Author: Max Smith

In the late 17th and early 18th-centuries, England began to emerge as a dominant naval power whose fleet rivaled, and eventually surpassed those of the Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and French armadas. However, this dramatic surge in naval prowess also coincided with, and in many ways depended upon, the emergence of a much lesser discussed aspect of waging war at sea; the caretaking of wounded sailors. In his 2024 work Early Modern Naval Health Care in England, 1650 – 1750, author and military historian Matthew Neufeld explores the transition which occurred over this roughly one hundred year period from primarily individual and outsourced caretaking of sailors, to government sanctioned hospitals and organized treatment efforts. In doing so he demonstrates how this responsibility evolved from oftentimes voluntary and highly gendered roles, toward modern medical systems and practices. While this topic happens to fall within the scope of the military, I would classify this work as more of a social history than anything else, given his focus on non-professionals and everyday individuals. In his own words “Rather than giving most of its attention to medical professionals, this book strives to recapture the significance of the people who did the majority of caring for injured and sick sailors.” (p12)

Early Modern Naval Health Care in England, 1650 – 1750 follows a generally chronological timeline, and Neufeld breaks down many of his chapters by conflicts such as the 9 years war, Queen Anne’s war, and the wars with Spain and France. Although I would consider this to be a social history, the first part of this work reads more as a history of medical practices of the late 17th-century. He does this primarily to establish the longstanding conditions that sailors were expected to endure when it came to hygiene, surgery, and treatment out at sea. If a sailor managed to survive his wounds long enough to return to England, he could then begin the process of care and recovery, a role that was typically (though not always) performed by women of coastal towns and cities. 

From the onset, Neufeld states that “Women were responsible for much of what naval health care did right during the later half of the 1740s, and in previous conflicts. At the time, this truth was not acknowledged widely. This book aims in part to right that wrong.” (p18) He points out that despite having the funds to construct massive fleets of warships, providing care for injured sailors proved initially to be somewhat of a low priority for the British admiralty, and oftentimes they simply forced the responsibility of caring for the infirmed onto ordinary citizens out of desperation. “People received sick and hurt seamen and cared for them on credit, in the belief that the navy would honour its debts in a reasonably short period of time. (p20) When the navy failed to fulfill the promises it had made to these individuals, it often led to the straining of relationships or even outright protests. Despite this tension, Neufeld asserts that this should not discredit the overall success of these early systems of care and the foundations for later systems they ultimately established.

Another theme of this work which is central to Neufeld’s argument is the intertwining of moral and economic advantages that this early system provided to both the government and the people. Using treasury and auditor’s records following the Glorious Revolution, he shows that the navy had spent almost 30,000 pounds on caring for sick and wounded sailors by 1690, and was in desperate need of funds to pay off their debts.(p45) Although some individuals protested by refusing to take in injured sailors altogether, it was still seen as a moral duty by the majority of English people who continued to work without compensation. Neufeld goes so far as to argue that “The patience of care providers and care workers prevented naval health care from total collapse during the Nine Years’ War.”(p46) These financial difficulties were in part what made Navy officials consider establishing a more organized system and eventually led to the construction of the first hospital for sailors. 

By the start of Queen Anne’s war, the navy had established a formal health care administration which performed these duties better than previous decades due to increased finances from the South Seas trade.(p69) Neufeld draws the readers’ attention to several key differences between this period and the early years of naval care such as clear instructions for treatment which contain areas of both change and continuity. These new guidelines placed a much greater emphasis on the centralization of care in key coastal cities, as well as the importance of qualitative and quantitative data regarding wounded sailors, however they still failed to account for the compensation of widows and family members.(p72) By the Georgian Era, the cost of healthcare for injured seamen had become a standard expense as evidenced by annual parliamentary session reports. Neufeld argues “The fact that the system of naval health care continued uninterrupted past the end of Queen Anne’s War is one of the most important aspects of its early modern development,” and served as a turning point from when health care provisions ended once fighting stopped.

