INTRODUCTION: THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION

The English revolution was the most spectacular product of the troubles. English radicalism came to question customary religious, social, legal, economic and political arrangements. It was the terrifying outcome of the troubles that successful struggle against one form of innovation unleashed another. What was for Thomas Edwards the death of reformation, or for William Prynne the death of political liberty, was for the radicals their substantial, rather than simply formal, achievement.

In this respect revolution was the inverse of statebuilding. Both entailed innovation and both were the products of war. One difference between them hinged upon the distinction between reformative and radical innovation. Another concerned their relationship to institutions: English radicalism took as its starting point the absence of those institutions which it was the business of statebuilding to perfect. Finally, therefore, one was a reaction against the other. In the pages to follow we will be studying a reaction against Laudian formality in the shape of radical anti-formalism. We will find a reaction against counter-reformation monarchical statebuilding in the shape of no monarchy at all.