Christmas Died at Naseby Fight

The Battle of Naseby was, of course, the penultimate Puritan victory in the First English Civil War, a victory of the 'new' England over the 'old'; and Christmas, and all that was associated with it, was very much part of the old. The festival was hated, in the first place, because it was 'popish', and in the second, because it was 'pagan'; it had no authority in scripture and it was the occasion for unseemly and drunken revels, presided over by the Lord of Misrule.

In the 1580s Philip Stubbes had written in The Anatomie of Abuses that;

The more mischief is that time committed than in all the year besides, what masking and mumming, whereby robbery, whoredom, murder and what not is committed? What dicing and carding, what eating and drinking, what banqueting and feasting is then used, more than in all the year besides, to the great dishonour of God and impoverising of the realm.

Ah, yes: robbery, whoredom, murder, dicing and carding. Just a typical family Christmas, then!

The festival had also become something of a political battleground between the stricter Protestant sects and Catholic recusants in England; for while it was condemned by the one it was growing in popularity with the other. Catholics, moreover, were quite happy to combine religious devotion with an attachment to the more profane aspects of Christmas celebration. Dorothy Lawson, a Catholic gentlewomam, was noted for celebrating "in both kinds...corporally and spiritually." Christmas thus became a prime target during the period of Puritan ascendency, both before and after Naseby.

The attack began with attempts to divorce the religious from the secular elements of the holiday, with Parliamentary ordinances from 1642 onwards calling for a more 'seemly' observation. The campaign was stepped up in early 1645 with the publication of the Directory of Public Worship, which plainly stated that "Festival days, vulgarly called Holy days, having no Warrent in the Word of God, are not to be continued."

The final victory over the King also saw the victory over Christmas. In June 1647 it was abolished outright. Neverthless, the festival remained popular with ordinary people, and fresh ordinances had to be issued throughout the period of both the Commonwealth and the Protectorate; even people attending church on 25 December were liable for arrest and interrogation by the army. The World is Turned Upside Down was part of a much wider popular and literary response to the whole Puritan campaign, including the wonderful satire The Arraignment, Conviction and Imprisioning of Christmas, printed by 'Simon Minced Pie' for 'Cicely Plum Pottage.'

Alas, England, ruled by Cromwell, in much the same fashion as Narnia was by the White Witch, was a land 'where it was always winter and never Christmas.' Old Father Christmas only returned with Summer and the King!

English Catholics and the Reformation

The problem for English Catholics after the break with Rome was in essence one of politics: the head of the Universal Church was now no more than a foreign potentate, and as their principle allegiance was to the crown, any lingering attachment to the secular authority of the Pope opened them to a possible charge of treason, especially after the excommunication of Elizabeth I.

Yet it should not be assumed that English Catholics always had an uncritical devotion to the Papacy. In the period before the onset of the English Reformation, when Sir Thomas More, later a Catholic martyr, was advising Henry VIII on the composition of his book, Defence of the Seven Sacraments, a polemic against Luther, he advised the King to tone down some of the arguments in favour of papal authority,

The Pope, as your Grace knoweth, is a Prince as you are. It may hereafter so fall out that your Grace and he may vary whereupon may grow breach of amity and war between you both. I think it best therefore that that place be amended, and his authority more slenderly touched.

I suppose the point here is that pontiffs like Alexander VI and Julius II, were almost entirely worldly figures, who impinged very little on Catholic practice and conscience. It was possible, in other words, to be a sincere Catholic yet distrustful of the Pope. So, those who in the end held to the 'Old Religion' may very well have done so for other reasons than loyalty to Rome.

The real break, the crisis of English Catholicism, if you like, came not in the 1530s but in 1570, with Pope Paul V's bull, Regnans in Excelsis. In forbiding English Catholics to obey Elizabeth and her laws, whether they paid heed or not, Paul effectively forced the government to treat them as a source of potential treason. The new class of 'Recusants', those who now refused to attend their local parish churches, were treated with increasing degrees of severity.

Even so, while there was some plotting against the throne, centering on Mary Queen of Scots, the Catholic alternative to Elizabeth, most of those who continued to adhere to the Old Religion, had little or no interest in treasonable actions; and regardless of papal instructions they effectively trimmed and compromised where they could, rendering unto Caesar what was due to Caesar. There were even Catholics who declared openly at the time of the Spanish Armada that if the enemy landed they would come to the defence of the Queen.

By the end of Elizabeth's reign, and into that of James I the pragmatic tendency in English Catholicism was well-established, expressed most particularly in the views of a new class of priests, known as the Appellants. The argument was now put forward that one could be loyal by both Pope and Crown, because the Pope had no claim on the political allegiance of Catholics. In this it is possible to see a 'national' reaction to the 'internationalism' of the Jesuits. In effect, the Pope's authority in civil matters was denied, just as he continued to be recognised as the supreme arbiter in matters of faith. It's worth emphasising that there was nothing new in this. Even rulers as orthodox as Philip II of Spain placed clear limits on the degree of papal interference allowed within their realms.

