scholarly journals The Meanings of “Malignancy”: The Language of Enmity and the Construction of the Parliamentarian Cause in the English Revolution

2014 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 835-858 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Leng
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
New Model ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
War Effort

AbstractThis article deconstructs a character that was ubiquitous within parliamentarian pamphlet literature in the English civil war: the “malignant,” whose “party” had been identified in the Grand Remonstrance of December 1641 as conspiring to destroy parliament and the true religion. Thereafter, the existence of this party became central to parliamentarian justifications of the war effort and to the activities of radical extra-parliamentary activists. The malignant thus became bound up in contests within the parliamentarian coalition, something reflected by the issuing of new remonstrances by London's Presbyterians, Levellers, and the New Model Army, each of which hinged on the identification of a new enemy. Despite these efforts, the specter of the malignant continued to haunt parliamentarian discourse after the regicide, although its meaning became increasingly ambiguous, symptomatic of the challenges facing the post-regicidal regimes as they sought to transcend the ideological parameters of the civil war in the name of “settlement.”

The Concept of Opposition in Early Stuart England

1980 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Zaller
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Revolution

To Clarendon, the English Civil War was an exercise in folly, pride, and the tragic corruption of the species. Since then, many a thesis has been advanced to explain the Great Rebellion, only to fall before fresh generations of skeptics, each demolishing a predecessor's orthodoxy to set up their own. But old notions die hard. They linger in the words and concepts that once expressed them, which remain impregnated with the old meaning even when the nominal definitions have changed. Such a concept is that of the “Opposition” in early Stuart England. Its history is virtually coextensive with the historiography of the English Revolution, and it remains today at the center of the debate on the origins and meaning of the Revolution.The concept of an Opposition in prerevolutionary England can be traced back to the eighteenth century. David Hume, writing of the 1620s, saw party conflict as an inherent and fundamentally progressive element in the clash between privilege and prerogative. The “wise and moderate,” he asserted, “regarded the very rise of parties as a happy prognostic of the establishment of liberty.” Here already is the germ of the Whig interpretation, which emerges full-blown a century later in Macaulay: [W]hen, in October of 1641, the Parliament reassembled after a short recess, two hostile parties, essentially the same with those which, under different names, have ever since contended, and are still contending, for the direction of public affairs, appeared confronting each other. During some years they were designated as Cavaliers and Roundheads. They were subsequently called Tories and Whigs; nor does it seem that these appellations are likely soon to become obsolete.

FINANCE, LOCALISM, AND MILITARY REPRESENTATION IN THE ARMY OF THE EARL OF ESSEX (JUNE–DECEMBER 1642)

2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 879-898 ◽  
Author(s):  
AARON GRAHAM
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Cultural Representation ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
National Strategy ◽  
War Effort ◽  
History Of ◽  
Financial Consequences ◽  
Earl Of Essex

ABSTRACTWork on the ‘county community’ during the English Civil War, and tensions between centre and periphery, has focused exclusively upon forms of political and cultural representation. However, this article argues that local communities also sought to achieve agency within the wider war effort by lobbying for military representation. In return for financial contributions, supporters wanted an ‘interest’ in the units they raised, mainly through control over the nomination of officers. The history of the army of the earl of Essex between June and December 1642 indicates the financial consequences of neglecting such military representation. Its structure dissolved particularist interests, orientating the army towards the pursuit of a national strategy, but this gave local supporters no confidence that their concerns were being represented. The result was an assertion of localism, a decline in donations, and a financial crisis within the army.

