Portrait by Anton Van Dyck
Partisan of an absolute power, Charles Ier must face a civil war, and is victim of the first English revolution. He is decapitated and replaced by Olivier Cromwell, who founds soon a personal dictatorship.
Puritanism
The puritan is a hybrid being: speculative and man of action, tormented in its heart and ensured of its safety; it handles with a rare happiness, and according to the circumstances, the square and the compass. The Bible in a hand, the sword in the other, this intrepid Protestant leaves to the attack the world with audacity. The puritan of the revolution, according to a tested imagery, sees himself qualified “round head” - undoubtedly because of cut of his hair, or this round hat whose the caricaturists rig out it. Its opposite, royalist, are the “rider”, intentionally aristocratic in its setting, defender of the Church and the Crown.
Reforms religious or political revolution?The revolution is nun: the royal cause merges quickly with the maintenance of the Church of England, the revolution with the total recasting of the communities. Only one Reform in three centuries: on the schism of XVIe century, the median years of the XVIIe century superimpose their immense ridiculed hope of a world in conformity with the Word; from aucuns await even the imminent return of Jesus-Christ, while some, thoughtful, begin to dream with a world of social equality and division.
At the XVIIIe century, last misadventure of this disappointed hope, the Reform is interiorized with the Methodism; it breaks with the policy. It was well at the XVIIe century “the fortune of England, Guizot writing, that the spirit of religious faith and the political spirit of freedom reigned there together”. And the former minister of Louis-Philippe to continue: “England undertook at the same time the two revolutions.”
Interpretation and terminological choiceTwo revolutions in only one, the policy and the nun, in whom one a long time did not see, in bad share, which a Great Rebellion - preserving interpretation - or a Reformation - puritan vision.
French parallelism
The term “revolution” came late to characterize the period. It is not essential before the XIX E century and rests on an explicit comparison with the French revolution: social radicalism, execution of a king, proclamation of a republic, then finally confiscation of the revolutionary heritage by a general, here Cromwell, there Bonaparte. Not counting these returns of exile, that of Stuarts in 1660, that of the Bourbons in 1814-1815, which close the period. If, of 1642 to 1660, England tries out a total upheaval well, this revolution was seen qualified variously. Middle-class revolution? Puritan revolution? Even English revolution? None of these epithets carries a total adhesion.
Middle-class or puritan revolution?
The middle-class revolution would suppose an economic change, with many regards indemonstrable. Moreover, the conflict between the king and the Parliament do not put at the catches different social classes. “Puritan Revolution” appears more acceptable if one takes care not to interpret the event in only religious terms. “English Revolution” is not less inaccurate when one becomes in account extensive of the phenomenon, which extends to the unit from British Isles.
A Scottish revolt against Charles I er puts fire at the powders, an Irish insurrection and the great fear which follows put rhythm into the event. Lastly, the pacification of the three kingdoms, of England, of Scotland and Ireland, will be the base of ascending the cromwellien. One will thus speak about “revolution of England” to approach a phenomenon which is not limited geographically to only one kingdom. The latter especially carried out the unit of British Isles to the profit of more populated its territories.