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| | From:  JackPoynter (Original Message) | Sent: 4/28/2008 5:38 PM |
I'm moving the relevant bits from my opening post to this thread, in keeping with management's desire to have threads appear in the relevant boad with a relevant title. I said: I'm interested in the time period 1529 or so to 1642 or so, those being the years during which preconditions and precipitants of the English Civil War took place; the English Civil War has fallout from those days until this. I wish to learn as much as I can about why the English Civil War was fought; I'm interested in what actually happened during the war only as far as it goes to show the bitterness of the war. This is what I think so far; I am not wedded to these ideas, and if better ones present themselves I will be most pleased: - Henry VIII wanted to establish himself as a monarch on the continental plan typified by the Louis'.
- To that end, he institutued the English Reformation as a land grab to enrich himself, and used the money to begin create a new nobility beholden only to himself, as opposed to the great feudal nobles of the English south and west.
- Most of the money was frittered away on a continental war in France, leaving Henry's plans in regard to the nobles only partly implemented, thereby setting up unresolved and ongoing friction between the new and old sets of nobles.
- It also left Henry's heirs, including Elizabeth I, with a badly divided court. Elizabeth I used these divisions to play off one set against the other and keep herself in power, further exacerbating the differences.
- (Points one - four are due to Kevin Phillips' The Cousins' Wars.)
- Dutch economic and cultural encroachment in East Anglia further deepened differences between East Anglia and the southwest of England. Calvinist religious ideas took deep hold in East Anglia due to Dutch influence, and helped strengthen the Puritan movement.
- (Point six is more or less my own invention; there are some circumstancial proofs of this.)
- Under Charles I and Bishop Laud, the persecution of the Puritans gave rise to the Great Migration to New England, and the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (as opposed to the Separatist / Brownist movement which went over on the Mayflower, and was a separate venture entirely.)
- By 1642, the divisions between Royalists and Parliament had come to a head, resulting in the English Revolution, the return of many Puritans to England to fight, the victory of Cromwell and Parliament, the hanging of Laud and the beheading of Charles I, and a repressive military dictatorship in England.
Here are the books I've read on the subject: - The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642, Lawrence Stone
- The Cousins' Wars, Kevin Phillips
- Albion's Seed, David Hackett Fischer
- By the Sword Divided: Eyewitness Accounts of the English Civil War, ed. John Adair
- Various overviews and standard histories, including The Outline of History, H.G. Wells.
An idea of which threads to investigate on this forum would be appreciated. Recommendations of other books I might look at would be appreciated. Comments from those familiar with the period would be appreciated. Actually, questions and comments from any of you about any of this would be appreciated. MarkGB5 said: That pretty much sums it up perfectly, although the East Anglia theory is new to me. I live a few miles from the site of one of the lesser battles of the English Civil War, Hopton Heath 1643. The Royalists won, but their commander, the Earl of Northampton was killed and his body taken by the defeated Parliamentarians as they retreated. The bitterness continued after the battle when the Parliamentarians refused to hand over the Earl's body until the Royalists returned their captured cannon. No deal was made, so the Parliamentarians carried the Earl's body with them for nearly three months before it was buried in a vault in All Saints Church, Derby. Then I said: With regard to East Anglia, Fischer in Albion's Seed says that the bulk of the migration from East Anglia to Massachusetts Bay took place from towns within a 60 mile radius of Haverhill. (p31). This area includes much of the area that in 1643 was defined as the Eastern Association - Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and Lincolnshire, plus parts of Bedfordshire and Kent. Many towns along the channel show 16th-17th century Dutch influence in architecture. (ref a bazillion [there's a scholarly term for you!  ] websites describing these town.) In the period pictures of the Puritans and Pilgrims in America, their dress is Dutch Dress. The East Anglians were referred to as engels (pronounced yongels) by the southern and western English during the 17th century; this Dutch term was a derisive name given by the west of England. It is one of the ways in which the term Yankee might have been derived. Like many derisive terms, it was taken over by the derided and made their own. This is again due to Albion's Seed. It is worth noting, I think, that Edward Pollard refers to the Yankees of New England as "regicides", writing between 1861-1866 in The Southern History of the War. Pollard was the editor of the Ricmond Examiner during the American Civil War, and wrote the History from dispatches in essentially real time. When he railed against New England, his words were coming from the heart, and directly from the memory and mood of the time. That's what I've got on Dutch influence helping to precipitate the English Revolution. |
