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The Mirror
Objectivity
and the
Causes of the English Civil War
Casey J. Enright
History 236E
In the preface to volume one of his
1659 Historical Collectionsr British historian
John Rushworth suggests "that most
writers nowadays appear in
public... crook-sided, warped and bowed to
the right or to the left."1 Rushworth was
referring to the mid-seventeenth century
English authors' inability to be
objective in their accounts of the
English Civil War and the events that led
up to it. This essay will discuss the
"objectivity question"2 as it applies to
the historiography of the causes of the
English Civil War and illustrate the
various stages through which it has
travelled in the past three centuries.
It becomes apparent through a study of
Thomas Hobbes's Behemoth, David Hume's The
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Objectivity and the Causes of the English Civil War
History of England, S.R. Gardiner's The History of
England, C.V. Wedgwood's The Great Rebellion,
and Christopher Hill's Intellectual Origins of the
English Revolution, that objectivity has not
increased in direct proportion to the
historian's increased displacement in
time, new and more accessible primary
source materials, and improved
historiographical methods. Accounts of
what happened may have become more
factually informed or complete, but each
historian exhibits through his or her
work a fundamental bias toward one or the
other sides in the Civil War conflict.
It is difficult to specify a
particular time frame within which to
study the causes of the English Civil
War. What a historian considers those
causes, determines to a large extent, the
scope of the historical perspective
needed to deal with them. Thus, a
Royalist historian, perhaps believing
that a small group of Puritan radicals
caused the war, might use a very short
time frame, while a Parliamentarian
historian, believing the Civil War was
the result of the inevitable development
of the liberty of the English people,
would use a very broad time frame. The
five historians we are concerned with
have identified the crucial period as
beginning with the accession of King
James I to the English throne in 1603 and
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ending with the final split between the
monarchy, under Charles I, the parliament
in 1642. For this reason this essay will
limit the brief chronology of events
below to those years. It will then look
at each of the five texts individually,
beginning with a general outline of their
content, followed by a discussion of the
author, the nature of his or her work
relative to aspects of historiography,
such as its place within the
historiographic tradition, sources and
style, and, finally, his or her biases.
Which events are deemed important
enough to be included in a chronology are
often determined by the inherent biases
of the historian's approach and
methodology. That is to say, the nature
of the controversy surrounding the causes
of the English Civil War is so complex
that the historian "takes sides," simply
by deciding which historical approach he
or she will use. Thus, approaching the
English Civil War from a political
perspective from the top down, or from a
purely social perspective, from the
bottom up, will greatly influence the
importance placed on a particular event.
This must be kept in mind from the outset
in any attempt to deal with such a
complex period in English history.
However, few would debate that a
change in monarchic fortune began when
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Objectivity and the Causes of the English Civil War
the Stuart dynasty succeeded the Tudors',
last represented by Queen Elizabeth I.
Neither James I nor Charles I possessed
the monarchic authority and political
adeptness Queen Elizabeth I used to keep
the political, religious, and social
forces within England in check, and it
was to the Stuarts' misfortune that
precisely these forces became
aggressively active during their reigns.
During James's reign, Protestant fears
and suspicions resulting from both
James's domestic and foreign policies
affected the economic demands of
Parliament during the few times it was
actually sitting. Thus, the peace with
Spain in 1604, the 1605 Gunpowder Plot,
the failure of the Great Contract in
1610, the marriage of Princess Elizabeth
to the Elector Palatine in 1613 and
subsequent embroilment in the Thirty
Years War beginning in 1618, Prince
Charles's failure in Spain in 1622, the
1624 breach with Spain and treaty with
France— all of these events are the
result of an infinitely complex
interaction between political, social,
and economic factors.
This is even more true of Charles's
reign as the conflicts intensified and
eventually burst into civil war.