It was, in short, possible for Catholics to be loyal subjects of a heretical crown, no matter how much the Pope may have disliked this development. The English Civil Wars were to provide the best demonstration of the new dual tradition, with Catholics high among the Royalists.

The Bishop's Crusade

Now, here is an interesting story for you, a story of an English bishop who led a 'crusade', no less, against the schismatic French. His name was Henry Despenser, Bishop of Norwich and nuncio of Pope Urban VI, who took an army into the Low Countries under the sign of the cross in May, 1383. Some years prior to this Urban had sent a bull to the Archbishop of Canterbury, offering crusading indulgences to all those who took arms against Clement VII, his rival in Avignon, who was supported by France and Scotland. Henry Dispenser, described as 'warlike' by his contemporaries, was quick to make his own plans for a crusading venture, which Urban readily approved.

The opportunity came when the people of Ghent rebelled against Louis of Male, Count of Flanders, a supporter of Clement. This also attracted the interest of the English crown, which had important commercial interests in Flanders, and was keen to support the burghers of Ghent. The matter was made all the more urgent after the Flemings were defeated by a French army at the Battle of Roosebeke in November, 1382. Because of this, and the danger the victory presented to English economic interests, Richard II granted Dispenser permission to raise an army. A crusade had the added advantage to Richard in that the expenses could all be met by the sale of Papal indulgences, rather than parliamentary grant.

Despenser and his army landed at Calais on 16 May. Soon after they attacked and slaughtered the French garrison at Gravelines, before moving on to Dunkirk, where they fought and defeated Louis of Male. It was after this high point that things started to go wrong. An attempt to take Ypres was a failure, after which the gains of the spring were lost, and towns previously captured by the crusaders were retaken by the enemy. Gravelines was only given up after Despenser, in his anger, ordered it to be sacked. By October most of the army was back in England.

Despenser was impeached before Parliament for his failure. His temporalities were confiscated and he was ordered to behave in a manner 'befitting his episcopal dignity.' The massacre at Gravelines also did much to discredit the Urbanist cause, just as the unscrupulous sale of indulgences had roused the criticism of John Wycliff and the new Lollard movement. Wycliff denounced both Popes as 'power made'. God's forgiveness, he argued still further, could not be purchased, and that the grant of remission of sins for killing fellow Christians was 'an affront to Christ.'

The Calendar Riot-a History of a Myth

Have you heard, I wonder, of the Calendar Riot of 1752, when people in England took exception to the 'loss' of eleven days of their lives when the old Julian Calander was replaced by the Gregorian? A wonderful story but-alas-a fiction, one that has been repeated time and again. It even makes an appearance in the relevant edition of the Oxford History of England. Encyclopedia Britannica once put these alleged riots down to the 'vulgar and ignorant prejudice of the mob'.

It's one of these stories that everyone seems to know about but nobody can quite pinpoint. The whole thing is a wonderful example of the circularity that one tends to find in certain forms of historical reportage: textbooks cited textbooks which cited other textbooks, and so on and so on! In other words, it was an event quite without witness. All such references are reducible to two sources only: to Lord Chesterfield and to William Hogarth.

It was Chesterfield who was behind the Calendar Reform Act of 1751. In one of his letters to his son he writes, "Every numerous assembly is a mob, let the individuals who compose it be what they will. Mere sense is never to be talked to a mob; their passions, their sentiments, their senses and their seeming interests alone are to be applied to. Understanding have they collectively none." But what he was doing here was boasting of his skill in having the Bill passed through the Lords. The 'mob' in question was his fellow peers!

So, this only leaves Hogarth's 1755 depiction of An Election Entertainment, in which a placard is shown, carrying the slogan 'Give us our eleven days.' According to Ronald Paulson, author of Hogarth, His Life, Art and Times, this shows that "...the Oxfordshire people...are specifically rioting, as historically the London crowd did, to preserve the 'Eleven Days' the government stole from them in September 1752 by changing the calendar."

And thus it was that the 'calendar riot' was born. The only problem is that the election campaign depicted was one which concluded in 1754, after a very lengthy contest between Court Whigs and Jacobite Tories. Literally every issue between the two factions was brought up, including the question of calendar reform. The Tories attacked the Whigs for every deviation, including their alleged favoritism towards foreign Jews and the 'Popish' calendar. Hogarth's placard, in his usual rumbustious fashion, is no more than part of a satire on the character of the debate. It was not an observation of actual crowd behaviour. The whole thing, as one author has rightly said, was simply a 'magnificent myth.'

