Edmund Burke and the First Stuart Revolution

Philip Connell

doi:10.1017/jbr.2020.40

Abstract

AbstractThis essay reconsiders the character and significance of Edmund Burke's attitude to the seventeenth-century civil wars and interregnum. Burke may have venerated the “revolution principles” of 1688–89 over those of the 1640s, not least in theReflections on the Revolution in Francein which he notoriously compares English dissenting radicals to regicidal Puritans. Yet his response to the first Stuart revolution is more complex than has commonly been allowed and is closely bound up with Burke's earlier parliamentary career as a prominent member of the Rockingham Whig connection. The revival of an anti-Stuart idiom within the extra-parliamentary opposition of the 1760s, together with the mounting conflict with the North American colonies, gave renewed prominence to the memory of the civil wars within English political discourse. The Rockinghamites attempted to exploit this development—without compromising their own, more conservative reading of seventeenth-century history—but they were also its victims. In the years that followed, Burke and his colleagues were repeatedly identified by their political opponents with the spirit of Puritan rebellion and Cromwellian usurpation. These circumstances provide a new perspective on Burke's interpretation of the nation's revolutionary past; they also offer important insights into his writings and speeches in response to the French Revolution.

Highlights

Like any observant reader of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, James Gillray quickly realized that many of Burke’s most provocative conclusions derived from his interpretation of English political and constitutional history
In the years that followed, Burke and his colleagues were repeatedly identified by their political opponents with the spirit of Puritan rebellion and Cromwellian usurpation
Gillray’s Smelling out a Rat depicts an outsized Burkean proboscis, surmounted by giant spectacles, discovering the intrigues of the homegrown “Atheistical-Revolutionist” Richard Price, whose 1789 sermon to the Revolution Society in London’s Old Jewry was the target of sustained pejorative commentary in the Reflections. Price and his audience had been commemorating the anniversary of the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, which he treated as a precedent for recent events in America and France

Summary

Introduction

Like any observant reader of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, James Gillray quickly realized that many of Burke’s most provocative conclusions derived from his interpretation of English political and constitutional history.

Results

Conclusion