Following Charles's accession to the
throne in 1625, events revolved almost
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entirely around his relationship, or at
times, lack of relationship, with
Parliament, but all of the other aspects
of society came into play as well. Thus,
in 1628 there was the Petition of Right
and the Duke of Buckingham's
assassination, in 1629 the dissolution of
Charles's third Parliament and the
beginning of Personal government, in
1637-38 the trial of Hampden, in 1639-40
that war against Scotland and the
beginning of the Long Parliament, in 1641
the Triennial Act, the abolition of the
Star Chamber, and the execution of
Strafford, in 1641 the Irish revolt and
the Grand Remonstrance, and in 1642, the
final breach following Charles's
attempted arrest of the five members of
Parliament. This is a "short list" of
events that must be dealt with by any
historian concerned with the causes of
the English Civil War.
There is a general consensus among
historians concerning the important
events that led to the Civil War, but not
on the underlying reasons for those
events. Therefore, the historically
significant events which occurred during
the period between James's accession to
the throne in 1603, and Charles's raising
of the royal standard on August 22, 1842
(the official declaration of war against
the Parliamentary forces) , must be viewed
as symptoms of an increasingly intense
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Objectivity and the Causes of the Bnglish Civil War
conflict involving all aspects of
seventeenth century English society
rather than as the conflict itself.
In his book Behemoth or the Long
Parliament, Thomas Hobbes is not concerned
with symptoms or possible causes of the
Civil War. He had none of the qualified
reservations of the twentieth century
historian. As a contemporary to the
events, he simply believed he knew the
answers and devoted the first half of
Behemoth to explaining them. "The people
were corrupted generally" and their
"seducers were of dicers sorts" he
claims.3 Opportunists, merchants,
Papists, and other sectarians were all
corrupting influences, but he saves most
of the blame for Presbyterian ministers,
Parliamentary lawyers, and ultimately,
the institutions that trained them— the
universities.4 "The core of the
rebellion" he claims "is the
universities...[which] have been to this
nation, as the wooden horse was to the
Trojans."5 Thus, both M.M. Goldsmith and
R.C. Richardson are correct when they
suggest Hobbes believed that a
"subversive conspiracy" was the primary
cause for the Civil War that manifested
itself in "a struggle for sovereignty."6
In his dedication to Behemoth, Hobbes
calls the second half of the book "a very
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short epitome of the war itself."
However, Hobbes, above all else, was a
philosopher and there is no doubt that
his account was heavily influenced by his
political philosophy. In the editor's
introduction Goldsmith states:
Behemoth is more than a brief history
of the Civil War. It is not only an
attack on what Hobbes regarded as
false and dangerous prevailing
opinions, but also an attempt to
show how Hobbes's science explains
the historical phenomena of the
Great Rebellion. Even more it is
Hobbes's triumphant vindication of
the doctrines he had expounded since
1640 and of his proposal that
Hobbism should be established by
authority.7
In other words, Behemoth was not meant to
be an objective appraisal and narration
to the events of the Civil War and their
causes. The purpose behind the book was
Hobbes's subjective need not only to
chastise the people of England for their
past folly, but also to warn them of
future dangers— dangers that could be
avoided by following his political
philosophy.
Other factors influenced the
objectivity of Hobbes's interpretation of
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Objectivity and the Causes of the English Civil War
the causes of the Civil War. As a
contemporary to the events, Hobbes was
forced to take sides. Seventeenth
century English society demanded it. It
is not surprising, then, that since his
livelihood depended on the aristocracy,
his interpretation should be favourable
to the monarchy. Behemoth is not a work
of partisan propaganda, however. Even
though his loyalty lay with the Royalist
cause, he was still very much an
individual and his ideas were
fundamentally independent. Richardson
states that "Hobbes's theory of undivided
sovereignty was inherently ambiguous, as
he himself admitted in an apology to
Charles II in 1662. Hobbes begged the
King not 'to think the worse of me, if in
snatching up all the weapons to fight
against your enemies I lighted upon one
that had a double edge.'"8 Goldsmith
describes Behemoth as "a book written by
a man hotly engaged in controversy," a
book that was "inflammatory" to the point
that Charles II forbade Hobbes to print
it.9
Hobbes's bias towards the monarchy
is also evident in the one documented
source found in the book. After Hobbes
states in the dedication to Behemoth that
the second half of the book is a small
"epitome" of the war, he goes on to say
that it was "drawn out of Mr. Heath's
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chronicle." Hobbes is referring to James
Heath's 1661 Chronicle of the Late Intestine War in
the Three Kingdoms, a book Richardson
characterizes as a "Royalist version" of
the Civil War that stressed "the
sovereign and paternal aspects of
monarchy."10 Hobbes, therefore, relied on
his personal, subjective impressions of
the conflict, impressions that in turn
were heavily influenced by his own
political philosophy as well as a
decidedly Royalist historian's account of
the events with all of its inherent
biases and limitations.
