The Maid Who Restored Charles II | Hacker News Reader

The Maid Who Restored Charles II

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83 pointssamclemens32 comments

The English Civil War feels like a dress rehearsal for the upheavals of the late 18th century. Many of the impulses of the American and French Revolutions are there, in germinal form. Egalitarianism, freedom of thought, even the see-sawing from monarchy to republic to monarchy again (America excluded). It is criminally undertaught in US schools (from my anecdotal experience) even though it explains much of context the founders were working within. Excellent & illuminating article.

"And do Englishmen so soon forget the ground where liberty was fought for? Tell your neighbours and your children that this is holy ground, much holier than that on which your churches stand. All England should come in pilgrimage to this hill once a year." John Adams wrote that while touring the site of the final battle of the English Civil War. I'd agree that the English Civil War is not covered in much detail in US Schools.

It wasn't taught to me at all here in the UK.

Nor me.

I did learn it, but at A-level (i.e an elective course after many kids had left school altogether)

tbf the English Civil War is, like most Civil Wars, pretty darned complicated in the motivations and actions of the key players, and dumbing it down gives lessons which are near, fit very nicely into modern tropes and are also almost entirely wrong in the messages they convey.

Yes, I was listening to the revolutions podcast which covers it in great detail. It's certainly messy to follow, but not as bad as the French Revolution.

I'm less familiar with the French Revolution. But the English Civil War might actually be worse: there are two diametrically opposed dumbed down narratives ("Parliament, represented by rugged common folk, fought an arrogant king and nobility for the right to democracy and religious liberty" vs "Puritan extremists fought to overthrow a king, installed a dictator infamous for banning public enjoyment and massacring the Irish, and the whole thing was such a failure that the monarchy was restored with widespread public support.") which are equally [in]accurate and both miss key points like Cromwell not being that important until relatively late on and Parliament really not representing many people and there actually being two English Civil Wars either side of peaceful factional struggles over what the future agreement with the king should look like, plus a prologue involving one side invading Scotland and an epilogue involving the other side invading Scotland

Then you've got questions like "was Cromwell unusually enlightened on issues of religious freedom or a religious extremist with a vicious hatred of anything that vaguely resembled Catholicism?" to which the correct answer is "both actually, and simultaneously". And the likelihood the whole thing could have been avoided if a king who wasn't exactly unusual in his behaviour for contemporary monarchs was actually good at politics or military planning, and that having taking the unprecedented step of executing a monarch for refusing to acknowledge them, Parliament then let a gentleman of modest background and means rule whilst refusing to acknowledge them them because he actually was good at politics and military planning.

Then there was the Glorious Revolution which wasn't actually a revolution a couple of decades and two kings later which was way more influential on democracy and religion in modern Britain and gets studied way less...

> there are two diametrically opposed dumbed down narratives

As every British schoolboy knows, there is only one narrative....

Royalists: Wrong but Wromantic

Parliament: Right but Repulsive

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_and_All_That

Just a few decades out of... millenia.

I highly recommend reading about the Levellers. It might be the only democratic movement in Britain until the 20th century.

Britain had a habit of showing all its religious/political (can't really separate them at this point in history) minorities the door (and to be fair, some of them were basically lunatics) which is likely a large part of why things shook out the way they did. A bunch of ideologically opposed groups cast onto another continent had no choice but to learn how to self govern despite their differences.

>religious/political (can't really separate them at this point in history)

In the US this is still true (idk anything about other countries' politics)

Religion has a relatively minor influence on UK politics these days. 37% of people are non-religious. 46% identify as Christians, but only 10% actually attend Church. And the majority of those Christians belong to moderate denominations whose politics isn't that different to that of the general population.

Eh even the nonreligious are still pretty culturally christian. This especially bubbles up during conversations about immigration

Politics is still religion. the "free market" religion, the "climate change" religion, etc.

