The reasons for the English bourgeois revolution were the economic crisis. Prerequisites for the revolution

English revolution of the 17th century. was a thunderclap that heralded the birth of a new social order that replaced the old order. It was the first bourgeois revolution of pan-European significance. The principles she proclaimed for the first time expressed not only the needs of England, but also the needs of the entire Europe of that time, the historical development of which led objectively to the establishment of bourgeois orders.

The victory of the English Revolution meant “... the victory of bourgeois property over feudal property, the nation over provincialism, competition over the guild system, the fragmentation of property over the primordial order, the domination of the land owner over the subordination of the land owner, enlightenment over superstition... enterprise over heroic laziness, bourgeois law over medieval privileges" ( K. Marx, Bourgeoisie and Counter-Revolution, K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. ;6, p. 115.).

The rich ideological heritage of the English Revolution served as an arsenal from which all opponents of the obsolete Middle Ages and absolutism drew their ideological weapons.

But the English Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, which, unlike the socialist revolution, only leads to the replacement of one method of exploitation of the working people by another, to the replacement of the rule of one exploiting minority by another. It revealed for the first time with complete clarity the basic laws inherent in all bourgeois revolutions, and the first of them is the narrowness of the historical tasks of the bourgeoisie, the limitations of its revolutionary capabilities.

The most important driving force of the English Revolution, like all other revolutions, was the working masses. It was only thanks to their decisive action that the English Revolution was able to triumph over the old system. However, in the end, the masses were bypassed and deceived, and the fruits of their victory went mainly to the bourgeoisie.

Along with these features common to all bourgeois revolutions, the English Revolution of the 17th century. It also had specific features inherent only to it, mainly a peculiar alignment of class forces, which in turn determined its final socio-economic and political results.

1. Economic prerequisites of the English Revolution

Productive forces are the most mobile and revolutionary element of production. The emergence of new productive forces occurs spontaneously in the depths of the old system, regardless of the will of the people.

However, the new productive forces that have arisen in this way develop in the bosom of the old society relatively peacefully and without shocks only until they more or less mature. After this, peaceful development gives way to a violent revolution, evolution to revolution.

Development of industry and trade

From the 16th century England experienced rapid growth in various industries. New technical inventions and improvements, and most importantly, new forms of organization of industrial labor, designed for mass production of goods, indicated that English industry was gradually being rebuilt along a capitalist path.

The use of air pumps to pump water out of mines contributed to the development of the mining industry. Over the century (1551 -1651), coal production in the country increased 14 times, reaching 3 million tons per year. By the middle of the 17th century. England produced 4/5 of all the coal mined in Europe at that time. Coal was used not only to satisfy domestic needs (heating houses, etc.), but was already beginning to be used in some places for industrial purposes. Over approximately the same 100 years, the production of iron ore has tripled, and the production of lead, copper, tin, and salt - by 6-8 times.

The improvement of blowing bellows (in many places they were driven by water power) gave impetus to the further development of iron smelting. Already at the beginning of the 17th century. In England, 800 furnaces smelted iron, producing an average of 3-4 tons of metal per week. There were many of them in Kent, Sessex, Surry, Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire and many other counties. Significant advances were made in shipbuilding and in the production of pottery and metal products.

Of the old industries, cloth making was the most important. Wool processing at the beginning of the 17th century. spread widely throughout England. The Venetian ambassador reported: “Cloth making is done here throughout the kingdom, in small towns and in tiny villages and hamlets.” The main centers of cloth making were: in the East - the county of Norfolk with the city of Norwich, in the West - Somersetshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, in the North - Leeds and other Yorkshire “clothing cities”. In these centers, specialization in the production of certain types of cloth has already occurred. The western counties specialized in the production of thin undyed cloth, the eastern counties produced mainly thin worsted cloth, the northern - coarse wool varieties, etc. The nomenclature of only the main types of woolen products included in the first half of the 17th century. about two dozen titles.

Already in the middle of the 16th century. The export of cloth accounted for 80% of all English exports. In 1614, the export of unprocessed wool was finally prohibited. Thus, England from a country that exported wool, as it was in the Middle Ages, turned into a country that supplied finished woolen products to the foreign market.

Simultaneously with the development of old industries in pre-revolutionary England, many manufactories were founded in new branches of production - cotton, silk, glass, stationery, soap, etc.

