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Free Choice Book Report: The Making of Oliver Cromwell by Ronald Hutton

Oliver Cromwell is one of the most fascinating British historical figures in its history. A commoner who became the ruler of his land, Cromwell has been hated, admired, and everything in between for nearly four hundred years, there have been many, many books about the man, his life and his impact on history. One of these books attempts to take a different approach to the life of Oliver Cromwell. Ronald Hutton in his book The Making of Oliver Cromwell, Sutton calls Cromwell “the greatest commoner of all time”. Sutton also touches upon how extraordinary Cromwel’s life was. Sutton stars his book by acknowledging the many numbers of biographies that have been about Oliver Cronwell. But Sutton says that his own biography will be different than the rest. Many books either worship Cromwell or look at him through a less heroic Lense. Hutton tries to read through it all and find a balanced narrative despite the historiography that tends to either fully hate or fully love the man Hutton  writes about, Oliver Cromwell.

The Making of Oliver Cromwell covers the first forty-eight years of Cronwell’s life. From birth, to 1647. Sutton notes that there is a lack of knowledge of Cromwell’s early life. We know his locations around this time, but as for actual personal information about Cromwell, it is severely lacking. That is why Sutton spends little time on Oliver’s childhood. We go from his birth, to him attending Cambridge at age seventeen in just a few paragraphs. What I like about Sutton is that when he needs to, he makes reasoned interpretation based on what we know of Cromwell.

Hutton concludes that “it has been clear to most of Cromwell’s biographers that the informing and defining experience of his life was his conversion to a passionate, Puritan, religiosity… Until then he seems a genuinely undistinguished and unambitious provincial minor gentleman.”(421). Usually when there are little to no historical knowledge on the early life of a figure, it can be hard to assume what events in that person’s life shaped why acted the way they did. For Oliver, thankfully despite a lack of evidence of early life, we do know that his conversion really shaped him into being who he became as a person.

Sutton writes “Can any more flesh be put onto these scraps of archival bone? Do we have any sense of what the young Cromwell was like as a person? Here there is an obvious problem with the early biographies of him: that, naturally, enough, the sycophantic accounts produced just after his death represented him as a paragon of sagacity, repairing for a great future, and those written later by political enemies make him an exemplar of most follies and vices…All or none of these portraits and accounts may be true. We are on safer ground when both the admiring nd hostile accounts agree on occasional detail.”(42-43). This could be one of Sutton’s purposes for writing The Making of Oliver Cromwell. Many biographies choose a side, they worship Cromwell, or they villainize him. Sutton is taking the middle ground, weaving through the biased sources that either adored Cromwell or detested him.

An example of Sutton’s balanced narrative is how he doesn’t make Cromwell perfect. Cromwell was far from perfect, but biographers can pick and choose what characteristics to highlight and some to leave under the table. Sutton brings up Cromwell’s constant self-promotion. For example, his rise in parliament, Sutton credits to when he defended John Lilburn. Cromwell had never met Lilburn before, but John was a “celebrated victim of the crackdown on Puritanism instituted by Charles I’s Personal Rule. It was doubtless conducted, as has been said, with passionate sincerity, but it also immediately brought Cromwell to the attention of the House of Commons in a context which could reasonably be expected to win him sympathy and regard, and so it did.”(423). Oliver tended to leave all the glory to himself. The only names that he would be mentioned as deserving of praise is God. Hutton remarks that Cromwell remains modest while also taking all the glory. (424). Cromwell is not a comic book villain. We see how capable he is in battle. For example, Cromwell was a capable cavalry leader at both Marston Moor and Naseby. A author looking to demean Cromwell would have belittle these achievements which Sutton does not do. Ronald Sutton walks the fine line between praising Cromwell but keeps himself from deifying Cromwell’s memory.

