Book Reviews

This is going to be a longer review because I think this format explains the chapters best, and because yes I liked the work!

Boswell, Caroline

Disaffection and Everyday Life in Interregnum England

Suffolk: Boydell Press

300 pp., $91.73, ISBN: 9781783270453

Publication date: 2017.

Disaffection and Everyday Life in Interregnum England is a work written by Caroline Boswell that dives into the problems happening in everyday life leading up to and going into the civil war. There is a bottom up socio-political perspective happening here that makes this easy to read. Even from the introduction, there is a political science feeling as Boswell compares life of common people to the royal of the time and the political occurrences. She has broken the book into two parts, Sites of Disaffection and Objects of Disaffection, The former is not literally physically, but more tangible than the ambiguity of the second.

In the first chapter, Boswell attempts to show how “sites” could mirror the issues happening above these citizens. Especially when there was no less than five major changes in (leadership) at this time. She goes on to say that the streets and the marketplace is where a lot of exchanges and tension happened. She asks the reader if the streets and marketplace were simply a “backdrop” for the conversation, or if it affected the conversation because it was a different type of forum was created? Boswell seems to believe it is micro examples of macro political issues. For example, this forum had a larger effect, especially to women. Boswell mentions that women sellers where arrested for being thieves and many other things but there was also the chance that women’s reputations may be put at risk if a man where to start “spitting at hir and calling hir whore.” (26-27) This reminds many that gender and reputation still mattered heavily at this time.
Chapter two looks into at alehouses and how any alcohol type drink was used at the time to ease the stress of poverty and other political discourse. This came with its pros and cons as it built a community, selling served as a job for struggling families, and became a culture point as the crafting of different beer grew (73). But this all connects back to the larger issues of the era. There was the aforementioned poverty, here and later Boswell talks about the excise-man, and others mentioned throughout the chapter. As drink became so ingrained in society and the crafting varied between “strong” and “weak” ale or beer, there became a class and cultural divide over who deserves the “good” drink. However, there is the classic inn setting happening also, as gender (for a short time) and class is not highly focused because it is mostly the working class visiting the inn or tavern. This is where much of the political discussion is happening. Finally, drink is also connected to religion and the culture related to religion in London. All of this comes back to Boswell’s original question to the readers, is it the “site” that made the issue or simply serve as a forum?

Section two starts to discuss specific “objects of disaffection,” as Boswell calls them. These are specific people or things that add to the tension. Chapter 3 is quite straightforward (name and contents) as the government attempts to quiet tensions of lower classes with “meddling soldiers” which made lower classes more upset. Then as the state failed to pay its own army, there is disarray as soldier begin seizing livestock and other provisions from citizens. The army seemed to have affected a bit of every issue also happening at this time, adding heat to the fire. Then chapter four shows the interwoven web of issues with the excise-man. Debt collectors were viewed by many citizens as the singular person that wrecked their society. There was a massive amount of hateridge put against this person appointed for the job by the government as they were called cruel and sinful. The citizens see the excise-man as the reason that they are suffering. Finally, chapter five focuses on the issue of religion with the dissolution of church and state connections (or lack thereof). This last chapter is massive in the sense that, most of the other issues really fall back to this. It seems to be the umbrellas that encapsulates it all. 

I think that this is a good and interesting writing style for the topic. There are a few sections where maybe too many citations and quotes happen, but it help to get the reader into the mindset of the time, Another strength of this work is the way Boswell broke up the two parts, I found this to be a massive strength because it feels like the reader starts with what is familiar and zoomed into the issue. But then discussing the taverns and alehouses still feel familiar, but start to zoom out and see how it is connected to previous issues mentioned. It felt easy to digest. There is also a good mix of secondary and primary sources, however the primary sources do not come in as much until part two. That adds to what I find to be almost a dialogue within the chapters in part two. Again, a little hard with so many citations and quotes but it did not ruin the book per say. Last minus for the book is that these chapters are so hard to explain! That is a bit of a joke and serious reflection. Each chapter handles such a complex issue that summarizing them is surprisingly difficult. 

Complete side note and not really “review worthy.” A weird connection I thought of when reflecting on section one was the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I thought of the scene where the peasants are working in the field and asks how Arthur became King of the Britons without their vote. I kept thinking about the idea of the “backdrop” that is mentioned in this book and asked myself; is it weird for peasants to discuss politics in the field, but not a street/bar?

Reviewed by Emily Meyers – George Mason University

Caroline Boswell is an associate professor of Humanistic studies and European History at the University of Wisconsin. According to the university’s website, Boswell’s works focus on popular dissent and changes in government during times of political/social crisis. This is reflected in her book Disaffection in Everyday Life in Interregnum England, as the book is dedicated to unpacking the nuance and realities of popular movements during the tumultuous decade(ish) after Charles the first was executed, including the Interregnum, Protectorate, and the very beginnings of Charles the Seconds reign.

In writing this book, Boswell seeks to better understand and explore how popular action, protests, and everyday social interactions were used by ordinary people to influence the policies of the Interregnum government. By extension, Boswell demonstrates how the existence of these points of conflict between the state and its subjects could and often did undermine the states legitimacy when the people felt that their traditional rights were being violated by said state and its representatives; a process exploited by royalist authors to sway the public towards supporting Charles II’s bid for the throne. Whether discussing the relocation of marketplaces (21) or the Sectarian associations of soldiers and the Excise tax (130 and 165 respectively), Boswell emphasizes how disagreements and conflicts between the state and its subjects were used by royalist propagandists and authors to tie an idealized past where these issues did not exist to the return of the monarchy, regardless of the monarchies’ actual position on the issues or the common peoples involved stances on the matter of royal restoration.

