Interview with Historian Norah Carlin

Norah Carlin’s new book  – Regicide or Revolution? What Petitioners Wanted, September 1648 - February 1649 is out now and is published by Breviary Stuff. I caught up with her and asked a few questions about the book.

Q. What made you pick the subject of Regicide or Revolution and what were the difficulties if any in researching such a wide-ranging subject matter. Basically, I would like to know how you write and approach a subject.

 A. I was spurred on by hearing once too often (at a 350th-anniversary conference) that the motives for regicide were not political as we would understand them, but religious fanaticism and superstition. The army was said to be have been committed since April 1648 to the death of the king as a 'man of blood, and too many books claim that this was also the main content of the late 1648 petitions from soldiers and others. I knew this was not true of the ones I had read, so I set out to find and read them all.

This involved trawling the contemporary printed material in the British Library's Thomason Tracts (now available online), which is a sheer pleasure to me, and printed record sources like the Commons Journal. From there, I moved on to whatever manuscripts related to the petitions survive. I also researched each regiment, county and town involved as far as I could without greater specialisation, mainly in secondary sources (some of the Victoria County Histories are a good starting point) but sometimes going back to the national or local archives when I felt existing literature didn't deal satisfactorily with a particular issue.

Q. What is your take on recent historiography on the subject of regicide and revolution?

A A.Recent debate has centred on whether the trial of Charles I was intended all along to lead to his execution. The petitions feed into this with their very varied approach to 'bringing offenders to justice. Most of them don't name the king explicitly, and when they do even fewer attack Charles I personally in the way that some well-known pamphleteers and politicians did. But they are also full of interesting political ideas that could move the discussion away from that narrow theme onto wider issues of what the English Revolution was, what motivated it, and what it achieved.

Q.Since, your first articles on the English revolution, were in the early 1980s, how would you say your historiography on the revolution has changed if at all. How do you see future historiography developing?

A.My main focus remains the many faces of English radicalism in this period, a subject that spreads (like the Leveller movement was said to do at the time) in ever-widening but concentric circles.

Q.The English revolution clearly holds a tremendous interest for you why is that. Also, do you think that left political tendencies have neglected the subject?

 A.I think it's because of the mass of material relating to popular action and radical ideas. Nowhere else in early modern Europe do you have anything like William Clarke's record of the Putney Debates, or the range of pamphlets and news in print.

Most left political tendencies have recognised the importance of the subject to some extent in recent times, though some have got bogged down by making a shibboleth of some over-simplified interpretation. Ironically, the left organisation I belonged to for many years regarded me as a heretic because I didn't agree with every last word written by Christopher Hill, including his claims that the gentry were 'the natural rulers of the English countryside and that 'the Bible caused the death of Charles I'. As I said in the 2019 memorial lecture, I value Hill's contribution to the historiography of the English Revolution very highly indeed, but his writings are not the last word on everything! It's only when there is no more debate that history ceases to be interesting.

Until very recently I would have said the subject also suffered from a lack of mainstream media attention, but since the December 2019 BBC2 documentary 'Killing a King' there is bound to be a resurgence of interest, and I hope it lasts.

QWhat are you planning to do next?

A.I have a book that was written some time ago but should be published soon, on the history of a grand house in Essex, Old Copped Hall near Waltham Abbey, where I have regularly taken part in an ongoing archaeological project. Over the centuries from 1258 to 1748 its owners were involved in all the major events in English history from the Barons' Wars to the South Sea Bubble, and I was pleased to go back to periods I had studied long ago so as to write about each of them. One owner, the second Earl of Middlesex, even happened to be on Parliament's team negotiating with Charles I at Newport in late 1648, right at the heart of 'Regicide or Revolution?' I am also writing up some research on Scottish local society in the age of the Reformation that I have done since moving back to Scotland.

I am pleased to call myself 'a jobbing historian' because I enjoy taking on a variety of subjects where I find surprising and interesting connections as well as contrasts — always centred on how the world has been changed, on the understanding that it is possible for human action to change it again. I hope these are relevant answers to the questions you asked.

What Historians have said about the book

'Popular petitions were at the very heart of the revolutionary crisis of 1648-1649 and this book is unique in recovering their meaning, the context in which they were issued, and the people who wrote and supported them. Essential reading.'

John Rees, author of The Leveller Revolution

'The petitions Norah Carlin has transcribed and carefully contextualized in Regicide or Revolution? represent an incredibly important cache of materials for understanding the crisis of the English Revolution, the trial and execution of Charles I. Carlin convincingly demonstrate that these petitions were not straightforward demands for bloody retribution. Rather, their content varied considerably, incorporating radical demands for legal, social and constitutional reform, giving historians a highly important window into the ideals and aspirations of the ‘well affected’ both within and outside the army. The collection should be required reading for scholars and students of the English Revolution, and the general reader alike.'