I always appreciated it when authors actually flesh out characters and don’t just treat them like a name on a page. Sutton does this with important historical figures such as Sir Thomas Fairfax, Prince Rupert and King Charles among many others. Cromwell is the main focal point of this story, but Hutton does not forget the other important people in Cromwell’s life.  Another thing I appreaicted is that It is easier to understand Oliver Cromwell and his actions if you are able to fiully comprehend the historical and political context of the world in which Cromwell emerged. For this, I thought Sutton did a capable effort of relaying what tensions were during this period without turning it into a different book altogether.

In conclusion, in his book The Making of Oliver Cromwell, Hutton intentionally tries to take a balanced look at the man’s life. Going into reading this book, I knew a little about Oliver Cromwell’s life. I watched the film Cromwell but other than that, I didn’t know too much about the man. Hutton really does paint a balanced picture of a man who had good and bad qualities. Hutton doesn’t portray Cromwell as a evil villain or a misunderstood hero. Here, Oliver Cromwell is first and foremost, a human being.

In Magic in Early Modern England: Literature, Politics, and Supernatural Power, Andrew Moore contests Max Weber’s famous “disenchantment of the world” thesis and argues that the advent of modernity did not see belief in magic fade in the wake of rationalist perspectives. Instead Moore contends that interest in magic spiked in early modern times and argues that rather this was bolstered by modernist trends rather than opposed to them.

Andrew Moore is an associate professor of Great Books at Saint Thomas University. Moore has a PhD in English Language and Literature and he specializes in renaissance literature. He has had an interdisciplinary focus on his work dating back to his undergraduate when he dual-majored in English and interdisciplinary studies. Accordingly, Magic in Early Modern England is itself a hybrid work. Moore analyzes his source base of Early Modern English literature to get at a broader point about Early Modern English culture and ideologies.

Moore begins his work by describing the paradigmatic thesis proposed by Max Weber in that he is responding to. In his lecture, Science as a Vocation, [1] Weber associated magic with a primitive mysticism characteristic of the medieval world. As science replaced magic, so too did it replace the systems of meaning associated with a premodern mystical worldview. Moore argues that this argument relies on the idea that magic is necessarily mystical, which he contests.

Moore argues that the ends of magic were generally both material and practical. He writes that “The impulse to magic in early modern literature and early modern society more broadly is an impulse toward controlling nature, an impulse to escape the limitations of the human condition, and, in extreme cases, to enslave or subjugate the world to one’s will.” (16)  He argues that “Both magic and science need to be understood as parallel enterprises that were concerned with this ambition.” (48) Magic-users sought to heal, harm, bring fortune, and make decisions that had bearing on the material world.

Moore also argues for the the affinity between Early Modernity and magic through examples of Early Modern Writers who argued that magic was part of the natural world. Moore references an account of a 1696 witch trial in which the author theorized that the witch may have used optical illusions and “speaking trumpets” to perform her acts of wickedness. (47-49) Moore argues that some saw magic “as misunderstood things that the new science will make clear and perhaps even possible to replicate.” While these anecdotes demonstrate the part of Moore’s thesis that Early Modern thinkers often approached magic from a rationalist perspective, it is less convincing, in that, in these cases, it is not clear that the thinkers really saw the abilities they investigated as supernatural. Nevertheless, these examples do show the blurred lines between magic and science.

But many early modern figures believed in magic straightforwardly, and throughout his book, Moore gives many examples of the degrees to which magic was ubiquitous in the society and argues that even realist political philosophers might also practice necromancy. (55)

Another trend of Early Modern thought that Moore covers is those who were skeptical of magic’s veracity but took belief in it seriously. Moore points out that in Thomas’ Hobbes’ Leviathan, Hobbes’ explicitly speaks about the unreality of magic, but still calls for the punishment of witches as dangerous individuals to society. (155) Moore argues that even skeptics were deeply involved and connected to the world of magic around them. This argument is more weakly aligned with Moore’s thesis, as the engagement of rationalist figures with the magical beliefs around them does not indicate that such beliefs were aligned with theirs.

