The Shaping of the Absolutist Ideology in 16th Century England and its Characteristics

Abstract

The myth that the political evolution of insular England was exceptional, and contrasted with that of continental Europe, is widespread in contemporary Anglo-American bourgeois historiography. The assertion that indigenous democratic traditions exist in England from remote antiquity, that the British always displayed extreme intolerance for despotism and absolutism, and that the British system of government, at all periods in its history, except for brief segments, was legal and constitutional is intensively propagated. As a supposed consequence of this, the general course of British history was allegedly moderate and calm, and marked by continuity, by the absence of sharp leaps and explosions. In the introduction to his recently published History of British Political Thought, Harrison proclaims that the British were always distinguished by restraint and by an inclination to compromise. As a result, class conflicts rarely played a decisive role in the life of the nation, unlike the situation on the cont...