Churchill in the Wilderness

There is an awful lot of retrospective justification in Churchill's political career. From the hindsight of history we know that appeasement was a doomed policy; but there was simply no way of knowing this at the time. I would go so far as to say that appeasement was a rational and understandable policy taking all of the political, diplomatic and strategic factors into account. It was unheroic, yes, but it was necessarily unheroic. Neither Britain nor France was ready for war in 1936, or 1937, or 1938. They were only just ready in 1939, largely thanks to the time that Neville Chamberlain had bought at Munich. For along with seemingly spineless concessions to Hitler-and the unprincipled sacrifice of a central European ally-went a steady process of rearmament, particularly important for the RAF, which was to be the decisive defensive wing in 1940. Rearmament was not, of course, Chamberlain' chief aim; for that was simply to secure the peace. He failed, but it was not a failure without consequence.

It is important to see Churchill's 'prescience' in a far wider political and personal context, which might help people to understand why he stood alone on this issue, as on so many others. You see, Churchill was not just opposed to the appeasement of Germany; he was opposed to all forms of appeasement. Put another way: he was opposed to political compromise on issues of fundamental importance to the interests of the British Empire, as he conceived those interests.

The emphasis here is important, for it entailed a refusal to entertain any kind of compromise, even in forms that most people, including the bulk of his own Party, considered perfectly reasonable. For example, he refused to entertain the proposal, again accepted by his own party, that India should aim for Dominion status within the Empire. For Churchill any understanding with Ghandi and Congress was, almost by definition, 'betrayal', attacked in the same way he was later to attack attempts to reach an understanding with Germany. Here was the arch-reactionary, the voice of the Tory ultras, whom no less a figure than Sir Samuel Hoare believed was aiming to smash the government and introduce some sort of undemocratic and Fascist rule in Britain and the Empire. Ridiculous, of course; but it remains true that Churchill's 'warnings' over India and Europe began to seem more and more out of touch, more and more unreasonable and reactionary, the voice of the past. Hardly surprising when one considers that in the preface to My Early Life, written in the summer of 1930, he bemoaned all of the political and economic changes in British society since the Victorian era, including universal suffrage.

Even before Hitler, true to his unique style, he was warning against disarmament, a principle universally strived for, describing the 1932 Geneva talks on the subject as 'mush, slush and gush.' In the Commons his speeches came close to war-mongering, and were generally perceived as such. His seeming lack of judgement was confirmed in 1936 during the Abdication crisis, when he threatened to form a 'King's party', even though there were great constitutional issues at stake, even though almost all opinion in Parliament was against Edward. It was at this point that his political stock sank to its lowest. He subsequently sought to recover by pronouncements on foreign policy. But he now had the reputation of being 'unsound' on almost all issues. In the Commons his denunciation of the Munich Agreement was seem merely as more of the same old stuff; the same old uncompromising Winston, full of hot air and bellicose intentions, unrealistic in every degree. It was fortunate for him, and his future reputation that history, at least in this one instance, proved him to be in the right

Of a Gay King and a Red Hot Poker

It is often claimed that James I was homosexual, though this is a contention that cannot be proved conclusively; it is unknown and unknowable. This is also true of Edward II, though to a far lesser degree, and there is enough material to make out a good circumstantial case, if one were so minded. So, at my peril, here it is.

Piers Gaveston, Edward's greatest friend, was introduced into his household by his father, seemingly as a suitable role model for the young prince. Later the Chronicle of the Civil Wars of Edward II was to claim that an immediate bond formed between the two; that Edward felt such regard that "he tied himself against all mortals with an indissoluble bond of love." The first contemporary reference we have is from a letter written by Edward himself in 1305, after the King had reduced his household, separating him from Gaveston and Gilbert de Clare, another young knight. In this he urges his sister Margaret to persuade Queen Margaret their step-mother, to intervene with the King to allow both men to return-"If we had those two, along with others we have, we would be greatly relieved of the anguish which we have endured and from which we continue to suffer from one day to the next."

Both were eventually restored, but in 1306 Gaveston was banished for unspecified reasons. He was only allowed to return after the King's death in the summer of 1307. It is now that expressions of disquiet become ever more evident in the sources, including that given by the Vita Edwardi Secundi. Robert of Reading goes even further in the Flores Historiarum, saying that Edward entered into 'illicit and sinful unions', rejecting the 'sweet embraces of his wife.' In the Chronicle written by John of Trokelowe, Edward no sooner brought his new bride, Isabella of France, to England after their marriage at Boulogne in 1308, than he rushed to greet Gaveston, showering him with 'hugs and kisses.' During the Queen's coronation Edward's attentions to Gaveston, and his neglect of his bride, caused her uncles, Louis de Everaux and Charles de Orleans to storm out in anger. That same summer Isabella wrote to Philip the Fair, her father, complaining of ill-treatment.

The final piece of evidence comes in the spring of 1312 when Edward fled in the company of Gaveston from the Baronial forces of Thomas of Lancaster, abandoning jewels, plate and his pregnant wife in his haste.

None of this amounts to a conclusive case-and one always has to be mindful of the bias in Medieval sources-, but it shows both an astonishing lack of judgement and degrees of intimacy with a single individual that exceeds all reasonable fraternal bonds; a degree of intimacy that would seem to go beyond mere considerations of personal loyalty. Edward was a king who came close to losing his throne not for the love of a woman but for his love of a man, in whatever form that was expressed.