Moore’s thesis reminds me of the arguments of Paul Griffith in Information, Institutions, and Local Government in England: 1550-1700. Like Moore, Griffiths argues against a prominent academic’s foundational thesis about modernity. Foucault argued that modernity brought a variety of changes to systems of authority ranging from shifts from public to private, corporal to psychological, and reputation to data. [2] Griffiths describes these changes as “turning inward” and argues that Foucault implies that this changes happened in late modernity and could be contrasted starkly with early modern times, but that they actually occurred earlier and more gradually. [3] Moore similarly contests Weber’s thesis that modernity brought disbelief in magic by highlighting the ubiquity of magic in Early Modern England.  

However Moore goes farther than Griffiths in contesting the foundational historiography and argues that the advent of modernity actually drove an obsession with magic. This is a different type of argument about modernity than Griffith’s and reminds me more of Lloyd Bowen’s argument in his book Anatomy of a Duel in Jacobean English: Gentry Honour, Violence, and the Law. Bowen argues against a historiography that sees private violence dwindling in the wake of an expanded legal system in Early Modern England. Bowen argues that the Early Modern increase in litigation actually drove an upswing in private violence instead of replacing it. [4] This is more similar to Moore’s argument about modernity. Nevertheless, all three works serve as examples of a historiographical trend of complicating the boundaries and assumptions of what modernity meant.

Moore concludes his work by arguing that Early Modern thinkers “were fascinated with magic because they were fascinated with questions about human power and natural limits.” (152) He argues that this fascination was core to the project of modernity and that even the skeptics built upon it. Rather than representing a rejection of magic, Moore argues that modernity represented a fulfillment of it.

 While Moore makes a compelling argument about the material aims of magic, he does not show the causality as strongly as I might have liked. Nevertheless, he successfully showcases myriad ways one in which the boundaries between magic and science were thin in Early Modern England.

[1]  Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 1946, 382–94, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25249-7_17. 

[2] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Vintage, 2012).

[3] Paul Griffiths, Information, Institutions, and Local Government in England, 1550-1700: Turning Inside (OUP Oxford, 2024).

[4] Lloyd Bowen, Anatomy of a Duel in Jacobean England: Gentry Honour, Violence and the Law (Boydell & Brewer, 2021), 9.

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)

By the Numbers: Numeracy, Religion, and the Quantitative Transformation of Early Modern England by Jessica Marie Otis successfully presents both a descriptive history of numeracy in early modern England and the cultural impact of the emergence of numbers and calculations on the people and their faith during this era. She describes in the book the “ revolutionary shift in the way people used numbers during the early modern period” (13)

According to her GMU profile, Dr. Jessica Otis is an Associate Professor of History and Associate Director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. Her background supports her qualifications for this publication. She received an MS in Mathematics and a PhD in History from the University of Virginia, and spent four years at Carnegie Mellon University Libraries as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Digital Humanities Specialist. Her ongoing research focuses on the Death by Numbers project, which seeks to transcribe and publish the Bills of Mortality to investigate how experiences of plague outbreaks connect with mentality among the people of early modern England.

In writing the book, Otis draws from many contemporary sources, including early modern math textbooks, diaries, sermons, pamphlets, and almanacs.  To supplement this primary data, her notes and bibliography cite a broad range of current research and historical writing.

The first two chapters do an excellent job of explaining the history and the evolution of the operational use of numbers in early modern England. This includes outlining the three categories of methods for counting and calculation used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Otis breaks these down into three categories: the performative, object-based, and written symbols. The performative details how words and gestures were employed to allow people to count and calculated independent of physical aids, primarily focused on using 10 as the base associated with finger counting. With the object-based level of numeracy, people took the next conceptual step, relying on tally sticks and counters as tools for arithmetic. These methods began to be replaced in the eighteenth century with written symbols using words and both Roman and Arabic numerals.

As Arabic numerals became more common, Otis challenged historians such as Karl Menninger, who argued that the transition occurred because these symbols made calculation easier. She maintains that men and women initially “adopted Arabic numerals not for calculating but for recording” (44), with the qualification that, because Arabic numerals could be manipulated more easily, Roman numerals and tally sticks continued to be used for sensitive record-keeping. Ultimately, Otis shows that the opportunity to use Arabic numerals for both record-keeping and calculation tipped the scales in favor of this system.