It is not surprising that Hobbes did
so, however. He was a man of the
seventeenth century, a transitional time
when ideas of professional
historiography, as they are known today,
were only beginning to appear in the
academic world. Therefore, it is unfair
to judge Hobbes's interpretation of the
Civil War by present standards. It is
best, perhaps, to view Behemoth as a
transitional book in the development of
historiography. The dialogue format and
the moral purpose behind Behemoth place it
within the old historical polemical
historical literature of the times points
to the future development of
historiography in general.
When David Hume's The History of England
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Objectivity and the Causes of the English Civil War
is considered, there is a movement from
what Richardson calls "quasi-history" to
real history.11 Hume was also a
philosopher and, like Hobbes, he was
interested in a forum for his own
philosophic theories. But, for Hume,
writing history became more than a
secondary endeavor. Rodney Kilcup states
in the introduction to the abridged
edition of Hume's History that:
Several motives converged in
[Hume's] mind in the early 1750's to
turn the attention of the
philosopher to the field of history.
An extensive historical
investigation of the modern British
political system would fill an
important public need, it might
serve to spread his name in higher
and wider circles, and it was a
subject directly related to his
philosophical concerns. Might he
not serve the cause of his literary
fame while also advancing into
historical and political subjects
the new experimental method of
reasoning he had defined as a
philosopher?12
Unlike Hobbes's Behemoth, Hume's History is
an extensive account of England's past,
from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the
Revolution in 1688. Thus, Hume places
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the time period with which this essay is
concerned within its broader historical
context. This is appropriate because
Hume saw the Civil War and the events
which led up to it as primarily a
constitutional conflict.
Both the monarchy and parliament
looked to the history of the English
constitution as a justification for their
actions.13 However, Hume believed that
the past spoke equally in favour of both
sides:
The turbulent government of England,
ever fluctuating between [royal]
privilege and prerogative, would
afford a variety of precedents,
which might be pleaded on both
sides. In such delicate questions,
the people must be divided: the
arms of the state were still in
their hands: a civil war must
ensue; a civil war where no party or
both parties would justly bear the
blame, and where the good and
virtuous would scarcely know what
vows to form.14
Thus, Hume believed that both sides in
the conflict were equally at fault when
they pursued their convictions to the
ultimate violent end.
It is on this point that his claim
40
Objectivity and the Causea of the English Civil War
to objectivity is made. Kilcup states
that "Hume's major purpose in the
H istory. ..was to correct the
misunderstandings about the British
constitution and its history that were
found in the partisan writings of Whig
and Tory alike."15 Hume's goal does not
appear unrealistic when the circumstances
in which he wrote it are considered.
First, in 17 52 Hume was appointed the
"Keeper of the 30,000 books in the
library of the Faculty of Advocates in
Edinburgh," a position which involved
"light duties" and "access to a large
collection of books on British history."16
Secondly, because he was writing from a
mid-eighteenth century viewpoint, he was
able to study and evaluate a century's
worth of books written about the period
leading up to the Civil War. That Hume
did just that is evident in the "Notes"
section found at the end of each chapter.
Historians from both sides of the
conflict are represented in relatively
equal proportions. In fact, Hume seems
to have relied almost entirely on
secondary resources. There are
relatively few manuscripts, court or
parliamentary records, and other types of
primary sources found in his
documentation.
Thirdly, working in the relatively
stable post-1688 period, Hume had the
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historical advantage of hindsight and,
therefore, a greater sense of resolution
of the seventeenth century conflict.
Controversy raged between Whigs and
Tories, but the fact that the terms
Royalist and Parliamentarian had been
dropped is indicative of the waning
immediacy of the Civil War traumas.