Ethics in the Marketplace: Gerrard Winstanley's London Bankruptcy, 1643

1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. D. Alsop
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Gerrard Winstanley ◽  
Whole Earth

One of the casualties of the economic malaise occasioned by the English Civil War was the business career of an obscure thirty-four-year-old junior freeman of the London Merchant Taylors' Company. Had circumstances been otherwise, Gerrard Winstanley would never have gone on to become the eventual leader and spokesman of the Diggers or to develop some of the most innovative and challenging socioeconomic theories of the seventeenth century. Winstanley's bankruptcy of 1643 did not, of course, create by itself one of the foremost radicals of the English Revolution. But scholars are agreed that the failure provoked a significant break in the continuity of Winstanley's life that forced him to change his livelihood and to transport himself from London to Cobham in Surrey, the location of his Digger radicalism. Furthermore, Winstanley never forgot the experience. Throughout his writings of the later 1640s, the bitter contempt and frustration engendered by his financial failings were obvious. They also colored his perceptions of England's current character and its errors. His portrayal of all commerce as dishonest and corrupt is one of the most striking features of his writings:For matter of buying and selling, the earth stinks with such unrighteousnesse, that for my part, though I was bred a tradesmen, yet it is so hard a thing to pick out a poor living, that a man shall sooner be cheated of his bread, then get bread by trading among men, if by plain dealing he put trust in any.And truly the whole earth of trading, is generally become the neat art of thieving and oppressing fellow-creatures, and so laies burdens, upon the Creation, but when the earth becomes a common treasury this burden will be taken off.

Charles I and the End of Conciliar Government in Scotland

1980 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 315-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice Lee
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Recent Survey ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Complex Problems ◽  
Ground Stone ◽  
The Government

That complex problems like the causes of the English civil war are constantly subject to reinterpretation is an obvious truism. Twenty years ago we were all embroiled in the gentry controversy; now it is the fashion to lay more stress on the blunders and failures of the government of Charles I. Lawrence Stone's recent survey is a case in point. Though his title, The Causes of the English Revolution 1529-1642, promises a long running start, this quondam disciple of R. H. Tawney places a surprising amount of emphasis on what he calls precipitants and triggers, which, it turns out, are the blunders and failures of the government of Charles I. Among these is the mishandling of the situation in Scotland. It is well known, of course, that the attempt to impose the new service book in 1637 touched off the chain of events which led to the Long Parliament, but historians have pointed out that this was by no means the first of Charles's errors there. At the very beginning of his reign came the act of revocation, which among other things rescinded “all grants made of crown property since 1540, … all disposition of ecclesiastical property and the erections of such property into temporal lordships.” No such sweeping change came about, of course, but in the view of most scholars this act, though in some sense successful, since it achieved the purpose both of increasing clerical stipends and of providing a machinery for their continuing adjustment, made the Scottish landed classes so mistrustful and fearful for their property that Charles could never gain their confidence. The comment of Sir James Balfour is always quoted: the act “in effect was the ground stone of all the mischief that followed after.”

The New Model Army and the problems of siege warfare, 1648–51

1990 ◽  
Vol 27 (105) ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Burke
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
The South ◽  
New Model ◽  
Siege Warfare

The destruction of the Royalist field armies at Naseby and Langport in 1645 did not end the English Civil War. Althought the king had suffered irreversible military defeats, Parliament was unable to govern effectively while politically important towns and fortresses remained in enemy hands. To ensure political stability Parliament’s army was forced to besiege and reduce a large number of strongholds in England, Ireland and Scotland, a task that was not finally completed until the surrender of Galway in 1652. In particular the war in Ireland was to test the army’s siege-making capacity more severely than any previous campaign. To complete the political conquest of Britain and Ireland the army and its generals were compelled increasingly to practise an aspect of warfare that had been traditionally neglected by English soldiers. In contrast, siege warfare was an area in which their continental counterparts had excelled.In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, European wars produced few set-piece battles. Conflicts were more frequently resolved by the assault and defence of fortified cities and towns. Consequently the art of siege warfare evolved rapidly. England’s political and military insularity during this period detached the country from advances in siege technology that had transformed the conduct of European warfare. No major siege had been undertaken by an English army since Henry VIII had invested Boulogne in 1544, and as there had been no siege of English towns or fortresses since medieval times, there had been little innovation in defensive fortifications. What improvements did occur were sporadic and unco-ordinated. In the sixteenth century a great fortress was built at Berwick-on-Tweed to counter Scottish infiltration and a number of coastal towns in the south-east were refortified against the threat of Spanish invasion. However, by the outbreak of civil war in 1642, even these were obsolete by contemporary continental standards.

