The Causes of the English Revolution- 1529-1642:
By: Lawrence Stone
A Book Review
James Capps
Hist. 581- Research Methodology
Dr. Gary Ebersole
Sept. 21, 2005
In his book, The Causes of the English Revolution 1529-1642, Lawrence Stone tries
to show the event in a way that no one has looked at it before. There have been many
historians that have attempted to tackle this topic, but none of them have been able to write
a complete and concise account of why it happened. Stone had previously written about this
subject, but he was met by intense criticism from his peers, so he sat down to revise his
arguments. As a social historian, Stone’s previous works were criticized because he neglected
to consider additional aspects of history such as religion and politics. In this book, Stone
realized, “The moment seems right, therefore to stand back and try to see the forest as a
whole rather than the individual trees (xii).” Stone acknowledges that this event in history is
an arena that has been fought over for years. Many scholars are ready to jump in and criticize
any work that’s published. He knew that even this revised work would not be met with open
arms. His purpose was not to please those he offended in his earlier work, but to give his
insights into why the war happened and to inspire others to do their own research,
contributing their own work.
In his analysis, Stone looks at his own colleague’s research and contributions to the
subject of the English revolution. The book is set into three chapters and two sections. In
the first chapter he defines what a revolution is and what can and can not be considered a
revolution. Stone subscribes to the behaviorist approach. The behaviorist sees the cause for
revolution as a surfacing of a fanatical revolutionary way of thinking. Revolutions are
supported by groups of people that can be religious or not, but who set out to create, as
Stone calls it, a “new Jerusalem (13).” In the mid-seventeenth century, the English Puritans
developed this way of revolutionary thinking for themselves. In the second chapter and end
of the first section he looks at the social origins of the English Revolution. He believes that
the problems with the studies done on the English Revolution are that they are never clear
which stage is being referred to. Each stage of the revolution was set off by different issues
that need to be clearly defined. In this chapter he also suggests that the background of a
historian must be considered when looking at their work. Stone labels himself as an agnostic
English liberal while a colleague, R.H. Tawney, is a Christian socialist. They have written on
the same subject but come at the material from two different angles. In this section of the
book Stone draws from books that his peers have written on revolution. He also uses many
journals that his peers have written articles for, pertaining to revolution and society (politics
and economics).
In Stone’s book, he lists four problems affecting England that led to the civil war:
economics, social changes, foreign threats, and confidence. England went through two
generations where the population doubled in size. This caused changes in all areas of society,
including agriculture, trade, and industry. Especially in agriculture, England introduced many
improvements that led to increased crop sizes and a higher quality of crops. This also caused
a shift in the relationship between landlord and tenant. The rent on land in the end of the
sixteenth century went down giving more power to the tenant. While in the early
seventeenth century the rents went back up moving the pendulum back towards the
landlords. When the rent rose, the land also became more privatized in enclosures. The shift
of power back to the landlords was necessary to take care of the new population but it also
put out many of the former holders of the land.
The growth of London also had a big impact on the economic development of
England. Many of the people who were put out from the farms in the country moved to the
cities, especially London. The importance of London was a key factor in the start of the war.
Stone explains, “A French king could and did survive the loss of Paris, but it was far more
difficult for an English king to survive the loss of London (71),” because the French kings
lived away from Paris, at Versailles, while the English kings lived in London The people
shifted away from the traditional ways to an interest in the constructs of a market economy.
The new policies and the failure to maintain them fell into the hands of the Stuarts. The two
Stuart kings before the war neglected to react to the changing conditions of the economy.
This caused jealousy and bitterness among the people who watched some become wealthy
while others became poor.
The new elite and the rise of wealth affected England socially, as well as
economically. In the reign of Henry VIII, one of his ways to get money to gain a standing
army was to sell the land of the monasteries that he had confiscated. In those last years of
Henry’s reign until 1640 there was a significant transfer of power and influence away from
the church and the crown to the middle classes (Stone, 75). This transfer of power happened
because Henry had to sell the lands he had taken. The church was losing influence because
Henry closed their monasteries and took away their authority when he made himself the
head of the church in the 1520’s. Henry was losing his influence because of the increased
numbers of gentry that now existed. In many cases the number of gentry doubled and had
become independent in their own right and held power in Parliament. The traditionalists had
no idea how to deal with new equals or their new ideas which led to the conflicts in 1642.