Finally, there is Hume's "new
experimental method of reasoning"
mentioned in the first extended quote
above. Kilcup states that:
Hume's History is singularly important
as the first sustained effort in
English to write a naturalistic,
scientific study of the national
past. It can reasonably be
considered the pioneer work for what
has become the major tradition of
modern English historiography, a
tradition that holds to the autonomy
of the method of empirical
investigation and shuns the
intrusion of non-scientific
philosophical considerations.17
For Hume, a nonscientific philosophical
consideration would be the factional
claims of the Civil War combatants to
constitutional legitimacy. Hume believed
the constitution was a "living" construct
that was in a continual process of change
through time.18 Ultimately, the
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Objectivity and the Causes of the English Civil War
constitution's legitimacy lay in the
opinion of the people which was, in turn,
determined by "custom and example."
Since these factors cannot be determined
empirically, any claim to constitutional
legitimacy based on past events or
precedent is fallacious.19 Therefore, the
fight over constitutional legitimacy in
the seventeenth century, according to
Hume's logic, was inherently futile. The
fact that Hume's History dominated English
historiography for over fifty years, is
indicative of the change that occurred to
the way history was perceived between his
and Hobbes's time.
Despite Hume's ability to remain
relatively objective in his account of
the causes of the Civil War, his work is
still fundamentally biased. Where his
loyalty lay is implied in his
autobiographical sketch that is included
in the 18 2 8 edition of his History:
But though I had been taught by
experience, that the Whig party were
in possession of bestowing all
places, both in the state and in
literature, I was so little inclined
to yield to their senseless clamour,
that in above a hundred alterations,
which further study, reading, or
recollection engaged me to make in
the reigns of the two first Stuarts,
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I have made all of them invariably
to the Tory side. It is ridiculous
to consider the English constitution
before that period as a regular plan
of liberty.
The first statement indicates Hume's
disdain for the Whig party and his
determination not to give in to their
pressure to conform. The second
statement is a concise denunciation of a
fundamental Whig tenet concerning the
Civil War. Add this to his belief that
justice must ultimately prevail over
liberty and one must, at the very least,
consider Hume a moderate Tory historian. 1
However, we should appreciate the degree
to which Hume was able to rise above
partisan history, remembering that for
all of Hume's talk of "scientific" or
empirical historical investigation,
historiography, as we know it, was still
very much in its infancy in the
eighteenth century.
The real break with the "literary"
historical style and methodology of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
occurred in the latter half of the
nineteenth century, and S.R. Gardiner's
History of England from the Accession of James I to the
Outbreak of the Civil War is the best example of
the "new scientific" historiography.22
Hume's "science" lay in his philosophical
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Objectivity and the Causes of the English Civil War
outlook towards man and history.
Gardiner's science is integral to his
historical methodology. Thus, while
Hume's History is based almost entirely on
secondary sources, Gardiner's mammoth ten
volume work is based on primary sources
alone. Gardiner also uses a rigorous
chronological approach, that Richardson
suggests was Gardiner's "antidote to
bias."23 By combining the use of primary
sources with a chronological approach,
Gardiner believed that the historian
could free himself from the subjectivity
and presentism that are intrinsic to the
old approach based on hindsight.24
Gardiner had reason to believe that
historical truth might be obtained
through primary sources, if only because
there were more of them available to the
historian in the latter half of the
nineteenth century than ever before. As
John Tosh points out in his book The Pursuit
of History, the state of private and public
historical documents "was [in] a period
of reform" in the mid-nineteenth
century.25 Great strides were made in
Britain at this time to make primary
sources available to researchers by
collecting and housing them in central
locations such as the Public Record
Office set up by an Act of Parliament in
1838 and the Historical Manuscripts
Commission founded in 1869.26 Also, the
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publishing of "calendars," or summaries
of the content of primary sources, was
begun during this period as an aid to
directing researchers to primary sources
that related directly to their research.27
Thus, the new centralized collections and
published summaries of primary sources
greatly enhanced the late nineteenth
century historians' ability to utilize
the new methodology. Undoubtedly,
Gardiner took full advantage of this
surge of interest in his country's past
and the documentation links with it. In
this sense Gardiner's work is very much a
part of a general trend in British
society in the late nineteenth century.