Ted Vallance, University of Roehampton, London

'At last, the army petitions of 1648-9 have found their editor and historian. Every student of the English Revolution will be indebted to Norah Carlin for bringing together in one place the soldiers' petitions, from all over England and Wales, that demanded justice. However, they conceived it, after the first and second civil wars. Each petition has been carefully edited, set in a context, and assessed in what is an authoritative edition of very important documents in the history of relations between Parliament, army and people.'

Stephen K. Roberts, Director, History of Parliament Trust

About the author

Before retirement, Norah Carlin was a Principal Lecturer in History at Middlesex University (London). She is also the author of The Causes of the English Revolution (Oxford, Blackwell for the Historical Association, 1999) and a number of articles on aspects of the seventeenth-century English revolution. Having moved back to her native Edinburgh some years ago, she is currently pursuing research on the kirk and rural society in Scotland in the century after the Reformation.

Imaging Stuart Family Politics: Dynastic Crisis and Continuity-Catriona Murray-London, Routledge, 2017, ISBN: 978-1472424051; 202pp.; Price: £115.00

For a Tear is an Intellectual thing;

And a Sigh is the sword of an angel king;

And the bitter groan of a Martyr’s woe

Is an arrow from the Almighty’s bow.

William Blake

“When does the artistic image appear convincing? When we experience a special psychic state of joy, satisfaction, elevated repose, love or sympathy for the author. This psychic state is the aesthetic evaluation of a work of art. Aesthetic feeling lacks a narrowly utilitarian character; it is disinterested, and in this regard, it is organically bound up with our general conceptions of the beautiful (although, of course, it is narrower than these concepts). The aesthetic evaluation of a work is the criterion of its truthfulness or falseness. Artistic truth is determined and established precisely through such an evaluation.

Art as the Cognition of Life-A Voronsky

Catriona Murray’s Imaging Stuart Family Politics is an award-winning and beautifully illustrated book. It carries with it a significant amount of original research and encompasses a cross-disciplinary approach while maintaining a high academic standard.

Having said that the book suffers a little from a one-sided approach in that it examines the English revolution solely from the standpoint of the monarchy. To her credit, Murray rather than examining the images used in the book in isolation does attempt with varying degrees of success to locate them within the socio-political context of the revolution.

In a convoluted way, Murray’s book shows the class nature of the Stuart dynasty. King Charles I’s use of art to defend his position was a novel solution in his and many eyes, but the fact that it did not succeed was not for want of trying. For all his political acumen which was not a lot King Charles did not understand the class forces he was up against. In pure desperation, he even used his children as propaganda as this cynical quote from Charles states  “We are moved both for your sake and the sake of the kingdom itself, over which you are ruling; because as children are a source of solace to parents, thus are they a source of support for kings; for the more children there are, the deeper are the roots, and the more numerous are the supports, upon which the stability of a kingdom rests.[1] This clearly failed, and in the end, like all dictators, he used war to solve his crisis.

Historiography

“ I hope that my book will encourage scholars to reconsider the significant part of the visual in Stuart politics and to reassess a body of fascinating material which performed a crucial, if, at times, unpredictable, role in early modern public communication”.

Murray recognises that the history of emotions is a very young discipline and that by default her book is a very specialised piece of historical study reflecting the early days of the discipline. Trying to place it in the historiography of the English revolution is, therefore, a complicated task. The book is part of a trend to examine the English revolution, mainly from the standpoint of the monarchy and its use of imagery and religion. The book stands on the shoulders of historians, Roy Strong, Oliver Millar, and Kevin Sharpe.

Again the use of Christopher Hill work would have given the book a better balance. As Hill points parliament and radicals during the revolution were not adverse in using art as a propaganda weapon he states “Politics was invariably expressed in religious language and imagery. (Gerrard) Winstanley used the stories of Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob, to express his class analysis of society; the younger brother would overcome his oppressing elder brother. David and Goliath, Samson and the Philistines, were symbols of revolt against tyranny. The existing corrupt society was designated as Sodom, Egypt, Babylon.[2]

Murray’s study of the use of imagery during the English revolution is a little one-sided. A multi-sided approach to the discipline is needed if one is to use art to cognize the complicated nature of the revolution. Her approach is Conservative, to say the least.

While it is only recently that through the work of Fred Choate and David North that the work of the great Russian Marxist scholars such as Aleksandr Konstantinovich Voronsky is coming to light, Murray’s book would have a better one if she had at least consulted figures like Voronsky who spent his life examining the role of art in society.