Structurally, the book is divided into two parts that focus on the places where unrest occurred and the sources of that unrest respectively. The book is thus not chronologically based, as each development and concept is examined more or less in its entirety before moving on to the next topic; despite this, Boswell does manage to create a sense of continuity and interconnectedness however, as the later chapters are not only positioned in the very places discussed in the first chapters, they are also constantly referring to common principles and justifications established early on as the traditional means by which common people express dissatisfaction and resistance towards unpopular policies. For example, policies introduced in an attempt to police morality by the state discussed around page 80 are referenced in subsequent chapters dealing with the public perception and reception of soldiers as the ones tasked with enforcing these deeply unpopular policies.

The points the author chooses to focus on as areas of conflict between English citizens and Parliamentary leaders are all interesting and insightful into the mindset of those on both ends of government policy. I personally found the chapter on drinking to be the most interesting due to the unintentional parallels between the policies that attempted to regulate public consumption of alcohol described and those of the American government almost three centuries later (not so much in their implementation but in their perception by the public). One particular commonality between many of these government policies worth noting was the exacerbation of societal tensions and issues meant to be reduced by said policies. To put it another way, many of the states attempts to reduce unrest by regulating behaviors only increased popular dissatisfaction with the government, as these measures were seen as arbitrary interference within daily affairs by an incompetent and potentially illegitimate wielder of power. Boswell articulates this point most clearly when discussing later implementations of the much-hated excise tax as protests against this practice led formerly staunch Parliamentarian towns to oppose the governments efforts (197-198).

One area in which Parliamentarian policy was in direct and expected conflict with the will of the English people was the toleration of religious minorities in England, specifically in the New Model Army. Boswell shows how despite the small number of religious nonconformists actually present in England the imagined threat of heretical teachings that upended established norms and customs led to animosity and even violence against religious ‘Others’ and those associated with them by ordinary English citizens (206-209). While questions are raised at the end of the chapter on ‘Fanatics’ as to whether repression was as preferable as people evidently remembered it to be following the Restoration, this section nonetheless shows how dissatisfaction with the government did not need to be uniform in character (i.e. each town saw a different group as religiously ‘Other’) to be seen as evidence of royalist support by both Parliament and Royalists.

Overall, I would say that Boswell’s book is an interesting and very insightful look into the mindset of ordinary people during a very unordinary time. The book was not difficult to read nor was it overly long while simultaneously offering good arguments for its positions. This work makes me want to look into how the arguments made by common people during the Interregnum for resisting certain policies might’ve changed in the following years and how many of the ideas expressed by them made it into our own history.

Timbers, Frances. Magic and Masculinity: Ritual Magic and Gender in the Early Modern Era. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.

Magic has had a long history of being used as a tool to both convey and define cultural ideas in society, and the ways that magic was regarded and used by people in early modern England is the focus of Magic and Masculinity: Ritual Magic and Gender in the Early Modern Era by Frances Timbers, who is currently an adjunct professor at Trent University and who focuses her research on ritual magic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Magic and Masculinity was her first monograph, published in 2014, and it grew out of Timbers’ doctoral thesis at the University of Toronto. The work’s primary concern is examining the ways in which ritual magic intersected with ideas of gender in early modern England, and Timbers shows how magic was opportunistically used by some in ways that reinforced traditional gender hierarchies, but also by others to undermine those established gender roles. Timbers relies heavily on manuscripts written by people directly involved in magic during the era; people such as Elias Ashmole, a well-educated and well-connected alchemist, and Goodwin Wharton, who left behind an extensive diary of his life with Mary Parish and their experiences with the spiritual world. While these manuscripts may contain any amount of fabrication, they remain historically useful sources because they open a window onto the culture in which they were produced and shine a light on contemporary gender issues. Timbers also uses Quarter session records from Essex to illuminate a legal episode that involved accusations of magic use.

Timbers opens her work with a quite useful primer on the subject of magic and the differences between ceremonial or ritual magic and witchcraft. While witchcraft was viewed as a means of supernatural harm, ritual magic was widely accepted as a positive and useful natural philosophy. It was largely employed by respected and educated men who sought to manipulate the natural world or engage with the spirit world in a synthesis of science, religion, and philosophy. In the early modern era, the boundary between the tangible and the intangible worlds was highly permeable or even non-existent, with widespread belief in magical ideas and spiritual beings like demons and fairies. This general belief in magic allowed those who practiced it to be influential drivers of culture.

A foundational argument of Timbers’ book is the way that magic was used as a pathway to manhood and its attendant power, control, and honor. Men used ritual magic to achieve their masculine desires and to strengthen the patriarchal structure of society. Male magicians were considered to be experimental scientists who used science, which was personified as male, to subdue nature, which was personified as female. This behavior by educated and influential men supported traditional patriarchal ideas of the dominance of men. The men who performed ritual magic sought to demonstrate control over both the natural and spiritual worlds. In the religious and cultural landscape of the early modern era, patriarchy was firmly entrenched in society and it was generally accepted that women were naturally subordinate to men; in fact, this was believed to be the divinely ordained order of things. Men extended these beliefs to the spiritual world and used ritual magic to subordinate and command spirits as well. Timbers explains that the demonstration of control over the spiritual world could add greatly to a magician’s sense of masculinity.

