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 moreimagined than real,
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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