As Voronsky States on page 98 of his book Art as the Cognition of Life “What is art? First of all, art is the cognition of life. Art is not the free play of fantasy, feelings and moods; art is not the expression of merely the subjective sensations and experiences of the poet; art is not assigned the goal of primarily awakening in the reader 'good feelings.' Like science, art cognizes life. Both art and science have the same subject: life, reality. But science analyzes, art synthesizes; science is abstract, art is concrete; science turns to the mind of man, art to his sensual nature. Science cognizes life with the help of concepts, art with the aid of images in the form of living, sensual contemplation."[3]

There is no getting away from the fact that the book is a beautifully illustrated and well-written book. It is hoped that in the future, Murray examines the more complicated use of imagery by parliamentary forces.

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[1] The Royal Correspondence of King James I of England (and VI of Scotland) to his Royal Brother-in-Law, King Christian IV of Denmark, 1603-16, ed. Ronald M. Meldrum (Brighton, 1977), p. 11.

[2] God and the English Revolution-Author(s): Christopher Hill-Source: History Workshop, No. 17 (Spring, 1984), pp. 19-31-Published by: Oxford University Press

[3] Art as the Cognition of Life: Aleksandr Konstantinovich Voronsky-Mehring Books-https://mehring.com/art-as-the-cognition-of-life.html

Just Send Me Word, a True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag, By Orlando Figes- - Allen Lane- 352 pages -24 May 2012

“How many times have I wanted to nestle in your arms but could only turn to the empty wall in front of me? I felt I could not breathe. Yet time would pass, and I would pull myself together. We will get through this, Lev.”

Svetlana Ivanov

No, I do not see any grounds for pessimism. One must take history as she is. Mankind moves like some pilgrims: two steps forward, one step back. During the movement back, it seems to sceptics and pessimists that all is lost. Nothing is lost. Mankind has risen from the ape to the Comintern. It will rise from the Comintern to genuine socialism. The sentence of the commission shows once again that a correct idea is stronger than the most powerful police. In this conviction lies the indestructible foundation of revolutionary optimism.

Leon Trotsky

"We wanted nothing for ourselves, we all wanted just one thing: the world revolution and happiness for all. And if it were necessary to give up our lives to achieve this, then we would have done so without hesitating."

Nadezhda Joffe

There is a strong cultural tradition in Russia of recording memoirs as a form of political protest. Unfortunately, the memoirs of Lev Mishchenko and Svetlana Ivanov recorded by Orlando Figes’s 2012 book Just Send Me Word does not fall into this category.

Memoirs from this time can in the words of J.J. Plant “serve many purposes, personal, political and literary. For the survivors of the Stalin terror, it has been particularly important to set the record straight, to rescue and preserve the memories and knowledge which Stalin and his regime set out to expunge and to name the criminals and collaborators who thought the Stalinist regime would last forever”.[1]

Just Send Me Word is a narrative-based study that has become one of many of the survivors of Stalinism memoirs” that they have in the words of the Marxist writer David North become a “literary genre”.

This is not to say that Just Send Me Word has no merit. The book is well written and researched. The archive of Lev Mishchenko and Svetlana Ivanov should contain a goldmine if a historian mines it well. Figes appears to found what he looked for in that the book is mainly absent of any politics.

What kind of enemy was Lev Mishchenko? Mishchenko studied physics and was heavily influenced by quantum physics. Ordinarily would have been a death sentence straight away given Joseph Stalin’s ignorant hostility to bourgeois physics. Lev survived and served in the army during the war and was captured by the Nazis.

After the war he offered work in the US as a nuclear physicist He turned this down preferring to be with his girlfriend, Svetlana. It was a wrong decision given that he was arrested for “betraying his homeland”.

During his time in the gulag, he exchanged more than 1,200 letters with Svetlana. These letters quite unbelievably have been preserved thus creating “the only known Gulag correspondence collection of such size and scope”.

Lev Mishchenko and Svetlana Ivanov were part of the nightmare years of the late 1930s, during which Stalin oversaw the physical extermination of socialist intellectuals and workers in the USSR.

The flower of the October revolution, Left Oppositionists, intellectuals, workers and peasants died by the hundreds of thousands in conditions of back-breaking labour and deprivation. The political nature of the opposition to Stalinism is a problem for Figes. In the book this struggle is absent.

Why is this a problem for Figes? Is it because the scale of the crimes are so big that they are difficult to comprehend. The key to understanding Figes position appears on page 18 when Figes laments that “no one ever knew what this calculated policy of mass murder was about “. This is not true as there was an opposition to Stalin in the form of the Left Opposition.

Figes blames Stalin’s “Paranoic killing of potential enemies”. This is very vague and is not a satisfactory answer. If Figes elaborated he would be forced to explain that there was a socialist alternative to Stalinism in the form of the Left Opposition led by Leon Trotsky.