Beyond the operational and adoption history of numeracy, the book shines in explaining the cultural shifts that numbers brought about in early modern England. Starting in chapter three, Otis addresses the cultural implications of the growing use of Arabic numerals for recording and calculation. For example, she notes that historians writing about education in the early modern period generally emphasize “the lack of a universal mathematical education” (80). However, Otis counters this view by arguing that “beginning in the 1580s, petty schools increasingly became a source of education in numeracy, arithmetic, and elementary accounting” (81). This change in the educational system was supported by the proliferation of textbooks and tutors, which hastened the overall adoption of Arabic numerals. She also draws on Mordecai Fingold’s research to support the teaching of mathematics, particularly at the university level. Likewise, the ultimate success of reforming the English calendar came after years of debate to address the “mathematical inconvenience” (114) of the Julian system. Math prevailed over the religious and political objections.

At an even deeper cultural level in chapter 5, Otis explains the practical implications of how faith, gaming, insurance, and tracking the plague affected society. Here, she highlights how By the Numbers produced a “quantitative transformation of early modern England, particularly its relationship with numeracy and religion” (11). She offers particular clarity and insight into how the clergy and Christian theology responded to the question of God’s providence and natural law, as seen in the debate between James Balmford and Thomas Gataker. The traditional view holds that God’s hand directs every event and interaction. However, calculations now showed predictable, quantifiable natural laws. For many, the resolution to this question was that “God employed intermediary forces, including so-called laws of nature. However, God was not in any way limited by these laws. He could, and did, violate them at will and function as a primary cause of earthly events” (120).

One area for future historical exploration of the implications of mathematical quantification for religion may be to assess its role in the emergence of the theology known as deism. This view holds that God created the universe to run according to natural laws but does not intervene in its daily operations, much like a watchmaker who builds a device and allows it to run on its own.

Finally, in chapter six, Otis explores both arithmetic and religion and examines the use of census data. In Old Testament times, King David’s taking a census brought punishment upon the nation of Israel. Once again, in early modern England, there was a potential conflict between numbering and faith. However, in this case, many clergy were able to distinguish the English census from the one in the Bible. As one pastor described it, David’s census was done “out of vain and ambitious ends” (142). In later years, census data went beyond serving fiscal and military purposes and also became a source for governing, known as political arithmetic.

By the Numbers presents an accessible history for both general readers and professional historians. The book offers a helpful perspective on how numeracy developed over time and was used by ordinary people in early modern England. More importantly, it highlights the cultural transformation it brought about in English society. A standout feature is Otis’s clear demonstration that men and women in the early modern period “developed a numerical worldview that existed within a framework defined by Christianity” (157). From much of our reading, including works by James Clark, Mark Stoyle, Lucy Mauffat Kaufman, Ian Gentles, and Andrea McKenzie, we see the central role that Christianity played in the day-to-day thoughts and actions of the people of this time. It makes sense, then, that the use and understanding of numbers and arithmetic would touch on people’s faith, bringing both challenges and opportunities. In her book, Otis captures and sensitively explores this transformation.

In Information Institutions and Local Government in Early Modern England, Paul Griffiths challenges Foucault’s assumptions about the advent of societal patterns associated with modernity. He argues that as early as the 1600s  there was a “turning inward” in which officials shifted from a focus on “public/visual representations of authority or ‘manifestaccon’” and instead increasingly used more internal information-based approaches that aimed for “precyson.” (1) He argues that while these processes have often been associated with top-down centralization, they actually occurred from the bottom-up as a result of the actions of countless middling officials seeking to improve their localities. 

Paul Griffiths is a professor of history at Iowa State University, hailing from Liverpool. He has specialized in the history of crime and authority in Early Modern England with a focus on London. This is his third book. 

Information is primarily a work of social and cultural history. It could be seen as either a bottom-up or top-down approach as it is focused on structures of government composed of middle-class officials and utilizes sources in a way more commonly found in bottom-up histories. He utilizes records of crimes, censuses, investigations, punishments, and various statistical records to show attitudes and practices around information and governance.