The third factor that Stone outlines was the decline of foreign threats. In 1588,
Elizabeth and her armies had defeated the Spanish Armada which left Spain as a former
threat. Spain had wanted to use Ireland as a jumping off point for an invasion but that was
thwarted in a starvation of the Irish people in 1600-01 and a peace was later agreed to by
England and Spain in 1604 (Stone, 78). The other foreign threat, France, was avoided by
their internal Wars of Religion over Catholicism and Protestantism and the Thirty Years
War. They had intentions to use Scotland as a landing point for their own invasion, but
opted not to because the Scottish nobility had converted to Protestantism under James I
after Elizabeth died in 1603 (Stone, 78-9). By the period of the English Revolution, the
external powers that would have been a threat were no longer a threat and the people that
could have united against a foreign power only had themselves to fight.
The last cause, and in Stone’s opinion, the most important was the loss of
confidence in the government and subsequently the church. In Henry VIII and Elizabeth,
England had leaders they could get behind and a strong sense of country. They also had the
early stages of divine right theory, that the king comes from God and is God on Earth.
William Tyndale said of Henry in 1528 that, “The King is, in his world, without law, and may
at his lust do right or wrong, and shall give account but to God alone (Stone, 88).” In 1559,
the man who would become Bishop Aylmer took the theories of divine right to a new level
proclaiming, “God is English (Stone, 88).” When Elizabeth took the throne in 1558, the
Him that was God was placed upon her. In John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, he saw the
succession of Elizabeth as God’s last act of destiny that saved the true religion for the
peoples of the world (Stone, 88).
The Stuarts lost that credibility when James and then his son Charles became kings
because they did not have the personalities that the Tudors had. Secondly, James had a proSpanish leaning in his foreign policy that infuriated the people of England because of its
popish undertones. The people of England felt that this was seditious act against their
national interests. James never sought to give or receive the respect and love of the people
like Elizabeth had done. “Thus while the Queen acquired the intense love of the people, the
present King is hated and despised by them (Stone, 90).” By 1640, the monarchy had lost all
respect of the people, and preachers began telling the people in their sermons that
Parliament was the true inheritor of the throne.
I also feel that this last cause was the most important in leading to the revolution. In
any society there must be a system of regulation and administration to control the rest of
society. In 1640, the administration fell apart at the seams due to the poor leaders, notably
the monarchy. The upside of divine right is that it instills a sense of great pride and respect
in your king or queen, if they are capable of running the country and really do become godlike in that sense. However the downside is that if you are given a leader that is not capable
of leading the country, it was believed that you just had to deal with what you were given
until a new king or queen came along. This was the policy until 1642 when the civil war
broke out and the people rose up against the king. When Charles I was captured in 1649 and
put on trial and executed, this was the first time in history a king had been put on trial. Kings
had been killed before but never in this manner, because kings had been “above the law.”
As a social historian, Stone is interested with the broader aspects of causality in
history rather than just the facts, such as what and where. This was a book that was a
compilation of his earlier works that had been revised because of the criticism of his peers. I
admire him for his willingness to reevaluate his own opinions in light of criticisms. I also
liked the way that he breaks the book up into two parts. The first part covers all of the
introductory information, such as what is a revolution and why this was a revolution in the
truest sense. The second part of that introduction is analyzing what others have said and
acknowledging the different ways that historians approach their material. In the last section
he discusses his own conclusions about the revolution and the causes that led up to it. He
made all of his points in a clear and concise way, by building upon each section from the
previous section. He moved between causes in a well structured pattern by applying these
causes to the chronological order of the events that led up to 1642.
Bibliography
Stone, Lawrence. The Causes of the English Revolution 1529-1642. London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1972.