Great successes during the 17th century. Trade also did. Already in the 16th century. A national market is emerging in England. The importance of foreign merchants, who previously held almost all of the country's foreign trade in their hands, is declining. In 1598 the Hanseatic Steel Yard in London was closed. English merchants penetrate foreign markets, pushing aside their competitors. On the northwestern coast of Europe, an old company of “Adventurers merchants”, founded back in the 14th century, operated successfully. Then arose one after another Moscow (1555), Moroccan (1585), Eastern (on the Baltic Sea, 1579), Levant (1581), African (1588), East Indian (1600) and other trading companies spread their influence far beyond Europe - from the Baltic to the West Indies in the West and to China in the East. Competing with the Dutch, English merchants founded in the first third of the 17th century. trading posts in India - in Surat, Madras, Bengal. At the same time, English settlements appeared in America, on the island. Barbados, Virginia and Guiana. The huge profits brought by foreign trade attracted a significant share of available capital here. At the beginning of the 17th century. in the company of “merchant adventurers” there were over 3,500 members, in the East India Company in 1617 there were 9,514 shareholders with a capital of 1,629 thousand pounds. Art. By the time of the revolution, the turnover of English foreign trade had doubled compared to the beginning of the 17th century, and the amount of duties had more than tripled, reaching 623,964 pounds in 1639. Art.

In pre-revolutionary England there were already many different enterprises, in which hundreds of hired workers under one roof worked for the capitalist. An example of such centralized manufactories is the copper smelter of the city of Keswick, which employed a total of about 4 thousand workers. Relatively large manufacturing enterprises existed in the cloth, mining, shipbuilding, weapons and other industries.

However, the most widespread form of capitalist industry in England in the first half of the 17th century. there was not a centralized, but a dispersed manufacture. Encountering resistance to their entrepreneurial activities in ancient cities, where the guild system still dominated, rich clothiers flocked to the surrounding countryside, where the poorest peasantry supplied an abundance of hired domestic workers. There is, for example, evidence of a clothier in Hampshire who employed house-workers in 80 parishes. From another source it is known that in Suffolk 5 thousand artisans and workers worked for 80 clothiers.

A powerful impetus to the spread of manufacturing was given by the enclosures and seizure of peasant lands by landlords. Landless peasants in industrial counties most often became workers in dispersed manufacturing.

But even in cities where medieval guild corporations still existed, one could observe the process of subordinating labor to capital. This manifested itself in social stratification both within the workshop and between individual workshops. From among the members of craft corporations, rich people emerged, the so-called livery masters, who were not involved in production themselves, but took on the role of capitalist intermediaries between the workshop and the market, relegating ordinary members of the workshop to the position of domestic workers. There were such capitalist intermediaries, for example, in the London corporations of clothiers and tanners. On the other hand, individual workshops, usually engaged in final operations, subordinated a number of other workshops working in related branches of the craft, themselves turning from craft corporations into merchant guilds. At the same time, the gap between masters and apprentices is increasingly widening, who finally turn into “eternal apprentices.”

Small independent commodity producers continued to play a significant role in capitalist production. This diversity of forms of industrial production characterizes the transitional nature of the English economy in the first half of the 17th century.

Despite the successes of industry and trade, their development was hampered by the dominant feudal system. England and by the middle of the 17th century. remained essentially an agrarian country with a huge predominance of agriculture over industry, villages over cities. Even at the end of the 17th century. Of the country's 5.5 million population, 4.1 million lived in villages. The largest city, the most important industrial and commercial center, which stood out sharply from other cities in terms of population concentration, was London, in which about 200 thousand people lived on the eve of the revolution; other cities could not compare with it: the population of Bristol was only 29 thousand ., Norwich - 24 thousand, York - 10 thousand, Exeter - 10 thousand.

Despite the rapid pace of its economic development, England in the first half of the 17th century. Still, it was still significantly inferior in terms of industry, trade and shipping to Holland. Many branches of English industry (production of silk, cotton fabrics, lace, etc.) were still underdeveloped, while others (leatherworking, metalworking) continued to remain within the framework of medieval craft, the production of which was intended mainly for the local market. In the same way, transport within England was still of a medieval nature. In a number of places, especially in the North, goods could only be transported by pack animals due to poor roads. Transporting goods often cost more than their cost. The tonnage of the English merchant fleet was negligible, especially in comparison with the Dutch. As early as 1600, one third of English foreign trade was transported on foreign ships.