A point elaborated by Russian Marxist historian Vadim Rogovin who states ” Stalin’s repressive campaigns flowed from his fear not only of the peasantry but of the working class and above all, its revolutionary vanguard—the Left Opposition. The ever-growing wave of mass violence was directed not against enemies of the October Revolution, but against enemies that the Stalinist regime itself created: the peasantry resisting forced collectivisation and participants in the communist oppositions.[2]

Conclusion

Both Lev Mishchenko and Svetlana Ivanov lives are a triumph of principle and human decency over repression caused by Stalinism. As Helen Halyard states “The memoirs of survivors of the Stalin terror are central in shedding personal light on the process of the long civil war which Stalin waged against the revolution. They illuminate and add force to the historical research of writers such as Conquest and Rogovin. However, they do more than this. They can, at their best, demonstrate the survival of some tiny kernel of humanity in the face of the most immeasurable oppression”. Both Lev Mishchenko and Svetlana Ivanov had spirits they did not have a revolutionary spirit.

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[1] https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol6/no4/plant2.html

[2] Author’s introduction to Bolsheviks Against Stalinism 1928-1933: Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition

By Vadim Z. Rogovin-30 August 2019- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/08/30/intr-a30.html

How to Do Good to Many: The Public Good Is the Christian’s Life – 13 Nov 2018by Richard Baxter & Jordan J Ballor (Editor) Christian's Library Press

“It is a sign he is a branch cut off and withered who careth little for any but himself” (292). 

Richard Baxter, How to Do Good to Many

“And let all men take their common and special opportunities to do good: time will not stay; yourselves, your wives, your children, your servants, your neighbours, are posting to another world; speak now what you would have them hear; do them now all the good you can. It must be now or never; there is no returning from the dead to warn them” (323-34).

Given the extraordinary literary output by Richard Baxter, it is hard not to agree with Richard Schlatter that figures like Baxter have been largely overlooked by historians both left and right. Baxter was a prodigious writer turning out more than 130 books. So many books that it is difficult to count. Many of the books are folios with over 1 million words in length.

While prominent figures like Baxter have largely been forgotten, the same cannot be said about the English revolution. The last two decades have seen a never-ending stream of literature.  The revolution still provokes significant interest and controversy. The purpose of this little review is to try and place Baxter within the context of the English revolution and to a certain extent, rescue him from the condescension of history.

While many significant figures of the revolution have sketchy biographies, this cannot be said of Baxter, who was born in 1615. From an early age, Baxter began to see things in class terms describing his father as “a mean Freeholder”. Like many families at the beginning of the revolution, Baxter’s family life was tough, and the family was “entangled by debts”. However, his poverty did not stop Baxter from thinking that  ‘Godly People were the best’.

Baxter was heavily influenced by his family’s acceptance of Puritanism. Baxter was later to recognise his father as the “Instrument of my first Convictions, and Approbation of a Holy Life’. In class terms, Baxter was part of a growing and influential lower middle class who would clash so spectacularly with the King and Aristocracy in the English revolution.

Like other middle-class people around him, Baxter had the drive to try and achieve ‘Academick Glory’, and ‘wanting Academical Honours’. This he did not achieve through university but by becoming self-taught.  Baxter “became one of the most learned of seventeenth-century divines.” Baxter puts this down to God. His praise of God is a running theme throughout his writings and is central to the book How to Do Good to Many: The Public Good Is the Christian’s Life. The book is a guide for the middle class on how to do good. There is nothing controversial in the book; much of Baxter’s political and social outlook is missing. This is a little strange given that Baxter was profoundly moved by the massive social, political and religious upheavals brought about by the English revolution.

While Baxter’s work is cloaked in religious trappings, once you break open the shell of religiosity, it is clear to anyone that a study of his political and philosophical writings play an essential part in our understanding of the events of the 17th-century English revolution.

From a political standpoint, Baxter was on the right-wing of the Presbyterians. He kept his distance from Oliver Cromwell and other leaders of the revolution. To use a modern term, Baxter took a typical centrist position also attacking anyone associated with the left-wing of the revolution, including Independents such as  Hugh Peters. The “sectaries” like Thomas Rainborow and any Leveller, in general, were “tools of Anabaptists’,. Anyone who sought to widen the franchise was seen as Anabaptists by Baxter.

Early on in his life, Baxter took up an extreme and class position on the poor. He did not believe that men “from the Dung-cart (could) to make our laws, and from the Ale-house and the May-pole to dispose of our religion, lives, and estates. When a pack of the rabble are got together, the multitude of the needy and the dissolute prodigals if they were ungoverned, would tear out the throats of the more wealthy and industrious…. And turn all into a constant war”.