In this same vein, there was an upper-class fraternity of men involved in ritual magic who formed groups that allowed for elite occult status that had the effect of enhancing the social status and masculinity of these men. Groups like the Royal Society and the Freemasons provided men who were interested in magical arts with a measure of exclusivity, secrecy, and occult knowledge. Timbers cites Elias Ashmole as an example of a rich and educated man, interested in astrology and alchemy, who was very drawn to these kinds of groups that had a mystique of ancient and secret knowledge available only to the male elite. Of course, these groups excluded women and lower-status men, thereby upholding patriarchal hierarchies and notions of masculine elitism.

Timbers also includes a case study of a local legal suit in the 1640s between John Alston and Robert Aylett. Alston, who was a prominent man in his community, accused Aylett and some fellow conspirators of breaking into his home in the night and sexually assaulting male and female members of his family. Alston explained the men of the family’s lack of resistance by claiming that Aylett had caused them to be charmed asleep during the assaults. This is a prime example of Timbers’ notion that magic was a tool that people wielded in various ways. By leveling an accusation of magic use at Aylett, Alston was able to frame himself and his family as victims of the supernatural, thereby retaining his honor in a situation that otherwise would have cast him as a weak patriarch who was unable to protect his family and home. Alston was able to retain his manhood by accusing his enemy of the nefarious use of magic.

Timbers’ examination of women’s use of magic also shows variations and inconsistencies in the ways it intersected with gender ideas. Goodwin Wharton wrote about his partner, Mary Parish, a female magician who sometimes undermined patriarchal ideas with her magic, and at other times seemed to support the notion of traditional patriarchy. In the accounts of Parish’s magic, she was submissive to the spirit world rather than in command of it, as male magicians would have been. This puts her below men in terms of magical prowess and feeds into ideas of women as naturally weaker and more subservient than men. But in another instance, she had to defend Wharton’s male virtue when he was being sexually abused by female spirits. This event reversed the usual patriarchal hierarchy of powerful males protecting the virtue of weaker women.

Magic and Masculinity examines how cultural opinions about gender were impacted by ritual magic, and by the way magic was used by various individuals, both male and female. The work should appeal to scholars interested in cultural or gender history, but could also hold wider scholarly appeal as the issue of magic in the early modern period overlaps with numerous other subjects, such as religion, science, and medicine. Timbers admirably covers a surprising amount of ground in a brief book, but Magic would have profited from a bit more analysis in the conclusion. She does well to write about the theme of boundaries, with male magicians seeking to build and control boundaries between the worlds while female magicians tended to blur those boundaries. But there seemed to be some additional themes in the book that she could have expounded upon as well, such as power or belief. That said, the book is well-written and full of fascinating ideas, so perhaps the criticism about the brief conclusion is just another way of saying that readers will be left with a curiosity to know more about this intriguing subject matter.

Reviewed by Matthew Inman – George Mason University

The British Civil Wars at Sea was written by Dr. Richard Blakemore and Dr. Elaine Murphy in 2018. Dr. Blakemore is a professor of the social history of sailors and the Atlantic world at the University of Reading. He has a deep interest in maritime studies and Early Modern European dichotomies of power and politics. Dr. Murphy is a professor of maritime and naval history at the university of Plymouth. She also has written works about the Irish civil war at sea. Dr. Blakemore and Dr. Murphy both combine their expertise and passion for maritime history to create this work, emphasizing the often overlooked role of Naval warfare in the British Civil Wars. Within their introduction, Blakemore and Murphy delineate their objectives: to provide an overview of the British Civil Wars at sea, assess the influence of maritime activity on the course of the wars, and to understand the consequences (11).

The book consists of seven chapters with each chapter examining a different aspect of the aforementioned objectives. Chapter one, titled “The Nature of Warfare at Sea,” immerses the reader in maritime standards of procedure in regards to prize law and sovereignty, piracy and privateering, technological advancements, and naval tactics. The regulations at sea were heavily influenced by the interests of individual governments and seafarers, resulting in lack of consistency and inter-imperial tensions (18). Piracy remained a threat and a weapon between nations, targeting merchant and naval vessels alike as both were components of maritime martial power (13). Technological development resulted in faster and stronger vessels that heightened the competition between imperial nations for maritime prestige, legitimacy, and sovereignty (21). Chapter two, titled “The Outbreak of War,” examines the eruption of civil war in England, Ireland, and Scotland in 1638. Dr. Blakemore and Dr. Murphy highlight Charles I’s role as an uncompromising and authoritarian ruler and the peoples fear of a tyrannical ruler (36). Charles’s failure to heed Parliament and appeal to his subjects resulted in rebellion. Charles begins to lose grip on his command over the Royal Navy as Parliament gains full influence (57). Chapter three, titled “the War at Sea,” and Chapter four, titled “Parliament’s Navy,” discusses Parliament’s rise as a Naval power and defeat of royalist forces at the end of the first civil war. This placed Parliament as defender of the realm and defender against foreign invasion and maritime threats (86). Chapter four also explains how Parliament utilized preexisting networks to mobilize maritime forces such as the Trinity House (107). Chapter five examines how Royalist, Confederate, and Scottish naval efforts “experienced fluctuations in strength, an over-reliance on merchantmen or privately owned warships, shortage of facilities ashore, and a lack of centralized control and administration” (108). Chapter six, titled “Revolution,” discusses the fractures formed in Parliament after the first civil war as they attempt to govern a scarred and battered nation. Uprisings broke out in response to heavy taxes and harvest failures (152). These uprisings mark the outbreak of the second civil war with the execution of Charles I. After Charles’s execution, the Rump Parliament goes into effect and purges dissenters from positions of power (153). Chapter seven examines the response of other European monarchies to the regicide of Charles I. Many European powers severed trade relations and refused to recognize the newly formed Commonwealth out of horror (154). The Commonwealth uses this as a reason for strengthening the British Navy as the frontline defense against invasion as well as a tool utilized in conquering Scotland and Ireland (154). During this new era of British history, England became a “fiscal naval state:” focused on naval industry and infrastructure, the professionalization of sailors, and the expansion of British territory alongside globalization (177).