He was later deposed by Isabella and her lover, Roger Mortimer, disappearing behind the walls of Pontefract Castle, where it was later claimed that his bowels were burnt out by the insertion of a red hot poker, a comment, I think, by chroniclers on his supposed sexual tastes

The Futility of Utility

The whole problem with Utilitarianism as a system of values is that it is deeply rooted in the mindset of the English middle classes during the high noon of the Industrial Revolution. It has, as Karl Marx rightly observed in Das Kapital, no real historical dynamism, that it cannot transcend time and place, and it cannot account for changing values and needs. The perfect Benthamite might very well be said to be the figure of Thomas Gradgrind in Charles Dicken's novel Hard Times, relentless in his demand for facts, and only facts. And I can think of no more damming critiqe than that penned by Nietzsche-If we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how. Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does. This, in my view, might very well serve as an epitaph for the whole Utilitarian movement!

Englishness

There was already a consciousness of Englishness and England before the Danish onslaught in the ninth century; before Alfred and even before Bede. However, England, as we have come to know it, and Englishness as a given identity, was formed, it might be said, by a gradual process of cultural and historical sedimentation. A loose identity was given a definite shape and direction by adversity; by war and the threat of war; by victory, and yes, by defeat. The successive victories of Alfred, of Ethelfleda and Edward the Elder established England on a new and more lasting basis, one that could not be threatened by the fresh wave of Norse invasions in the tenth and eleventh centuries, when the country was absorbed into a Danish empire.

Even so, this England, and once Anglo-Saxon and Viking, effectively came to an end with the Norman Conquest in 1066. No longer part of a Germanic and Scandinavian world, the country was drawn into the mainstream of European feudal civilization; no more than an appange, it might be said, of a trans-continental empire. And there it might have remained, no more politically significant than Provence, but for one man: good old, bad old King John. An unusual 'hero' of Englishness, I know; but it was his loss of Normandy and the bulk of the Angevin Empire that threw England back on itself; that gave the country a new sense of its political importance, notwithstanding the fact that there was still a huge cultural divide between an English-speaking peasantry and a French-speaking aristocracy. The victory of William Marshal over the invading force of Prince Louis was also an important step in safeguarding this new political independence and sense of self-reliance.

In considering the whole question of the formation of modern England by far the most significant figure of all, as far as I am concerned, has to be Edward III. It was he who began the political and cultural transformation of the nation; he who embarked on a War that helped form a new national consciousness; a war that consolidated and defined some of the country's most enduring political institutions. It was his patronage that turned St. George into a national saint, and his policy that, in 1362, saw English recognised as the 'tongue of the nation.' It was during his time that the old divisions between Norman-French and Anglo-Saxon became less and less distinct, and Englishness, the Englishness of Chaucer and others, emerged on its modern path

Edward III-Father of the English Nation

I've been reading Ian Mortimer's book, The Perfect King: the Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation. Yes, there is much in Mortimer's thesis that stands up to scrutiny. Perhaps the most common perception of Edward's reign is one that brought England success in war, from the Halidon Hill and Neville's Cross against Scotland, to the even greater victories against France at Crecy and Poitiers. In 1356 England had two enemy kings in captivity: David II of Scotland and John II of France. In some ways the country had reached the high point in its Medieval history. But success in war brought two more innovations: the enhanced role of ordinary people in attaining military success, and the rise of Parliament as a unique English political institution.

Before Edward England had continued to rely on the feudal levy for its military arm, which meant, in essence, dependency on the great feudal nobility and the armed knight. But Edward's wars saw the recruitment of professional armies, where the decisive arm was not the knight but the plebeian archer.

It was through Edward's wars that the ordinary people of England (and Wales!) acquired a direct interest in the course and the outcome of the nation's foreign adventures, which did much to forge a common sense of nationhood, distinctly lacking at earlier periods. Even more important, the wars demanded money, and money meant Parliamentary grants, and Parliamentary grants meant detailed scrutiny of expenditure, as well as the granting of petitions. By the end of Edward's reign the Commons were able not only able to introduce legislation, but also to hold officials to account. His successor, Richard II was to discover just how assertive Parliament could be.

It was Edward who raised England from the nadir of the reign of his father, and created a sense of common identity and purpose. More than that, it was his patronage that turned St. George into a national saint, and he was the first king to give first place to the English language, as opposed to the Norman-French favoured by his predecessors. Not only did he use English himself in everyday discourse, but also in 1362 he passed legislation recognising English as 'the tongue of the nation.' Where he led the great nobility followed. So, the answer has to be, yes: Edward has every justified right to be considered as the father of the English nation.

Elizabeth and the Catholics

Official attitudes to Catholics in Elizabethan England were, to begin with, fairly fluid, with patterns of conformity and dissent dictated as much by local considerations as by national policy. It was quite possible for people to be Catholic in some aspects of their lives, though not in others; conformist and non-conformist at one and the same time.