It would be easy to dismiss Baxter’s writing on the poor as an exception, but in reality, they partly expressed a real fear amongst the ruling class that the revolution would lead to a wider franchise and more importantly a revolution against the property. which to a certain extent happened.

If you strip away all the religious superstructure at the base of Baxter’s writings are hatred of the masses. His Holy Commonwealth, which is probably his most famous book is a manifesto against a more comprehensive democracy except for the chosen few namely people like him. Baxter‘s hostility to the poor was expressed most vehemently in his opposition to the Leveller’s. 

When Baxter was in the New Model Army as an army Chaplin, he opposed the  Levellers in debate accusing them of publishing “wild pamphlets” as “changeable as the moon “and advocating “a heretical democracy”. The irony of this being that Baxter’s books themselves were burnt and he was labelled as a subversive like the Levellers he criticised.

Printing Revolution

You could say that this book by Baxter is the product of two print revolutions. One took place in the seventeenth Century the other in the twenty-first century. Baxter’s original book was part of an influential print culture that exploded during the English revolution. As Joad Raymond writes ” The publication of one of the first popular printed works, Mercurius Gallobeligicus, in 1594 ushered in a new era of the printed word to England in the form of pamphlets and newsbooks. These works quickly gained popularity by the middle of the seventeenth century, amplifying communication among all levels of society”.[1] Given Baxter’s prodigious output it has been said that he “was the first author of a string of best-sellers in British literary history”.

This book is also part of another print revolution no less important. The print revolution in the twenty-first century has seen the rise of books printed by their author or publisher. This particular edition was initially printed in the United States, but my copy says it was printed in the United Kingdom by Amazon. In some cases, it is difficult to tell the origin of the country a book is printed in since ships outfitted with printing presses now print vasts quantities and deliver them to any country in the world.

One of the most interesting parts of the book is Baxters appeal to merchants to behave themselves as good Christians. As Christopher hill recounts in his book The English Revolution 1640 “The political theorist, Hobbes, describes how the Presbyterian merchant class of the city of London was the first centre of sedition, trying to build a state-governed like the republics of Holland and Venice, by merchants for their interests. (The comparison with the bourgeois republics is constantly recurring in Parliamentarian writings.) Mrs Hutchinson, the wife of one of Cromwell’s colonels, said all were described as Puritans who “crossed the views of the needy courtiers, the encroaching priests, the thievish projectors, the lewd nobility and gentry . . . whoever could endure a sermon, modest habit or conversation, or anything good.”[2]

As was said at the beginning of this review, Baxter is an overlooked writer but along with Thoms Hobbes and James Harrington[3] is a crucial figure if one wants to understand the nature of the English revolution. Baxter’s writings give us a more in-depth insight into culture and politics during the civil war.

According to one writer “The largest single group among Baxter's correspondence consists of some seventy men who became nonconformist ministers at the Restoration, but the interest of the letters is not confined to the history of nonconformity, ecclesiastical affairs, or theological controversy. Baxter was an acute enquirer into matters arcane and mundane, inveterately interested in both public affairs and individuals' experience, encyclopedically industrious in establishing the grounds for the opinions which, for over half a century, he freely discussed in letters with persons of every walk of life, from peers, the gentry, and members of the professions, to merchants, apprentices, farmers, and seamen. The result is not merely a rich historical archive: the range of this correspondence, the vitality of its engagement with a great variety of topics, the immediacy of its expression, and the unpredictability’s of its mood and tone make this collection a record of felt experience unique among early epistolary archives”.

To a certain extent, Baxter was sensitive enough to recognise the social currents that brought people of diverse social backgrounds into struggle against the king. Baxter used the only tool available to him. He “ransacked the Bible and half-understood historical precedent for some theory to explain what they were doing”.

Baxter chose the parliamentary side because he felt that “for the debauched rabble through the land emboldened by his (the kings) gentry and seconded by the common soldiers of his army, took all that were called Puritans for their enemies”.

While it is correct to place Baxter’s writings alongside that of Hobbes and Harrington  Schlatter believes that Baxter’s opposition to Hobbes and Harrington were that they believed in a secular state, but Baxter did not.

Having said that Baxter closely followed the writings of Hobbes and Harrington declaring  "I must begin at the bottom and touch these Praecognita which the politicians doth presuppose because I have to do with some that will deny as much, as shame will suffer them to deny."