The King, the Parliament, and the Localities during the English Civil War

1985 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Relative Effectiveness ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Recent Discussion ◽  
Small Minority ◽  
Clear Separation ◽  
War Effort ◽  
The Stability

Debate over the nature of central-local relationships has played an important part in recent discussion of the origins and course of the English Civil War. It is an oversimplification, but not a caricature, to say that two distinct sets of views are current. The first, and in many ways the most consistent and coherent, arguments are those found in the work of the local historians who have developed the idea of the county community as the most important focus for the activities of the provincial gentry and, in more general form, in Morrill's The Revolt of the Provinces and Hutton's The Royalist War Effort. In this work a clear separation is seen between local and national issues or preoccupations. The majority of the county gentry, and still more the ranks below them, were ill informed about national developments and concerned with the activities of central government mainly as they affected the stability of their local communities. Only a small minority of activists were genuinely committed to the Royalist or the Parliamentarian side in the Civil War; the most characteristic provincial response to the divisions of 1642 was reluctance to become involved, as shown both in widespread neutralism among individuals and in collective attempts at local pacification. Gradually the whole of England was drawn, willy-nilly, into the war, but allegiance was determined largely by contingent military factors: the proximity of London or of the king's army or the relative effectiveness of the small numbers of local partisans.

Thomas Dalton of Thurnham: A Lancashire Royalist Colonel

1982 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-90
Author(s):  
J. M. Gratton
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Military History ◽  
Active Role ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
War Effort ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Military ◽  
Roman Catholics

One of the more welcome aspects of recent studies of the English Civil War is the renewal of interest in the military history of the Northern Counties, through the work of B. G. Blackwood and more particularly P. R. Newman, both of whom have served, in the case of Lancashire, to illuminate Ernest Broxap’s pioneering tome of 1910. Newman has done a useful service in drawing attention to the active role in the fighting played by Northern Roman Catholics, who made substantial contributions to the Royalist war effort, a view which modifies the neutrality theory of Dr K. J. Lindley.

The Struggle for London in the Second Civil War

1983 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Gentles
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Support ◽  
New Model ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Major General

According to a familiar interpretation, London was parliamentarian in the English Revolution, and was instrumental in the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the English republic which endured for eleven years. London was the arsenal, the treasure–house and the recruiting ground for the revolutionary cause; it was the Paris of the English Revolution. In this article I shall argue that from early 1646 – a year after the formation of the New Model Army – London was deeply divided between those who wanted the terms agreed by the Houses to be imposed on Charles rather than negotiated with him, and those who wanted a speedy end to the war, a mutually agreed peace, the disbandment of the army and the imposition of religious uniformity. By 1647 the rulers of London were dominated by an implacable hatred of the revolutionary army, and bent their efforts to restoring Charles to his throne. In this policy they enjoyed the warm support of a majority of the City's population, who repeatedly demonstrated their anti-revolutionary convictions. in both word and deed. The army's political support in London was drawn mainly from the artisan and tradesman classes (many of them non-citizens), and from the suburbs. To a large extent it was the assiduous efforts of one man – Philip Skippon, major-general of the New Model infantry – which kept London in the parliamentary camp during the second civil war.

The ‘Royal Independents’ in the English Civil War

1968 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 69-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Pearl
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Public Safety ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
New Model ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Rump Parliament

Few historians of the Long Parliament would regard the form of Church government as the first concern of the parliamentary leaders in their negotiations with the king. Contemporary historians considered that the early struggle was not about religion. The royalist Clarendon, the parliamentarian Thomas May, even Richard Baxter, a deeply religious Puritan, were unanimous. To the aristocracy and gentry, it was essentially a conflict over political power and public safety. Religious fervour would inspire the New Model Army, rouse the London citizens, and stimulate the printing presses. But how many members of Parliament or of the gentry in 1640 supported fundamental religious change? Sir Edward Dering told the Commons on 20 November 1641 that he had heard no one there declare themselves for either Presbyterianism or Independency. When Baxter described the composition of the Rump Parliament, he did not see it as the culmination or fulfilment of a religious movement, the expression of Independency.

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