In his conclusion, Neufeld echoes his earlier points about the simultaneous aspects of both continuity and change that existed within the English naval health care system by referencing contrasting first hand accounts of the later 18th-century. In some instances, sailors received treatment at large state-sanctioned hospitals where medical professionals attended to their needs, while in other cases they were looked after in private sick-quarters by caretakers who were mostly women. Although hospitals had begun to shoulder more and more of the burden once placed on private individuals, in Neufeld’s opinion… “Early-modern naval health care did not end with the emergence of permanent hospitals for seamen.” (p188)

On a more personal note, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this work; not only because it was a topic of my own choosing, but because Neufeld has a literary style that is very easy to follow and heavily reinforced by first hand evidence. While he states in his introduction that the focus was solely on England because that was where naval healthcare was the “most decisive for the system’s emergence and transformation,”(p15) I do wish he spent a bit more time discussing what that experience was like for sailors who were treated in foreign colonies. Furthermore, although he does not engage as much as some of the other authors we have read with the existing historiography, he is ultimately very honest about his own methodology. In his words… “while not discounting the limitations of such sources, nor claiming that my reading of them is “unbiased,” I hope the story that follows is a valuable and true interpretation of the past. To claim something as true makes it possible for others to point out features of it that are in fact wrong. Indeed, this book will have succeeded if it encourages other historians to prove my story wrong.”(p13)

Conspiracy Culture in Stuart England by Andrea McKenzie is a book quite unlike any other we have read during the course of this semester. At first glance I assumed this was going to be a straightforward microhistory, not unlike Anatomy of a duel by Bowen, however McKenzie directly refutes this characterization of her work stating that “This book is not simply… a case study or ‘microhistory’. Rather, it is the story of how accusations, rumours and speculations about the death of one man transformed English political culture: an anatomy of a conspiratorial crisis that shook the nation to its core.”(p11) While the story itself is undoubtedly interesting from a “murder mystery” point of view, the author takes it a step further by seeking to uncover how this particular moment in Early Modern English history gave rise to the “new age of conspiratorial politics in which we now live.”(p5)

Andrea McKenzie is not only an expert in the fields of Crime and Legal History and Conspiratorial Politics, but manuscript history as well which lends an additional layer of credibility to her work.[1] Some of the sources she refers to throughout this book include shorthand marginalia and drafts of the chairman of the House of Commons Committee of Secrecy, George Treby, as well as draft copies of William Lloyd’s letters to Roger L’Estrange discussing Godfrey’s death which she personally decoded.(p9) The body of this text is composed of five chapters which range from dominant theories regarding the cause of death of Edmund Godfrey, rumours about the possibility of suicide, and subsequent information that emerged after the fact. 

The first Chapter begins not with an account of Godfrey’s life, but rather one of his funeral, where clergyman William Lloyd posed the question ‘Qui Bono” or, whose interest was it? McKenzie points out that while Lloyd did not outright accuse Catholics of being the masterminds behind the conspiracy to murder Godfrey, she notes that he ended his funerary sermon with a “casual reference to the groundless conspiracy theory that Catholics had been responsible for the catastrophic Great Fire of London…” (p20) As Ed pointed out in his review, the comments of Lloyd, as well as Titus Oates, whom Godfrey had taken witness statements from prior to his death, were likely the cause of mass hysteria and violence directed towards English Catholics. However McKenzie also believes they were “more than simply a rallying call to the villagers to burn down Dr Frankenstein’s castle” instead arguing that they offer a “snapshot about what was known and believed about Godfrey… before any witness had come forward or any arrests had been made.”(p17)

Essentially, what the author is trying to do is to reject straightforward explanations regarding Godffrey’s death which had been put forth by subsequent historians as late as the 20th century, and instead return the historiography to a 17th century lens which can paint a more accurate picture of the complexity of the political life at the time. In doing so, McKenzie does not shy away from investigating the “surprising plausibility of some of even the wilder theories,”(p11) noting that the initial prosecution of Berry, Green and Hill as his killers rested on shaky evidence given by a man who repeatedly recanted and altered his testimony. 

