The trial and execution of Charles I in 1649 has in the past been portrayed as the outcome of a crazed 'bloodlust' for revenge by supporters of parliament. This simplistic and dubious narrative obscures more than it reveals, and what is hidden by it is quite remarkable. Norah Carlin's new book Regicide or Revolution? What Petitioners Wanted, September 1648 - February 1649 is a collection and examination of the petitions from numerous units of the New Model Army and commoners around England in […]
Epiphany : directed by Suzy Gillett : produced by Ian Bone : 2013 Epiphany is a hybrid documentary evoking the Mystics and Anarchists of the English Revolution. Highlighting two little-known religious and political movements of the 1600s' Republic, The Fifth Monarchists and the Muggletons come to life in London as told by contemporary leading anarchists: Ian Bone and Martin Wright star as John Thurloe (Cromwell's spymaster) and Thomas Vennner. Venner led the only uprising through the city […]
Justice, liberties and popular petitioning in 1648-49 The regicide of 1649 has often been presented by books, articles and TV dons as the result of religious beliefs related to the King's role as a 'Man of Blood', whose own blood must be shed to deliver England from the taint of killing and the fear of God's vengeance. However the evidence suggests a far more sophisticated political response rooted in the concepts of 'Justice and Liberties' displayed in both public and military petitions. […]
This novel is set in Oxford during the restoration in the 1660s, a time of complex intellectual, scientific, religious and political ferment and uses a mix of both real and fictitious historical figures. The murder of Dr Robert Grove, a fellow of New College, and the events surrounding it are narrated from four significantly different points of view. Marco da Cola, a Venetian Catholic doctor newly arrived in Britain; Jack Prescott, son of a Royalist traitor and desperate to clear his father’s […]
By A L Morton The Ranters formed the extreme left wing of the sects which came into prominence during the English Revolution, both theologically and politically. Theologically these sects lay between the poles of orthodox Calvinism, with its emphasis on the power and justice of God as illustrated in the grand scheme of election and reprobation, with its insistence upon the reality of Hell in all its most literal horrors and upon the most verbal and dogmatic acceptance of the Scriptures, and of […]
Havoc in its Third Year is Bennett’s third novel. It is set the 1630s in the period leading up to the English civil wara town in northern England which had recently removed a corrupt and tyrannical local aristocrat, only then to be ruled by a new repressive puritanical regime. Bennett is a writer of deep political conviction and this novel deals with universal themes, in particular the corrupting forces of power, fear of the outsider and the destitute and the nature of moral and political […]
Liam Flynn's Ale House 22W. North Ave. Tel. (443) 956 1702 liamflynn@gmail.com The Family of William Penn: Their Role in the brutal Colonisation of Ireland The Story of the Penn family's involvement in Cromwell's bloody occupation of Ireland, their amassing of land and estates by force and their role as aristocatic absentee landlords. A mighty counter-blast to the accepted depiction of the Penns as peace lovers, promoters of brotherhood and religious freedom.
USA 2011
Brecht Forum, 451 West Street (between Bank & Bethune Streets, New York, NY 10014 Phone: (212) 242-4201 - Email: brechtforum at brechtforum.org Despite the cheerleading you may have seen in the media about the Diamond Jubilee of the British Monarch, a wave of nausea and apathy, rather than nationalism has suffused 'Albion' of late. Echoes of the English Revolution of the 1640s still haunt the British Royals; an historic event which led to the first modern popular Republic and culminated in […]
Taken from Bristol Past and Present by J. F. Nicholls and John Taylor, published in 1882 In Bristol from 1604 the Rev. William Yeamans, a Puritan vicar of the church of St. Philip and Jacob, was the central rallying point for the godly, who sat under his light for nearly twenty years, keeping many fast days in private houses, namely, at one Wm. Listun's house, a glover, near Lawford‚s gate, and at one Richard Langford's house, a house carpenter in the Castle, and sometimes at other places, where […]