This flexibility gave way to more rigid attitudes in 1571, by which time the Church of England had given firm expression to its Protestant doctrine in the Thirty-Nine Articles, while the Council of Trent gave a far stricter definition of what it meant to be a Catholic, forbidding any kind of participation in heretical services.

At that point the whole question moves from one of faith to one of politics: the conflict and contradiction between loyalty to one's faith and loyalty to one's nation. Even so, it is important not to place too much weight on Pius V's Regnans in Excelsis, declaring Elizabeth to be a pretender, as most English Catholics made open and sincere declarations of loyalty to the crown.

Still, for obvious reasons, it made the general position of recusants that much more problematic. The government became more vigilant, though action against priests was restricted to the new cohort emerging from Douai College, and not the surviving native or Marian priests, who were allowed to continue with minimum interference. In 1585 all priests ordained abroad and returning to England were declared guilty of high treason, and those who helped them of a felony. At the same time the pressure of the recusants became more systematic.

It was possible for ordinary people to remain Catholic-and a great many did-though the financial penalties for doing so became ever more burdensome. By the end of Elizabeth's reign in 1603, while it is difficult to give precise figures, Catholics comprised no more than about 2% of the total population in England, more numerous in some places than in others. The most secure were the upper class and noble Catholics, those who could afford to pay the recusancy fines. But the faith survived also among sections of the working population. They survived, with difficulty, yes, but without the wholesale persecution that was the fate of religious minorities on the Continent.

Was Enoch Powell a Racist?

I addressed myself in debate to this particular question. Here, below, is the answer I gave.

No, I do not think he was a racist. He was, rather, an angry man; angry at his party and angry at the leadership. His anger, his alienation, it is probably better to say, took him down a dangerous road, a road marked by insensitivity and misjudgement

The essential point to note was that the Rivers of Blood speech had the immediate effect of turning Powell into a kind of folk hero, even as he was being cast into the wilderness by the then leadership of the Conservative Party. London Dockers marched on Parliament to demonstrate their support, as workers in Wolverhampton and the Black Country demanded his reinstatement. Opinion polls taken at the time gave him an approval rating in excess of 70 per cent. He also received thousands of letters of support.

So, as far as race relations in the late 1960s are concerned, the picture revealed is not very attractive. On the basis if the measures I have given, one has to conclude that most of the British people harboured some form of racial prejudice. Powell did not create this; he simply gave shape and direction to underlying emotions, feelings that had slowly been building up ever since the arrival of The Empire Windrush from Jamaica twenty years before, beginning the first wave of post-war black immigration to England. At the time Labour back-benchers wrote to Prime Minister Clement Atlee, saying that "an influx of coloured people would cause discord and unhappiness among all concerned." By the late 1950s, with the rate of arrivals averaging 50,000 a year, this 'discord and unhappiness' achieved open expression in the Notting Hill race riots.

Although racism at this time was probably best explained as a kind of post-imperial hangover, it took on new and more worrying forms in the 1960s, the time just prior to Powell's speech. In sociological terms it was also becoming a largely working-class and, indeed, a regional phenomenon. There were two basic reasons for this. There was a large constituency of people, former Labour voters in the main, concentrated for the most part in the West Midlands, Powell's own political hunting ground, who felt they were being increasingly neglected by the government of Harold Wilson. This was the area, moreover, where black immigration was heaviest, leading to competition for housing and jobs. During one particularly notorious by-election for the Smethwick constituency, the successful candidate, Peter Griffiths, beat Patrick Gordon Walker, a senior Labour politician, by, amongst other things, the distribution of the most scurrilous forms of campaign literature, including one leaflet saying "Vote Labour for more nigger-type neighbours." This key event in British electoral politics showed that black immigrants had become scapegoats for more deep-rooted social ills. It really only needed the 'Rivers of Blood' to turn this from a local into a national phenomenon.

Racism is still with us; it will always be with us. But so much has changed since 1968. In general people are much more accepting; open discrimination is disallowed by law and black people are to be found at all levels of public life. There have been tragedies, there has been violence; but Powell was a poor profit. The Tiber is not foaming with much blood, and is never likely to.

Gerrard Winstanley-a Very English Radical

Gerrard Winstanley was a man of his time, one who gave shape to the radical hopes and expectations of the day, but there are also aspects to his work that go beyond the 'primitive communism' so beloved by Christopher Hill and others, ideas that could easily find a place in the modern green and environmental movement. His concept of God, for instance, comes close to pantheism, a belief that the divine was not remote and unknowable, but imminent and immediate, within nature itself:

The whole creation is the clothing of God. The Father is the universal power that hath spread himself in the whole globe; the Son is the same power drawn into and appearing in one single person, making that person subject to one spirit and to know him that dwells everywhere.

