From Expectation to Militance: Reformers and Babylon in the First Two Years of the Long Parliament
Despite the great attention which the puritan movement has received, many historians have been reluctant to afford religion a major role as an immediate precipitant of the English civil war. There has been a tendency to settle the matter by quoting Oliver Cromwell's statement: ‘Religion was not...
| Published in: | The journal of ecclesiastical history |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1973
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| In: |
The journal of ecclesiastical history
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Despite the great attention which the puritan movement has received, many historians have been reluctant to afford religion a major role as an immediate precipitant of the English civil war. There has been a tendency to settle the matter by quoting Oliver Cromwell's statement: ‘Religion was not the thing at first contested for …’, although he put forth this interpretation more than a decade after the event. Recently attention has been focused upon the early 1640s as a period in which puritans became highly militant; at the same time, the key to this aggressiveness has been provided by a series of studies of the hitherto neglected apocalyptic ideas of English protestants. Dr. Burrell has shown a close relationship between apocalyptic thought and the outbreak of the Scottish rebellion, while other scholars have indicated that such a connexion existed at the start of the English civil war. This article will attempt to chart the development of puritan militance by examining the apocalyptic interpretations put forward by prominent English reformers during the crucial period which began with the opening of the Long Parliament on 3 November 1640 and ended with the first great battle of the civil war at Edgehill on 23 October 1642. The importance of religion in the outbreak of that conflict should thereby be demonstrated. |
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| ISSN: | 1469-7637 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The journal of ecclesiastical history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0022046900047230 |