Book description
The sequence of civil wars that ripped England apart in the
seventeenth century was the single most traumatic event in this
country between the medieval Black Death and the two world wars.
Indeed, it is likely that a greater percentage of the population were
killed in the civil wars than in the First World War.
This sense of overwhelming trauma gives this major new history its
title: God s Fury, England s Fire. The name of a pamphlet
written after the king s surrender, it sums up the widespread feeling
within England that the seemingly endless nightmare that had destroyed
families, towns and livelihoods was ordained by a vengeful God that
the people of England had sinned and were now being punished. As with
all civil wars, however, God s fury could support or destroy
either side in the conflict. Was God angry at Charles I for
failing to support the true, protestant, religion and refusing to work
with Parliament? Or was God angry with those who had dared challenge
His anointed Sovereign?
Michael Braddick s remarkable book gives the reader a vivid and
enduring sense both of what it was like to live through events of
uncontrollable violence and what really animated the different sides.
The killing of Charles I and the declaration of a republic events
which even now seem in an English context utterly astounding were by
no means the only outcomes, and Braddick brilliantly describes the
twists and turns that led to the most radical solutions of all to the
country s political implosion. He also describes very effectively the
influence of events in Scotland, Ireland and the European mainland on
the conflict in England.
God s Fury, England s Fire allows readers to understand once
more the events that have so fundamentally marked this country and
which still resonate centuries after their bloody ending.
Michael Braddick
is Professor of History at the University of Sheffield. He is the author
of
The Nerves of State: Taxation and the Financing of the English
State, 1558 1700
and
State Formation in Early Modern England, c. 1500 1700
.