The book is written with a clear dialogue with Foucault, and the author repeatedly draws attention to this. Specifically, Griffiths engages with Discipline and Punish; Foucault began that work with the dramatic story of the torture and dismemberment of a regicide in 1757. He contrasted that brutal public destruction of a person’s body with modern methods of punishment; Foucault argued that modern punishment was no longer public, and rather than punishing the body, sought to reform the person’s soul. 

While Griffiths does not necessarily contest the dynamics of what Foucault describes, he does contest his timeline. Griffith argues that it was not an “abrupt leap” between torturous public punishment and private incarceration. (289)  Rather, he argues that the two forms of punishment coexisted for centuries and that private punishment was actually more common than public punishment after 1550. (171) He adds to this by describing the heavy early modern usage of “maidenwells,” early prisons that existed not just for punishment, but for reformation. He also contests the distinction between private and public more generally, arguing, for example, that questions about the public were often decided in private spaces. (288) In contesting a historiography about an emerging hegemony of the public sphere, Griffiths joins historian  Lloyd Bowen. In Bowen’s Anatomy of a Duel, Bowen argues against the concept that increased legalism in England went hand in hand with a shift from private violence to public justice within a process of modernization. By highlighting the reciprocal relationship between family feuds and litigation, Bowen also emphasizes the coexistence of the public and private sphere in Early Modern England “question[s] our tendency to distinguish law and violence by their relationship to a supposedly unbelligerent ‘modernity.’” [2]

In addition to Griffith’s argument about the early and gradual process of the English government “turning inside,” he contests the method by which that process occurred. Griffith argues that contrary to a historiography that associates increased information gathering systems with centralization, it instead stemmed from the decentralized actions of local officials to solve local problems. Griffiths argues that these officials shared ideologies including that of “precyson.” By this he means a desire to identify and quantify in an exact and truthful way. (11) To show this he gives various examples of the questions that officials asked in the course of their duties. Two that he finds especially important are “Who are you?” and “What are you?” (14) Through questions, papers, and tests, officials sought to both identify peoples’ identity (who they were), but also to identify what role they played in society (what they were). When they asked these questions, they intended to follow up with actions.

Griffiths argues that middling officials were deeply concerned about what they saw as the degradation of society. He argues that there was an actual increase in crime in the period in which they lived and that they perceived it that way. (7) Griffiths sees the catalyst as being the rapid growth of urban areas that was occurring at this time which brought with it crowded cities, foreigners, beggars, theft, fraud, violence, and prostitution. Officials sought to deal with these changes first by classifying them with precision. Then they sought to deal with the problems that they classified through a variety of methods including whipping, jailing, removing, dunking, and branding.  Through these methods, officials sought both to reform troublemakers, but also, they sought to remove them from society. 

This removal fit with the purposes of manifestaccon, or the visual projection of authority in pursuit of honor, beauty, cleanliness, and order.  Officials believed that these aesthetic criteria were connected to moral decay. (68) Because of this they sought to regulate their surroundings through cleaning, repairing, decorating, and as mentioned above, physical removal.

Griffiths emphasizes that Early Modern officials aimed for perfection in their information gathering and enforcing of standards, but acknowledges that rather than a utopian vision, it was more like “a permanent condition or strategy that defined governance.” (31) He argued that the manifestaccon approach to governance never really went away, “but that age-old intense and regulatory identity-authority-politics has all but disappeared from ‘official’ scripts” as institutions turned inward. 

Griffiths tone throughout the work is one of deep skepticism and cynicism towards the information, institutions, and local governments in Early Modern England that he covers. He succeeds in showing the Early Modern antecedents of Foucault’s panopticon, but perhaps one weakness of his work is that in the process he paints a picture of Early Modern England that appears more like a managerial surveillance state than it actually was. This is less in the details that Griffiths does include and more in his tone and what he doesn’t include. He rarely emphasizes the ways in which the Early Modern world was significantly less precise and less private than the contemporary world. 