In chapter 3, she therefore examines the widespread speculations that Godreys death was actually the result of a suicide, a theory that had already been debunked even before Robert L’estrange and other contemporary Catholic propagandists put forth the idea.(p88) Mckenzie revisits forensic evidence put forth by L’estrange and asserts that the possibility of a suicide was incredibly unlikely, however she does not completely write off his theories, adding that one particularly “compelling contribution to the debate was in his psychological portrait of Godfrey as a man deeply distracted and depressed in the weeks leading up to his disappearance.”(p105) The academic integrity and honesty behind McKenzie’s methodology and research is one aspect of this work I really appreciated. She does not fall into pitfalls which settle for simplistic answers like robbery or suicide, yet she also does not completely write off the testimonies of L’estrange solely because he may have had alternative motivations in order to protect catholics. 

In Chapter 4, McKenzie dives headfirst into the political machinations which were present in London during this period, especially related to Whigs who were anti-catholic and heavily opposed to the succession of James II. She points out that the so-called “Popish Plot” which accused Catholics of engaging in a conspiracy to assassinate Charles II had begun to run out of steam at exactly the same period when Godrey’s death reinvigorated it, making the timing incredibly suspicious.(p124) 

As mentioned in her introduction, one of Mckenzie’s main goals in writing this book was to create a link between the conspiratorial nature of early modern England, and that of contemporary Anglo-American society. While I personally think some of these connections are too distant from one another to justify a correlation, it is a literary device which not only engages her audience, but allows them to empathize with the politics and cultural trends of a 300 year old society, something that is certainly no easy task. To quote just one example of this technique, McKenzie states “Much as the O.J. Simpson trial… helped spawn a cottage industry in television crime scene investigations and cold cases in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, Godfrey’s death seems to have spurred this late seventeenth-century fascination with true crime.” (p128)

Throughout this work, McKenzie engages heavily with the existing historiography on the subject, an aspect of historical writing which we have not seen from every author during this semester. This willingness to not shy away from academic debates is what, in my opinion, makes for a truly insightful work on any subject. Within this text, she also demands that we should “take more seriously, and literally, the fact that men like William Lloyd and Gilbert Burnet emphasised Godfrey’s tolerance for and mysterious dealings with Catholics, suggesting that they may have got him into trouble.”(p158) Godfrey’s death may well have been the result of a political conspiracy, just not the one that audiences at the time had assumed. “It is a tragic irony that Godfrey… who seems to have laboured in the cause of compromise and toleration – contributed by his death to a dramatic breakdown in trust in the government, culminating in what recent historians have termed the ‘Restoration Crisis.”(p14)

[1] University of Victoria biography on Andrea McKenzie

Ian Gentles’ The New Model Army: Agent of Revolution book review by Max Smith

In the mid-17th century, England was engulfed in a series of civil wars, mutinies, and revolutions that would eventually result in the deaths of as many as half a million English, Irish, and Scottish citizens, as well as that of King Charles I himself. Although this period is perhaps one of the most researched areas of English history, the historiography has not taken any dramatic new turns among recent historians, appearing to be one of those events of which “all there is to say about it has been said.”

In 2022, professor of History at Tyndale University Ian Gentles published his work entitled The New Model Army: Agent of Revolution, a comprehensive reexamination of this period which seeks to uncover the true accounts of this newly formed military force and their subsequent actions following the falling out between Parliament and King Charles I in 1642. Gentles states that in the second publication of this work he ultimately  produced “a very different book from the one I first published,” due to his condensing of original material in order to add various new chapters.

Gentles’ writing style is reminiscent of older and more traditional histories of the period which precede him, given its top down framing, as well as its extensive use of charts and illustrations concerning budgets and battlefield movements. However, in many other ways he distinguishes himself from those traditional narratives by lending a greater deal of attention to the social, interpersonal, and religious dynamics which molded the actions of the army and its leaders. Given the extensive scope of this work It is also quite difficult to place The New Model Army squarely into one single category of historical literature. It is of course a military and political history, but he does not confine himself to these definitions by any means. 

This book follows a chronological timeline of events which begins with the establishment of a new professional fighting force overseen by leaders such as Cromwell and Fairfax in the 1640’s and the initial successes they enjoyed over royalists. The author meticulously follows the political and military changes throughout England and its surrounding empires through the Second Civil war, execution of Charles, and death of Cromwell which ends with the eventual rejection of sole parliamentary rule and the reestablishment of the monarchy 20 years later. Each section of Gentel’s work is dedicated to a particular aspect of the army’s most active years ranging from highly statistical information regarding conscription, pay, and battlefield achievements, all the way to more elusive characteristics such as the effects of religion and disbelief among the ranks. 

