Having published substantial books on the Fifth Monarchy men, early modern almanacs, Oliver Cromwell’s navy, the popular writer John Taylor, and gossip and gender, Bernard Capp attends once more to the intersections of social, cultural, and political history in this sprightly study of “culture wars” in the decade of England’s Interregnum. Though the political, constitutional, religious, and intellectual developments of this period are well known, their impact on ordinary lives and aspirations has so far resisted analysis. By bringing his mastery of local archival sources to bear on the program for the reformation of manners, Capp sheds fresh light on the contests and divisions of a fractured moral environment. He shows how pockets of zeal made advances in probity and discipline, as traditional attitudes and customary practices generally withstood the pressures of reformation.
The English world changed dramatically in 1649 when Puritans and republicans cut off the king’s head and abolished the institution of monarchy. Their revolution brought to power a sanctimonious elite, backed by the army, who attempted to transform England into a model godly commonwealth. Moralistic campaigns against sin and superstition, unlawful sex, disorderly drinking, and worldly pleasures had reverberated for over 100 years, but only during the Interregnum did their proponents control the apparatus of the state. This book reviews their efforts and accomplishments, alongside examples of resentment and resistance.
The army, the church, and the law were imperfect instruments for implementing cultural reform, especially when the ruling regime lacked legitimacy. Nonetheless, a combination of central directives and local initiatives undertook to ban Christmas and enforce the Sabbath, quell profanity, forestall drinking, end swearing, and instill godliness in all social relations. They sought to suppress Shrovetide and Maytide, and the merriments of those seasons, as well as bearbaiting, cockfighting, and alehouse irregularities. Successive Interregnum governments used their authority to advance those clergy and magistrates they thought favorable to reform, and to remove others who impeded God’s work. But sectarian rivalries and the contests of Independents against Presbyterians weakened clerical command of the pulpits, and backsliding among local officials allowed unreformed habits to continue. Conservatives and traditionalists gradually recovered their influence. Counterrevolutionary plots and propaganda also drained the Interregnum regimes of energy. So too did the cleavage between enthusiasts for secular liberty and Puritans preparing God’s kingdom on earth. Capp counsels against a verdict of “failure” on the Interregnum revolutionaries, but most of their effective initiatives were short-lived.
Capp’s Interregnum is populated by hundreds of individuals caught up briefly in the mesh of authority or the scrutiny of the press. They include William Gibson and his wife Ellen of Lower Withington, Sussex, convicted for swearing sixty-two and twenty-five oaths, respectively; Susan Scott, who was whipped through the streets of York for fornication; and Mary Miller, who was arrested at Whitechapel after winning a garland at dancing. They give an impression of cultural vitality shadowed by reprimand and sanction, in cultural wars that were bloodless but unwinnable.
The sources for this study include manuscript records of county and borough courts, through which the authorities attempted to impose discipline. Unfortunately, they yield less information than the old ecclesiastical courts, which Capp and others have used elsewhere to tell more-detailed stories. Newspapers, which did not exist before the revolution, were often laconic in their reporting, allowing the historian to say little more than “we hear” of this or that incident or action. England’s Culture Wars is crowded with short reports that rarely expand to constitute a micronarrative. The main exception is a chapter-length study of godly rule in action in the merchant community of Exeter, where Puritan magistrates held sway, though not without turbulence and contention. The volume is graced by notes at the foot of each page that display the author’s wide reading in seventeenth-century texts and his engagement with modern historical scholarship, but there is no bibliography. There are a few signs of haste, with some quotes lacking references. Several interesting cases are cited from the London Metropolitan Archives, but there is no entry for that repository in the list of manuscript sources.