Gardiner's History is also a part of
the historical debate over the cases of
the Civil War. Despite his reliance on
primary sources, Gardiner was very much
aware of other historians' work. In the
footnotes to pages 71 through 77,
Gardiner takes issue with the nineteenth
century historian John Forster's account
of the Grand Remonstrance. After
Gardiner meticulously corrects what he
believes are mistakes in Forster's
account he states: "It is sad that a
writer to whom all students of the period
owe so much, can never be trusted in
details."28 Gardiner also draws the
seventeenth century historian Lord
Clarendon into the discussion. This
indicates Gardiner's awareness of the
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Objectivity and the Causes of the English Civil War
vast body of secondary sources, an
awareness that must certainly have
influenced his own account of the
conflict.
An implicit bias in Gardiner's History
also becomes apparent when it is compared
to his 189 2 school textbook A Student’s
History of England. Consider this passage
from his History concerning the conflict
between the Crown and Parliament over
Lord Buckingham's actions in 1625:
Yet it would be a mistake to suppose
that either party in the quarrel was
grasping at power for its own sake.
Charles had believed that he was
defending a wise and energetic
minister against factious
opposition. The Commons believed
that they were hindering a rash and
self-seeking favourite from doing
more injury than he had done
already.
Here Gardiner presents a balanced account
of the controversy. Now consider the
following account from his Student’s History:
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Though the question now raised was
whether England was to be ruled by
the king or by the House of Commons,
it would be a mistake to think that
the Commons were consciously aiming
at sovereignty. They saw that there
was mismanagement, and all that they
wanted was to stop it.30
Here Gardiner's focus on only one side of
the conflict indicates his sympathy for
the Parliamentarians.
The title of the section that the
above passage is found also indicates
Gardiner's bias regarding who was in the
right in the Civil War conflict. He
calls it "The Puritan Revolution" and
this suggests that not only did he
believe Parliament was in the right, but
also that religion was the driving force
behind the conflict.31 Thus, Gardiner did
not achieve complete objectivity, but
nonetheless, he greatly influenced the
development of British historiography.
As Richardson suggests: "The main
novelty in historical scholarship in the
later nineteenth century lay not in any
total break with the complacent, present-
based Whig interpretation of the English
past, but in the emergence of the
historian's profession and the
refinements in methodology."32 S.R.
Gardiner was at the forefront in this
nineteenth century movement in British
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Objectivity and the Causea of the English Civil War
historiography.
C.V. Wedgwood's two volume work, The
Great Rebellion, while being a fine example
of traditional narrative history, is
evidence that Gardiner's influence has
remained strong well into the twentieth
century. Wedgwood's style and purpose
might be different than Gardiner's, but
her historical methodology is virtually
identical. In the introduction to volume
one Wedgwood states: "It is my aim to
show the unfolding of certain characters
and the emergence of others and to
comment on them, as far as possible, from
evidence relating only to the years
described" and that "only a resolute
insistence on chronology can made the
immediate pressures and confusions which
acted on contemporaries clear to the
modern reader."*3 Wedgwood's work,
therefore, incorporates the two salient
features of late nineteenth century
historical methodology: a rigid
adherence to chronology, and a strong
reliance on primary rather than secondary
sources.
Wedgwood is more interested in "re
creating" the past, however, than trying
to resolve the controversies surrounding
the causes of the Civil War as did her
predecessors :
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I have not attempted in this book to
examine underlying causes, but
rather to give full importance and
value to the admitted motives and
the illusions of the men of the
seventeenth century. I have sought
to restore their immediacy of
experience.34
Thus, Wedgwood takes the reader on a very
literary-styled journey through the
eventful period from 1637 to 1647. Book
one of volume one is a descriptive blend
of geography, economics, politics, art,
and folklore through which she attempts
to establish the physical conditions and
mindset of not just the English elite,
but of the lower classes as well.
Wedgwood then embarks on a chronological
account of the Civil War and the events
that led up to it. But she takes great
care to maintain the re-creative tone
developed in book one.