While he may have overstated his case at times, Griffiths adds significantly to the historiography by showing the early history of processes that are essential to our understanding of modernity institutions. While Griffith’s book is frequently excessively wordy and difficult to read (like Foucault), it is also engrossing. Griffith succeeds at giving a glimpse into the worldview of local English leaders in Early Modern times and effectively shows the impact of the structures and methods they created.

[1] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Vintage, 2012). 

[2] Lloyd Bowen, Anatomy of a Duel in Jacobean England: Gentry Honour, Violence and the Law (Boydell & Brewer, 2021), 9.

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

Andrea McKenzie’s “Conspiracy Culture in Stuart England: The Mysterious Death of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey” seeks to unravel the enduring murder mystery of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey’s death which has fascinated historians and the public for over three hundred years and spawned numerous conspiracies ever since he was found in a ditch run through with his own sword in October 1678. Sir Godfrey was a respected, knighted, Justice of the Peace for Whitehall, who just prior to his death, had taken several witness statements while investigating the allegations of the “notorious perjurer” Titus Oates who baselessly claimed to have infiltrated the Jesuits and obtained inside information on an impending Catholic conspiracy — the “Popish Plot.” (1) Oates together with William Bedloe, falsely claimed that Jesuits plotted with English Catholics to organize a diabolical plot to kill King Charles II, massacre thousands of English Protestants, burn London (again!),[1] place his brother and heir, James the Duke of York on the throne, and impose Catholicism and French absolute rule on Britian. (1-2, 33-36) In the febrile religious and political environment of the Restoration, Oates’s allegations were widely believed, even by some Catholics, and regrettably unleased a hysterical moral panic that led to a crackdown on Catholics and the unfortunate judicial murder of dozens of Catholics and the imprisonment of many others.

McKenzie’s book at times reads like a detailed true crime murder mystery – a genre which ironically was emerging in England at this time. Each chapter focuses on a potential suspect or group of suspects and explores the forensic evidence, testimony of witnesses, political environment, and motives of various people suspected by contemporaries in often elaborate conspiracy theories to have committed the crime. In chapter three, she examines evidence regarding whether Sir Godfrey’s death was a suicide, as alleged by royal propogandist Roger L’Estrange in his “Brief History,” published in 1688. Some modern historians such as Alan Marshall have promoted a variant of L’Estrange’s suicide theory arguing Sir Godfrey’s suicide was “covered up and staged by the family” to protect their estate. (8) McKenzie rejects these suicide arguments. She also explores whether Godfrey’s death was murder disguised as a suicide by a Jesuit and Catholic cabal designed to protect the “usual suspects” of Catholic conspirators behind the Popish Plot, a theory that was widely believed at the time; or a “false flag” operation launched by the ambitious and unscrupulous Earl of Danby, Charles II’s chief minister, designed to protect his position at court; or a murder directed by the Duke of Buckingham to protect what Sir Godfrey intimated was a “horrible secret” revealed to Godfrey shortly before his death. (51)

McKenzie’s detailed history is far more than a whodunit that seeks to solve a complex murder mystery.[2] Rather, McKenzie’s history explores issues of moral panic, mass hysteria, conspiracy theories, and the tendency to “scapegoat marginalized groups” (folk devils), in this instance Catholics, which has resonance with today’s modern politics where we have witnessed the QAnon movement and other conspiracies involving elites. (52) According to McKenzie, the death of Sir Godfrey gave credence to Oates’s wild allegations unleashing latent fears that “plunged the nation into an anti-Papist moral panic,” that brought dozens of Catholics to their deaths “because their religion made the trumped-up charges against them not only plausible, but unanswerable.” (181, 196) Further, Sir Godfrey’s death fueled the “Exclusion Crisis” (1679-81) which dominated British politics beginning in 1679 wherein Parliament sought to exclude the Duke of York from the succession leading to the Glorious Revolution in 1688. (53) These outcomes were possible she convincingly argues because “of the demise of a culture of civility, compromise, and coalition” akin to that experienced in modern American politics. (196) Thus, as she puts it “the aim of this book is not to pass judgment on the judicial mishaps and prejudices of the past but rather to examine the particular circumstances and contexts that gave rise to them.” (4)