Dr. Blakemore and Dr. Murphy’s main argument is that the British Civil war had a crucial and previously unexamined naval component that led to the British domination of maritime power during the Colonial Era. Dr. Blakemore and Dr. Murphy use a vast array of sources beyond scholarly works by their peers to back their argument. Some primary sources include pamphlets, captain’s logs, letters of correspondence, government documents, addresses to parliament, and journal entries. Their use of sources and groundbreaking findings are major strengths of the work. The books structure is also incredibly straightforward and ensures an understanding of each section through the conclusion paragraph at the end of each chapter. The only real weaknesses of the work is that many of the sources are parliamentary records, leading to the threat of a biased interpretation, and the material in the body of the chapter. I felt as though this book could easily be condensed into an article rather than a full book. Much of the body of the chapter consists of extremely detailed naval battles and the introduction of various characters within each conflict. I did not find this material incredibly relevant to the main argument and considered it more of fluff material that would be of interest to a naval historian.

Reference for Information on authors:

Book Details

Richard Blakemore and Elaine Murphy’s, The British Civil Wars at Sea: 1638-1653 continues a trend to revise the existing historiography of early modern British sea power by moving away from the traditional view involving “momentous swings between success,” such as the purported triumphs of the Elizabethan navy, and failure as epitomized by purported Stuart navy stasis, and a nationalist view of “an inexorable but sometimes interrupted progress toward a nineteenth-century apogee” of global British naval power. (3, 29) The authors instead focus on the neglected story of the intense interaction between land and naval forces during the British Civil Wars and how that “internecine strife . . spurred on efforts to expand and improve naval forces,” sometimes fitfully and gradually, such that by the 1653 the new ships, organization, dockyards, and most crucially the “’fiscal naval state’” enabled the Commonwealth navy to extend its reach globally and “place pressure on foreign powers such as the Dutch, French, Spanish and Portuguese” navies in a manner unthinkable in the 1630s as demonstrated by British naval impotency against the Dutch and Admiral Maarten Tromp in 1639 during the Battle of Scheveningen. (3-4, 177)

Dr. Elaine Murphy is a professor at the University of Plymouth and has published extensively on British naval history. She characterizes this book as the “first comprehensive study of this period at sea.” (YouTube interview) The authors establish three main objectives at the outset of the work. The first is “to provide an overview of the war at sea” during the British civil wars “that takes into account the wider nature of the conflict within the British Isles,” to include interconnected warfare in England, Ireland and Scotland where naval forces of each belligerent transported materials and troops, blockaded ports, relieved sieges, raided commerce and took prizes, and made substantial investments in maritime forces. (174) The authors claim to fill a “scholarly gap” as most histories of the British Civil War have focused almost exclusively on land warfare. (3) In addition, their other objectives are to “assess the impact of maritime activity on the course of the wars; and to understand the consequences of the civil wars for wider British naval and imperial history.” (174) The authors accomplish all three of their primary objectives in this readable and deeply researched book.

The first chapter sets the stage for understanding the role of naval forces in the British Civil Wars with a highly readable account of the nature and limitations of early modern naval warfare such as its extensive reliance on private initiative in the form of commerce raiding, privateers issued letters of marque and reprisal, piracy, tactics, the development of fast frigates, the growth of state navies, and the constant challenge of financing a navy. This financial challenge is epitomized in the 1630s by the perennial royal demand for Ship Money imposed across the land that ultimately created divisive constitutional issues that played a role in undermining the reign of Charles I. (13-15, 30-31) The authors develop the important point that early modern naval power must be viewed as “’maritime potential’” which considers both the steady expansion of British merchant fleets during the period as well as naval developments, because as emphasized throughout the book, merchant ships were most often armed and contributed to the war efforts of all belligerents through a war of attrition. Hugo Grotius and John Selden’s competing concepts of maritime sovereignty are also introduced which support the authors’ later arguments that Charles I, the parliamentarians and Commonwealth all sought to stridently exercise such maritime sovereignty as characterized in these emerging concepts of international law. (24-25, 31)

The second chapter conveys how in 1642 Parliament wrest control of the bulk of the navy Charles I had built with his controversial Ship Money often with the active support of not only senior officers, but also junior officers such as pursers, surgeons, gunners, boatswain mates, and even common seamen. The authors maintain, for example, that the Earl of Warwick who assumed command for parliament, was not only supported by most naval captains, but also was popular among seamen and “the decision of these sailors to support Warwick secured the control of most of the royal fleet for parliament, even before the civil war in England had begun in earnest.” (50, 53) In fact, sailors seized control of two ships from captains who were hesitant to side with Parliament at the outset of the Civil Wars. (51) This discussion of the agency of sailors and the extensive discussion of the mutiny of 1648 in Chapter 6 are based in part on the authors’ prior research in the social history of seamen. Dr. Blakemore has frequently published, while a professor at the University of Reading, on the social history of British sailors during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and his prior work is cited to support the discussion of the 1648 mutiny for example. (e.g., 140, n.74) Similarly, Dr. Murphy’s current social history research focuses on the experiences of women with the Royal Navy in the 17th Century.

