By Christopher Thompson
I think that you will find
it helpful to clarify J.P.Kenyons view of Marxism by reading John Morrill’s
obituary appreciation in the Proceedings of the British Academy (Volume 101
(1999), pages 441-461). Morrill explains there that Kenyon had a “fundamental
disapproval of model-builders and systematisers. He had no time for social
determinism as a tool of the historian for explaining the past or of social
engineering as a tool of the politician in effecting the future.” (ibid. page
443).
Later in this piece, Morrill
discussed Kenyon’s 1958 book, The Stuarts, and its analysis of the
pre-revolutionary period: “it is a very hard and crisp review of the political,
legal, and religious culture of the period 1580-1640 and of the origins of the
English Civil War. Kenyon found no evidence of disintegration of an outdated
system; no progressive movement made up of an alliance of common lawyers,
Puritan gentry and clergy, thrusting merchants and trendy intellectuals; rather
he found a gentry confused and unsure of itself, at once timidly in awe of
firebrand clergy and determined to subject the church and its wealth more and
more to lay control”. (ibid. pages 447-448) That remained his view. He was
never a Marxist or a fellow-traveller with them.
