Duncan Bowie on a new study of the English Civil War
The Fiery Spirits by John Rees published by Verso
This is a very different history of the English Civil War. Rees, who has previously written an excellent study of the Levellers, the extra-parliamentary radical agitation, has now turned his attention to a small group of radical parliamentarians, led by Henry Marten, William Strode, Alexander Rigby and Sir Peter Wentworth. This book is no partisan polemic, despite Rees’ day job as national organiser of the Stop the War Campaign, and being a former member of the Socialist Workers Party and Galloway’s Respect Party and a founding member of the Counterfire far left group. Rees is a serious historian, and this new volume demonstrates sound research and an impressive use of primary sources. While presenting a different approach to many previous historians of the subject, including the semi-Marxist Christopher Hill, Rees is careful not to criticise his historical predecessors, and makes good use of recent research by other academics, referencing journal articles as well as less widely (and expensive) academic tomes such as those of the American David Como and Scot Norah Carlin.
This book is not light reading. Rees’s wide use of quotations from the contemporary literature with the original 17th century spelling makes for slow work, though authenticity is well justified – and there must be hundreds of such pamphlet references – there are sixty pages of footnotes. 17th-century radicals clearly were prolific, even when in prison, and the contemporary religious terminology is often difficult for a non-specialist reader to fully understand – but Rees” commentary shows that he is a specialist and rises to the challenge.
The book is nevertheless fairly dry as perhaps most studies of parliamentary processes tend to be, despite the degree of agitation and vehemence involved. Rees’ main purpose is to demonstrate the significance and influence of his small group of “fiery spirits”. In order to do so, he needs, or at least feels it necessary, to list the membership of the numerous parliamentary committees, to show the affiliations of their members. Compared with the current parliamentary processes, 17th-century parliamentarians were clearly incontinent in their obsession with setting up a new committee for every question, sometimes three new committees in a single day, and the fiery spirits, despite their small numbers, managed to dominate many of the key committees.
There is little mention of the military struggles and battles of the civil war, no mention of the economic background so central to the work of orthodox Marxists and no attempt to delve into the different religious beliefs of the various sects so beloved of Hill, though Rees does acknowledge the links between belief and politics. He does, however, demonstrate these can be more complex than sometimes understood, not all the war party were Puritans, not all the peace party were Presbyterians and not all of the Royalists were Catholics or Laudians (high church Anglicans). Rees’s work focuses on the years 1640-45. After preliminary chapters on the earlier crisis of 1628-9. He skips over the years of Charles II’s personal rule, when no parliament was called.
In the final period, Marten and the parliamentary fiery spirits make alliances with Lilburne and the Levellers, which means some duplication with Rees’ earlier work, but the narrative ends with the execution of the king, so there is no analysis of the establishment of the first commonwealth and the establishment of the Cromwellian protectorate. Cromwell and Ireton have a relatively low profile in the narrative. Consequently, Rees does not consider the opposition of Marten and some of his fellow republicans against the Cromwellian autocracy, though the rise and fall of the republic have been the subject of other recent studies. Rees’ book is a sound scholarly study, and it is well worth taking the effort to read it.