The authors adeptly frame the naval engagements of the Civil War by noting that the defection of the standing navy to Parliament forced the royalists, Irish confederates, and Scottish covenanters to build naval forces, and organizations nearly from scratch which meant there would be no dramatic set piece, large scale naval engagements; rather, the war at sea would be characterized by commerce raiding, protection of sea lines of communication, the transport of military resources from the continent, and the support of coastal garrisons against sieges by naval supply which was often decisive in such as in Drogheda, Limerick and other ports. (56)

The structure of the book is largely chronological in chapters 3-4 and 6-7 with a focus on tracing the origin, development, and engagement of the better documented naval forces of Parliament with descriptions of the engagements and challenges of the opposing naval forces interspersed. However, Chapter 5 departs somewhat from this chronological approach to describe in detail the resourcefulness of the “Royalist, Confederate, and Scottish Naval Efforts, 1642-1653” as the chapter title announces. This chapter and the continuation of these concepts elsewhere are one of the more original achievements and strengths of the book. The authors painstakingly reconstruct the capabilities, engagements, organization, leadership, and impact of the navies of the royalist, Irish confederates, and Scottish covenanters based on scarce and scattered primary source material and often unpublished work. This was a difficult task as the records of these navies for the most part have not survived so their story had to be piecemeal assembled from hostile parliamentarian sources, depositions in prize cases, and other sources. (108) The authors note that these forces were never able to seriously threaten parliamentary naval power; however, they inflicted considerable damage on commerce, and just as importantly forced Parliament to “develop and deploy substantial resources to eliminate the danger they posed,” and in particular protect London’s crucial trade which was the engine needed to finance the war at sea and on land. (84, 128)

In sum, Blakemore and Murphy provide a readable and comprehensive survey of the naval dimension of the British Civil Wars and the often effective naval efforts of royalist, confederate and Scottish naval forces – both topics have often been omitted from other histories. Further, they painstakingly piece together disparate sources to paint a vivid picture of the royalist, confederate, and covenanter navies. Moreover, they provide useful Appendices, an extensive bibliography, and robust citations enabling others to build on this foundational work to further advance the field.

Blakemore, Richard J. and Elaine Murphy. The British Civil Wars at Sea, 1638-1653. Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2018.

The civil wars fought in the British Isles during the seventeenth century have been extensively studied and analyzed by historians over the centuries, but it is the significance of the waters and seas surrounding those islands, and what happened there, that is the focus of Richard J. Blakemore and Elaine Murphy’s The British Civil Wars at Sea, 1638-1653. Blakemore and Murphy produced this work upon the realization that the historiography of the civil wars has left a gap by its lack of examination of maritime and naval events, and that those events add crucial context to the understanding of the civil wars themselves, and to Britain’s post-civil war history. Both authors are well-suited to this subject; Blakemore is at the University of Reading and focuses his research on British seafarers in the early modern period, and Murphy is an Associate Professor at the University of Plymouth, focusing on British naval history. Both have written extensively on the maritime history of Britain, and this collaboration received multiple scholarly accolades after its publishing. The skills of both Blakemore and Murphy are on display in their impressive use of primary sources for the book. They build their work with documents from the National and Parliamentary Archives, including documents from the High Court of Admiralty and the Calendar of State Papers. They also use a large number of printed manuscripts and London propaganda newsbooks like Mercurius Aulicus and the Moderate Intelligencer. The goal of The British Civil Wars at Sea is to demonstrate how the British navy progressed from being a feeble fleet in 1638 to a dominant naval power by 1653, and how naval actions were critical factors in the outcome of the civil wars.

Blakemore and Murphy structure the general arc of the book to present a roughly chronological narrative of naval events during the civil wars. With a general build-up of European naval strength in the seventeenth century, due to growing maritime enterprise and threats posed by privateering and piracy, Charles I instituted a very unpopular tax for the benefit of the navy, which was just one of the many causes that led to the outbreak of war. Charles faced rebellions in Scotland and Ireland, and at home, a defiant parliament that had taken control of the navy. Over the next several years, naval success went back and forth between royalist and parliamentarian forces, with most maritime action coming through siege blockades and strategic movement of supplies and reinforcements rather than head-on ship battles. After the parliamentarian victory in 1646 there was growing dissatisfaction and disunity within the navy, which led to a major mutiny in the Downs in 1648 led by seafarers who wished to treat with the king and to the renewal of naval conflict between royalists and parliamentarians. It is possible that Charles I and his forces had a small window of opportunity for victory during this time, but in the end, any advantages essentially backfired and Charles was defeated once again. The conflict continued for several more years, with Charles II and his royalist forces eventually losing out.

The authors couple their overview of the wars with the argument that naval events were crucial factors to the course and eventual outcome of the wars, a perspective they contend is missing from much of the historiography. To begin with, the fact that parliament gained control of the navy in 1642 was a colossal advantage and the authors argue this was a contributing factor to parliament’s victory. Control of the navy allowed the parliamentarians to defend London, support the land war throughout the islands, and control maritime trade and security. A few ships remained loyal to the king, and both sides were forced to hire private merchantmen to fight, but in a conflict where the number of existing ships was finite, the advantage fell on the parliamentarian side. While the royalists made a determined effort, the authors write that “in the long run they lacked the capabilities to pose a serious threat to parliamentarian domination of the seas” (128).

