[HN Gopher] The Maid Who Restored Charles II
___________________________________________________________________
The Maid Who Restored Charles II
Author : samclemens
Score : 58 points
Date : 2025-05-29 05:58 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historytoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historytoday.com)
| lordleft wrote:
| The English Civil War feels like a dress rehearsal for the
| upheavals of the late 18th century. Many of the impulses of the
| American and French Revolutions are there, in germinal form.
| Egalitarianism, freedom of thought, even the see-sawing from
| monarchy to republic to monarchy again (America excluded). It is
| criminally undertaught in US schools (from my anecdotal
| experience) even though it explains much of context the founders
| were working within. Excellent & illuminating article.
| vondur wrote:
| "And do Englishmen so soon forget the ground where liberty was
| fought for? Tell your neighbours and your children that this is
| holy ground, much holier than that on which your churches
| stand. All England should come in pilgrimage to this hill once
| a year." John Adams wrote that while touring the site of the
| final battle of the English Civil War. I'd agree that the
| English Civil War is not covered in much detail in US Schools.
| Xss3 wrote:
| It wasn't taught to me at all here in the UK.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| Nor me.
| notahacker wrote:
| I did learn it, but at A-level (i.e an elective course
| after many kids had left school altogether)
|
| tbf the English Civil War is, like most Civil Wars, pretty
| darned complicated in the motivations and actions of the
| key players, and dumbing it down gives lessons which are
| near, fit very nicely into modern tropes and are also
| almost entirely wrong in the messages they convey.
| vondur wrote:
| Yes, I was listening to the revolutions podcast which
| covers it in great detail. It's certainly messy to
| follow, but not as bad as the French Revolution.
| notahacker wrote:
| I'm less familiar with the French Revolution. But the
| English Civil War might actually be worse: there are two
| diametrically opposed dumbed down narratives
| ("Parliament, represented by rugged common folk, fought
| an arrogant king and nobility for the right to democracy
| and religious liberty" vs "Puritan extremists fought to
| overthrow a king, installed a dictator infamous for
| banning public enjoyment and massacring the Irish, and
| the whole thing was such a failure that the monarchy was
| restored with widespread public support.") which are
| equally [in]accurate and both miss key points like
| Cromwell not being that important until relatively late
| on and Parliament really not representing many people and
| there actually being _two_ English Civil Wars either side
| of peaceful factional struggles over what the future
| agreement with the king should look like, plus a prologue
| involving one side invading Scotland and an epilogue
| involving the other side invading Scotland
|
| Then you've got questions like "was Cromwell unusually
| enlightened on issues of religious freedom or a religious
| extremist with a vicious hatred of anything that vaguely
| resembled Catholicism?" to which the correct answer is
| "both actually, and simultaneously". And the likelihood
| the whole thing could have been avoided if a king who
| wasn't exactly unusual in his behaviour for contemporary
| monarchs was actually good at politics or military
| planning, and that having taking the unprecedented step
| of executing a monarch for refusing to acknowledge them,
| Parliament then let a gentleman of modest background and
| means rule whilst refusing to acknowledge them them
| because he actually was good at politics and military
| planning.
|
| Then there was the Glorious Revolution which wasn't
| actually a revolution a couple of decades and two kings
| later which was way more influential on democracy and
| religion in modern Britain and gets studied way less...
| growlNark wrote:
| I highly recommend reading about the Levellers. It might be the
| only democratic movement in Britain until the 20th century.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Britain had a habit of showing all its religious/political
| (can't really separate them at this point in history)
| minorities the door (and to be fair, some of them were
| basically lunatics) which is likely a large part of why
| things shook out the way they did. A bunch of ideologically
| opposed groups cast onto another continent had no choice but
| to learn how to self govern despite their differences.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| >religious/political (can't really separate them at this
| point in history)
|
| In the US this is still true (idk anything about other
| countries' politics)
| wahern wrote:
| Democratic in the modern sense. The past millennia of English
| history could be understood as a slow progression of the
| devolution of power. The actual politics were pretty messy,
| but the evolution in legal and political theory was more
| steady. Compare that to most other civilizations, where the
| evolution of democracy was much more abrupt and epochal, not
| to mention even bloodier and altogether much more recent.
|
| There were democratic movements elsewhere, but almost all
| were squelched by king and tsars (domestic or foreign) and
| the legal and political environments reset to square 0.
|
| Also, the modern notion of the history of democracy is the
| devolution of power to the masses. But I like to think of the
| evolution of English history, at least legally, as the
| (albeit slow and uneven) _elevation_ of the masses to the
| aristocracy, and in that way something similar to how the
| Greek 's viewed democracy--with power comes responsibility
| and stricture. Though, that was partially the product of the
| expulsion of certain groups from the island; yet, that
| process was carried over in the US where many of those groups
| landed.
| rjsw wrote:
| There was more than just the Levellers at the time, maybe
| read "The English Revolution, 1640" [1] by Christopher Hill.
|
| [1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/hill-
| christopher/english-re...
| growlNark wrote:
| Very interesting. Cheers, thanks for the read!
| dhosek wrote:
| I knew the 17th-century kings from a mnemonic that my world
| history teacher gave (Charlie the tuna in the middle of the
| sandwich[?]James I-Charles I-Charles II-James II), but not much
| more than that. Most of my English history came by way of lit
| classes which had Milton the only author between the Cavalier
| poets from the early 17th century and Alexander Pope in the
| mid-18th century, so your anecdotal experience holds up with my
| Gen X education.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| that period exactly touches the nerve of Catholic versus non-
| Catholic history.. The removal of that cause of war was a
| driver for the US Constitution religious liberty clauses.. so
| repeating in detail the drivers of the conflict is not taught
| in public schools in the USA generally, yes agree
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| If modern democracy was conceived from the magna carta then
| this was its birth. It for once and all proved that the king
| rules by the consent of Parliament and not the other way round.
| Charles II was much more hesitant to interfere, and his
| successors increasingly delegated political matters, paving the
| way to one of the most stable and free democracies in the
| world.
|
| The Brit in me is also smug that "our" revolution was so much
| less messy then the French one.
| atombender wrote:
| Louis XVI researched extensively about Charles I once he was
| imprisoned, including reading the protocols of the trial, which
| were minutely recorded, including transcripts of the exchanges
| between the king and the court [1]. Louis chose a very
| different strategy, which didn't help him in the end. As with
| the English civil war, the French revolutionists weren't sure
| what to do with the king, either, and execution wasn't the one
| option considered. It really does feel like history rhymes.
|
| [1] https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_exact-
| and...
| gbolcer wrote:
| One tiny comment, I think the article meant "steward" not Stuart.
| LOL
| dhosek wrote:
| Nope, Stuart was the surname of the kings from James I-James
| II.
| bell-cot wrote:
| But actually, their surname _did_ come from "Steward" -
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Stuart
|
| And they were monarchs of England, Scotland, and Ireland from
| King James IV-who-was-also-King James-I through Queen Anne.
| Veen wrote:
| James VI and I, not IV and I.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Oops! - yes, thanks.
|
| James IV was about a century earlier, and "only" the King
| of Scotland. But it was his artfully negotiated marriage
| to Margaret Tudor that set the dynastic stage - for his
| great grandson (James VI and I) to also inherit the
| thrones of England and Ireland in the Union of the
| Crowns.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_IV
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-05-29 23:01 UTC)