To know the secrets of nature was to know the works of God, who is also to be found in each and every individual. For Winstanley nature, the bounty of nature, was corrupted by greed and selfishness, by private property and covetousness, all of which entered the earth as a consequence of the Fall. Greed, as he saw it, had adversely affected the natural environment. The earth was being exploited not for a common good but for ruthless forms of private gain, which enriched the few only to enslave the many. The artificial divisions placed on the land, by expropriation and enclosure, had to be ended by everyone "coming to live in community with the globe and in the spirit of the globe." This was also a spiritual and mystical as well as a practical vision, for Christ himself was present in nature;

The body of Christ is where the Father is, in the earth, purifying the earth; and his spirit is entered into the whole creation, which is the heavenly glory where the Father dwells.

Winstanley shared the view of other Puritan thinkers that the second coming was immanent, but it was not of a figure emerging from the skies to sit in judgment, but the liberation of a force already latent within the hearts of people, a concept that anticipates later Quaker thought. The restoration of the earth as a bounty and treasury for all was, as he saw it, already in the process of coming true, as new forms of consciousness, new ideas of freedom, acted as a signal to the reappearance of Christ-"The Spirit of Christ, which is the spirit of universal community and freedom, is rising and rising."

Fully consistent with his belief in universal liberation, of people and the land on which they lived, Winstanley rejected many of the theological ideas so beloved by his fellow Puritans, particularly the excluding concepts of election and predestination, yet another sign of his originality. Salvation, like liberation, had to be universal, and all men and women would be gathered up in Christ. Just as the many were chosen, not the few, so there was no original sin and no Hell.
Yes, an original thinker, too radical for his own day or, for that matter, any day after.

The Horror of the Hustings

Those who have read George Elliot’s novel Middlemarch will remember, I feel sure, Arthur Brooke of Tipton’s humiliation on the hustings, having announced his candidature for Parliament. Indeed, it’s hardly possible to forget the scene depicted by the author, in all of its comic intensity!

The novel is set in the 1830s before the passage of the Great Reform Act, a time when only a tiny proportion of the adult male population-and none of the female-had the right to vote at all. But the kind of open air public meeting addressed by Brooke was an example, if you like, of popular democracy in action, almost in the style of ancient Athens. Even if most of those who came had no say in the outcome; they could at least make their views know, as they often did in the most vigorous way possible. For candidates it could be a really bruising experience, often physically as well as mentally.

The story of this aspect of English political history, the rise and fall of popular confrontation, is well summarised in John Lawrence’s new book, Electing Our Masters: The Hustings in British political Culture from Hogarth to Blair.

For all of the eighteenth century and a good bit of the nineteenth century Parliament was largely dominated by a narrow landed elite, resistant to all forms of popular pressure. But even candidates hand-picked for rotten boroughs, those in the gift of the local landlord, still had to go through meetings and even public nominations hustings, not abolished until 1872.

It was on these occasions that the public had a chance to make themselves heard, shouting abuse as well as throwing rotten vegetables, eggs and what was euphemistically referred to as ‘street dirt’! It was a two-way process: the crowd had a chance to let off hell and the candidate had a chance to prove that he could go through hell with equanimity. Poor old Brooke could not! It’s possible to get a sense of what went on, as Lawrence says, from the Hogarth’s wonderful prints. Writing in the 1930s Churchill put it thus;

Dignity may suffer, the superfine gloss is soon worn away…much has to be accepted with a shrug, a sigh or a smile; but at any rate in the end one knows a good deal about what happens and why.

Churchill, in a sense, represents a late flourishing of a form of popular democratic interaction that played such an important part in political tradition, played such an important part in making him the man he was-a grandee, yes, but one who understood even the most ordinary of people, one who had the ability to manage crowds achieved by few others. I say late flourishing because the hustings as a form of political contact declined steadily in the course of the last century with the rise of other media. John Major’s 1992 ‘soap box’ election was a late, personal and temporary revival.

Now politics and elections are much more managed. Television is the preferred mode of communication rather than face-to-face encounters. The expenses scandal saw a slight move away from this trend, though those MPs called to account in their constituencies faced not general meetings but in camera assemblies of their own parties, though this was bruising enough for some!

Politicians, particularly senior ones, are largely cushioned from potentially dangerous contacts with voters. Yes, the eggs and the rotten tomatoes have gone, though so too has much of the vibrancy. I imagine the very idea of returning to the hustings would terrify so many of the mediocrities who occupy Parliament now: not that many Churchills; lots of Brooks!

Cromwell's Last Battle

Every age has a tendency to refashion the past in its own image, and the story of Cromwell's statue at Westminster provides no better illustration of this general principle. In fact, this statue, if 'read' in its own particular historical context, tells us far more about the shifts and changes in Victorian opinion than it does about the infamous Lord Protector.

The saga begins soon after the old Palace of Westminster burned down in 1834. To enhance the new gothic structure designed by Sir Charles Barry and Augustus Welby Pugin, the recently established Fine Arts Commission, arranged for a series of paintings, statues and stained glass, all intended to celebrate the nation's history. This, of course, included depictions of the various monarchs. Only Oliver Cromwell was omitted, passed over in silence as a regicide and a tyrant, a view that had been in place ever since the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660.