The initial maritime advantage that the parliamentarians benefitted from seemed to grow more commanding as the wars went on. The authors show that this was due to effective infrastructure and organization. Parliament added newly-built warships to its fleet, while also hiring many private ships to act as an auxiliary force, and the admiralty was run by effective leaders. Over time, this led to increasing control of the seas around Britain, which gave parliament a certain amount of control of shipping and trade routes, and provided security from foreign invasion. For parliament, this only aided the ability to support the land war, while the abilities of the royalist navy slowly shrank. This development is most evident in the later stage of the wars, after the execution of Charles I, as the new Commonwealth felt beset by enemies, and the authors cite N.A.M. Rodgers’ comment that it was “the fear and insecurity of a military dictatorship surrounded by enemies real and imagined which made England a first class naval power” (154). The fears and pressures of war encouraged the investment in naval power and increasingly paid off in real advantages. This can be seen in the Commonwealth’s gradual overwhelming of the royalist navy in the 1650s, as Prince Rupert’s fleet was increasingly ineffectual and seemed to be merely avoiding capture, rather than contributing to the war effort in any meaningful way. The necessities of war were the impetus of the build-up of the parliamentarian navy, and the authors conclude that by 1653 the British navy was “the pre-eminent naval force in Europe, and a key pillar of the Commonwealth” (174). This mastery of the seas poised Britain for its imperial future across the globe.

The British Civil Wars at Sea is a strong and well-researched military history that is clearly intended for serious scholars of the conflicts in Britain during this time period. It provides a focused examination of one piece of the larger puzzle of the civil wars; a reader will not come away with an understanding of the wider events of the civil wars from this book alone, but it would contribute to a fuller understanding in combination with other scholarship on the subject of the wars. The one point on which Blakemore and Murphy could be criticized is that after writing a compelling work on the importance of the naval element in the civil wars, they seem to somewhat downplay their conclusion. While stressing the significance of the maritime conflict, they also admit that it was land battles that ultimately decided the outcome of the wars. While their effort to avoid hyperbole or unmerited overemphasis of naval events is appropriate, it does feel a bit undermining to the central arguments of the book.

Reviewed by Matthew Inman, George Mason University

Alastair Bellany is a History Professor at Rutgers who specializes in Early Modern British Isles: Political and Media History. He has been teaching at Rutgers since 1996 and is the Department Chair. Thomas Cogswell is a Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis. He specializes in Early Modern England and has taught at Riverside since 1999. Both authors are established in their fields and both focus on Early Modern England. This is the first of two collaborations between the two authors. They’re currently working on England’s Assassin: John Felton and the Assassination of the Duke of Buckingham which relates to this book. 

Alastair Bellany and Thomas Cogswell’s The Murder of King James I challenges what I knew about Early Modern England by stating that King James I was murdered instead of dying like natural causes as I was taught and read growing up. Before King James’s death, he had suffered a stroke that left him too weak to fight and he died a few days later. The royal physician’s had diagnosed the king with a “pure intermitting tertian ague, or a fever.” (Page 31). The king was said to have died of natural causes. The medical report that was published by the doctors said that the king’s health had taken a turn for the worse suddenly and that, on top of many underlying causes such as poor diet and previous medical history resulting in the king’s death, the autopsy on his body echoed what the doctors had said. Charles I, James’s son and successor spared no expense for his father “an estimated £50,000 was spent” (46) this was on top of Charles’s coronation, the sum was higher than the funerals and coronations of previous monarchs. This can be seen as a son mourning his father and at first glance, that’s what it was. Charles was honoring his father and establishing himself as the next monarch of England. But, you cannot help but to think in the back of your head that something was amiss, it felt like Charles was covering up his involvement in the plot to become the new monarch and as you read deeper, that starts to become a reality.

George Eglishman, who is the main focus of  Bellany and Cogswell’s book, which dissects and examines every piece of evidence that Eglishman detailed in his own book. The Frontrunner of Revenge Upon The Duke of Buckingham for Poisoning the most potent James, King of Great Britain, as well as the Marquis Hamilton and other nobles. In his book, Eglishman accuses the Duke of Buckingham of poisoning King James I and of poisoning of Hamilton, who was Eglishman’s patron. Eglishman had also drawn people’s attention because of the rumors that while Hamilton was on his deathbed, Eglishman had converted him to Catholicism, the rumors on top of the belief that the publication of his book would have him sharing the same fate as his patron and the late king, he fled the country and went to Brussels. Eglishman wasn’t a saint by any means and he didn’t publish this book because he cared about King James, he had a vendetta against Buckingham and Charles, who he blamed for the troubles in his life up to date.

Eglishman’s actions resulted in Parliament opening up an inquire into the death of King James, news of Eglishman’s work transcended social status as it became the talk of the town in London “copies had been industriously scattered up and down in the streets of the city of London.” (210) This had a profound impact on English society as other officials started to come out with accusations against the Duke himself. The Earl of Bristol used the same method to spread his own charges against the Duke (210) The select committee called forward eight doctors to testify in the trial but the most important of these judges was John Craig, who was the unnamed doctor in Eglishman’s book. Craig had been assigned to be one of King James’s doctors in 1621 and he challenged Buckingham’s intervention in the care of the king and became a prisoner in his own chambers after he said that King James had been poisoned and when the doctors marched in the King’s funeral procession, Craig did not walk with the other physicians but with the servants and when it came to payment, Craig was not paid by Charles and did not get his pension back until 1635 (214). King Charles did not take kindly to royal physicians testifying before the committee and Ramsey was forced to become a prisoner in his own home after giving testimony that Charles deemed unacceptable. Each of the royal physician’s testified that the king should only be treated by them and with their consultation and that when they noticed that a plaster had been applied to the king’s side (The Duke had applied it to the King’s side without consulting the doctors first)  they had it removed since they did not approve of it being applied. Buckingham also have the King something to drink that he said would help with the King’s illness. Over a few hours, the Duke’s intervention only made things worse for the ailing monarch. The articles of impeachment thrown at Buckingham weakened his stance and in 1628, he was assassinated by John Felton who claimed that he was spurred to do it by Eglishman’s book. In the end, Eglishman got his revenge for his patron. Buckingham was assassinated but what transpired after changed England and the role that it played in European politics.

