Keith Lindley – Fenland Riots and the English Revolution
 [back cover] |
Keith Lindley – Fenland Riots and the English Revolution
[Heinemann 1982] buy used at abebooks.co.uk If you use this link to purchase this item breviary stuff will receive 5% commission During the seventeenth century, attempts at fenland drainage projects provoked bitter opposition and widespread rioting. In this book Keith Lindley relates the disturbances to their wider political context, showing how they contributed to the causes, course and consequences of the English Revolution. The implementation of drainage schemes in the 1630s confirmed the absolutist direction of government during Charles I's personal rule. Fenmen were preoccupied with preserving their commons from large-scale enclosure and their traditional economy from transformation, and a broad spectrum of local society from peasant to gentry was drawn into the resistance. Fenland disturbances helped to raise the political temperature country-wide, as the political elite became convinced that the King must be supported as a bulwark against anarchy. Yet the fenmen were not revolutionaries. The riots themselves were essentially defensive, conservative and restrained. For the vast majority of those involved, the chief significance of the political crisis was the ideal opportunity it afforded to level enclosures and regain their commons. By the end of the seventeenth century they could claim a large measure of success: courtier-dominated schemes were not revived after the Restoration and fenland drainage projects became subject to parliamentary approval. Contents
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