). (She might also have invoked a national church;
dissent came from within the Church of England, not from without, and there were
no independent minority enclaves.) It was only natural that the elites in such a
system should think in national as well as local terms, and provided we do not fall
into the opposite heresy, of talking like Macaulay, Gardiner, or Trevelyan of a
personified England - the "country" felt that, or the "nation" resisted this - there
seems room for Russell to retreat further on this point than he has so far.
On the other hand, this book seems to signal a disengagement from Sommer-
ville. No one versed in the period would dissent from Hughes's remark that
"kings were . . . obliged to rule according to law." James I freely acknowledged
this in 1610, and his son always believed he was ruling according to law. Russell
would, I am sure, agree with the proposition that "a belief in tradition could . . .
involve dissent from the status quo . . . [and] there was profound disagreement
over the foundations of politics" (perhaps with the substitution of "confusion"
for "disagreement") (pp. 81-82).27 He would certainly agree that "members of
the elite were perfectly capable of believing at the same time in both 'ascending'
and 'descending' theories of political authority" (p. 84).
Hughes's most important point, however, is that we must accommodate
ourselves to an expository structure in which social developments are reinstated as
27 Compare Russell's Causes, p. 136: "The two sides in 1642 were apparently argui
between rival interpretations of a doctrine of the rule of law whose roots were largely common
to both."
a long-term cause of the Civil War; we should even dust off the "Rise of the
Gentry" hypothesis. The latest research strongly suggests that in the century
preceding the Civil War a significant proportion of the elite were prospering, and
so were the yeoman class, the "middling sort," yet at the same time the gap
between them and an increasingly numerous, increasingly desperate underclass
was widening, creating apprehension, doubt, and destabilization (pp. 125-26,
129-30). If Russell's previous attitudes are any guide, this will fall on deaf ears,
but it is with him in mind that she says: "Narratives of high politics or the doings
of great men alone cannot explain the origins of the civil war, which need to be
sought through analysis of long-term social, ideological and political develop-
ments" (p. 158).
On Russell's behalf we must make the point that his interpretation does allow
for long-term causes: religion going back to the 1580s, perhaps even 1559;
national finance going back to the 1590s, perhaps earlier; the Scottish problem to
1625, the Irish to 1628 or beyond. But the gulf between him and Hughes is laid
open in her peroration: "The initial political breakdown of 1642 had its immediate
origins in the high politics of the several British kingdoms. . . . However,. . . the
attitudes of the elites who participated in high politics were often influenced by
their understanding of social change and by the opinion of their social inferiors.
The nature of the civil war which broke out in England is explicable only within
the context of a broad and aroused political nation with divided views and
complex relationships to elites" (p. 181).
But it is dangerous for either of these historians to talk about "the nature of the
civil war," because it seems to me that the nature of that war does not meet their
expectations or sustain the drive of their arguments -a war fought largely
between or within counties or county associations or similar regional groupings,
a war in which neither side succeeded in forming a truly national army until 1645.
This does not reflect Hughes's unified nation, but neither does it support Russell's
implied assumption that as Westminster went, so went the nation.

Kenyon. English Revolution

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Kenyon. English Revolution

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Review: Revisionism and Post-Revisionism in Early Stuart History

Reviewed Work(s): Unrevolutionary England, 1603-1642 by Conrad Russell; The Causes of

Revisionism and Post-Revisionism

The impact of "revisionism" on early seventeenth-century English history

[Journal of Modern History 64 (December 1992): 686-699]

issues." 13 "I have no difficulty," he says, "with material . .. w

23 B. H. G. Worrnald, Clarendon (Cambridge, 1951), pp. 6-7.

passionately rejected any idea of conditional loyalty, though, as Russell dryly

You might also like