But the decision of the hapless Commmissioners was greeted by protests from across the country. Radicals and Nonconformists of all sorts demanded that he should have his rightful place in the national panorama. The reason for this is not too hard to detect. England was undergoing some rapid social and political changes; the old aristocratic dominance, the dominance of the Cavaliers, if you like, was under challenge by the 'Roundheads' on a whole variety of fronts. The Reform Act of 1832 had extended the basis of the franchise to large sections of the new middle-classes.

The landed interest was under sustained challenge from the Anti-Corn Law League. Right at the heart of this desire for change were to be found the religious Nonconformists, once confined to the political margins, now moving steadily towards the centre. For all of these people Cromwell was a symbol. On this occasion the agitation failed; but it would not go away. Admiration for Cromwell grew still further when Thomas Carlyle, the historian, published Cromwell's Letters and Speeches in 1845. No longer perceived as the tyrant who dismissed more Parliaments than any other man in history, Cromwell re-emerged as an earnest middle-class Victorian moralist, an advocate of the twin ideals of empire and religious toleration.

In the years that followed he appeared in provincial town halls and Nonconformist chapels up and down England, in statue, bust or in stained glass, wherever the radical tradition was strongest. Another attempt to install him at Westminster was made in 1871, supported by over 100 MPs, but once again was defeated as Whigs and Tories fought out the old battles of the English Civil War.

Thereafter the issue died away somewhat, especially after William Ewart Gladstone took over the leadership of the Liberal Party. For the Nonconformists and the radicals the 'Grand Old Man' became something of a living embodiment of Cromwell, full of the same moral earnestness and sense of purpose. What need of statues when one had the real thing?

The project revived for the oddest of reasons: in 1894 the 'Roundhead' Gladstone was suceeded both as leader of the Liberal Party and as Prime Minister, by the 'Cavalier' Lord Rosebery. Rich, elegant, urbane, Rosebery, a member of the Jockey Club, is said to have had two ambitions: to become Prime Minister and to win the Derby. What he needed to do immediately was to uphold the uncertain coalition of interests that made up the Liberal Party, which almost came apart in the latter stages of Gladstone's ministry over the question of Irish Home Rule. To secure his position he needed the support of the Nonconformists; and to secure the Nonconformists he proposed to give them Cromwell. But he was surprised from an unexpected direction, as yet another old battle was refought, the bitterest of them all.

Rosebery mangaged to push the issue of the statue through Cabinet; but when the Commons was asked to fund the project in June 1895 John Redmond, the leader of the block of Irish Nationalist MPs, on whose votes the ministry also depended, rose in protest, reminding the House of the horrors of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. The motion had to be withdrawn, a move which was greeted, as one Cabinet member noted, "with anger and disgust from English Liberals, with thick-witted jibes from Unionists...and with wild cries of aboriginal joy from our Irish friends."

In the end Rosebery decided to pay for it out of his own pocket, but the erection was resisted all along the way, by an odd combination of Tory and Irish opinion. it was only finally unveiled on 14 November 1899 at 7.30 in the morning, an unusually early hour, intended to avoid any adverse demonstration. Cromwell had won his last battle.

Why did Fascism never come to England?

So, what's the answer, why did Fascism not take root in England?

I think it important to consider that Britain had few, if any, of the deep-rooted structural problems that gave rise to Fascism on the Continent. It possessed an organic political culture with readily identifiable symbols and institutions, which served to unite the whole community behind a single defining idea. Even the deepest economic and social grievances were not enough to 'disengage' most people from the national community, particularly those on the political right, who may otherwise have been attracted by Mosleyism. The country had not been defeated in war, like Germany; it did not feel aggrieved by the outcome of war, like Italy. There was simply nothing upon which Fascism could get a purchase. Even anti-Semitism was a non-starter, and Mosley's growing obsession with the 'Jewish question' was about as far away from traditional English 'golf club' snobbery as it was possible to get.

Most people would have surely have been happy to accept Stanley Baldwin's assessment of Mosley that he was "a cad and a wrong 'un." Finally, any nation that could laugh at the absurdities of Roderick Spode and the Black Shorts was never, ever going to be seduced by the real thing. Heil Spode!

England, St Helena and the Magi

England is full of legends about the Magi, the three kings of the Bible. In the most popular Melchior, King of Arabia, the one who presented the gold, is considered to be elderly and grey-haired; Balthasar, King of Ethiopia, who gave the frankincense, is middle-aged, and Caspar, King of Tarsus, giver of the myrrh, is just a boy. The are particularly significant because all are linked to Saint Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, whom the English held to be the only daughter of Old King Cole, the supposed ruler of Britain who held his court at Colchester. By tradition she was held to have been born in this town, married the Roman general Constantius there, later giving birth to Constantine within the city walls.