After Buckingham’s death, the country started to fall apart and a Civil War erupted that divided the country. On one side you had Charles I and his loyalists and on the other, you had those that believed that Charles was a tyrant and that he deserved to be overthrown for aiding Buckingham for having a hand in his father’s death. Although George Eglishman’s The Frontrunner of Revenge wasn’t the sole reason that the English Revolution happened but it did provide a spark that complied with other factors of English society, cascaded into a full on revolution. 

In conclusion, I found Alastair’s Bellany and Thomas Cogswell’s The Murder of King James I to be an interesting book and I’m glad that I selected it as one of my books but it definitely was not what I was expecting when I selected it. As I was reading it, it felt like a huge cover up by Charles because he wanted to be king so badly and Eglishman came in and spoiled it for him. Cogswell and Bellany did their research and I felt that they did a good job at breaking down Eglishman’s work and explaining why it mattered. Although I liked the book, I did have several complaints with how the book was written and its contents. First of all, I found that the book was really long and could’ve used some editing. In the database that I used, it was 618 pages and I had to take multiple breaks in order to read it in its entirety. Another key problem/issue that I had with the book was that the main argument or focus that they had was George Eglishman and the impact of his book and this wasn’t mentioned until page 200 in my book. If he was going to be the central point in your analysis, then I would’ve liked for him to be presented earlier in his book. Otherwise, I felt like Bellany and Cogswell presented a good book, they broke down Eglishman’s points and how it impacted Early Modern England and fits into the historiography that we have been examining in class since the start of the semester.

Reviewed by Vincent Cervone, Master’s Student at George Mason University.

The Murder of King James I by Alastair Bellany and Thomas Cogswell was published in 2015 for an academic audience interested in the political and print culture of Early Modern England. Bellany is a professor of 16th and 17th century British culture and politics at Rutgers University. Cogswell is a professor of early modern British history at Washington University who is known for his love of law and order. Bellany and Cogswell combined their interests and specialties to discuss the development of the rift between parliament and the Stuart kings of England leading up to the English Civil war through the lens of political unrest created by the death of James I. Through their book, Bellany and Cogswell argue that the alleged murder of King James I acted as a springboard for the impending regicide of King Charles I due to the nature of the alleged murder, evidence presented, and the suspects involved (413). Bellany and Cogswell emphasize the impact of print culture and values on the trial proceedings and public reception of political action. The book utilizes various primary sources such as court records, personal correspondence, pamphlets, portrait prints, poems, and other printed materials alongside secondary source publications from scholarly peers in order to construct their argument with tangible evidence. Photocopies of these primary sources often appear within the text in order to immerse the reader into the investigation and examination of “why and how contemporaries claimed or believed that the king was poisoned” as well as the nature and consequences of those beliefs (xxx).

Within the introduction, Bellany and Cogswell break the book down into six sections that follow a relatively linear timeline along with a theme. Each section also has a prologue that introduces the characters discussed and provides contextual information relevant the the theme. The first section, titled “The Authorized Version, 1625,” consists of chapters one and two, which discuss the death and burial of James I. The prologue of this section is large enough to be considered it’s own chapter, unlike the rest, and sets the stage for the rest of the book. The prologue focuses on the political strains of James I’s late reign and the relationship he had with his son and the Duke of Buckingham.  Buckingham was unusually close to James I and was gaining more political influence at court as a result. Chapter one examines James’s final days after he falls ill with a severe fever and his “good” death (26). His attending physicians conduct an autopsy and file a report chalking his death up to natural causes due to James’s chronic illnesses and poor lifestyle choices (35). This report later becomes controversial in later chapters. Chapter two discusses funerary arrangements and the transfer of power to Charles I. Section two, titled “Making the Secret History, 1625-26,”consists of chapters three through seven. The theme of this section is the introduction of criminal scandal with the publication of a secret history of James l’s final days and death. The tumultuous rumor of a plaster and potion administered to James by Buckingham, leading to his death surfaces as Buckingham attempts to gain favor and influence over Charles I. Here, we are introduced to George Eglisham, a philosopher physician, who publishes The Forerunner, a pamphlet that illustrates the rumor and is dispersed through Europe, naming the Duke of Buckingham as the suspect guilty of poisoning James I and poisoning other nobles at court. This pamphlet was utilized as propaganda for stirring civil unrest in England to distract from war with Spain (153). Section three, titled “Impeaching Buckingham, 1626,” consists of chapters eight through twelve and discusses the court proceedings and formal investigation of the allegations against the Duke of Buckingham. We can see cracks begin to form between the monarchy and Parliament within this section as Charles fails to reprimand Buckingham and instead dissolves Parliament, thus protecting Buckingham from conviction and creating further political unrest (265). Charles, as a result of his actions, becomes implicated in the murder of his father (248). Section four, titled “The Poisonous Favorite, 1626-28,” consists of chapters thirteen through sixteen and further examines these implications through the testimonial of Thomas of Canterbury as the role of print media in the foundation of evidence. Due to Charles impeding upon Parliamentary action in the trial of Buckingham, the duke is murdered by John Felton (339). Section five, titled “Strange Apparitions, 1629-49,” consists of chapters seventeen through twenty-one and Section Six, titled “Speaking Reproachfully of the Dead, 1649-63,” consists of chapters twenty-two through twenty-six. Both of these sections discuss the resurfacing of Eglisham’s secret history prior to the outbreak of civil war with a shift of focus from Buckingham’s role in the murder to Charles’s role. Charles is placed on trial and executed for tyranny, murder, conspiracy, and injustice (418).