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ref MarkGB5: "The bitterness continued after the battle when the Parliamentarians refused to hand over the Earl's body until the Royalists returned their captured cannon. No deal was made, so the Parliamentarians carried the Earl's body with them for nearly three months before it was buried in a vault in All Saints Church, Derby" With regard to the battle of Hopton Heath: From By the Sword Divided, John Adair, 1983, 1998. Adair says Northampton was unhorsed and surrounded. After killing a colonel and several others with his sword, he lost his helmet due to a musket butt stroke. When summoned to surrender, Adair quotes Northampton as saying, (p144,) "I scorn to take quarter from such base rogues and rebels as you are." Whereupon he was killed by a blow from a halberd. Northampton's son met Brereton, the leader of the Parliametiary forces in that fight, in a narrow lane in London, after the war. N's son immediately drew on Brereton and challenged him. Again, p144, "Brereton refused to fight, but before he made his somewhat undignified retreat he received several vicious slashes on his head and shoulders." The anger and contempt of one side for the other continued in the New World, as Puritans isolated themselves in New England, and Royalists were invited to form "a new aristocratic society" in Virginia, by royal governor William Berkeley. The long distances between the two cultures allowed them to intensify their very different cultures long after Royalists and Parliamentarians had settled their differences in England. Albion's Seed, by David Hackett Fischer, is a study of the four seminal migrations to North America (Puritans, Royalists, Quakers, and Scots-Irish,) in which he identifies the differences and persistence of those differences, albeit in changed form, over long periods of time, down into our present day. Both Fischer (Albion's Seed) and Phillips (The Cousins' Wars) make reference to continuing themes in Anglo-American history. And this enmity, varying in intensity over time, has always existed in the American political system, beginning with the compromises necessary in the American Constitution, and continuing with the ongoing battles between liberals (the heirs of Quaker-Puritan thought) and conservatives (the heirs of Royalist-Scots-Irish thought.) Hence my need to understand the causes of the English Revolution. Wars within the Anglo-American community have occurred three times: the English Revolution, the American War of Indendence, and the American Civil War. To understand these wars, one must understand their causes. JP |
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Jack, in your list of wars within the Anglo-American community, you omitted the War of 1812. Was that deliberate? or an oversight? I don't know much about that period, but I do know that Anglo-Canadian/British forces fought U.S. (and French?) forces. In school (in Ontario), we were taught a number of stories about that war -- Laura Secord, Sir Isaac Brock (both famous names in Canada) and the burning of the White House in Washington. Your comments about how the English Civil War affected so many aspects of society down through the years are fascinating. Right now I'm expanding my horizons a little by reading more about the era before the Tudors (the Wars of the Roses period); maybe I should be looking forward in time to the Stuarts too! Linda Ottawa |
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Linda, I left out the War of 1812 because I usually seem to follow the outline in Phillips' The Cousins' Wars, especially when I'm writing in a hurry, as I was when I wrote that post. But, in fact, there are a lot of interesting things about the War of 1812, apart from the fighting itself. For one thing, it pointed up the immense differences between New England and the rest of the USA. New England really didn't like the War of 1812; they thought it was unnecessary and expensive, and interfered with trade. In fact, New England's leaders disliked it so much that, in the Hartford Convention, (1814,) they threatened to secede and form their own country. The only reason that movement didn't go forward was because of Jackson's victory at the Battle of New Orleans. Jackson himself said that if he had been in Hartford, he would have hung the lot of them. Another of the things resulting from the War of 1812 was the demise of the Federalists. They were severely discredited by their stance against the War of 1812, and never recovered. The Republican party was organized in the stead of the Federalist party. JP |