One thing I appreciated was his attention to the class differences which marked the roles of soldiers, for instance he states that “…it was clear that the poor were the ones being targeted. In principle all men between the ages of eighteen and sixty-five were liable to impressment, but any man, or the son of any man The new model army, rated at £5 in goods or £3 in land, was exempt.”p20 Unlike the sons of Yeoman and craftsmen which mainly composed the calvary, the infantry was made up of “scum” from the lowest classes of society. This inevitably had the effect that “Few foot soldiers understood or cared about the reasons for fighting against the king.”p21

As Tony mentioned in his review, the role of soldier’s religious beliefs (or lack thereof) is a major part of Gentles’ research. While he acknowledges that high morale was partially a result of a collective religious consciousness among soldiers, and that they eventually became nicknamed the “Praying Army,” he also poses the question of whether or not these religious services, both official and unofficial, were actually “meaningful to those who took part in them? Did they make a difference to the soldiers’ conduct?”p46 He demonstrates that during the early years of victories when soldiers were generally preoccupied on the battlefield, religious dissent was at its lowest. However after the fighting died down, more and more instances of heresy, quakerism, and debates on topics such as infant baptism grew steadily causing conflicts between soldiers and civilians. 

By 1646 the new model army was facing increased threats of extinction by parliamentarians who wanted to curb their numbers in order to decrease the debt they owed soldiers, among other reasons. As a dramatic last ditch effort, Cromwell approved a plan to seize Charles I who had continued to plot against them along with the help of presbyterians. Gentles demonstrates that what followed was a series of political wars and conspiracies that ultimately resulted in the outbreak of the second civil war, setting in motion a chain reaction of disastrous events for England’s stability. 

His examination of the personal aspects of Cromwell’s life adds to his arguments by calling to attention the deaths of his children and Cromwell’s wavering religious bravado which eventually collapsed with the defeat at the island of Hispaniola, an event that Gentles claims he never really recovered from. 

Ian Gentles’ The New Model Army: Agent of Revolution is an extremely comprehensive review of the timeline between the First English Civil War and the Restoration of the Monarchy, a period of only 20 years in which the country’s history would be forever reshaped. I was immediately struck by the statistical nature of this work and the quantity of examples that Gentles provides his readers in order to paint a clear picture free of bias and without reliance on previous works on the subject. That being said, this is not a work which seems to make any one grand rejection of previous accounts, but rather one that seeks to be much more all encompassing in its use of evidence. For me that is the strongest aspect of Gentles’ methodology, but it is occasionally hampered by the feeling many of the examples he provides do not necessarily add to an overall argument.

It is thus useful to note that the author concludes this work by restating the dual natured legacy of the new model army by subsequent historians; having defeated absolute monarchy, and raising suspicion of standing armies simultaneously. Here we can see the clearest that what Gentles has actually done is to complicate these legacies by approaching his research without first having taken either side, but letting the evidence speak for him.

From Tudor to Stuart: The Regime Change from Elizabeth I to James I 

by Susan Doran, book review by Max Smith  

 

Just before the death of Queen Elizabeth I, a new, foreign king was simultaneously  being chosen to ascend to the throne of England and take over as a result of her heirless reign. King James VI of Scotland (later King James I) was about to transform the English monarchy in his own right, but was this really the dramatic transition that some believe it to be or simply a continuation of Elizabethan values and practices? This is the question that historian Susan Doran asks in her 2024 work entitled From Tudor to Stuart: The Regime Change from Elizabeth I to James I, in which she explores the circumstances leading to the dynastic transformation that occurred at the beginning of the 17th century, and the consequences which resulted from it. 

 

In her introduction, Doran claims that “James’s accession was far less smooth than is often supposed” arguing that despite his eventual acceptance as the new monarch and relatively unchallenged rulership over the country, there were a number of significant obstacles which initially stood in his way. However, at the same time, Doran also argues that his reign did not lead to significant alterations in monarchical institutions nor alterations in monarchical institutions, rather those institutions he inherited “remained fundamentally intact.” This level of nuance within Doran’s thesis is simultaneously what I respect about her writing, as well as what frustrates me the most. Her bibliography is well rounded and the methodology is sound, yet she seems almost hesitant to challenge the historiography in any meaningful way, carefully treading between ideas that James I’s rule led to sweeping changes and very few, if at all. 

