EMH EarlyModernHistory

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    David Underdown's account of the historiography of the English Revolution over the past thirty years is too misleading to pass unchallenged. The difficulties created by attempts by R.H.Tawney, Lawrence Stone and others  to account for the conflicts of the 1640s in terms of an antecedent rise of the gentry and decline of the peerage were evident well before 1970. Such problems led Conrad Russell to argue in 1973 that this "social change explanation of the English Civil War" had broken down, although the long-term weakening of the financial positions of the Crown and Church remained an "undoubted part" of its causes. He envisaged that any new social change explanation would have to be based on the rising power of artificers and tradesmen and to account for the political and religious divisions amongst the gentry and peers that made  such a conflict possible. His subsequent work on the financial problems of the Crown, on its quarrels with Stuart Parliaments ove...

  A surprise from Christopher Hill  "Those who dislike bull baiting will dislike healthy sports like fox-hunting." Christopher Hill, England's Turning Point. Essays on 17th century English history (Bookmarks. London, 1998), p.200. Author's Subject : Re: Bellany on the Russell festschrift Date Written : Mon, 8 Sep 2003 15:33:48 -0400 Date Posted on H-Albion : Thu, 10 Sep 2003 Alastair's Bellany's review of the festschrift for Conrad Russell edited by Tom Cogswell, Richard Cust and Peter Lake was characteristically intelligent and penetrating. It made a number of extremely important points about the evolution of studies of the early Stuart period since Conrad Russell began working in the 1960s. I was, however, surprised to see him commenting on "how ossified and uncritical historical understanding of early Stuart high political history had become by the early-1970s, sheltered in a pretty-much neglected corner as the storm over the gentry raged across the st...