The Coming of War, 1640–2

Abstract

In the previous chapter we saw that the traditional interpretation of the Civil War as an inevitable conflict has been seriously challenged by the revisionist argument that, far from being on the verge of revolution, England was ‘unrevolutionary’ in the 1630s. It has been claimed that England under the early Stuarts was more stable, and thus less prone to internal conflict, than under Elizabeth.¹ The possibility of civil war because of dynastic problems or the military pretensions of the nobility was a thing of the past; there was no longer any fear of foreign invasion; population growth and inflation that had caused misery under Elizabeth were slowing down; violence towards state servants had largely disappeared; centralised state power was on the increase; and until the accession of Charles I the Puritans and Papists were no longer a menace and had settled down into an accommodation with the state. Thus the England that Charles inherited was moving further away from civil conflict rather than towards it. It follows in the revisionist account that the reasons for civil war must be sought mainly within the reign of Charles and not further back.