16/3/07 - English Literature - The Civil Wars

1. The Civil Wars in recent culture

Cromwell's image is inconstant and shifting. He is still a controversial figure; he can't be categorised. England was once a republic. Cromwell was to an extent its monarch, although he refused to be called a king. Cromwell was originally buried in Westminster Abbey, then he was disinterred and his head placed on a spike. Later his head was put into a Cambridge college and finally reburied. This highlights the fact that he never belonged anywhere, even after death.

2. The Civil Wars: what, where, when?

Chronology of the Civil Wars:

1637 Charles attempts to impose English form of Church govt., by Bishops (Episcopacy) on Scottish Kirk, together with a new Prayer Book.
1638 Scottish National Covenant commits signatories to defend Presbyterianism from Charles’s reforms.
1639 First ‘Bishops War’ ends in humiliating defeat for King and his English army.
1640 Scottish situation forces recall of English Parliament; Nov., the ‘Long Parliament’.
1641 Nov; news of Irish rising reaches Westminster; conflict over control of military force to be sent to suppress it.
1642 Charles leaves London after failed attempt to arrest Parliamentary leaders; raises standard at Nottingham; hostilities ensue - Oct., battle at Edgehill - one all after extra time.
1643 Solemn League and Covenant: Eng. Parliament promises to impose a Scottish-style Presbyterian mode of govt. on English church in return for Scottish entry into war on Parliamentary side.
1644 Marston Moor - destruction of Charles’s northern army by Sir Thomas Fairfax’s Parliamentary force.
1645 Parliamentary army reorganised into the New Model Army; King’s army smashed at Naseby; Royalist army under Marquis of Montrose wins victories in Scotland.
1646 Charles surrenders to Scottish army - handed over to English Parliamentary allies.
1647 Charles seized by leaders of the New Model Army; Army and Parliament and Scots increasingly at odds.
1648 Scottish Royalist army invades - defeated at Preston; Royalist risings throughout England and Wales, finally suppressed with taking of Colchester in August; Parliament purged of members willing to make a deal with the King.
1649 Charles tried for treason, found guilty and beheaded; monarchy and House of Lords abolished; radical democratic groups (Levellers, Diggers) suppressed; Ireland invaded - rising genocidally suppressed.
1650 Montrose executed; Cromwell invades Scotland, defeats Scots at Dunbar.
1651 Charles, Prince of Wales crowned King of Scots after signing 1643 Covenant; defeated by Cromwell at Worcester and flees to France; Scotland occupied by English army to 1660.
1653 Cromwell disperses remnants of Long Parliament (the ‘Rump’); becomes Lord Protector; attempts at forging permanent political settlement go on, but unsuccessfully.
1658 Cromwell dies; his regime collapses.
1659 renewed Royalist and radical risings; leader of English army in Scotland, Gen. Monck, marches south to force recall of pre-Purge Long Parliament.
1660 renewed Long Parliament votes for Restoration; Charles returns from exile.
1661 Charles crowned King of England; reneges on promise to impose Presbyterianism in England, and returns Scotland to mixed system of bishops and presbytery.

3. Competing meanings

In a sense, the Civil War does not have a correct place either: it is not quite over. There is not even an official name for it; there are many different titles under which these events go under: The English Civil War, The War of the Three Kingdoms, The Puritan Revolution and The English Revolution.

The competing names for the events of the civil wars come about by taking different perspectives on the them.

Firstly, the English Civil War is the term most often used by people writing a history of the events. It focuses on the constitutional crisis that came about in the 1630s-40s. There was an imbalance of power, an interdependence and conflict between monarchical and parliamentary institutions, which could not be resolved by either one of them. There became a paralysis of constitution whenever there was disagreement between the institutions. There was no law to say which should have the final word. The monarchy depended on the government to raise funds to keep the monarchy in place, yet parliament was not a ruling power, it was simply an event. So it could not be dissolved when the monarchy depended on it. There was a problem over who had the most power - supposedly it was the monarch, yet it was parliament that kept the monarchy alive, so now who had the upper hand? A stalemate was the inevitable result of disagreements.

Secondly, the War of the Three Kingdoms takes into account the disputes between England, Scotland and Ireland. There grew a disagreement between the king and the government over who had control of the armed forces to put down Scottish rebellions against a union with England. The king left for York to set up his own institution. Next there came Irish dissatisfaction with English rule.

