Oliver Cromwell in the Middle Ages?

[steepholm]

Lucy Worsley began Harlots, Housewives and Heroines on BBC4 last night, by declaring: "The Restoration was a turning point in British history. It marked the end of the mediaeval, and the beginning of the modern age."

WTF?

First, I realise it's a fuzzy borderline, but I've never heard anyone put the date of the medieval/modern divide anything like so late. (The Battle of Bosworth was good enough in my day.) Does she really class Shakespeare as a medieval writer? Is this idea in common currency?

But also, the transition from Commonwealth to monarchy was in many ways a regression back into the Middle Ages, from what had in its beginnings at least been a proto-modern state, with a modern idea of human rights and politics (just read the birthpangs of English democracy in the Putney debates, and see how modern they sound compared with anything that happened for 100 years afterwards). Not only is the whole idea of monarchy thoroughly mediaeval in itself, but Charles's government set the clock back in totally senseless, spiteful ways, just because they wanted to wipe the deeds of the Commonwealth from history. They re-introduced Rotten Boroughs, for goodness' sake!

Of course, in many ways the tide of modernity flowed on under Charles and his successors: how could it not? He wasn't the absolutist his father had been (but then, he was smart enough to realise that wasn't an option). The Royal Society was set up in 1660, with him as patron - but that was simply the continuation by other means of what people like Hooke, Petty, Boyle and Wren had been doing through the 1650s at Gresham College and at Wadham College, Oxford (the latter under the Mastership of John Wilkins, Cromwell's brother-in-law). If the Restoration is going to be given credit for that, then by the same token we might as well blame it for the Fire of London and the plague - a nasty, mediaeval disease, don't you know.

Comments

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

"For really I think that the poorest hee that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest hee; and therefore truly, Sr, I think itt clear, that every Man that is to live under a Government ought first by his own Consent to put himself under that Government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that Government that he hath not had a voice to put Himself under."

Hear hear, and let's not forget the poorest she as well.

(Deleted and reposted when I realized my first comment was a modernized paraphrase of the original text.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Quite! And yet here we are over 350 years later, debating whether to introduce democracy to the House of Lords...

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

I was just about to quote that! It's Colonel Thomas Rainborow, 1647.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

And did anybody quote that during either the American Revolution or the Chartist movement? Because that's basically the argument of both, in a nutshell. I don't recall having come across it in the former context, and I haven't much studied the latter.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Give or take the famous Putney Debate speech, Rainborowe is not as well known as he perhaps might otherwise have been as he was assassinated by Royalist irregulars, so didn't have as much influence on the newly founded republic as he might otherwise have done. The Chartists seem to have been more familiar with the speeches and writings of 'Freeborn John' Lilburne and with the works of Cromwell himself.

That said, Rainborowe did have New England connections via the Winthrop family, so it's not impossible his writings and speeches might have been known amongst revolutionaries.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to remember the dates for Cole/Postgate and Thompson - 1780 for Thompson. Industrial capitalism was clearly underway by then. Post Bosworth pre-Commonwealth is early modern.


Isn't Huizinga with the famous book? When does he stop? (Not to be confused with the volume about how men in their forties begin to look like Rooney.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that Huizinga even goes as far as the sixteenth century, let alone the later seventeenth.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Huh?

That's arrant nonsense, but I suppose that as an early modern specialist, I would say that.

Bosworth still does for me although some historians would date the break as occurring as the late at the Henrician Reformation or perhaps the reactionary regime of Mary Tudor and Philip of Spain which at least also make some sense!

It's nice to see _tekalynn_ quote from my MA thesis subject: good old Thomas Rainborowe, the original sea geeen incorruptible! :o)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Bosworth still does for me although some historians would date the break as occurring as the late at the Henrician Reformation or perhaps the reactionary regime of Mary Tudor and Philip of Spain which at least also make some sense!

I could accept either of those - particularly the former.

[shark-hat.livejournal.com]

I've recorded it and mean to get around to watching at some point... but I was puzzled, too, why she talks in the trailers about the Restoration being the first time ordinary women had a chance to be important (as mistresses, natch)- what about all the prophetesses in the Levellers, and so on? There were really interesting ideas around at the start of the Commonwealth. (I mean, if what you want to do is make a series about sexy Restoration ladies, cool. But that seemed like a simplification too far.)

(Side grizzle: although I love Horrible Histories, it annoys me how... ooh... monarchonormative? they are- stuff about the Restoration is always positive, Cromwell is just grumpy and bans things, no sketches about why we had the Civil War. Bring back 1066 And All that, I say! Wrong but Wromantic is a useful concept!)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes, that annoys me about HH too. They're fond of puncturing historical myths, yet they seem happy to perpetuate them when it comes to Cromwell and the Commonwealth.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Bosworth does it if you're talking about England and Wales, but really the Renaissance was as unevenly distributed as any future and had been roaring ahead in Italy for decades before that. I think 1453 makes a very clear line for everyone.

The idea of putting it at the Restoration is infuriating bunk.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

1453 makes sense too. Actually, just yesterday I heard someone on the radio arguing that the transition from the Byzantine Empire to the Ottomans didn't make much difference, but that may be carrying revisionism too far.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Although it's certainly true that Murad and the other Ottoman Sultans saw themselves as the true heirs of Rome. Byzantium had splintered into a number of warring micro states fringed by potential Serbian and Bulgarian invaders as well as the Turks well before the Ottomans took Constantinople.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Well, when I'm dealing with the history of music ...

One problem I have with dividing both medieval/renaissance (Worsley seems to have forgotten about the latter, or maybe she's just taken C.S. Lewis too literally and thinks it doesn't exist) and renaissance/baroque is that they begin at different dates in different countries, both starting in Italy and spreading out from there.

I have no trouble beginning the med/ren split in the early 15th century in Italy, but in England 1485 makes more sense. And the ren/baroque split is even tougher. There's a clear dividing line around 1600 on the continent, but I have trouble hearing composers even as late as Gibbons, Lawes, and Tomkins, who were active in James I's reign, as Baroque. To my mind the English Baroque began to flourish in the Restoration.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was thinking CSL too -- "I believe I have proved to my satisfaction that the Renaissance did not exist -- or, alternatively, that if it did, it had no importance!" (from memory)

[larryhammer]

Bah -- no, 1660 was the end of the renaissance. Sheesh.

---L.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

I missed that one. I think I'd have been a bit gobsmacked by that one. I always feel I'm on the back foot when I try and argue that the medieval period in Scotland extended onwards to 1513, with the modern period beginning after the Battle of Flodden...