Baxter was heavily critical of Hobbes whose “mistake” according to one writer “was that in his doctrine of "absolute impious Monarchy' he gives priority to man by making sovereign the will of man rather than the will of God. Baxter deplored any attempt to draw criteria for right and wrong from man's As for Harrington; his great fallacy consisted in denying God's sovereignty by making "God the Proposer, and the people the Resolvers or Confirmers of all their laws." If his [Harrington's] doctrine be true, the Law of nature is no Law, till men consent to it. At least where the Major Vote can carry it, Atheism, Idolatry, Murder, Theft, Whoredome, etc., are no sins against God. Yea no man sinneth against God but he that consenteth to his Laws. The people have the greater authority or Government than Gods in Baxter's view, such conceptions of politics and its practice as those of Hobbes and Harrington is suited to atheists and heathen”.

While being critical his writings bore similarities to both Hobbes and Harrington.According to Geoffrey Nuttall "in politics as well as an ecclesiastical position as continually taking a 'moderate' position which from both sides would bring him charges of betrayal or insincerity."

To the consternation of many revisionist historians, a case can be made that the English revolution was fought along class lines. As Baxter himself put it at the time: “A very great part of the knights and gentlemen of England . . . adhered to the King . . . And most of the tenants of these gentlemen, and also most of the poorest of the people, whom the others call the rabble, did follow the gentry and were for the King. On the Parliament’s side were (besides themselves) the smaller part (as some thought) of the gentry in most of the counties, and the greatest part of the tradesmen and freeholders and the middle sort of men, especially in those corporations and counties which depend on clothing and such manufactures…Freeholders and tradesmen are the strength of religion and civility in the land, and gentlemen and beggars and servile tenants are the strength of iniquity”.[4]

Conclusion

To conclude Schlatter offers some advice on how we should understand Richard Baxter's place in the English revolution “students of Baxter must look backwards, for he stands near the end of a tradition which, although someone is always trying to revive it as a weapon in the never-ending war on liberty and democracy has been long been dead. To understand Baxter’s politics we must reflect on that long political tradition which achieved its first and most magnificent expression in the City of God, which flourished in the Middle Ages and Reformation, and died in the Age of Reason”.

Comment  by C Thompson

Dear Keith,

                   I read your most recent post on the works of Richard Baxter and their significance with interest. I am afraid I do not think your interpretation is correct. Because Baxter like many of his contemporaries recognised that there were economic and social distinctions in English society does not mean that they were class-based or that they supported an interpretation of the events of the 1640s as an example of class conflict in the Marxist sense. 

The use of terms like "lower middle class" is anachronistic and the view of the capacity of those at the lower end of the social scale to take political decisions was not just a reflection of upper class prejudices. I am hard-pressed to think of any early modern historians nowadays who would use such terms. There was, moreover, no real prospect at any stage of small groups like the Diggers, still less the Levellers, overthrowing the economic and social order. In any case, the complex mechanisms for conciliation and negotiation between different individuals, social groups and localities have yet to be fully explored. Baxter cannot be re-moulded in this procrustean sense.

                 With good wishes,

                                                Christopher   

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[1] Joad Raymond, The Invention of the English Newspaper: English Newsbooks, 1641-1649 (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1996), 6

[2] https://www.marxists.org/archive/hill-christopher/english-revolution/

[3] See J ames Harrington: An Intellectual Biography – 10 Oct 2019-by Rachel Hammersley

[4] https://www.marxists.org/archive/hill-christopher/english-revolution/

The Orange Hare

By Arturo Monterroso

 “I am taking it!” she said with a loud voice. I looked up. She was a bit over seventy, and he was clearly closer into falling the eighty something abyss. He walked stooping over his three-legged cane, and took a breath after telling off his wife. She was the first to raise her voice, as she was holding a stuffed rabbit tight against her bosom. The woman had resisted her husband’s reprimand, digging her heels into an attitude that I perceived as defiant because she had responded immediately.

“I am taking it,” she said again in a lower yet firm voice making a pout. She was petite, still holding some echoes of sweetness deep in her eyes. “No,” he said with a slight quiver in his voice, “I am not willing to pay a fortune for a stuffed animal that your granddaughter will not even like.” “Our granddaughter,” she quickly corrected him; “for our granddaughter who will be delighted with this bunny.” “Yes,” he replied, “a horrendous and extremely expensive, odd-colored rabbit. Have you ever seen an orange rabbit before?” “It’s a stuffed bunny, Heriberto, it’s not a real rabbit; it’s a toy,” she explained to him. “Uh-huh,” he replied, “and surely that justifies why we must pay for it as much as our electricity bill.”

The thin-bodied man was wearing a flat cap sunk down just above his eyebrows. “Well, as you wish,” she said, “you win,” and left the toy on the table from where she had taken it. Until that moment I wasn’t aware that the bookstore sold stuffed animals, and it was not precisely found in the children’s section. He made a gesture of complaisance, one made by those who think they are right. “Let’s go!” commanded to his wife (they clearly were married), “it is getting late.” “Late for what?” she asked somewhat angry. “You always think it’s late!” “Let’s go,” he said, trying to show composure. “All right!” she said loudly. “You are the boss! It’s always the same! You are the boss!” And then I lost sight of them.