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I've just gotten back into the War of 1812 book I hurled to the side when my new shipment of Tudor books came in from Amazon LOL & I am just up to the Hartford Convention. Really, it seems that the majority of the delegates to that agreed to participate so that they could discourage the secession talk amongst the minority element. The British blockade was destroying the New England's seafaring-based economy by late 1814, ironic in that the British had the most sympathy for that region of the "colonies", another reason it targeted Washington & Baltimore for invasion rather than Boston or New York this time around. The burning of Washington actually gave the British bad European press, as one just did not run amuck wantonly destroying capital cities, wartime or not, & the excuse of retaliation for American forces' destruction of York (the capital of Upper Canada AKA Toronto) had worn thin by then, considering vengeance had been exacted all along the Niagara Frontier for that incident, including the burning of Buffalo. My that was a run-on sentence LOL Interesting to see Puritans of all groups characterized as "liberals"; I would've thought them to be ranked amongst the most conservative groups of all despite their defiance of the Anglican Church. England's religious dissidents did toddle off to the Low Countries for succor, but there was also the Dutch colony of New Netherland (AKA New York) on New England's doorstep, so to speak, both of which had to have had a profound influence on the Puritans. Also, there was the War of Spanish Succession (methinks, them Hapsburgs had so many wars it's kinda tough to keep track LOL if I got it wrong do let me know) where Elizabeth sent aide to the Dutch (all roads lead to the Tudors, see? ), principally for economic reasons, though I'm sure tweaking Philip's beard had a lil something to do with it. The Hapsburg-controlled Low Countries were an integral part of the English wool trade & we couldn't have Philip mucking that up with his nonsense. Alas, it seems I have answered none of Jack's original queries whilst going off on tangents & raising more LOL |
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And now Linda is going to make me sing:  If you love Laura Secord chocolatesThen you'll love Laura Secord puddings! LOL Ad jingle blast from childhood as I do happen to be on the Niagara Frontier my good self. Once I even got a comic book from Fort Niagara extolling Laura Secord's long walk to warn the British that the Americans were coming. At least Paul Revere got a horse LOL She got good reviews in the book I'm reading |
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For the love of humanity, don't make Greeny sing ROFL TYVM for reading, Jack It's a huge pet peeve of mine when members lunge for the General board & ignore the rest. That may be OK in a social circle, but it's maddening when you're trying to find a discussion in a certain time period, & it's not there to be found because it got buried in General. We like tidy & organized  Also lovely to have someone aboard with a Stuart interest as they're usually sadly neglected  As for your points, I agree that Henry VIII was eager to be a major player in continental politics, as evidenced by his immediate jump into the European fray of the moment when Ferdinand of Aragon snapped his fingers at his new son-in-law & then left the English archers stranded in Navarre. He was pleased as punch to acquire his "Fidei Defensor" title from the papacy, since Ferdinand & Isabella were dubbed "the most Catholic kings" for driving out the Moors. Henry did spend lavishly, probably a direct result of Henry VIIs notorious stinginess leaving him a huge treasury, much of which paid for his initial forays into continental politics as he didn't want to tarnish his golden-boy king image by going cap in hand to Parliament begging for a subsidy to fight foreign wars. I'm not sure if he was clever enough to think of the wealth involved in dissolution until Cromwell whispered it to him Selling off monastic lands was to make sure they never got back into the hands of the Church, & at that point Henry lived to thwart the papacy. I've read he originally had decent intentions of establishing universities in England to rival those on the Continent & make himself the centerpiece of the "New Learning", but the sheer volume coming into Augmentations must've activated his greed gene instead; it was a perfect way to "augment" the royal treasury without levying new taxes & ticking off the populace. Henry wasn't