Wedgwood's critics maintain that she
is too much of a "how” historian rather
than a "why" historian.35 But this does
not mean her work is free from bias. In
what might have been a response to this
criticism, Wedgwood writes in the
introduction to volume two, published
three years after volume one, that:
this book...is a narrative history,
a description of what happened, and
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Objectivity and the Causes of the English Civil War
this book..-is a narrative history,
a description of what happened, and
how it happened, which often by
implication answers the question of
why it happened. (author's
italics) .36
The key word here is 11 implication11
because, even though Wedgwood or any
other historian might claim impartiality,
be it through 11 scientific” methodology or
scholarly "story-telling," both personal
and societal factors impinge upon their
ability to be objective, and thus will
influence their work. This essay has
shown this to be the case with Hobbes,
Hume, and Gardiner. Wedgwood is no
different except that she openly admits
it.37
This implicit bias is very important
to keep in mind, especially when reading
narrative history written as well as
Wedgwood's. As justification for the
high level of detail in The Great Rebellion
Wedgwood makes the following analogy:
A painter covering a gigantic canvas
does not expect the spectator to
register and identify accurately all
the secondary figures and background
details, but they may none the less
enhance the general impression that
he is trying to convey.38
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When reading history of this nature it is
a very trusting "spectator" who allows
"secondary figures and background
details" to influence his or her "general
impression" of a controversial subject
such as the English Civil War.
In Wedgwood's case, a close critical
reading indicates that she leans toward
the Parliamentary side of the conflict.
For example, in her effort to re-create
the suspense and intrigue that
accompanied the opening of the Long
Parliament and the anticipated attempt to
impeach the Earl of Strafford, Wedgwood
provides a detailed account that is
suspiciously sympathetic to John Pym.
Consider the following:
John Pym was wary from the start.
He avoided the traps. Parliament
opened on November 3rd and, to the
surprise of many, not a word was
said about Strafford for more than a
week. For the first days every
other kind of complaint was aired
and encouraged: this was good
strategy. . .39
and:
Sir John Clotworthy, the member from
Malden, acting presumably on a hint
from Pym, made a violent and
incoherent speech against Strafford.
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Objectivity and die Causes of the English Civil War
This was the opening move in the
well-planned attack that Pym had
been holding back until the time was
ripe.40
The second passage is the logical
conclusion to the first and together they
indicate Wedgwood's attitude towards John
Pym. The problem lies in the two pages
that separate the above passages where
Wedgwood cites the Common Journals and
other primary sources four times to
support less conjectural details of her
account, while she offers no support for
her conclusions concerning the glowing
account of Pym's performance. Wedgwood
is clearly sending out mixed messages.
In contrast to her treatment of Pym,
consider Wedgwood's account of
Strafford's arrest:
The mighty had indeed fallen, and
Dr. Baillie, who with the Scots
Commissioners saw it all, recorded
gravely in his diary that the evil man
had been taken away "all gazing, no
man capping to him, before whom that
morning the greatest of England
would have stood discovered."41
(italics mine)
Because of the way she has written the
account, it is unclear exactly who
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considers Strafford to be evil, Dr.
Bailie or Wedgwood herself. Wedgwood's
use of conjecture favours Pym, while her
ambiguity is detrimental to Strafford.
It can be suspected then, from these
examples that Wedgwood's sympathy lies
with Pym and Parliament and, indeed, the
other parliamentary figures are generally
shown in a better light than those on the
side of the Crown.
Therefore, while The Great Rebellion
might be more objective than the other
three accounts of the Civil War, it is
still intrinsically biased. With all of
the advantages that modern professional
historiography had to offer Wedgwood—
greater temporal displacement from the
conflict, a greater and more easily
accessible volume of primary sources, a
large body of insightful secondary
material, more refined historiographic
research techniques, and the employment
of a "how" rather than a "why" approach—
she was unable to produce an objective
account of the war and the events that
led up to it.
By using C.V. Wedgwood's The Great
Rebellion as a transition from the
nineteenth century to the twentieth
century this essay has followed the
development of the traditional British
historiographic research tradition.
