In A Better Book

A dear friend of mine had quipped that the only two Revolutions he thought much of were the American Revolution and the Glorious Revolution, which he added, perhaps weren’t really "revolutions" at all.  It struck me that I didn’t really know much about the latter or the two beyond the general time and place.  On my last trip home I sent myself some different titles from Amazon to pick up, including what appeared to be a history of the Glorious Revolution.

And you cannot judge books by covers, let alone jpegs.  This is more of a quick, self-published pamphlet on the Intellectual History of England in the seventeenth century with lots of photos kings and queens and Lord Protectors, with text that isn’t aligned well and folksy asides rather than the academic treatment or at least a readable treatment, I was expecting.  

One epiphany, I hadn’t realized that England changed hands between Catholic and Protestant rulers as many times as it did.  The separation from the Catholic world wasn’t a given after Henry VIII. But his gesture of convenience undeniably became broadly popular, over the century.  Cromwell comes across a murderous, grumpy turd who slaughtered the Irish citizenry after conquering them but later when he defeated the Scots was sparing.  Charles has it rough, after the English Civil Wars and we wonder if he might have come out in one piece, if he hadn't been so quarrelsome.  Why do we not remember his beheading the way we do the one that befell Louis XVI one-hundred-and-fifty years later?  Is the axeman any less dramatic than the Guillotine? 

And the Glorious Revolution itself?  I’m glad it wasn’t particularly violent.  I’m glad Parliament came out ahead and left despotism that much further behind.  I’m glad the daughter Mary and her pal Bill were able to disobey her father in the name of her country.  It must have been the compromised text I was tearing through, but the big GR itself didn’t come across as all that "Glorious."  I suppose it's explanatory powers will need to be gleaned some other time in a better book: how it sired the American Revolution, how it helped England to avoid the excesses of the French Revolution.

Friday, 12/07/18