I went back to reading the first page of Cartas portuguesas (this was the reason that had brought me to the bookstore’s coffee shop), but a scream got my attention and made me to look up over the book. “No!” exclaimed the old man, trying to lift the three-legged cane, clearly meaning to threaten her. The lady was holding the rabbit again and the husband was blocking her way. “No!” he repeated once again, “it’s already decided! Put that rabbit back in its place!” She looked around as her eyes were met by the few people in the cafe, and left the rabbit back on the table. Then she appeared annoyed, rolled her eyes up (maybe asking to some divinity for help in the bookstore’s ceiling), walked a couple of tired steps and reached for the man’s arm who seemed satisfied. Finally, her wife had come to her senses.

When they had disappeared among the shelves, surely on their way to the door which would definitively settle their disagreement, I went back to the Cartas de la monja portuguesa, a title in Spanish of the book that collects five letters written by sister Mariana Alcoforado, a nun who had been seduced by a count. As I pondered on the kinky circumstances and the image of the woman writing love letters under the dim candlelight of her lonely cell, I saw the woman passing in front of me who, once more, had the stuffed rabbit in her hands. I stopped thinking about the nun and paid new attention to the drama of the rabbit that, looking closer, it wasn’t a rabbit but a lanky, long-eared hare, the color of oranges; of orange oranges ¾because of course there are green and yellow oranges¾ and of a hue similar to the skin of ginger. It had a long and funny face; the hare, not the lady who, ensconced in the self-help section, was nervously and fondly squeezing the stuffed animal. Her granddaughter would surely like it. What would an old fogey know about what a little girl likes?

I asked for the check, paid the coffee, closed the book, and put it back on the self. Anyhow, the famous letters were not written by the nun, but by a Gabriel-Joseph de Guilleragues, who had been ambassador of France in Constantinople. And that small detail spoiled the erotic taste of reading the book. Besides, with all this drama of the old couple and the orange hare I had lost my concentration. I even stopped for a moment to look at a volume on sale of the complete works of the philosopher Walter Benjamin, to whom probably I am never going to read, and then continued my way out to the door. I was about to step out when I heard the woman’s voice again who, at the checkout counter, was calling to her husband while her finger was pointing at a little paper next to the hare.

Indeed, the husband’s credit card had gone through the small payment device and the man had to sign the little paper. I would never know how she had convinced him, but it was obvious that the women had won the battle. I browsed through the last illustrated edition of Vida y muerte de la pequeña Caperucita Roja (Una tragedia), by the German writer Ludwig Tieck, pretending I wasn’t interested in learning how things would unravel. I waited to see how the drama of the hare would end and, opposite to what I thought, it wasn’t a big deal after all: the old man signed the paper, took his card, and put it away in his wallet. Then he offered his arm to his wife and left the bookstore nonchalantly. She was carrying a plastic bag with her much coveted possession: the orange hare. I stayed a little bit longer in the bookstore waiting for them to walk ahead.

I caught up with them just as they were about to go down the escalator, but the couple was blocking the way because they were arguing about who would go first. It was hard to say if his three-legged cane was the reason or the bag the lady was holding which seemed impossible, or maybe it was just uncomfortable, to ride the escalator at the same time. “Heriberto,” she would say still holding his arm, “let’s wait for Gerardo to help you go down.” “Who is Gerardo?” asked the old man annoyed and with an inquisitive look. “He is your lifelong chauffeur, of course. Who else?” she replied. He seemed to ponder deeply and then asked with a frown: “Should we return it?” She replied evidently eager to pick up a fight: “Who? Gerardo?” “That rabbit, the old man answered, pointing at the plastic bag. “It’s too expensive, you know that at our age we should be saving.” “Oh, Heriberto!” she exclaimed, “shut up! I will leave you here until Gerardo comes and help you down. I am sick of you!” “I don’t need any such Gerardo to go down this simple escalator,” said the old man. “I can do it by myself.” She turned around only to realize that there was already a line of people waiting for them to end their squabble. At last, she finally let go of her husband’s arm so that he could go first on the escalator.

He took a minute to assess the elusive step each time he wanted to place his foot on the it, but then he unexpectedly went ahead, tried to grab the bag from the woman, and lost his balance. He was unable to plant his three-legged cane on the fleeting stairs, and fell on his face. He bounced several times before landing horizontally at the foot of the escalator, looking dead. It turned out he wasn’t, because when we rushed down to help him, he was still breathing, although with some difficulty. Now without the flat cap, which had flung somewhere on the floor, I was able to recognize in the pale and scrawny countenance the face of General Túnchez, one of the greatest gunrunners of the past decades. He had become a millionaire under the shadows of power, enabling smooth way to countless containers through customs avoiding taxes. Later, he had invested in all kinds of properties and in the money laundering industry. Nobody was able to prove anything. He was forever untouchable. And that is how he had reached the age of retirement and peace. Until today. All because of a harmless orange hare.

