The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England

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Capturing a century such as this in one breath is not for the faint-hearted. . . . An unapologetic narrative history that draws the focus from the Tudors and onto the fascinating Stuart age can only help to freshen the air of current historical discourse. In this sense, Healey’s book is blazing trails.” —Nadine Akkerman, History Today

I like narrative history and I like concrete examples to illustrate and amplify the broad story being told. This excellent history of seventeenth century England reads easily, with this from the introduction: But so are people who do not fit neatly into tales of a rising merchant class and revanchist feudalists. Women, shunted to the side in earlier histories of the era, play an important role in this one. We learn of how neatly monarchy recruited misogyny, with the Royalist propaganda issuing, Rush Limbaugh style, derisive lists of the names of imaginary women radicals, more frightening because so feminine: “Agnes Anabaptist, Kate Catabaptist . . . Penelope Punk, Merald Makebate.” The title of Healey’s book is itself taken from a woman writer, Margaret Cavendish, whose astonishing tale “The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World” was a piece of visionary science fiction that summed up the dreams and disasters of the century. Healey even reports on what might be a same-sex couple among the radicals: the preacher Thomas Webbe took one John Organ for his “man-wife.” Yet, in Cromwell’s time, certain moral intuitions and principles appeared that haven’t disappeared; things got said that could never be entirely unsaid. Government of the people resides in their own consent to be governed; representative bodies should be in some way representative; whatever rights kings have are neither divine nor absolute; and, not least, religious differences should be settled by uneasy truces, if not outright toleration. Another slightly Whigish characteristic of this book is that, in Jonathan Healey's telling, the story of seventeenth century England is, broadly speaking, a story of progress. We entered the century a land of witchcraft trials, frequent executions, and famine; we ended it with all of these in sharp decline, and a pattern of economic growth and specialisation that foreshadow the later industrial revolution. Bottoms and fartsIt wasn't made any easier by whoever was sitting on the throne either side of the republic. James I, a Protestant with a Catholic mother, had to deal with the aftermath of the Catholic terrorist Gunpowder Plot early in his reign which set the anti Catholic tone for years to come. However, Protestant Charles I was married to a Catholic and as Jonathan Healey writes, veered towards Catholic tradition, wanting parishioners to "stand for the Creed and the Gloria, kneel at the sacrament and bow at the name of Jesus." The restoration king - Charles II, for all his public upholding of Protestantism, was baptised a Catholic shortly before his death. His brother James II was already a Catholic but promised to "defend and support" the church of England. Protestants hoped the king and queen's tragic inability to produce a child who would live long enough to become monarch would mean the throne returning to a Protestant after his death. But such hope was confounded with the birth of James, who by rights should have become the next king of England and restoring a Catholic succession. It was something the fledgling Protestants could not stomach, hence the Glorious Revolution and the invitation to William and Mary to invade England from the Netherlands. James II ended up deposed and a law passed that never again will the king or queen be a Catholic. Despite that act still law today, Britain's leading Catholic, Cardinal Vincent Nichols was still happy to pay homage to Charles III at his coronation. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. He identifies the opportunities the wars brought to middling men who would not otherwise have troubled the history books — the ultimate example of course being the fenland farmer Oliver Cromwell, who rose to be head of state. As the soldier William Allen said when considering draft peace terms to be put to the king: “I suppose it is not unknown to you that we are most of us but young Statesmen .” There is one chapter (17) which felt out of place, perhaps because I have already read detailed histories of this period, 1665 and 1666, discussing the Dutch naval wars, the Plague and the Great Fire of London. As a result of the breakdown of state mechanisms such as censorship, religious courts and the episcopal hierarchies during the early 1640s, there was an explosion of dissent, of political and religious radicalism, which began to disseminate into mainstream political cultures and receive wider acceptance as the war went on, and as a political settlement failed to be reached. The 1640s was a period of turmoil and dramatic change which caused people to come up with innovative radical solutions to deal with the extraordinary events that faced them. Traditional institutions, systems, beliefs were all up for question and debate.

To cover such a long period I am sure that Healey has had to make many choices over what to emphasise and what to omit, but for me as a lay reader, the book gives a wonderful understanding of a complex period. There are many detours that can be taken into the various Protestant religious sects (Quakers, Socinians, Muggletonians, Seekers etc) and political groups (Levellers, Diggers etc), which are mentioned sufficiently, but which don’t lose the overall narrative drive of the book. I really enjoyed this and highly recommend it to the interested reader of popular history. The most interesting parts to me were the glimpses of the impact on every day people, and I do wish that we had learnt a bit more about what the government of the day was doing outside of the various plots to get either Protestants or Catholics in power - e.g how was healthcare provided, how was literacy going? Etc… but maybe that would have made it a ridiculously long book. Many other books I have read concentrate on only one of these events/periods – or often even only certain aspects/sub-periods of them – so where this book really works is in bring the whole period into one cohesive account. So this book is about raw politics, but it is also about the social change that conditioned those politics. It is narrative history, and for this it makes no apologies, but it’s also about how those two forces combined to create nearly a hundred years of turbulence, out of which arose a remarkable new world, one which – for better or worse – was blazing a path towards our own.