 

The organization of this work follows the formula of many others we have read this semester. Part 1 is entitled “Succession and Ascension” which she begins by summarizing the end of Queen Elizabeth’s life, as well as the machinations within her own court which would ultimately set up James I as her natural successor. Doran states that the queen’s “unwillingness to make provision for the succession” ultimately harmed her reputation among the people and subsequent historians. Within this section she also utilizes a fair amount of environmental history and examples of social unrest, pointing to instances such as the great dearth of 1595-97 as well as protests and riots caused by the ongoing practice of enclosing public lands. Doran ultimately argues however the extensive grief that was displayed upon her death and funeral procession was not a show of fake emotions. 

 

Part 2 explores the people and institutions at play during the reign of James I, of which his wife Anna is a central focus. The death of her two young daughters Mary and Sophie, as well as their eldest son Henry took a considerable toll on her well being as well as her relationship with her husband. In her public life, Anna’s catholicism was widely known, however Doran argues that James used this to his advantage when garnering the sympathy of catholics both within the country and abroad. She adhered to the patriarchal system in place at the time, retreating from disputes with her husband when he overruled her suggestions about appointments and the like, however Doran also points out that this meant the king ultimately received the majority of the blame when it came to her lavish spending and lifestyle. 

 

This section also discusses the roles and responsibilities assumed by James’ Privy Council and Councillors of which there were many. Perhaps of one king James’ most enduring reputational qualities was his affinity for hunting, during which time he would spend long periods away from the city and in the countryside, including when his own children had passed away and he refused to return home to console his wife. His subjects had begun to accuse James of disinterest in his monarchical duties, saying of him that he attended to “nothing but his pleasures, especially to the chase… warning him, too, that unless he changes he will bring himself and the kingdom as well down to the ground.” Although oftentimes untrusting of their advice, Doran notes that king Jmes appointed councilors to a “significant number of the sixteen vacant posts that were filled after Elizabeth’s death,” a far cry from his predecessor.  

 

In part 3 of her work Doran examines the religions and politics which governed this era, and how it affected the ecclesiastical and popular opinion of the King. James continually fought with English puritans in an effort to impose conformity amongst them, however he simultaneously wanted to avoid a “serious confrontation with the Puritan clergy and their lay supporters” and therefore remained content simply with promises of future obedience. James not only fought with Puritans, but Catholics as well. In fact Doran makes an argument for continuity between the regimes of James and Elizabeth by claiming that he kept many of the discriminatory policies against Catholics despite his wife’s religious standings. Although initially he displayed a sense of moderation towards them, in Doran’s words “James had no intention of permitting full toleration even if Catholics proved loyal.”

 

James’ persecution may not have been as harsh as his predecessors’, however he also did not stray far from the beliefs of Elizabeth when it came to the administering of recusant fines and even banishments of catholic believers and priests. In this chapter Doran quotes one anonymous parishioner who stated “despite the king denouncing ‘war’ against them at his accession, he was now carrying out ‘all maner of persecution’ against them.”

 

After having read this work, I still cannot fully decipher which side Doran is taking when it comes to the transition between regimes; that of disruption or that of continuity. I think in many ways she plays it safe when it comes to James I following in Elizabeth’s footsteps, claiming that it “did not result in a radical break with the past.” Yet in others she seemingly contradicts herself by stating that his reign altered many aspects of the English crown. I believe it is of course possible that both of these ideas can be true at once, however I wish she had been more deliberate when stating her thesis. 

Book Review of The Dissolution of the Monasteries: A New History, by James Clark

 

As Professor of History at the University of Exeter, author James G. Clark has spent his professional career uncovering the role of English monasteries in the medieval and reformation eras. His work titled The Dissolution of the Monasteries: A New History, attempts to demonstrate the various ways in which monastic life became unraveled in the early 16th century during the Tudor Reign. The central thesis of his work argues against the long standing belief among scholars that this dissolution was swift, uniform, and absolute in its lasting effects. 

