THE BLAZING WORLD

A wide-ranging study of the social and political makeup of 17th-century Britain.

Healey, a professor of social history at Oxford, offers an ambitious narrative stuffed with engaging detail about the social and political developments that led to the overthrow of the Stuart monarchy, restoration, and shift to a constitutional monarchy following the Glorious Revolution of 1688. With the explosion of the press and proliferation of free schools came “the rise of the literate middling sort”—i.e., those below the gentry class—who grew more politically active and opinionated and who were directly involved in challenging the authoritarian strictures of James I and his son, Charles I. The author is particularly insightful on the advancement of this “middling sort.” As challenges to the monarchy mounted, Parliament began to gain real power and became “the institutional voice of the new political classes.” Healey ably chronicles the suspenseful buildup to the shocking regicide of 1649 via two primary threads: republicanism, tinged with fervid anti-Catholicism; and royal absolutism. The author gives a fair assessment of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, whose “unattractive Puritanism, apparently vaunting ambition, and of course brutal conquest of Ireland helped taint republicanism for centuries and still does, to a point.” As Healey convincingly shows, “one of the great tragedies” of the time was that Cromwell “prevented the Republic being so much more.” In addition to his keen attention to the lives of ordinary citizens, the author includes portraits of many of the important thinkers and visionaries of the time, including Isaac Newton, John Locke, Francis Bacon, Samuel Pepys, and Margaret Cavendish, whose early science-fiction novel provides the title for Healey’s book. “The political world we live in today, with regular parliaments and elections, ideologically defined parties [and] a vibrant press…was born in the seventeenth century,” writes Healey. “For this…the story told here remains fascinating and vital to this day.” Most readers will agree.

An educative history and fresh civics lesson for a new generation.