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Objectivity and the Causes of the English Civil War
Marxism is another research tradition
that gained prominence in England during
the first half of this century and
Christopher Hill's Intellectual Origins of the
English Revolution is very much a part of that
tradition. This book is different from
the other four books I have discussed
because Hill is more concerned, as the
title suggests, with a larger event in
which the Civil War is only a part,
albeit a major one. But it is useful to
finish with Hill's Intellectual Origins because
in some ways it brings this survey back
full circle to Hobbes's Behemoth.
In Intellectual Origins, Hill argues that
a group of English intellectuals helped
provide the motivation needed to
undertake the ultimate final act of
rebellious social change— civil war.
Hill's argument is far more subtle than
Hobbes's— there is no "subversive
conspiracy" in Hill's interpretation— but
like Hobbes he argues that beneath all of
the other actors in the conflict, there
was a group of revolutionary individuals
that played a key role in causing the
Civil War.
Hill presents his argument through a
discussion of three men he considers key
seventeenth century intellectuals:
Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Ralegh (sic),
and Sir Edward Coke. For Hill, these
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were men whose ideas "appealed to 'the
middling sort', to merchants, artisans,
and yeomen."42 But Bacon, Raleigh, and
Coke were not traditional intellectuals.
"The new ideas which I want to consider
came from laymen, not from clerics; and
from men not associated with university
teaching.1,43
Thus, Hill identifies a particular
class of people in English society, 'the
middling sort' , who fit his Marxist
interpretation of the Civil War.44 Hill
wrote in 1940 that:
The Civil War was a class war, in
which the despotism of Charles I was
defended by the reactionary forces
of the established Church and feudal
landlords. Parliament beat the King
because it could appeal to the
enthusiastic support of the trading
and industrial classes in town and
countryside, to the yeomen and
progressive gentry, and to wider
masses of the population whenever
they were able to free discussion to
understand what the struggle was
really about.45
Hill's is not a "vulgar Marxism,"
however, as his argument for an
ideological influence in the Civil War
period suggests:
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Objectivity and the Causes of the English Civil War
Bacon, Raleigh, Coke, together with
the many lesser figures whom we have
studied in this book, helped to
undermine men's traditional belief
in the eternity of the old order in
Church and state, and this was an
immense task, without the successful
accomplishment of which there could
have been no political revolution.46
Hobbes's "ambitious and unscrupulous men"
manipulated the people of England47, while
Hill's "laymen" made violent action
possible by "undermining" the
intellectual status quo. Thus, where
Hobbes's interpretation of the causes of
the Civil War is based on his own
political philosophy, Hill's is based on
a revised version of Marx's.
As a Marxist historian, Hill's
methodology is far less empirical than
Hume's, Gardiner's, or Wedgwood's. Hill
agrees to as much when he writes in
Intellectual Origins:
The origin of this book in lectures
should be borne in mind by the
reader. I was advancing a thesis,
not attempting to sketch the
intellectual history of England in
the fifty years before 1640. I
therefore picked out evidence which
seemed to me to support my case.
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So, though I hope I suppressed no
facts which make against me, I have
often... omitted facts which seemed
to me 'neutral'.48
Hill's 11 evidence" comes from a wide
variety of both primary and secondary
documentation, and despite his disclaimer
that the book is only a preliminary work,
it must be kept in mind that some very
fundamental ontological factors have
influenced his approach to the material
and the evidence he ultimately decided to
draw from it.49 Unlike Wedgwood, Hill is
a "why" historian and because he works
within a "theory” centered research
tradition he has less difficulty fitting
facts to his interpretive theory than
listorians from the empirical, or "fact",
centered tradition might.
Having completed this brief survey
of British historiography as it relates
to the causes of the English Civil War,
John Rushworth's words at the beginning
of this paper seem even more appropriate.
Indeed, all five historical works
discussed are, to some degree, "crook
sided, warped and bowed to the right or
to the left." This essay has travelled
from Thomas Hobbes's seventeenth century,
Behemoth, a candid but philosophically and
politically biased book, to the
ideologically biased Intellectual Origins of the
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Objectivity and the Causes of the English Civil War
English Revolution written by the twentieth
century Marxist historian Christopher
Hill. In between it has looked at David
Hume's The History of England r S.R. Gardiner's
History of England from the Accession of James I to the
Outbreak of the Civil War, and C.V. Wedgwood's
The Great Rebellion, from the eighteenth,
nineteenth, and twentieth centuries
respectively. With these three books,
the development of empirical methodology
and the rise of the professional
historian has been followed and has also
been found to be intrinsically biased.