English village

The peculiarity of the socio-economic development of England at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times was that bourgeois development here was not limited to industry and trade. Agriculture XVI-XVII centuries. in this respect, it not only kept up with industry, but in many ways was even ahead of it. The breakdown of old feudal production relations in agriculture was the most striking manifestation of the revolutionary role of the capitalist mode of production. Long associated with the market, the English countryside was a breeding ground for both new capitalist industry and new capitalist agriculture. The latter, much earlier than industry, became a profitable object for investing capital; In the English countryside, primitive accumulation took place especially intensively.

The process of separating the worker from the means of production, which preceded capitalism, began in England earlier than in other countries, and it was here that it acquired its classical form.

In England in the 16th - early 17th centuries. profound changes were taking place in the very foundations of the economic life of the village. Productive forces in agriculture, as well as in industry, by the beginning of the 17th century. have grown noticeably. The drainage of swamps and reclamation, the introduction of a grass system, fertilizing the soil with marl and sea silt, sowing root crops, and the use of improved agricultural tools - plows, seeders, etc. - eloquently testified to this. The same is evidenced by the fact that agronomic literature was extremely widespread in pre-revolutionary England (during the first half of the 17th century, about 40 agronomic treatises were published in England, promoting new, rational methods of farming).

High incomes from agriculture attracted many wealthy people to the village who wanted to become owners of estates and farms. “...In England,” Marx wrote, “by the end of the 16th century, a class of rich for that time “capitalist farmers” had formed ( K. Marx, Capital, vol. I, Gospolitizdat, 1955, p. 748.).

It was more economically profitable for the landlord to deal with a tenant deprived of any rights to the land than with traditional peasant holders who paid relatively low rents, which could not be increased before transferring the holding to the heir without violating the ancient custom.

The rent of short-term tenants (leaseholders), flexible and dependent on market conditions, in many estates turns into the main item of manorial income. Thus, in the three manors of Gloucestershire, all the land by the beginning of the 17th century. was already in the use of leaseholders; in 17 other manors of the same county, leaseholders paid almost half of all feudal taxes to landlords. The share of capitalist rent in the counties adjacent to London was even higher. The medieval form of peasant land ownership - copyhold - was increasingly replaced by leasehold. An increasing number of small and medium-sized nobles switched over to capitalist methods of farming in their manors. All this meant that small peasant farming was giving way to large, capitalist farming.

Drawing from the anonymous book "The English Blacksmith" 1636

However, despite the widespread introduction of capitalist relations into agriculture, the main classes in the English pre-revolutionary village continued to be traditional peasant holders, on the one hand, and feudal landowners - landlords - on the other.

There was a fierce, sometimes open, sometimes hidden, but never-ending struggle for land between landlords and peasants. In an effort to take advantage of favorable conditions to increase the profitability of their estates, the lords already from the end of the 15th century. began a campaign against peasant holders and their communal, allotment farming system. Traditional holders were the main obstacle for manorial lords on the way to new forms of economic use of land. Driving the peasants off the land became the main goal of the enterprising English nobles.

This campaign against the peasants was carried out in two ways: 1) by fencing and seizing peasant lands and communal lands (forests, swamps, pastures), 2) by increasing land rent in every possible way.

By the time of the revolution, enclosures had been implemented in whole or in part in Kent, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Worcestershire, Hertfordshire and a number of other central, eastern and south-eastern counties. Fencing took on a particular scale in East Anglia due to the draining of tens of thousands of acres of marshes there; Large sums of money were spent on drainage work carried out by a company specially organized for this purpose. In the West, in connection with the transformation of reserved royal forests into privately owned parks, fencing was accompanied by the destruction of communal easements of peasants (rights to use land). Government investigations have shown that 40% of the total area enclosed between 1557 and 1607 occurred in the last ten years of that period.

In the first half of the 17th century. fencing was in full swing. These decades were also a time of unprecedented growth in land rent. An acre of land, rented at the end of the 16th century. for less than 1 shilling, began to rent for 5-6 shillings. In Norfolk and Suffolk, rents for arable land increased from the end of the 16th to the mid-17th centuries. several times.

Differentiation of the peasantry

The interests of various groups of the peasantry were not united. Even in medieval England, the peasantry legally fell into two main categories: freeholders and copyholders. In the 17th century the land holdings of the freeholders were already approaching in nature the bourgeois property, while the copyholders were land holders under feudal customary law, which opened many loopholes for the arbitrariness and extortion of manorial lords.

Writer and publicist of the second half of the 16th century. Harrison considered the copyholders "the largest part (of the population) on which the well-being of all England rests." At the beginning of the 17th century. in Middle England approximately 60% of holders were copyholders. Even in East Anglia, which had a high percentage of the freeholder population, copyholders made up between one-third and one-half of the holders. As for the northern and western counties, copyholding was the predominant type of peasant holding.

