To Cromwell we come then. His influence arose from his successful military leadership of the "New Model" Army under Charles, new as in its national scope with central government funding (p. 196) and its disciplined professional soldiers. As in so many other factional disputes like enumerated above, officers and fighting men often had different political and religious viewpoints, which may explain why no military coup was attempted through the revolutionary century. In fact when Charles finally surrendered it was "Not to Parliament [and its New Model Army]. . . but to the [Scottish] Covenanters." (p. 208). The path from surrender to execution (p. 256) was political not military, as was the selection of Cromwell as leader: "The new regime had toppled the monarchy and established the power of the Commons, but they had done so without rooting the new government in actual popular consent." (p. 258). Cromwell was the executive of the government, and "there was no doubt that Cromwell was the leading political figure of the nation" (p. 280) but he still ruled through Parliament and other councils of state. In his own words, "I am ready to serve not as a King, but as a Constable" (p. 306), to which Healey offers the assessment that "one of the great tragedies of Cromwell was that he prevented the Republic being so much more. He was, at heart, a conservative East Anglian landowner." (p. 310) The Empress reconnects with the spirits and asks if one of them can come serve as a scribe to help with her Cabbala. They agree to send a “plain and rational” woman writer, the Duchess of Newcastle—or Margaret Cavendish, who advises the Empress to write her Cabbala as a fictional allegory. The two women become dear Platonic friends, and their souls frequently visit one another’s worlds. On a visit to the Blazing World, the Duchess admits that she wishes she could conquer a world for herself—but the spirits convince her that it’s better to rule a fictional “celestial world” than try to conquer a real one. Later, the Empress visits the Duchess’s world, where they visit a London theater, observe the English monarchy up close, and meet the Duchess Cavendish’s incredibly “wise, honest, witty, complaisant and noble” husband, the Duke of Newcastle, who has lost most of his vast estate in the English Civil War. The Duchess asks for the Empress’s help convincing Fortune to stop disfavoring her husband. Honesty and Prudence speak on the Duke’s behalf, but neither of them manages to convince Fortune, so the Duchess resolves to learn to accept Fortune’s folly. After the trial, the Empress notes that she has created divisions in the Blazing World by introducing a new religion and turning the different groups against one another. She resolves to return to the old system: “one sovereign, one religion, one law, and one language.”

It provides a narrative based history which proceeds at pace through the period from the ascension of King James I (of England) to the Proclamation of William and Mary as King and Queen, taking in all of the major events of the era (from Gunpowder plot, to Charles I ascension, the Civil Wars, the King’s execution, the Republic and the Restoration and the brief reign of James II culminating in the Glorious Revolution). The situation shifted when, in February, 1645, Parliament consolidated the New Model Army, eventually under the double command of the aristocratic Thomas Fairfax, about whom, one woman friend admitted, “there are various opinions about his intellect,” and the grim country Protestant Oliver Cromwell, about whose firm intellect opinions varied not. Ideologically committed, like Napoleon’s armies a century later, and far better disciplined than its Royalist counterparts, at least during battle (they tended to save their atrocities for the after-victory party), the New Model Army was a formidable and modern force. Healey, emphasizing throughout how fluid and unpredictable class lines were, makes it clear that the caste lines of manners were more marked. Though Cromwell was suspicious of the egalitarian democrats within his coalition—the so-called Levellers—he still declared, “I had rather have a plain russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a gentleman.” This is a wonderful book, exhaustively researched, vigorously argued and teeming with the furious joy of seventeenth-century life' The TimesHowever, constitutional niceties clearly weren't the primary motivator for all participants in the Civil War: Cromwell, for example, described constitutions as mere 'dross and dung' in comparison with Christ. The author speculates that post-Civil War England might have taken a different direction under the stewardship of a more constitutionally minded leader such as John Lambert, who he describes as a 'constitutional genius' (an interesting judgment on someone who came up with a constitution which failed). Things can only get better If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. 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.” A zesty and gripping account of England’s ‘century of revolution.’” —Edward Vallance, Literary Review The political world we live in today, with regular Parliaments and elections, ideologically defined parties, a vibrant press and mass campaigns [centered] on large protests and petitions, was born in the seventeenth century,” asserts Healey. “For this, as well as so much else, the story told here remains fascinating and vital to this day.”

Unfortunately, the Stuart kings Charles II and James II’s style of management was drifting towards autocracy, reopening old wounds — now fault lines between the new Whig and Tory parties. Healey recounts the Popish Plot, Exclusion Crisis, Monmouth Rebellion and Glorious Revolution with gusto, revealing the crucial inheritance of the unfinished business of the 1649 revolution for events in 1688 — a view not always fashionable among historians.

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Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? Healy] 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.... Wryly humorous and occasionally bawdy”— The Wall Street Journal What happened in the English Revolution, or civil wars, took an exhaustingly long time to unfold, and its subplots were as numerous as the bits of the Shakespeare history play the wise director cuts. Where the French Revolution proceeds in neat, systematic French parcels—Revolution, Terror, Directorate, Empire, etc.—the English one is a mess, exhausting to untangle and not always edifying once you have done so. There’s a Short Parliament, a Long Parliament, and a Rump Parliament to distinguish, and, just as one begins to make sense of the English squabbles, the dour Scots intervene to further muddy the story. The 1600's gave us so much else entertainingly and so interestingly written about by John Healey in The Blazing World. I was keen to read about the Levellers, a group so ahead of its time and its aspirations still in the 21st century a pipe dream in a country still defined by its class system and elite with the royals at the top. One of the many virtues of Jonathan Healey’s exciting new history of England during its most revolutionary period is the skilful way in which he thoroughly dissects the often obscure points of contention while never losing sight of the need to keep the narrative flowing. A rich and compelling account of one of the most fascinating and turbulent periods in all our history.” —Simon Griffith, Mail on Sunday

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 farts An admirably even-handed account. . . . For those new to the subject, Healey’s retelling is exemplary.” —Jerry Brotton, Financial Times 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 At the beginning of The Blazing World, a lustful merchant kidnaps the young Lady, hoping to make her marry him. As punishment, the gods blow the merchant’s ship toward the North Pole, where the Lady’s world meets “another Pole of another world.” The merchant and his crew freeze to death, but the Lady survives. She finds herself in this other world— the Blazing World—which is full of curious hybrid creatures who have the bodies of animals but walk, talk, and act like human beings. The bear-men, who live near the Blazing World’s icy North Pole, find the merchant’s ship and rescue the Lady. She is as unusual to the Blazing World’s inhabitants as they are to her, so they bring her to their Emperor, who lives in a palace in the gold-and-jewel-studded city of Paradise. The Emperor believes the Lady to be a goddess, and he graciously marries her and gives her “absolute power to rule and govern all that World as she please[s].”

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. The book is split into twenty chapters and for my own reference I have made well over a hundred notes. 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.

By David Cay Johnston

A continuous thread runs from the accession of England’s first Stuart king, James I, in 1603, to the dynasty’s fall in the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688-89. Yet historians often balk at telling the tumultuous, ideologically charged story in one go. Often it is divided into three chunks. First come increasing resistance to absolutism and religious intolerance, civil war, the parliamentary army’s victory, the execution of Charles I, and the establishment of the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell. Next, the monarchy’s restoration under Charles II; finally, the disastrous reign of James II and invitation to William of Orange to take his place and establish a proto-constitutional monarchy.