 

The book is divided into three main sections; the first of which sets up key context for the role of monasteries in England and their complicated relationship with the secular public. Clark argues that monasteries were not simply features of the landscape that the public had grown accustomed to seeing from town, but in many ways contained the very essence of those landscapes themselves. He provides evidence to show how their influence extended far beyond the walls of those looming structures, intermingling with everyday activities such as travel and commerce. Their ancient existence served as key markers on maps, and their longstanding presence provided a sort of repository for myth and symbolism for medieval England as a whole. (55) 

 

Clark takes this section beyond their geographical and commercial role however, extending his research into areas of familial, gender, and class relationships in order to demonstrate the ways in which they acted as sources of power in the time of Henrician era. His use of ordination records as primary sources provides key insight into who decided to take sacred vows, their reasonings behind that decision, and the rising and falling of those statistics over time. Through this research, Clark reaches the conclusion that individuals, both men and women, who joined monasteries rarely did so as a result of coercion but were instead influenced by factors such as opportunity, education, and propriety. (58) Despite this, he believes that public criticism had already begun to pave the way for the dissolution arguing that the very entice that had drawn so many towards monastic life, acted as symbols of exclusion and confinement to many others. (100)

 

In section two of this work, Clark seeks to uncover the shift from monasteries as an example of generally private religiosity and spirituality over their territory, towards a much more public, personal, and even subservient relationship with the crown and their patrons. This primarily happened in the year 1535 following the act of supremacy, and consisted of sworn testimonies by monastic leaders regarding information of their salaries and property holdings. He makes particularly good use of royal commission records which were intended to annex Church leaders from their monastic positions into ones closer to the sphere of influence of King Henry VIII, showing that such encounters contradict typical narratives of an all out “assault on the religious houses.” (207) 

 

Although the inclusion of primary sources accounts throughout the book certainly lends more credibility to his arguments, the decision to keep their old English spelling proves at times decidedly more difficult for the reader to decipher their ultimate meanings. Clark also admits to the shortcomings of these commission reports acknowledging that evidence of their effects have not survived nearly as well as the more widely cited parliamentary statutes which initiated them. (208) Overall, he claims that this reorganization was not in and of itself a cause of the dissolution and warns against interpreting this event as the “first warning cracks of an inevitable collapse.” (263) Furthermore, he encourages readers not to be misled to notions of swiftness or uniformity by the pace of this transformation, demonstrating that tensions between the church and the crown varied widely from year to year and from location to location. 

 

The final section of Clark’s work addresses the aftermath of the dissolution, and by extending his scope beyond those of other traditional narratives he aims to refute the idea that monastic existence and influence was abruptly halted. He points to scenes such as the destruction of the Cluniac priory of St Pancras at Lewes whose violent removal would later influence the perception of the dissolution in the minds of Elizabethan writers. Clark points out that the reality of most of this period did not match the extraordinary examples such as the Lewes Priory, and the narrative of their swift and decisive obliteration is a result of writers referencing sources which did not chronicle events as they happened, but rather, were books filled with patchy and conflicting accounts. 

 

Ultimately, Clark states that the dissolution was not a concise, nor a uniform event across the country, but rather one that heavily depended on the Church leaderships’ willingness to cooperate with the crown’s commissaries, as well as the public’s perception of their role and influence upon everyday life. He relies on a variety of evidence to prove this point such as ordination records, commission reports, first and second-hand accounts of monastic rule post-1535, and archaeological evidence which demonstrates that monasteries were dismantled over a long period of time rather than being subject to an extreme and swift destruction like that of Lewe. 

 

This is not an introductory reading, but a book for those who are already well versed and familiar with the subject of the Henrician era and the dissolution of English monasteries. It is a dense read, full of early English primary source accounts which will take quite some time for the average reader to decipher. That being said, Clark’s narrative is worth the time, and provides an account whose argument distinguishes it from most other works on the subject. It separates itself from other works on the subject by not falling victim to popular sources, and instead examines accounts from those such as church officials and commision reports who provide a better understanding of the transition from an English society as a primarily monastic one, to a society which was ruled almost entirely by the crown and its cohorts.