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The Causes of the English Revolution: A Reappraisal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Paul Christianson
Paul Christianson*
Affiliation:
Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario
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Extract

Recently one of the most distinguished historians of Tudor and Stuart England, Lawrence Stone, distilled his extensive study and careful analysis of this era into a compact, persuasive, up-to-date account of The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642. Abounding in shrewd insights, it appears destined to became the standard short introduction to the background of that event and a popular starting point for comparative studies. For these reasons, the framework of historical interpretation expounded in the Causes bears careful, explicit examination and assessment. Stone himself stressed the need for such inquiry and indicated its direction by pointing out that “the main thing which distinguishes the narrative from the analytical historian is that the former works within a framework of models and assumptions of which he is not always fully conscious, while the latter is aware of what he is doing, and says so explicitly.” One must add that the analytical historian rarely escapes from the category reserved for his narrative colleague. However, the Causes opens the way for reappraisal of a whole historiographical tradition precisely because Stone explicates portions of his explanatory framework.

Normally most historians operate from hidden assumptions which enclose the perimeters of an historiographical tradition and provide it with needed stability. While excluding other approaches, these presuppositions make detailed research possible by singling out particular hypotheses, problems, and even evidence as especially significant or legitimate. From the days of Samuel Rawson Gardiner to the present, historians as different as Gardiner and Stone have shared a set of basic assumptions about the movement of history in general, about the long term causes of the “English Revolution”, and about its nature and timing.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , Spring 1976 , pp. 40 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1976

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References

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70. Stone, , Causes, pp. 55–57, 140–45Google Scholar. For the leadership of the Commons, see Hexter, King Pym, and Glow, Lotte, “The Manipulation of Committees in the Long Parliament, 1641-1642,” J.B.S., V (1965), 31–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar. One can work out the links between peers and members of the Commons from Keeler, Long Parliament.

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77. David Underdown, “Settlement in the Counties, 1653-1658,” in Aylmer, , Interregnum, pp. 176, 165–82Google Scholar. See also the rest of the essays in this collection and those in Parry, Civil War and After, for the Protectorate and Restoration.

78. Stone, , Ec.H.R., 2nd Ser. XXV (1972), 135–36Google Scholar. Almost all of my colleagues and all of the students in my senior honors seminar on Stuart Britain have listened to many of the arguments presented in this article for a number of years. I should like to thank them all for their help and patience, especially those who have commented upon various drafts of the manuscript: Professors Klaus Hansen, Robert Malcolmson, James Nuechterlein, George Rawlyk, James Stayer, and Donald Swainson from Queen's, Jack Lander of the University of Western Ontario, John Christianson of Luther College, and William Lamont of Sussex University. Since the counsel of these people was not always followed, the mistakes which remain are mine.