Arturo Monterroso

Nació en Guatemala en 1948. Es escritor, editor y corrector de estilo.

S.Roskell, Perspectives in English Parliamentary History

By C Thompson

Academic essays which survey the state of particular areas of historical interest rarely have long shelf lives. They are creatures of the moment, useful to undergraduates but soon outdated by the passage of time. As new articles and books appear, their utility declines and, before long, they are forgotten. Nonetheless, there have been surveys of this kind which encapsulate the understanding of historians at a particular point in time and which pose an interesting contrast to later claims.

The essay composed by the distinguished medievalist, J.S.Roskell, on perspectives in English Parliamentary history and published in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library in March, 1964 falls into this category.[1] Roskell took as his subject the development of Parliament from the medieval period onwards up until the year 1700 and made some critical points about the point at which the institution became an indispensable and permanent part of the country’s constitution.

In the pre-modern period, Parliament depended on the sovereign’s will for its meetings: such meetings were extraordinary and occasional events. Until Parliament became a regular part of the constitution, it could not control royal governments. J.E.Neale’s works on Tudor Parliaments made it clear that it was not the business of Parliament to supervise the government of England. It was true that the House of Commons had gained a degree of control over attendance and of freedom from arrest. But Queen Elizabeth had contested with success claims by M.P.s like Peter Wentworth to speak on matters like the royal succession and, indeed, on religion. Restiveness in opposition is one thing but the thing it was not was power. 

“So much”, Roskell concluded, “for the treat to personal monarchy and the preparation of the constitutional revolution of Stuart times.” Under James and Charles, too, the right to free speech proved illusory in practice: M.P.s could be and were confined during and Parliamentary sessions in 1614, 1621, 1626, 1629 and the spring of 1640. It was not until the Bill of Rights of 1689 that there was any constitutional safeguard for freedom of speech.

The acid test of Parliamentary power rested on the control of direct and indirect taxation. This had actually contracted under the Tudors because of the life-time grant of Tonnage and Poundage in the first Parliaments of their reigns. The bargaining power of the House of Commons was thereby reduced. It was not withheld until 1625 but Charles I still collected taxes without Parliamentary authority. As long as a King could dissolve Parliament at his discretion and could use his prerogative to choke opposition, it was impossible for the House of Commons to secure the abolition of levies like impositions and Ship Money collected on the basis of royal authority backed by judgments in the courts of law.

If Parliament was to control taxation, it was necessary to make its grants conditional upon their appropriation to specific purposes and to ensure that these were adhered to. This requirement was resurrected in 1624 and 1641 but only made invariable post-1688. The auditing of such grants was only indisputably re-established in 1667.

The real break, Roskell argued, came with the end of the power of the Crown to govern effectively without Parliament. What the Tudors had created was not the “power” of the House of Commons, much less authority, but merely potentiality. What was being fashioned under the early Stuarts was the procedural means to secure power but not, critically, power itself. The new practices identified by Wallace Notestein were the means to an end but control over the Crown itself was not established. The great divide in Parliamentary history came in the late-seventeenth century when Parliaments had to meet regularly, when taxes had to be voted year by year, when, in fact, they became a regular part of the constitution.

The significance of this essay lies in its summary of historical understanding in the mid-1960s. Roskell was perfectly clear that Parliament was not an institution wielding power and that its existence depended upon the willingness of monarchs to summon it. He was no less clear on its pre-1640 role as an extraordinary and occasional event. It could not control the government nor could it prevent levies or taxes without Parliamentary approval being collected. Monarchs could and did disregard privileges like freedom of speech when they chose: they could and did incarcerate members of both Houses during Parliamentary sessions and after adjournments and dissolutions. Procedural changes did not give either House “power” as such.

This analysis undermines claims for the novelty of Conrad Russell’s assault on the Whig interpretation of Parliamentary history when it was made over a decade later. Historians like John Ball in his study of Sir John Eliot’s role in Parliaments between 1624 and 1629 had already disposed of such an interpretation while J.H.Hexter in 1959 had repudiated the claim that there was a struggle for sovereignty between the Crown and Parliament. The views Russell criticised were antique and no longer current in the historiography of the period. Roskell’s essay confirmed this verdict.

1.J.S.Roskell, Perspectives in English Parliamentary History. Bulletin of the John Rylands Library. Volume 46, No.2 (March, 1964), Pp.448-475.