Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688

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Defiantly unrepentant, the new republican regime’s leaders in London were now about to declare war on their fellow Protestant republicans, the Dutch, in the first of a series of seventeenth-century Anglo-Dutch wars fought over trade routes and colonial expansion. Inspiration for Devil-Land’s arguments came from five television films I made for the BBC entitled The Stuarts and The Stuarts in Exile in 2014-15. A history of contemporary Britain written on the basis of articles in Le Monde, De Telegraaf and El País, interwoven with excerpts of what they are really saying about us in Brussels and Strasbourg, would undoubtedly be very interesting, but as a picture of events on this side of the Channel it would have its limitations. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Three years earlier, the English had sent shockwaves throughout Continental Europe by putting their divinely ordained king, Charles I, on trial for high treason and executing him in public.

During the two years spent making the BBC films, the seeds of Devil-Land’s arguments were sown when reappraising the impact of Stuart rule in locations ranging from a windswept Aberdeenshire beach that once hosted an invading Jacobite force, to Derry’s city walls, Breda’s cobbled streets, Madrid’s monumental Plaza Mayor, Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors and the Vatican City tomb of the Jacobite ‘Old Pretender’. As one of these observers notes, James VI came to the throne ‘as quietly as could possibly be desired’. H istory tends not to come with serving suggestions, but it does make a lot of difference where you choose to slice it. Among foreign observers, seventeenth-century England was known as 'Devil-Land': a diabolical country of fallen angels, torn apart by seditious rebellion, religious extremism and royal collapse. This is a detailed history that covers the period between the end of Elizabeth the First’s reign and the Glorious Revolution.Starting on the eve of the Spanish Armada’s descent in 1588 and concluding with a not-so ‘Glorious Revolution’ a hundred years later, Devil-Land is a spectacular reinterpretation of England’s vexed and enthralling past. She has presented a number of highly successful programmes on the Stuart dynasty for the BBC and is the author of Charles II in the Penguin Monarchs series. If it all sounds a bit bleak, that is because Jackson has chosen to view this era in large part through the eyes of commentators elsewhere in Europe who reacted with (sometimes pleasurable) horror at the succession of catastrophes to afflict England. The story of the rise and fall of the Stuart dynasty in England, as seen through the eyes of our often confused European neighbours .

This is a refreshing take on a well-worn theme - England in the seventeenth century (well, most of it, plus the stub of the sixteenth). Starting on the eve of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and concluding with a not-so 'Glorious Revolution' a hundred years later, Devil-Land is a spectacular reinterpretation of England's vexed and enthralling past. Jackson does a skilful job of delineating different alliances, tensions and conflicts, and how they contributed to political events and popular perceptions alike. Take, for example, the Spanish Jesuit whose history of England painted it as ‘a nest of vipers, a den of thieves, a ditch and cesspit of poisons and noxious vapours’. The author has mined the diplomatic correspondence adroitly and takes us to the heart of the action, as seen through the eyes of these sophisticated players.

They were also not always very discerning: the Dutch theologian who classed the British Civil Wars of the 1640s alongside revolt in Catalonia and an earthquake in North Africa was painting a picture that was vivid but not especially coherent. Often this period is portrayed as being a conflict between catholic and protestant, but there was more than one way to be a protestant, and differing views on the shape of the reformation could also lead to conflict. The book looks at England from the perspective of its continental enemies (and sometime allies, depending on the geopolitical shifts). A book to be savoured by students, history aficionados, and anyone who enjoys seeing a scholar at the top of her game diving into stories we think we know well, only to emerge with all manner of surprises.

These may include creased cover, inscriptions or small amounts of writing, fanned edge, ripped or tatty dustjacket, and other signs of being read. When James VI acceded to the English throne, one French observer appeared disappointed at the absence of the ‘most horrible and bloody tragedies’ that he was expecting. Devil-Land ’s title derives from the nickname ‘Duyvel-Landt’, coined by an anonymous Dutch pamphleteer in 1652. Clare Jackson offers some acute insights on an era of failure and ferment , weaving together an impressive narrative of a time when the English seemed suddenly to have lost their minds.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

Given the scope of the subject matter, there was a lot to fit into circa 500 pages, but there is a good balance between depth of coverage and narrative pace. Nonetheless, it is also arguably a problem that this book is so heavily reliant on foreign observers and their opinions.Indeed, just as the Williamite-Jacobite war in the aftermath of 1688 was one aspect of the wider 9 Years' War, the final episode was the Hanoverian-Jacobite war of 1745 which was a British dimension to the wider War of the Austrian Succession of 1740-1748. Charles II's reign of often stereotyped as a national party, but in fact we see here that it was a turbulent time. Since dynastic, diplomatic and economic decisions were invariably inflected by confessional choices, ‘get that wrong, and the nation would literally go to the Devil’.