About the contributors

Throughout the blurred action, sharp profiles of personality do emerge. Ronald Hutton’s marvellous “ The Making of Oliver Cromwell” (Yale) sees the Revolution in convincingly personal terms, with the King and Cromwell as opposed in character as they were in political belief. Reading lives of both Charles and Cromwell, one can only recall Alice’s sound verdict on the Walrus and the Carpenter: that they were both very unpleasant characters. Charles was, the worst thing for an autocrat, both impulsive and inefficient, and incapable of seeing reality until it was literally at his throat. Cromwell was cruel, self-righteous, and bloodthirsty. But the story of this century is less well known than it should be. Myths have grown around key figures. People may know about the Gunpowder Plot and the Great Fire of London, but the Civil War is a half-remembered mystery to many. And yet the seventeenth century has never seemed more relevant. The British constitution is once again being bent and contorted, and there is a clash of ideologies reminiscent of when Roundhead fought Cavalier. It is tempting to use a book such as this to draw parallels with the England and United Kingdom of today, and indeed many of the other reviewers of Healey’s work have sought to do just that. For sure, there are some parallels- both were/are times of great national division and culture wars, times where the nature of the Island nations’ relationship with Europe were questioned. There is also a certain parallel in the questioning of the nature of monarchy today with that of the 1600’s, although it is fair to say that Charles III doesn’t run quite the same risk of losing his crown and his head as his ancestor Charles I (indeed, the ghost of Oliver Cromwell still haunts English republicanism to this day). The 17th century saw an explosion of new ways of disseminating information and spreading news and, also then as now, disinformation. The rise of print media in the form of pamphlets and journals was as revolutionary in the 17th century as the rise of social media has been in the 21st. Britain today finds itself in the grip of volatility and division, as it did in the C17th. But trying to draw more comparisons starts to become stretched and forced. The 17th century is, as the author himself concludes, unique and entir Healey presents early-seventeenth-century England as highly fractured. Changing socio-economic conditions, a rising gentry and middling sort that was becoming increasingly politicised, religious polarisation tied to Puritan moralising reform and anti-Puritans attached to traditional culture (one would be forgiven for seeing the parallel with contemporary culture wars), debates over the nature of sovereignty and an increasingly litigious society. Civil war was not inevitable, but as one leading historian argued, it was made possible by these conflicting views over politics, religion and society. Perhaps the most important evolution which the civil war helped to bring about was the end of absolutism and the divine right of kings. Even though the kings, and indeed Cromwell, dismissed Parliament several times, by the end of the century Parliament was in the ascendancy with power in the hands of the people and the monarch's wings clipped. Yet even today at the recent coronation we saw the bizarre spectacle of the Archbishop of Canterbury anointing Charles III as if he really believes, perhaps he does, that God has put Charles on the throne.

The seventeenth century began as the English suddenly found themselves ruled by a Scotsman, and ended in the shadow of an invasion by the Dutch. Under James I, the country suffered terrorism and witch panics. Under his son Charles, state and society collapsed into civil war, to be followed by an army coup and regicide. For a short time – for the only time in history – England was a republic. There were bitter struggles over faith and no boundaries to politics. In the coffee shops and alehouses of plague-ridden London, new ideas were forged that were angry, populist and almost impossible for monarchs to control.

Reviews

Healey vividly describes all the political and social upheavals of the 1600s: from the Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Plot of 1605, through the chaos of the civil wars, the execution of King Charles I, the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, the Restoration of the monarchy, to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. It was a century of revolutions which set the stage for the modern concept of representative government. Jonathan Healey’s The Blazing World makes a convincing argument that the turbulent era qualifies as truly ‘revolutionary,’ not simply because of its cascading political upheavals, but in terms of far-reaching changes within society. The author, a professor at Oxford University, delivers a clearsighted narrative of 17th-century England, deftly integrating original and insightful analysis of underlying social phenomena and expressing his enthusiasm in brisk, wryly humorous and occasionally bawdy prose.” —Stephen Brumwell, The Wall Street Journal

This book details many such changes in fortunes and makes clear that most modern aristocrats wouldn’t have managed to hang on to their titles over the last few centuries without the peace and stability of democracy. An irony if ever there was one.The Restoration, widely welcomed, saw a return towards monarchical absolutism, for which Louis XIV, the French Sun King, was the model and apogee. James II, who inherited the Crown after his brother Charles II’s death in 1685, had learnt nothing from the tumultuous age into which he had been born. His misjudgments climaxed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which ensured the Protestant Crown in Parliament under William and Mary, in whose reign scientific and economic innovations would pave a path to global ascendancy. Jonathan Healey’s The Blazing World is a new political history of 17th Century England, a time of unprecedented revolutionary upheaval in politics, society, religion and the economy. It was the era of the Stuarts, when monarchs were held accountable for the first time to the law and the people. A time of revolution - or, more correctly, revolution(s), when the world seemed perpetually ablaze. Religious extremism and movements such as Puritanism were bumping up against modernism and free thinking, superstition was clashing with science. It was a time of trade and social & economic development, and also a time of war as England became embroiled in continental conflicts. It was in the 17th century that the foundations of the Imperialism and Industrial Revolution of the centuries to come were laid. A sparkling account of a period that is crucial for any understanding of the history of the UK, Europe and the world beyond.” —Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads As the notable Marxist historian Christopher Hill asserted, this was period of great political and intellectual excitement, a period where the old world could be transformed. And these political and religious ideas would emerge from across the social spectrum, including those usually excluded from formal politics. Likewise, the revolution opened up new vistas of political participation. Mass petitioning, lobbying and popular demonstrations would become increasingly commonplace. I read Devil Land last year and thought it was excellent (I would have given it four stars out of five, the same as this book review) but didn't review it at the time as I was a bit occupied with other things (moving house). ↩︎