Democratic in the modern sense. The past millennia of English history could be understood as a slow progression of the devolution of power. The actual politics were pretty messy, but the evolution in legal and political theory was more steady. Compare that to most other civilizations, where the evolution of democracy was much more abrupt and epochal, not to mention even bloodier and altogether much more recent.

There were democratic movements elsewhere, but almost all were squelched by king and tsars (domestic or foreign) and the legal and political environments reset to square 0.

Also, the modern notion of the history of democracy is the devolution of power to the masses. But I like to think of the evolution of English history, at least legally, as the (albeit slow and uneven) elevation of the masses to the aristocracy, and in that way something similar to how the Greek's viewed democracy--with power comes responsibility and stricture. Though, that was partially the product of the expulsion of certain groups from the island; yet, that process was carried over in the US where many of those groups landed.

I think one should be wary of taking a view of history like this. Feels a bit too whiggish

The republican tradition never really died out in Europe. From city states to merchant / maritime republics to free imperial cities, there were always polities that can be best understood as republics. Venice lasted for 1100 years, and San Marino is even older, with its origins lost in time.

There was more than just the Levellers at the time, maybe read "The English Revolution, 1640" [1] by Christopher Hill.

[1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/hill-christopher/english-re...

Very interesting. Cheers, thanks for the read!

I knew the 17th-century kings from a mnemonic that my world history teacher gave (Charlie the tuna in the middle of the sandwich≡James I-Charles I-Charles II-James II), but not much more than that. Most of my English history came by way of lit classes which had Milton the only author between the Cavalier poets from the early 17th century and Alexander Pope in the mid-18th century, so your anecdotal experience holds up with my Gen X education.

that period exactly touches the nerve of Catholic versus non-Catholic history.. The removal of that cause of war was a driver for the US Constitution religious liberty clauses.. so repeating in detail the drivers of the conflict is not taught in public schools in the USA generally, yes agree

If modern democracy was conceived from the magna carta then this was its birth. It for once and all proved that the king rules by the consent of Parliament and not the other way round. Charles II was much more hesitant to interfere, and his successors increasingly delegated political matters, paving the way to one of the most stable and free democracies in the world.

The Brit in me is also smug that "our" revolution was so much less messy then the French one.

Louis XVI researched extensively about Charles I once he was imprisoned, including reading the protocols of the trial, which were minutely recorded, including transcripts of the exchanges between the king and the court [1]. Louis chose a very different strategy, which didn't help him in the end. As with the English civil war, the French revolutionists weren't sure what to do with the king, either, and execution wasn't the one option considered. It really does feel like history rhymes.

[1] https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_exact-and...

I wonder if the current political shifts in America are just our version of swinging back to monarchy. Through the lens of modern American society, it's not a huge leap between monarchy and technocratic dictatorship.

Monarchies have crossed into dictatorship many times throughout history. Would a modernized dictator monarchy look like the US today?

Related historical novels about England, full of intrigue, passion, crime, and adultery, what else do you expect, like of any (feudal) period anywhere in the world, but a somewhat light, fun read, now and then. Gotta get those jollies out, and this is one way. Catharsis, IOW :) :

Jean Plaidy / Eleanor Alice Burford

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Alice_Burford

Georgette Heyer novels are another series in the same category. Some good writing and depictions there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgette_Heyer

All fiction.

I say, what a splendid tale.

One tiny comment, I think the article meant "steward" not Stuart. LOL

Nope, Stuart was the surname of the kings from James I–James II.

But actually, their surname did come from "Steward" -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Stuart

And they were monarchs of England, Scotland, and Ireland from King James IV-who-was-also-King James-I through Queen Anne.

James VI and I, not IV and I.

Oops! - yes, thanks.

James IV was about a century earlier, and "only" the King of Scotland. But it was his artfully negotiated marriage to Margaret Tudor that set the dynastic stage - for his great grandson (James VI and I) to also inherit the thrones of England and Ireland in the Union of the Crowns.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_IV

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