This conclusion should not be
surprising. It is impossible for any
historian to be completely objective in
his or her recreation or explanation of
past events. This holds true as much for
the modern professional historian, with
all the advantages that moder
methodology, technology, and hindsigh
bring to historical writing, as it doei
for the seventeenth century contemporary
historian who has been a part of the
events he or she is writing about. It is
essential, therefore, to recognize the
limits to objectivity, to acknowledge
them when writing history, and to keep
them in mind when reading it.
*****
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Casey Enright has completed a combined
English/History Honours degree at
Western, and is currently working toward
a Bachelor of Education at the University
of Windsor. Like most of us, Casey would
like to land a job after graduating,
preferably back in London, teaching at
the primary level.
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Objectivity and the Causes of the English Civil War
Endnotes
1 R.C. Richardson, The Debate of
the English Revisited. (New York:
Routledge, 1988) 17.
2 Two texts that deal with this
area of historiography in depth are Peter
Novick's That Noble Dream, Cambridge
University Press, 1988 and John Tosh's
The Pursuit of History, Longman Group,
1984 . 3 Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth. Ed.
Ferdinand Tonnier (London: Frank Cass &
Company, 1969) 2.
4Ibid., 2-4.
5Ibid., 40, 58.
6Ibid., introduction xiii;
Richardson, 25.
7Hobbes, xiv.
8Richardson, 24.
9Hobbes, introduction, vi, vii.
10 Richardson, 21.
11 Ibid., 27.
12 David Hume, The History of
Encrland. Ed. John Clive (Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1975) xiii.
13 David Hume, The History of
Encrland. (London: Jones & Company,
1828) 576;.
14 Ibid., 576.
15 Hume (1975 ed.), xv •: s
16 Ibid., xi.
17 Ibid., xxiv.
18 Ibid., XXV.
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19 Ibid., xxv.
20 Hume, iv.
21 Richardson, 7.
22 Richardson, 6, 82-84.
23 Richardson, 84.
24 Tomlinson, 14.
25 John Tosh, The Pursuit of
History.
43. (New York: Longman, 1984) 42,
26 Tosh, 43; Tomlinson, 14.
27 Tosh, 42.
28 Samuel Gardner, History of
Enaland from the Accession of James I to
the Outbreak of the Civil War. (New
York:
Vol. 10,Longmans, Green and Co., 1904)
77.
29 Ibid.. Vol. 5, 434.
30 Samuel Gardner, A Student's_
History of Enaland. (London: Longmans,
Green and Co., 1892) 321.
31 Richardson, 85-86; Tomlinson,
15. 32 Richardson, 31.
33 C.V. Wedgwood, The Great
Rebellion. (London: Collins Clear-Type
/1955) Vol . 1, 17 .
34 Ibid., 16.
35 Richardson, 152
36 Wedgwood, Vol.
37 Ibid., Vol. i,
38 Ibid., 12.
39 Ibid., 369.
40 Ibid., 372.
41 Ibid., 373 .
II, 11.
14-15.
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Objectivity and the Causes of the English Civil War
42
Origins Christopher Hill,
of the English Intellectual
Revolution.
(London:
6Oxford University Press, 1965)
43 Ibid., 10.
44 Ibid., 9.
45 Richardson, 115.
46 Hill, 291.
47 Hobbes, xiii.
48
49 Hill, preface, vii.
My ideas concerning Marxist
theory and ontology originate from my
reading and seminar participation in
History 301, The Historian's Craft. It
is very difficult, therefore, to narrow
them down to a particular source.
Probably the most influential have been
"History: the Poverty of Empiricism",
from Ideology in the Social Sciences, by
Garth Stedman Jones, pp. 96-115. 1972
Fontana/Collins; and "Marxist
Historiography and the Methodology of
Research Programs", from History and
Theory, Studies in the Philosophy of
History. by Howard R. Berstein. 1981,
Wesleyan University Press.
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