Thirdly, the term Puritan Revolution accounts for the questions that arose over religion, particularly over churches.

Lastly, the term English Revolution refers to class and social changes at the time, including the rise of capitalism and the bourgeoisie.

4. The wars as cultural crisis

"When something as cataclysmic as the English Civil War and Revolution occurs, a massive destabilisation in the order of meaning is engendered. That there were so many words enhanced the sense of this, and it was a time which many acknowledged as a collective loss of reason. When historical analysis properly discovers so many kinds of continuity … so that the revolution seems even less than a ‘grand rebellion’, little more than a constitutional cough, or, in economic history, gradual transformations of ownership and the steady growth of entrepreneurial activity, it is well worth looking at the world of words, which is where the impact of the crisis was most strongly registered."
[Nigel Smith, Literature and Revolution in England (1994), 362]

"The Times… were never so full of faction, detraction and contradiction, as at this present, men being only full of windy opinion, so that the world is ground into a new confused Chaos, or a Babel of bawling, and foolish disputing."
[The Doleful Lamentation of Cheapside Cross (1642)]

"Truth indeed came once into the world with her Divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on: but when He ascended, and His Apostles after Him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb, still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, lords and commons, nor ever shall do, till her Master’s second coming; He shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection. Suffer not these licensing prohibitions to stand at every place of opportunity, forbidding and disturbing them that continue seeking, that continue to do our obsequies to the torn body of our martyred saint. . .

"Behold now this vast city: a city of refuge; the mansion house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with His protection; the shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion cut the plates and instruments of armed Justice in defence of beleaguered Truth. that there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new motions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching Reformation: others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies? We reckon more than five months yet to harvest; there need not be five weeks; had we but eyes to lift up, the fields are white already."
[John Milton, Areopagitica: A Plea for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing (1644; NEL 1806, 1807)]

"A Declaration to the Powers of England and to all the Powers of the World…

"In the beginning of time, the great creator Reason made the earth to be a common treasury, to preserve beasts, birds, fishes and man, the lord that was to govern this creation; for man had domination given to him, over the beasts, birds and fishes; but not one word was spoken in the beginning, that one branch of mankind should rule over another.

"And the reason is this, every single man, male and female, is a perfect creature of himself; and the same spirit that made the globe dwells in man to govern the globe; so that the flesh of man being subject to reason, his maker, hath him to be his teacher and ruler within himself;... therefore needs not run abroad after any teacher and ruler without him; for he needs not that any man should teach him, for the same anointing, t hat ruled in the Son of Man teacheth him all things.

"But since human flesh (that king of beasts) began to delight himself in the objects of the creation, more than in the spirit reason and righteousness, who manifests himself to be the indweller in the five senses of hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, feeling; then he fell into blindness of mind and weakness of heart, and runs abroad for a teacher and ruler. And so selfish imagination, taking possession of the five senses and ruling as king in the room of reason therein, and working with covetousness, did set up one man to teach and rule over another; and thereby the spirit was killed and man was brought into bondage, and became a greater slave to such of his own kind, than the beasts of the field were to him.

"And hereupon the earth (which was made to be a common treasury of relief for all, both beasts and men) was hedged into enclosures by the teachers and rulers, and the others were made servants and slaves: and that earth, that is within this creation made a common storehouse for all, is bought and sold and kept in the hands of a few, whereby the great creator is mightly dishonoured, as if he were a respecter of persons, delighting in the comfortable livelihood of some, and rejoicing in the miserable poverty and straits of others. From the beginning it was not so."
[Gerard Winstanley, The True Levellers’ Standard Advanced (1649; NEL 1740)]

I think not on the state, nor am concerned
Which way soever that great helm is turned,
But as that son whose father’s danger nigh
Did force his native dumbness, and untie
His fettered organs: so here is a cause
That will excuse the breach of nature’s laws.
Silence were now a sin: nay passion now
Wise men themselves for merit would allow.
[Katherine Philips, ‘Upon the Double Murther of King Charles, in answer to a libellous rhyme made by V. P. [i.e. Vavasour Powell]’, (?1649; NEL 1680)]