a "reformer" by any means, he just wanted a bloody divorce ROFL It was a splendid side effect to breaking with Rome, but I don't think it was even up there in his main reasons for doing so at the start, though it did have the effect of enriching the grateful nobility & even some of the middle class. It certainly in the end didn't turn out to be enough to maintain Boulogne as a springboard for his heirs. Elizabeth's upbringing was such that she grew up to trust no one & probably would've been just as manipulative & duplicitous as she was for no other reason than that. It was unheard of in those days for a lone woman to rule successully & well, so she constantly had to "prove" herself. Religion was the biggest creator of trouble in her reign (MQOS, for one), could you elaborate on this author's take of other differences & frictions that got exacerbated? The Dutch were a necessary evil for England's wool economy to prosper, & they certainly had a lot of other trade irons in the fire espeially in northern Europe (that whole tulip futures thing is amazing) & basically controlled the Hanseatic League. Their presence in England, Denmark, Sweden, etc., can be pinned on the papacy, as the mood of religious intolerance, especially in Hapsburg-controlled lands, drove many "reformers" from the Low Countries to make their fortunes elsewhere in Europe. Apparently they didn't realize that by expelling the "heretics" from their lands, said heretics would just take their doctrinal theses elsewhere & spread the heretical word even further abroad. (Don't forget, some of them were English a generation or so back to start with, as many fled south when Mary took the throne to escape her mini-inquistion.) by the mid-1600s Spain was no longer such a hotshot superpower, & all because it had no tolerance for dissidents who had no choice but to take their economic ideas elsewhere if they were to prosper. Charles I, in marrying the Catholic Henrietta Maria & with his own Catholic sympathies, was rather ripe for exploitation by the narrow-minded likes of Laud (& let's not forget either the legacy of what a whacko....another nice historical term ROFL....James I could be where religion & witchcraft were concerned ). Charles's character was a bit vacillating & indecisive, & he was another example of an unfortunate, weak king with a bossy French wife poking him & muttering, "Est vous un homme ou une souris, mon cher?" We could get into a whole thread on THAT marriage alone  Same thing the rest of Europe did, stuff your freedom of religion in your sack & get lost, or else. Mary's lucky she died when she did, as she would've more than likely been deposed for it; Henry VIII was a strong enough monarch to get away with it; Charles wasn't. Laud tried just what Henry tried to stop....the reclamation of Church lands, which endeared him not to the populace. Charles's initial mistake was what Henry wouldn't do in the early days of his reign....go to Parliament for money to fight a foreign war on behalf of his sister Elizabeth, the "Winter Queen", & her deposed husband, Frederick. His blind support of Buckingham's vain pursuit of military glory wasn't any help in getting Parliamentary assistance, either. Buckingham if you recall wanted to go to France & take out some Huguenots. Gotta love religious persecution Manipulating Parliament's numbers was a transparent ploy at best. Tantruming & dissolving Parliament was never Charles's finest hour, nor was pawning the crown jewels out of spite or extorting money from his subjects. He used Laud & his ilks to preach of his "divine right" to get....whatever he wanted. Interestingly, Parliament's initial answer to all this, the Petition of Right, reads like a handbook for the American Revolution, as evidenced by its main points. Charles agreed & then basically tried to weasel out of it....never inspiring to have the king go back on his word of honor. Religion enters in belatedly again with the onset of the Bishops' Wars, a result of Laud's attempt to cram English liturgy down the kirk's throat & another example of Charles promising one thing while doing another. I've always said the majority of wars would never have been fought were it not for organized religion There's always some passel of fanatics trundling about a huge tinder box looking for a fuse to ignite. While that played into the English Civil Wars, I think it took a back seat to Charles's refusal to compromise & his insistence that he could jolly well do as he pleased. |