The strengths of this work lie in the abundance of source material and thoroughness of research done to formulate the argument. Cogswell and Bellany present a wealth of knowledge and do an excellent job of utilizing sources to back up claims and piece together a greater picture of revolution beyond the trial. In contrast, the weaknesses of this work include the organization and feeling of being overwhelmed with details and the daunting length of the book. The sectioning off of chapters by theme and years leads the reader to believe that the book would follow a linear timeline, yet in later chapters the timeline jumps around and grows frustratingly fuzzy at times. Cogswell and Ballany also include copious amounts of details that distract from the arguments made. Perhaps with further editing the sheer length of the book could be cut down to a more approachable size that could easily entice interested readers, some even being outside of an academic audience.

Bellany, Alastair and Cogswell, Thomas. The Murder of King James I. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015. 

Alastair Bellany and Thomas Cogswell collaborate to create an original book that looks at the creation and movement of the radical theory that King James I was murdered. The book is rather refreshing and does not look at whether James I was murdered but instead looks at the spread of the theory that Duke Buckingham poisoned him on his death bed. The death of King James occurred during a difficult time in English history, and his successor, Charles I, would inherit a kingdom on the verge of revolution. Shortly after the death of James I, rumors spread that Buckingham poisoned James to give the throne to Charles. The spread of the theory of murder sheds light on England’s political and social history in the early years of the 1600s. 

 England in the 1620s was a kingdom filled with fear and paranoia. The country was gripped by fear of a catholic invasion, and the Protestant nations of Europe were threatened by the dual threat of Austria and Spain. The Netherlands and various German states were under threat, and Austria invaded some German states to place a Catholic king on the throne. Charles tried to walk the knife’s edge of supporting protestants in Europe and avoiding war with the Catholic nations. Charles I actions towards Spain drove a wedge between him and English citizens. The grievances that English citizens had towards Charles and his use of the king’s power sparked the tender generated around James’ I death. 

The death of King James was a traumatic event for many in the King’s court. Duke Buckingham was a great friend of James, and he grew in power due to his friendship. In the last days of James’ life, Buckingham brought several medicines to heal James. The medication did not work, and James died several days later. Buckingham was with James till his dying breath, which implicated him in the eyes of some to poison the king. The death of the king sent shockwaves throughout English society. Some in Parliament were hesitant with the growing power of Buckingham and the monarch. James died in 1625, George Eglisham wrote a pamphlet in 1626 that argued that Buckingham caused James’ I death. Eglisham’s pamphlet recounted courtly suspicion and a conspiracy to kill the King of England.

Eglisham’s pamphlet The Forerunner of Revenge was based on an underlying distrust of monarchical power in the early 1600s. Members of Parliament saw an increase in the monarch’s strength as a direct threat to their power. The theory that Buckingham killed James I was not just reserved for members of Parliament. Bellany and Cogswell demonstrate that people from all spheres of English life had heard that the King had been murdered. In one notable example, a man who cared for cattle at a local fair listened to the rumor of the murder of the king. The distrust of the monarch trickled down to every stratum of society. 

The Duke of Buckingham was murdered in 1628 by loyal members of the Parliament after the Duke survived multiple instances of impeachment. Both times that Buckingham faced impeachment, Charles I granted a favor for his friend by dissolving Parliament before a vote could occur. The treatment Charles I gave to Buckingham widened the divide between the monarch and Parliament. Popular sentiment was in favor of the death of Buckingham, and he was very unpopular in Parliament. Through abolishing Parliament Charles, I became a threat to the power of Parliament by abusing his powers as king. 

One of the wild theories that circulated in the 1620s was Charles I was complicit in the murder of his father. Charles I had much to gain from his father’s death, but having his father killed was a step too far. No evidence was ever brought forth that Charles killed his father, but the rumor persisted. The pamphlet was a product not just for English readers but, instead, was intended for a European audience. Eglisham produced the pamphlet in Brussells, and the death of King James was a moment that would have impacts on broader European events. Charles I would bring England into a war with Spain and be the monarch who suffered the fate of a violent revolution that took his life. 

The Murder of King James I is a good book that takes a new look at a significant event in English history. Instead of ruling on the validity of 400-year-old rumors, focus on the spread of information. Their analysis reads like an intellectual history that examines how the event of James’ death was remembered around Europe shortly after it happened. Parliament’s distrust towards Charles I and his actions while king led to a revolution between the monarch and Parliament that engulfed all of England. 

I enjoyed how Bellany and Cogswell approached the death of King James I. They avoided blaming who killed James and instead gave an honest history of how it was perceived in England at the time. I also was astonished that looking at pamphlets from the 1620s could be used to examine the roots of the English Civil War. Between the fear of Catholic influence and the divide between the King and Parliament, the English Civil War has roots that trace back decades. The emphasis on pamphlets on the period provides insight into how people thought of their government and its members. The Murder of King James I blends political, social, and intellectual history for an original synthesis. 

I disliked the number of direct quotes. Direct quotes are great to provide a sense of the people from the time, but many paragraphs are filled with lengthy passages. Some selections could be paraphrased or used in the notes section. Overall, the book was an insightful read that had a hint of true-crime drama mixed with several different historical approaches to create a unique synthesis for the foundations of the English Civil War.