Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution

 

Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution – by Peter Ackroyd

This book was a gem of a find. This is actually part 3 of a (I think) 6-part series where author Peter Ackroyd writes in detail about the history of England. This book was full and rich, yet I must say that I felt there was so much more to tell. I’m guessing the author had to carefully watch the page length. This thing could have easily been about 3-4 times as thick.

The book mainly focuses on the monarchy of England. We read of the histories of James I, Charles I, Charles II, and James II. None of these leaders come across as exceptionally good, and some are flat out awful. In fact, right in the middle of this book is where the civil war in England breaks out where the country is temporarily ruled by non-royalty. This is one of the areas that I think almost deserved its own book. Still, the reader gets enough information to come away with a basic understanding of the mood and the events.

What is interesting, and a bit of a distraction to be honest, is that Ackroyd knows that if he’s going to tell an authentic history, he needs to go beyond the monarchs. So we get chapters woven in about fashion, literature, and other elements of the culture during the time of the 17^th century. It’s all welcome, but there were times when I just wished he would focus on the powers that be and the ongoing conflict. This includes the various parliaments that were formed and destroyed during the time.

There really is a lot to cover here, and I’m sure it was a challenge for the author to keep this narrative detailed yet somewhat brief. There are a lot of names to assimilate, and it doesn’t help when said names are also titles “The Duke of York, etc.”. Maybe if one is more familiar with the English history and geography, it wouldn’t be so overbearing, but it was a bit of a struggle to juggle all the names during the majority of the seventeenth century.  There’s also a lot of politics and religion here, and whereas Ackroyd covers the details as well as he can, there’s only so much of this type of history that one can consider “interesting”.

I should also point out that the “glorious revolution” that happens near the end of this narrative is also quite skimpy in terms of detail.  Minor sins, though, as this thing was an excellent read overall. In fact, I’m eager to now read the other volumes in this series with the hopes of learning even more.  All nations in the history of civilization deserve such a retrospective.