The Roots of Radicalism in England

Nicholas McDowell

The English Radical Imagination Culture, Religion and Revolution (1630–1660)

Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press

Oxford English Monographs, 2003

220 pages, 57,15 €, ISBN 0–19–926251–6

Jacques Coulardeau

Université Paris Dauphine

This book is a revealing and thrilling monograph on the English Revolution. It scrutinizes the period (1630–1660) from a completely new point of view and opens a completely regenerated perspective. Before entering the book, it is necessary to express one regret: the numerous books studied in this monograph are listed with their initial publishing dates but not with present references. But this is detail after all, and we can rather easily find this information.

Nicholas McDowell starts with the commonplace stereotype about this period of English history. This stereotype comes from Thomas Edwards who fought at the time against the multiplication of religious approaches during the revolution with one essential argument: the presbyterian church and the religious establishment are supported by literate people, whereas all the heretics are religious heterodox groups of illiterate people expressing their artisan radicalism («illiterate mechanick persons, p.1; “cobblers, tinkers, pedlars, weavers, sow-gelders and chimney-sweepers”, p.38). Then Christopher Hill, after the Second World War in England, endorsed this point of view to support his Marxist approach that these various religious groups were the expression of the working class of the time (craftsmen, artisans, and shopkeepers) if not even the populace, hence the root of a deep democratic desire in England (“the most vigorous instance of plebeian opposition to the puritan ethic”, p.23). Nicholas McDowell picks this stereotype as a challenge and tries to prove it is completely misguided by ideological and social interest on the side of Thomas Edwards and by ideological if not even political interest on the side of Christopher Hill, though Nicholas McDowell does not enter any polemics with the latter.