Apart from her discovery of the True Cross and the Holy Nails it was once believed that she also journeyed to India, where she discovered the bodies of the Magi, taken from there to Constantinople. In 1413 the borough of Colchester adopted a new coat of arms, depicting the True Cross the Three Nails and the three crowns of the Magi. The local girl did good!

Signor Dildo-You Ladies all of Merry England

I'm in a really super mood today, so I feel like upseting all the prigs of the world with a liittle discourse on John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester! He was a poet and a libertine, who lived and worked in my period of my special interest, late Stuart England. His poetry is of a particularly bawdy nature, about as far removed from Puritanism as it is possible to imagine.

More than that, he represents, it might be said, the Restoration's antithesis to the heavy and joyless hand that that had ruled England for over ten years. Wilmot was an atheist and a hedonist-No glory's vain which does from pleasure spring. His poetry is a celebration of pleasure in its many forms, especially sexual pleasure. He did not just practice debauchery, he advocated debauchery!

Her father gave her dildos six;
Her mother made 'em up a score,
But she loves nought but living pricks
And swears by God she'll frig no more.

During the Parliamentary session of 1673 objections were raised to the proposed marriage of James, Duke of York, brother of the King and heir to the throne, to Mary of Modena, an Italian Catholic Princess. An address was presented to King Charles on 3 November, foreseeing the dangerous consequences of marriage to a Catholic, and urging him to put a stop to any planned wedding '...to the unspeakable Joy and Comfort of all Your loyal Subjects." Wilmot's response was Signior Dildo (You ladies all of merry England), a mock address anticipating the 'solid' advantages of a Catholic marriage, namely the wholesale importation of Italian dildos, to the unspeakable joy and comfort of all the ladies of England!

You ladies all of merry England
Who have been to kiss the Duchess's hand,
Pray, did you not lately observe in the show
A noble Italian called Signior Dildo?...
A rabble of pricks who were welcomed before,
Now finding the porter denied them the door,
Maliciously waited his coming below
And inhumanly fell on Signior Dildo...

And so on and so forth! :-))

The Popish Plot-an English Political Witch-Hunt

The Popish Plot was a wave of anti-Catholic hysteria that overtook England from 1678 onwards, but the political roots of the crisis go back several years, and has to be viewed against a background of the growing distrust between Parliament and the Crown.

It is also important to understand that for English people of the day Catholicism was not simply a set of religious beliefs: it was, rather, an all-embracing ideology, with strong associations with Continental despotism, represented, above all, in the person of Louis XIV.

This would have had little bearing on England but for one thing: in the early 1670s James duke of York, the brother and heir of King Charles, who had no legitimate heirs, was known to have converted to Catholicism. The anxiety this caused led to an ever more vocal opposition to royal policy, from the alliance with the Catholic French against the Protestant Dutch, to Charles' attempts to introduce, by royal prerogative, a measure of toleration for Catholics and Protestant Dissenters.

It was a highly unstable political mixture that, by the late 1670s, simply needed one spark to cause a major explosion. This came in 1678 when one Titus Oates, in collaboration with a half-mad clergyman by the name of Israel Tonge, started to spread rumours that there was a plot by the Jesuits to kill the king. This story went through various metamorphoses; but in the final version the assassination was conceived as part of a grander strategy to replace Charles with the Catholic James. Nothing may have come of these stories but for the mysterious assassination of Edmund Berry Godfrey, a magistrate who had been appointed to look into the whole affair.

It was this murder that really sparked off all that was to follow. It gave substance to the stories of Oates and Tonge, made all the more credible when it was found that Edward Coleman, secretary of the duke of York, was in treasonable correspondence with the French. England was now gripped by collective hysteria. Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, chief among James' enemies, was soon demanding that the Catholic duke be exluded from the succession, thus beginning the Exclusion Crisis.

Shaftesbury and his allies, loosly known as the 'Country Party', to distinguish them from the supporters of Charles and James, known as the 'Court Party', formed the Green Ribbon Club, opposed to Catholicism, Absolutism and James in equal measure. Their enemies began to refer to them as Whigs, after a group of extreme Presbyterian rebels in Scotland. The Green Ribbons responded in kind, referring to their enemies in Parliament as Tories, after Irish Catholic bandits.

It was on this inauspicious basis that English party politics took shape, which was to be the chief legacy of the Popish Plot. In the end Charles managed to sidestep, though not resolve, the issues that had been raised by dissolving the Oxford Parliament in 1681, bringing the Exclusion Crisis to an end. James duly succeeded to the throne in 1685, held up by a wave of Tory reaction against the Whigs and the murderous excesses of the Popish Plot.

But fear of Catholic Absolutism did not go away; and in 1688 sections of the Whig and Tory parties united to remove James from the throne in the so-called Glorious Revolution. Soon after Parliament passed an act outlawing any future Catholic succession, and the Whigs and Tories became a permanent part of the English political landscape.