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Well, OK! Response is what I asked for, response is what I got. Now I have to read all of it and figure out what I want to say about it. Greensleeves said "Really, it seems that the majority of the delegates to that agreed to participate so that they could discourage the secession talk amongst the minority element." That's not a perspective I'd heard before. What makes you say that? And what book are you reading? With regard to Puritans being labelled as liberals: In their time they were a very progressive group. The conservatives were the Royalists, who were advocating a return to monarchial dominance in opposition to the growing power of Parliament. Phillips makes the point, though, that both sides were harking back to non-existent pasts, each advocating returns to old values. The idea that modern American liberals are the cultural descendants of the Quakers and Puritans is due to Fischer in Albion's Seed. In his view (and mine) liberals descend from a theocratic view of government, in which all liberties are granted in relief of prior restraint; if we don't explicitly say you have a right, it doesn't exist sort of thing. And the Puritans and Quakers in America were the cultures which were religion centered. The Quakers in their original form were very radical in their antinomianism. Conservatives, on the other hand, descend from the Royalists, who were hierarchial, caste-oriented, and law-based; and from the Scots-Irish, who were natural law based, a Lex Talionis view of things, in which all liberties were natural unless the law said they didn't exist. To give you an example, in America liberals are for gun-control; they believe that the State should protect you 24-by-7, and therefore the state should be the only armed body. Conservatives believe that 24-by-7 protection is basically impossible, and that any government capable of giving you constant protection is capapble of taking away everything you have. Those ideas, no matter what you think of the merits of the two positions, are straight out of the 17th and 18th century positions of those cultures. Here's another: anti-war sentiment, or pacifism, is a Quaker invention, and is a part of the liberal creed. The American south, where the Royalists and the the majority of the Scots-Irish settled, has never had a problem with fighting wars; it's where the majority of American soldiers come from. In New England, becoming a soldier is something one does as a necessary chore. In the south, everyone joins the military, statistically speaking. And another, this one due to Albion's Seed again: A review of court records over long periods of time shows that crime against property is relatively higher in the North than in the South, and crimes against persons is relatively higher in the South than in the North. In the South, we take crimes against property personally; in the North, it's more of a game. This last, by the way, is not something I would have believed before I came to a Northern city and started working in retail. I'm a son of the South, and the things thieves do in the cities here is just unbelievable to me. As James Webb says in his book Born Fighting, "insult a Bostonian and he'll take you to court; insult a mountain boy and he'll kill you." Kill is an exaggeration, but he will certainly handle the matter personally rather than legally. And that's a defining difference between the cultural descendants of those cultures. I don't believe this sort of analysis will fly in England. The Scots-Irish, for instance, were never a power in England proper. They were driven out of the border area between England and Scotland after 1707, when the border was closed due to the union of Scotland and England; they went first to Northern Ireland, and then many of them immigrated to the American backcountry, 1717 to 1775. And in England, the peerage is the conservative group, and they, I think, would more closely correspond to the Royalists, I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong. Things went the way they did in America because they could; with all the great geographic separation between the founding cultures, they could intensify and retain many of their cultural characteristics because the pressure for change was lower. In England, with everyone living cheek-by-jowl, the political pressures to get along would have been much higher. There's lots of other discussion points in the various posts, but I'm out of time; it's almost two a.m. now. ForeverAmber, I'm not ignoring your post, I'm just out of gas. JP |
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FAs long-winded like that Jack, the book is 1812: The War That Forged a Nation by Walter R. Borneman. I'm too lazy to go thumb thru it atm, but the gist of what he was saying is that the gentleman who chaired the convention is documented as only agreeing to attend so that he could cool down the secesh hotheads, & that there was really only a few delegates who were determined to secede from the Union, most hoped to prevent it. There was also a delegation from New York there as well, so it wasn't just New England states who were anti-war; New York was quite the battleground in the earlier days when invading & claiming Canada was the be-all & end-all. I haven't managed to get any further in it as tis my "PT book" so that's where it gets read (couldn't do that with a novel but a history book you know how it turns out). I was thrilled to stumble across this book as there seems to be a dearth of material on it, even here on the Niagara Frontier, & I've always been interested in a conflict that took place practically in my backyard. |