The copyholders, who made up the bulk of the English peasants - the yeomanry, in the figurative expression of a contemporary, “trembled like a blade of grass in the wind” before the will of the lord. First of all, the ownership rights of copyholders were not sufficiently secured. Only a relatively small proportion of copyholders were hereditary holders. Most held the land for 21 years. It depended on the lord whether the son would receive his father's allotment or be expelled from the land after the expiration of the holding period. Further, although the rents of the copyholders were considered “unchangeable,” their size was in fact constantly increased by the lords with each new lease of the allotment. The most dangerous weapon in the hands of the lords were the allowance payments - fains, levied when the holding passed by inheritance or into other hands. Since their size, as a rule, depended on the will of the lord, then, wanting to survive a holder, the lord usually demanded an exorbitant payment from him for admission, and then the holder was actually driven out of his site. In many cases, fains from the middle of the 16th to the middle of the 17th century. increased tenfold. Forced to give up their holdings, copyholders became leaseholders, short-term tenants of plots of land “at the will of the lord,” or sharecroppers, cultivating someone else’s land for part of the harvest.

The lords also collected other monetary payments from the copyholders, in addition to rent. These were: posthumous tax (geriot), mill and market duties, payment for pasture, for the use of forests. In a number of places, corvée duties and taxes in kind have been preserved in some quantities. Copyholders were limited in the right to dispose of their allotment. They could not sell it, nor mortgage it, nor rent it out without the knowledge of the lord; they could not even cut down a tree on their estate without his consent, and in order to obtain this consent, they again had to pay. Finally, copyholders for minor offenses were subject to the jurisdiction of the manorial court. Thus, copyholding was the most limited and powerless form of peasant holding.

In terms of property, there was significant inequality among copyholders. Next to a layer of more or less “strong”, wealthy copyholders, the bulk of copyholders were middle and poor peasants who had difficulty making ends meet on their farm.

The differentiation among freeholders was even sharper. If the large freeholders were in many ways close to the rural gentlemen-nobles, then the small freeholders, on the contrary, were in solidarity with the copyholders and fought for the preservation of the peasant allotment system, for the use of communal lands, and for the destruction of the lords’ rights to peasant land.

In addition to freeholders and copyholders, in the English countryside there were many landless people, cottagers, exploited as farm laborers and day laborers, and manufacturing workers. At the end of the 17th century. Kotters, according to contemporaries’ calculations, numbered 400 thousand people. This mass of rural residents experienced double oppression - feudal and capitalist. Their life, as one contemporary put it, was “a continuous alternation of struggle and torment.” It was among them that the most extreme slogans put forward during the uprisings were popular: “How good it would be to kill all the gentlemen and generally destroy all rich people...” or “Our affairs will not improve until all the gentlemen are killed.” .

All these destitute people are partly simply beggars, paupers, homeless vagabonds, victims of enclosures and evictions ( Eviction, English, eviction - eviction - a term meaning the expulsion of a peasant from the land with the destruction of his yard.) - crushed by need and darkness, was not capable of any independent movement. Nevertheless, his role was very significant in the largest peasant uprisings of the 16th - early 17th centuries.

2. The alignment of class forces in England before the revolution

From these features of the economic development of pre-revolutionary England flowed the uniqueness of the social structure of English society, which determined the alignment of the contending forces in the revolution.

English society, like contemporary French society, was divided into three classes: the clergy, the nobility and the third class - the “common people”, which included the rest of the country’s population. But unlike France, these estates in England were not closed and isolated: the transition from one estate to another occurred more easily here. The circle of aristocratic nobility in England was very narrow. The younger sons of a peer (i.e., a titled lord), who received only the title of knight, not only formally became part of the lower nobility (gentry), but also in their lifestyle often became noble entrepreneurs close to the bourgeoisie. On the other hand, the urban bourgeoisie, acquiring noble titles and coats of arms, remained bearers of the new, capitalist mode of production.

As a result, the English nobility, united as a class, found itself split into two essentially different social strata, which found themselves in different camps during the revolution.