Most modern historians have concluded the Papist Plot itself was a deliberate fictional invention by Oates without any factual basis. However, McKenzie astutely argues contemporaries were not “wholly irrational or without evidentiary basis” in grasping at conspiracies in this febrile climate as there were “real” plots and conspiracies afoot involving “secret French diplomacy and crypto-Catholicism at court.” (52) In fact, as rumored at the time, Charles II had entered into the secret Treaty of Dover with Louis XIV in 1670 in which he “promised to declare war on the Dutch and to announce his conversion to Catholicism . . . in exchange for subsidies” which would enable him to avoid calling Parliament for revenue and finance a standing army that many suspected was intended for use against his own subjects rather than in foreign wars. (184, 185) Embarrassing details of this Treaty began to leak as early as 1672. (184)

In addition, Catholic zealot Edward Coleman’s letters, some of which were published at the time, revealed that possibly at the behest of the Duchess of York, for whom he served as secretary, he “had solicited foreign [French] aid to promote both a repeal of the penal laws against recusants [including Catholics] and dissolution of the intolerably Anglican Cavalier Parliament” possibly with the support of the Duke of York. (181, 195) William Lloyd wrote in a cryptic letter, first decrypted by McKenzie, in response to royal propogandist L’Estrange that Coleman had “confided sensitive and ‘horrible secrets’ to Godfrey” that made Godfrey fear for his life. (174) McKenzie argues that Sir Godfrey learned from Edward Coleman “not about Oates’s bogus Popish Plot;” rather, about Coleman’s “admission of complicity in a real plot to use French money to bribe English MPs and other people dissatisfied with Danby’s administration in order to bring about more toleration for Catholics.” (182, 207) Godfrey also learned, possibly from Coleman, that the ardent Protestant Duke of Buckingham also solicited and accepted French bribes. (208)  Another potentially dangerous secret known by Godfrey was that the Duke of York had hosted a Jesuit conference at Saint James just before the Popish Plot emerged which could implicate the Duke in the Plot in the public mind. (174)

McKenzie’s analysis complicates the traditional Whiggish historical narrative of the corrupt Charles II and Tories taking French bribes by noting that many Whigs also took French bribes including the Duke of Buckingham. (189, 208) These real plots taken together made Oates’s spurious accusations more believable to contemporaries predisposed to believe and have complicated attempts to resolve the mystery of Sir Godfrey’s death ever since.

McKenzie engages in through archival research and introduces for the first time several letters she decrypted from William Lloyd to L’Estrange. She compares Lloyd’s drafts to the excerpts that appear in his “History” indicating that he was selective and manipulated his evidence in arguing Godfrey had committed suicide. She analyzes a plethora of primary sources including the Lloyd’s letters, the writings of Bishop Gilbert Burnet, letters of the well-informed French ambassador Paul Barillon to Louis XIV, Edward Coleman’s key evidence. McKenzie has thoroughly analyzed “contemporary pamphlets and trial accounts, newsletters, parliamentary records and state papers, journals, memoirs, diaries, and correspondence.” (8)

In the Conclusion, McKenzie finally reveals, after examining in excruciating detail all other potential culprits, whom she believes murdered Sir Godfrey. She hedges but asserts: “it is possible, then, that Buckingham ordered Godfrey’s murder because the magistrate was in possession, through Coleman, of correspondence which implicated the duke in French schemes to bribe the English political opposition.” (219) McKenzie describes Buckingham as having a track record of violence and suffering from “narcissist personality disorder” such that he lacked empathy, was unscrupulous and may have directed “his equally unscrupulous henchman Colonel John Scott” to murder Sir Godfrey. (220)

[1]Many Protestants blamed Jesuits and Catholics for the Great Fire of London of 1666. Id., 20, 197.

[2]Professor McKenzie posted an hour length lecture on her work on YouTube.