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Well, it wasn't just a few hotheads, though you're right that secession was squashed as unnecessary and ill-considered in time of war. One of the prime movers was Timothy Pickering, secretary of state from 1795 until 1800, and later senator from Massachusetts. Also there is correspondence between John Adams and Benjamin Waterhouse talking about the issue, and pointing up the desire of New England to control the country. Here's excerpts from the relevant letters between Adams and Waterhouse, followed by excerpts from a letter by Pickering. The Annals of America, Vol. 4, 1797-1820, pp288-289: On a Northern Confederation, Benjamin Waterhouse to John Adams, 8 July 1811, (Source: Statesman and Friend, Correspondence of John Adams with Benjamin Waterhouse 1784-1822, Washington C. Ford, ed. Boston, 1927, pp 58-66) excerpts: Benjamin Waterhouse to John Adams …The British Party, or Tories, have long contemplated a separation of the states and a formation on a Northern confederacy, the end and aim of which was to be opposition to France and to the Southern states, and a sort of alliance with England. Old England was to hold one end of the golden chain of commerce and New England the other, while the devil and Bonaparte were to take our Southern brethren. Fisher Ames gave a toast in a certain assemblage several years ago indicating Hamilton as the military leader of this kingdom of the North. His sentiment was to this effect: "Alex'r H____ may we not speedily want his great military and political talents, but when we do, may we have them." When Burr shot Hamilton, it was not Brutus killing Caesar in the Senate house; but it was killing him before he crossed the Rubicon�?/BLOCKQUOTE> Two years ago, when they brought forth their famous resolutions in the legislature, and when Gore talked so boldly of warring with France, Hamilton's death was again a melancholy subject of deep lamentation among the leaders of the party, and the separation of the states and a Northern confederation was again alluded to, in private circles and "assemblages." They then began again to "speak daggers"; and it was observed that they brought forward and caressed General Brooks of this neighborhood, and toasted him at a dinner they have in honor of the Spanish Patriots; but they found that the general had grown old very fast and was spiritless, so that we have heard no more of him at their solemn feasts�?/BLOCKQUOTE> …If these things be truths, ought they not be told to the people, instead of amusing them with the Berlin and Milan decrees? Ought not the people of this state to be told that their chief justice [Theophilus Parsons] is in league against their liberties, against their constitution? And ought they not be told that a war with England is the only remedy against the evil, and against a greater one, a war among ourselves?�?/BLOCKQUOTE> Adams to Waterhouse, in reply <DIR> …If there ever was a "Hamiltonian Conspiracy," as you call it, and as you seem to suppose, I have reason to think its object was not "a Northern Confederation." Hamilton's ambition was too large for so small an aim. He aimed at commanding the whole Union, and he did not like to be shackled even with an alliance with Great Britain. I know that Pickering was disappointed in not finding Hamilton zealous for an alliance with England when we were at swords' points with France, and I have information which I believe, but could not legally prove, perhaps, that Pickering was mortified to find that neither Hamilton nor King would adopt the plan that he carried from Boston on his way to Congress after he was first chosen into the Senate, of a division of the states and a Northern Confederacy. No! Hamilton had wider views! If he could have made a tool of Adams as he did of Washington, he hoped to erect such a government as he pleased over the whole Union and enter into alliance with France or England as would suit his convenience�?/BLOCKQUOTE></DIR> //////////////////////////////////////////////////////// The Annals of America, Vol. 4, 1797-1820, pp. 189-191: On Northern Secession, Timothy Pickering to Rufus King, 4 March 1804, (Source: Documents Relating to New England Federalism, 1800-1815, Henry Adams, ed., Boston 1905, pp. 351-353): [From the comment:…Since these Federalists felt themselves already doomed to minority status by the Louisiana Purchase, which threatened them with an insuperable coalition of the South and West, they now became desperate…they seriously considered bringing about the secession of at least New England, and perhaps New York, as well…] In the excerpts that follow, Pickering is talking about Thomas Jefferson, then president. Pickering had been secretary of state from 1795 until 1800, when he was dismissed for his constant intrigues attempting to bring about war with France. When he wrote this letter, he had been returned to Washington as Senator from Massachusetts. - jp] [First he goes on at some length about his disgust with Jefferson, a "cowardly wretch." - jp] …I am therefore ready to say, "Come out from among them, and be ye separate."