Some time ago, I needed to find our more about the English Civil Wars and, yes, ‘wars’ is correct as there were two of them, a long one, then a far shorter one when, for various reasons, negotiations between Charles I and his Parliament collapsed.
I eventually came across God’s Fury: A New History Of The Civil Wars by Oxford University historian Michael Braddick, and as far as I was concerned it was just what I was looking for.
I did not at the time leave a review here on this blog because it didn’t occur to me, and were I to write one now, I should at the very least have to read it again.
But I learned a great deal, not least that what we ‘know’ about the Civil Wars, the decision to execute the king and the republican Commonwealth (which became the Protectorate) is so broad-brush and overly generalised as to be almost misleading.
For one thing the Parliamentary side was certainly not united in any putative attempt to establish a republic.
Over time it became ever more divided and factionalised, and Charles’ execution was certainly not what many of them intended or wanted.
More broadly believing, as some do that at it heart was a popular desire of republicanism is so well wide of the mark as to be nonsense. But here, in a review of another book, is not the place to rehearse threadbare nature of what many ‘know’ about the English Civil Wars.
Braddick’s book concludes with the establishment of the Commonwealth, but I wanted to know more: I wanted to know about England and Scotland under the rule of Parliament and later the man who became a de facto military dictator, Oliver Cromwell, and how the restoration of the Stuart monarchy came about.
So I happened up on Cambridge historian Clare Jackson’s Devil-Land, England Under Siege 1588-1688, and very rewarding find it was, too.
But first, I do have two, though very mild, gripes, one of which cannot even be laid at Ms Jackson’s door: as always with any book, on the front and rear covers of a paperback and on the flyleaves of hardbacks, we are treated to the endorsements from other academics, reviewers and a range of – pretty much the usual suspects – of ‘names’. I have learned to ignore these endorsements wholly.
They are used by the publisher to serve just one purpose, to sell the sodding book. So on my paperback copy of Jackson’s book we have Andrew Marr insisting it – on the front cover – it is ‘amazing, extraordinary, perception-changing’, so a little confusing is his plug on the back cover, ‘one of those perception-changing books of British history which only comes along very few decades’. Not really, Andrew, old bean.
Equally and dutifully fizzing with the obligatory hype is a David Reynolds in the New Statesman who informs us that ‘ “This sceptered isle” is unlikely to look the same ever again’. You think, Davey.
Gerard DeGroot reviewing in The Times is a tad more sober: ‘Clare Jackson offers an impressive narrative of a time when the English seemed suddenly to have lost their minds.’ Well, sort of, Gerard. On the other hand my reading of Braddick’s account of who it all came about tends to make your ‘suddenly’ something of an exaggeration.
As for ‘losing their minds’, history shows us that a ‘nation’ losing its mind happens regularly and I don’t even have to give examples here, I suspect.
Then there’s the line by John Adamson in the Sunday Times: after describing the book as ‘a big historical advance. Epic in scale, briskly paced and elegantly written . . . Ours it turns out is a very un-insular “Island Story”. And its 17th century chapter will never quite look the same again’.
Are you sure, John, given that apart from her admirable method – of which a little more below – Jackson does not add any startling new facts and is distinctly short on analysis (which I do not mean as a criticism)?
NB Those who might like a refreshing and down-to-earth take on ‘the critics’ – here Marr, DeGroot and Adamson, but they are legion – and the faith we lay readers have in them and to whose judgments we are inclined to defer, Virginia Woolf had some good points to make in her Essay On Criticism.
As for my gripe, more a ‘gripette’ in truth, about Jackson herself, in the her introduction she goes to some lengths to justify entitling her book ‘Devil-Land’ etc. She begins:
In 1652, an anonymous Dutch pamphleteer advised that England could no longer be known as ‘Angel-land’, but instead be rechristened ‘Devil-land’. Reversing familiar Latin puns whereby the Anglorum (English) could be cherished as cherubic ‘angelorum’ (angels) Dutch denigration of ‘devil-land’ drew on xenophobic suspicions dating back to mediaeval times that Englishman had tails. Diabolic and dreadful, the English were fallen Angels: rebellious king-killers who had murdered their monarch, Charles I, three years earlier and whose republican leaders, most prominently Oliver Cromwell, had declared war against their Dutch commercial rivals. A Dutch print, also published in 1652, and entitled The Horrible Tail-Man, depicted Cromwell sporting a strong scaly tail that was made of gold coins and proved resistant to blows inflicted by his English Royalist, Scottish and Dutch enemies. Nor were denunciations of duyvel-landt, or devil-land, confined to foreing critics.This is interesting enough, perhaps, and naturally every book needs a title, but that title, Devil-Land, is oddly misleading for what is essentially a romp – as the man said elegantly written, certainly – through a century of English history, from 1588 with the execution of Mary Queen of Scots to the death of William III in 1702.
I also takes issue with Jackson line that England was ‘a failed state’. Yes, is was, but given the domestic troubles Spain, France, and the Dutch had, ‘failed’ is over-egging the pudding and elsewehre in Europe it certainly wasn’t all plain sailing.
Finally, Jackson’s description in the book title of England being ‘under siege’ is frankly very odd. By whom was the country ‘under siege’?
It is worth asking because apart from the claim made in the title, at no point in the subsequent 512 pages is there any mention of ‘a siege’ at all. Even if that phrase is intended metaphorically, it simply does not stand up.
Spain was contending problems hanging on to is possessions in the Netherlands as well as rebellions in parts of the country, The Dutch were not at all united what with the struggled between the House of Orange and their own avowed republicans, and France was continually plagued by confessional issues and had its own religious dissidents to deal with.
Having said that, I might come across as far too severe: my gripe refers solely to the book’s title and certainly not the book itself which was, gratifyingly, exactly what I had been looking for. What I especially liked was what I have called Jackson’s ‘method’. And impressive it is, too.
Rather than providing a standard editorial analysis, she has contemporary commentators provide insight in their comments and observations and letters to each other. These are not just English and Scots from, but outsiders like the ambassadors and envoys from France, Spain, Venice, the Vatican, Denmark/Norway, and the Holy Roman Emperor.
Jackson also provides us with that the various kings, queens, princes, Dutch republican leaders and so on wrote and said to each other, and it all adds up to a fascinating historical picture.
Yes, there are a great many names in her account, but I at least was not confused and going back a page or two to look up who so-and-so might be is not too much of a hassle.
I call the picture ‘fascinating’ given the ongoing double-dealing, treaty-making and treaty-breaking, forging of secret allaiance which went one in Western Europe by all protagonists.
In brief, you could do a lot worse than read Jackson’s book
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