England on Edge deals with the collapse of the government of
Charles I, the disintegration of the Church of England, and the
accompanying cultural panic that led to civil war. Focused on the
years 1640 to 1642, it examines stresses and fractures in social,
political, and religious culture, and the emergence of an
unrestrained popular press. Hundreds of people not normally seen in
historical surveys make appearances here, in a drama much larger
than the struggle of king and parliament. Historians commonly
assert that royalists and parliamentarians parted company over
issues of principle, constitutional scruples, and religious belief,
but a more complex picture emerges from the environment of anxiety,
mistrust, and fear.
Rather than seeing England's revolutionary transformation as a
product of the civil war, as has been common among historians,
David Cressy finds the world turned upside down in the two years
preceding the outbreak of hostilities. The humbling of Charles I,
the erosion of the royal prerogative, and the rise of an executive
parliament were central features of the revolutionary drama of
1640-1642. The collapse of the Laudian ascendancy, the splintering
of the established church, the rise of radical sectarianism, and
the emergence of an Anglican resistance all took place in these two
years before the beginnings of bloodshed. The world of public
discourse became rapidly energized and expanded, in counterpoint
with an exuberantly unfettered press and a deeply traumatized
state.
These linked processes, and the disruptive contradictions within
them, made this a time of shaking and of prayer. England's elite
encountered multiple transgressions, some more imagined thanreal,
involving lay encroachments on the domain of the clergy, lowly
intrusions into matters of state, the city clashing with the court,
the street with institutions of government, and women undermining
the territories of men. The simultaneity, concatenation, and
cumulative, compounding effect of these disturbances added to their
ferocious intensity, and helped to bring down England's ancien
regime. This was the revolution before the Revolution, the
revolution that led to civil war.
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