�?/BLOCKQUOTE> The Federalists here, in general, anxiously desire the election of Mr. Burr to the chair of New York…And, if a separation should be deemed proper, the five New England States, New York, and New Jersey would naturally be united. Among those seven states, there is a sufficient congeniality of character to authorize the expectation of practicable harmony and a permanent union, [with] New York the center. Without a separation, can those states ever rid themselves of Negro presidents and Negro congresses, and regain their just weight in the political balance? [Pickering is, of course, referring to the three-fifths rule, under which each slave counted as three-fifths of a person toward calculation of representation in the House of Representatives. He would have each slave count as no person at all in the representation equation. - jp] At this moment the slaves of the Middle and Southern states have fifteen representatives in Congress, and they will appoint that number of electors of the next president and vice-president; and the number of slaves is continually increasing. You notice evil. But will the slave states ever renounce the advantage? As population is in fact no rule of taxation, the Negro representations should be given up. If refused, it would be a strong ground for separation, though perhaps an earlier occasion may present to declare it�?/BLOCKQUOTE> [Pickering expects the states of the Louisiana Purchase to render New England a backwater. - jp] …Whenever the Western states detach themselves, they will take Louisiana with them. In thirty years, the white population on the Western waters will equal that of the thirteen states when they declared themselves independent of Great Britain�?/P> |
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Here's a link to the Hartford Convention document: |
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Ref msg 7. FA, You said "Henry wasn't a "reformer" by any means, he just wanted a bloody divorce ROFL It was a splendid side effect to breaking with Rome, but I don't think it was even up there in his main reasons for doing so at the start, though it did have the effect of enriching the grateful nobility & even some of the middle class. It certainly in the end didn't turn out to be enough to maintain Boulogne as a springboard for his heirs" As a reason for tearing England apart, his divorce strikes me as romantic and unconvincing. I don't trust romantic reasons, I do trust in the propensity of political leaders to make political decisions. Further, one view of history is that leaders don't cause things to happen all by themselves, they implement cultural groundswells: they can't make great cultural changes unless the cultures involved are willing and eager to go along. We can debate that if you wish, I think I can come up with plenty of examples. One aspect of that is my view that countries get the leaders they deserve, rather than the leaders they need. You said, " could you elaborate on this author's take of other differences & frictions that got exacerbated" Sure, but look how long it took me to get back to you on just this much. You said, "by the mid-1600s Spain was no longer such a hotshot superpower, & all because it had no tolerance for dissidents who had no choice but to take their economic ideas elsewhere if they were to prosper." That's not a view that I've ever heard, not that I know everything, nor even scarcely anything. Could you please explain why you think that? You said, "Henry VIII was a strong enough monarch to get away with it; Charles wasn't. Laud tried just what Henry tried to stop....the reclamation of Church lands, which endeared him not to the populace." Charles stood at the end of a long road of English fragmentation begun by Henry, and continued by Elizabeth, and worsened by Mary. He was trying to bring back a non-existent English past, when England was ruled by monarchs whose word was law. By the time Charles came along, the rise of the mercantile classes and the new nobility, and the disgust of the Calvinist clergy with the Anglican clergy (uneducated, absent, not religious) had pretty much doomed his efforts, strong-minded or not. Laud was also harking back to a non-existent past, where all the English shared the same true faith, and the religious ordered ruled over all. Their opposition, on the other