God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [351]
The equestrian statue of Charles I at Charing Cross, pictured soon after it was erected
The Cromwell statue in Parliament Square, pictured soon after it was erected
These partial and ultimately outmatched efforts at destruction, and the achievement of security at home and abroad, were not the sum of the republican achievement, however. Anxiety, confusion and discord continued to spur intellectual, rhetorical and communicative creativity.13 In an important sense 1649 was a moment of opportunity, at which definition could be given to the people, their representative, their religion and the purposes of government. For this reason it was the opening of ‘the epic years of the English political intellect’.14 The opportunities were so plural, however, that any practical solution would simultaneously be a rejection and a limitation. There followed successive attempts to set limits and boundaries, to give definition to the new dispensation, and this created new victims and martyrs beyond the ranks of the defeated royalists. This fertile legacy of political argument, however, far outlived the failures and compromises of the 1650s.
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In a way, the failure of monarchy, Parliament or local government to contain and resolve conflict in 1640–42 represented the dissolution of political community. This posed a profound challenge, and gave rise to an enormously destructive civil war, but it was for some an exhilarating experience, rich in reflection on what it meant to belong to a political community. It was prompted by a religious protest in Scotland which fractured the English peace. Rival, plural mobilizations gave rise to loose coalitions, held together by fear. Print accelerated, generalized and amplified the resultant argument. During the war further escalation resulted in further acceleration. Pamphlets engaged with one another, sharpening, refining, escalating and radicalizing arguments. This became a political crisis with great social depth, not just or even principally in print, but in all the practical attempts to mobilize – pamphleteers, armies, iconoclasts, witch-hunters, clubmen, Levellers, protesters and petitioners. The social depth of the crisis was important not just in itself, but because it was part of the crisis. Intellectual coherence was challenged by multiple mobilizations around common-sense values – Protestantism, law, honour, treason, loyalty – for partisan purposes among overlapping publics. This process of mobilization fractured a common-sense system, making manifest contradictions and encouraging the development of new ways of imagining the world. If killing the King did not end the arguments then neither did the declaration of the first year of England’s freedom: it set off another round of paper combats over what that was.
In particular, further reformation had opened up the boundary problem – the attack on the authority of bishops removed the umpire of questions of theological error and decency in worship. The ensuing debate operated on both levels – where were those limits (fought out using popery and sectarianism) and, more fundamentally, who should decide, and how? The two archetypes which drove polemic during 1640–42 – anti-popery and anti-Puritanism – were well-established world views, religious in tone, but embracing visions of social and political relationships too. But they expressed fears about the edges of the reformed faith rather than certainties about its core.
Regicide did not answer this uncertainty and the 1650s saw an unresolved debate about the nature of the Christian community. On what basis should Christians be gathered into communities, and