BOOKS Who was then the gentleman?

G. D. RAMSAY

Why did one group of Englishmen take to arms against another group not much more than three hundred years ago? Until recent times, there was general acceptance of an ex- planation, couched in terms of puritanism and prerogative, as narrated in detail by the Victorian scholar S. R. Gardiner. Then in 1940 the tercentenary of the outbreak was marked by a couple of dissenting publica- tions. R. H. Tawney, in a celebrated article, sought to show that the troubles of the 1640s might be viewed rather as the culminating and political phase of 'the rise of the gentry'; while a booklet edited and largely written by the present Master of Balliol (the original edition is now a collectors' piece) and more directly inspired by Marx boldly argued that the Long Parliament had precipitated an authentic 'bourgeois revolution' on English soil.

When from 1946 onwards the historians were back in their libraries, controversy ex- ploded. Efforts were made to refute, elaborate or modify the theses of Tawney and Hill, and various ingenious and in- creasingly complex interpretations of the upheaval were put forth. There is now in ex- istence a large body of writings dealing with the subject, but no longer an agreed basis for explanation, though a great deal has been discovered about the workings of society in Stuart England and indeed about the social process in general. Perez Zagorin is an American scholar who has descended upon the troubled scene with a commentary—The Court and the Country: The Beginning of the English Revolution (Routledge 60s)— upon this quarter-century of argument.

Mr Zagorin's approach is empirical: he makes no bones about rejecting any Marxist-inspired interpretations. English society, as he sees it, rested on distinctions of status not class: 'the most elementary distinction it enforced was between those who were gentlemen and those not'. And both sides were led by indubitable gentlemen. The historian, he admits, must refine and distinguish if he is to make sense of any situation and not be overwhelmed by the welter of facts—but always with the reservation that his categories are artificial, mere 'classificatory constructions and nothing more'. Mr Zagorin's major categories are (1) the Court, (2) the Country, (3) the Citizen element and (4) Puritanism. Around these he has grouped his analysis.

It would be unfair to take Mr Zagorin to task for any looseness in his categories.

Possibly he makes too much of the ap- pearance of the words 'Court' and 'Country' which for some centuries were bandied about as somewhat casual labels in English political life. As he takes care to explain, the civil war was in no sense a conflict between them, for the military conflict was possible only because of a schism in the ranks of the Country. For most of the time, 'Court' and 'Country' meant little more than the vague psychological dichotomy 'we' and 'they'. To this, Mr Zagorin virtually confesses by his

frequent employment of the inelegant and watery term 'oppositionist' to describe critics of government. An 'oppositionist', it seems, is not quite an opponent: there was certainly before 1640 no concerted 'opposition' still less any conspiracy against the king, though some strong-willed notabilities were growing very discontented.

The high drama of Mr Zagorin's 'English revolution' falls within the brief space of 1640-2. The king, having provoked a suc- cessful rebellion in Scotland, was forced to summon a parliament to enable him to deal with the Scots, whose troops were occupying the northernmost English counties. His first assembly. the Short Parliament. proved recalcitrant and was soon dissolved; the se- cond, the Long Parliament, met in November 1640 and proceeded to establish a grip on affairs that could not readily be shaken. Pym and the other leaders of the Commons acted methodically, in accordance with well-laid plans. They aimed their blows not directly at the king but at his advisers. As every schoolboy knows, his most dreaded counsellor, the Earl of Strafford, went to the executioner's block. The Archbishop of Canterbury was imprisoned, while a Secretary of State and the Keeper of the Great Seal avoided the same fate only by fleeing the country. Royal government in its arbitrary forms collapsed. The Star Chamber and other prerogative courts ceased to func- tion. Chprles Stuart, bereft of support, gave his assent to various statutes that for the future ensured a diminution of royal authority. This is an old story, but the in- terest of Mr Zagorin's book lies in the in- terpretations, abreast of current historical research, and occasionally his own discovery, that he is able to supply.

The electorate represented in the Parlia- ment was not aggrieved by the heaviness of taxation, for the fiscal burden was com- paratively light; but people resented the manner in which money was raised and they feared the political implications of un- parliamentary levies—and there was great Puritan discontent at recent ecclesiastical enormities. Pym figures as the great harmoniser of critics. steering clear of con- troversial issues that might divide the Com- mons in their almost unanimous en- croachments upon royal power. The king had no idea of how to grapple with the situa- tion. He was not prepared to accept the reforms that an appointment of Pym and his friends' to office would have entailed. Nevertheless, it looked as if changes were

going to be forced bit by bit upon him from

outside the government, when suddenly the news' from Ireland forced a brusque con-

frontation between the radicals and those who felt that the pace of reform was quick enough. The Irish papists, it was reported, had risen and were slaughtering the Pro- testants. An army, it was universally agreed, must be dispatched to quell them.

But who was to command it? This was the point at which the moderates parted com- pany from Pym and his friends, who wanted the commanding general to be a parliamen- tary nominee. This was too much for Falkland, Hyde and others who had hitherto kept in step with the constitutional revolu- tion in progress. When Pym sought to restore unanimity by putting forward the manifesto later known as the Grand Remonstrance, it passed the Commons by only eleven votes. The minority were not chiefly actuated, as Gardiner thought, by a zeal for the preserva- tion of episcopacy, for Pym did not seek to abolish the bishops, but merely to reduce their wealth and status. What caused the division, which was to prove lasting, was, as Dr Zagorin is able to show, a fear on the part of the minority that the whole monarchical order was now being en- dangered, or, as Hyde put it, that the Grand Remonstrance threatened to overturn 'the whole frame and constitution of the kingdom'. This marks the cleavage that has so far eluded social analysis.

With the passage of the Grand Remonstrance, the slide towards violence quickened. London was by now a hothouse of political passion. The City was much more enraged than the provinces, in which a sort of horrified neutrality was widespread. The Londoners of 1641-2 were not the sans- culottes of Paris in 1789-93, but there were curious likenesses of which Gardiner did not dream. The City was by far the richest cor- ner of the kingdom, and it had been the fiscal mainstay of the monarchy. But now with the censorship in ruins, subversive parliamentary speeches were being printed for distribution, while news-sheets and sermons drove home the arguments they adumbrated. The young men of London were organised for political agitation, with 'tavern clubs in each ward'. so that the leaders in the Commons could ar- range for a mob of apprentices to speed the condemnation of Strafford or to discourage hesitant MPS from voting against the Grand Remonstrance. From January 1642, the wealthy merchants who filled the chief seats at the Guildhall were unable to prevent their authority slipping away to a more popularly- elected 'committee of safety'. The ensuing civic revolution (first described by the

English scholar Dr V. Pearl) led to the eclipse and then the replacement of the Lord Mayor by a parliamentary stalwart. Control of the City provided a major reason for the success of the parliamentary forces in the ensuing military conflict.

This is a powerful book, well fortified by sharp insight as well as by learning. It puts the case against any stereotyped social in- terpretation of 'the English revolution' as persuasively as is ever likely to be possible.

Dr Zagorin is most at home in treating of Puritan ideals and grievances—American historians seem. to excel in their in- terpretations of Puritanism. But his gifts are also shown to advantage in the narrative chapters, which are written in tense and spr- ingy prose. In urban and economic problems his touch is less sure: indeed, one wonders

whether his book might not have eained• by

grafting some of the analysis of 'classificatory constructions' upon the nar- rative. However, this might leave his defences more open to the onslaughts of the social analysts which he is now likely to en- counter.