hand, were also harking back to a non-existent past, in which the lawyers said what was legal and what was not, and the rights of parliament were paramount. This last is due to Lawrence Stone (The Causes of the English Revolution,) and also to Kevin Phillips (The Cousins' Wars.) This harking back to a non-existent golden age as a cause of conflict is a common thread in all the great Anglo-American wars. In fact, most result when a rising standard of living is beign thwarted by government regulation of one sort or another (Stone's j-curve, if you're familiar.) With regard to the English Revolution, Charles and Laud were threatening the advances made by the new nobility and the mercantile classes. This is what gave energy to the war, and put it out of the realm of the theoretical and romantic and into the realm of the practical. Stone divides the causes of revolution into three parts: preconditions, precipitants and triggers. The precondition for the English Revolution were two sides, which disliked each other for practical reasons, and in close proximity. The two sides were created by Henry, and further divided by Elizabeth and Mary. The precipitants were all those things which you mention except the dissolving of Parliament, which was the trigger. At that point, the building forces were such that almost anything could have been the trigger. You said, "I've always said the majority of wars would never have been fought were it not for organized religion " I don't believe that. I believe that religious issues have many times provided the excuse for wars; but their underlying causes were much more powerful. JP |
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If I may tiptoe into FA & Jack's discussion, I'd like to put in my 2 pennies worth. I'm curious as to what exactly you mean by your first point, using the term 'a monarch on the continental plan typified by the Louis'.'. Are you refering to the 2 Louis' of France that had ruled in the 15th century? I don't know much about Louis XI except that he was always at war with Charles the Bold of Burgundy and he interfered in the War of the Roses by getting Margurite of Anjou & Warwick together. Louis XII did campaign & win back Milan, had a nasty divorce/anullment proceeding with Joan of France (Louis XI's daughter) and then Louis XII later famously married the young Mary Tudor & died shortly after. Jack, you said, "As a reason for tearing England apart, his divorce strikes me as romantic and unconvincing. I don't trust romantic reasons, I do trust in the propensity of political leaders to make political decisions." I think that Henry never had the idea that he was making a political decision, or thought that his personal life would tear England apart. We know that his determination to leave a son & heir would lead to the split from Rome, etc, but Henry did not. I suspect that the warped, bitter old man he became was shaped by the things that he saw happening to him, that he could not control. I'm not sure that Anne Boleyn would have even been queen had the pope been more accomodating and allowed Henry to find a new wife when he first asked about the validity of his marriage. One step led to another. Had Anne Boleyn not been so determined to be a wife and not a mistress, Henry may have eventually reconciled himself to leaving a daughter, Mary, to be queen alone. We look at history, knowing that Henry would marry 6 times - he never thought beyond his next wife. (which at the time, I'm sure he thought she would be "the one", whoever she was!) |
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GRRRRR the ONE time ya don't c/p before hitting SEND.....tis like MSN KNOWS that Let's try this again..... LMFAO @ Henry being described as "romantic" in regards to his "divorce" from Catherine.....the man just wanted eggs that weren't expired LOL Had Anne been a lil more complaisant a lot sooner, he'd have tired of her just as quickly & married some French princess like Wolsey wanted. I think Spain lost out on a lot with its religious intolerane; the Jews were the moneylenders of Europe, after all, & even conversos weren't guaranteed no hot seat in the auto-da-fe; the Moors were great builders & traders; the Protestants were drawn from the more educated class (even to this day they can't hold office in Spain, much like England after the Test Acts). I think they lost more with their shortsighted policies of plundering the New World to replenish Philip's perpetually bankrupt treasury (o the cost of war) & not bothering to establish good commercial ties there instead. Silver & gold is a natural resource, after all, & it do run out. After the Spanish fleet's death-knell defeat by the French in the 1640s, even Old Noll was able to snatch Jamaica out from under them. Methinks that spells "not a superpower anymore if we can't defend one measly lil island" LOL |
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