New nobility

A significant part of the nobility, mainly small and middle, by the time of the revolution had already closely linked their fate with the capitalist development of the country. While remaining a landowning class, this nobility was essentially a new nobility, for it often used its land property not so much to obtain feudal rent as to extract capitalist profit. Having ceased to be knights of the sword, the nobles became knights of profit. Gentlemen ( Gentlemen in the 17th century. predominantly representatives of the new nobility were called - gentry; wealthier gentlemen were called squires; Some of them received the title of knight from the king.) turned into dexterous businessmen, not inferior to businessmen from among the urban merchants. To achieve wealth, all activities were good. The “noble” title did not prevent an enterprising gentleman from trading wool or cheese, brewing beer or smelting metals, mining saltpeter or coal - no business in these circles was considered shameful, as long as it provided high profits. On the other hand, rich merchants and financiers, acquiring lands, thereby joined the ranks of the gentry.

Already in 1600, the income of the English gentry significantly exceeded the income of peers, bishops and wealthy yeomen combined. It was the gentry who were most active in the market as buyers of crown lands and possessions of the impoverished nobility. Thus, out of the total amount of land sold in 1625-1634, in the amount of 234,437 f. Art., knights and gentlemen bought up more than half. If the landownership of the crown from 1561 to 1640 decreased by 75%, and the landownership of the peers by more than half, then the gentry, on the contrary, increased its landownership by almost 20%.

Thus, the economic prosperity of the new nobility was a direct consequence of its involvement in the capitalist development of the country. Forming part of the noble class as a whole, it socially stood out as a special class, connected by vital interests with the bourgeoisie.

The new nobility sought to transform its ever-increasing land holdings into property of the bourgeois type, free from feudal shackles, but the absolutist regime countered the aspirations of the new nobility with a comprehensive and increasingly restrictive system of feudal control over its land ownership. The Chamber of Guardianships and Alienations, established under Henry VIII, turned under the first Stuarts into an instrument of fiscal oppression. The knighthood, by which the nobles owned land, became the basis of the feudal claims of the crown, one of the sources of its tax revenues.

Thus, on the eve of the revolution, the peasant agrarian program, which consisted in the desire to destroy all rights of landlords to peasant plots - to turn copyhold into freehold, was opposed by the agrarian program of the new nobility, which sought to destroy the feudal rights of the crown to their lands. At the same time, the gentry sought to eliminate peasant traditional rights to land (hereditary copyhold).

The presence of these agrarian programs - bourgeois-noble and peasant-plebeian - was one of the most important features of the English Revolution of the 17th century.

Old nobility

Something directly opposite in its social character and aspirations was represented by the other part of the nobility - mainly the nobility and nobles of the northern and western counties. In terms of their source of income and way of life, they remained feudal lords. They received traditional feudal rent from their lands. Their land tenure almost completely retained its medieval character. So, for example, in the manor of Lord Berkeley at the beginning of the 17th century. the same payments and duties were collected as in the 13th century - fains, heriots from holders (copyholders), court fines, etc. These nobles, whose economic situation was far from brilliant, since their traditional incomes lagged far behind Their insatiable thirst for luxury, however, looked down on the noble businessmen and did not want to share their power and privileges with them.

The pursuit of external splendor, huge crowds of servants and hangers-on, a passion for metropolitan life and a passion for court intrigue - this is what characterizes the appearance of such a “distinguished lord.” Inevitable complete ruin would have been the fate of the aristocrats if they had not systematically received support from the crown in the form of various pensions and sinecures, generous cash gifts and land grants. The impoverishment of the feudal nobility as a class is evidenced by the large debt of the aristocracy: by 1642, i.e., by the beginning of the civil war, the debts of the nobles who supported the king amounted to about 2 million pounds. Art. The old nobility linked its fate with the absolute monarchy, which protected the feudal order.

Thus, the English bourgeoisie, which rebelled against the feudal-absolutist regime, had against itself not the entire noble class as a whole, but only part of the nobility, while the other and, moreover, the most numerous part of it turned out to be its ally. This was another feature of the English Revolution.

The bourgeoisie and the masses

English bourgeoisie of the early 17th century. was extremely heterogeneous in its composition. Its upper layer consisted of several hundred money tycoons of the City of London and the provinces, people who reaped the benefits of the Tudor policy of patronage of domestic industry and trade. They were closely associated with the crown and the feudal aristocracy: with the crown - as tax farmers and financiers, holders of royal monopolies and patents, with the aristocracy - as creditors and often participants in privileged trading companies.

The main mass of the English bourgeoisie consisted of middle-class traders and the upper layer of guild craftsmen. The latter opposed fiscal oppression, the abuses of absolutism and the dominance of the court aristocracy, although at the same time they saw in the crown the support and guardian of their medieval corporate privileges, which gave them the opportunity to monopolize the exploitation of apprentices and apprentices. Therefore, the behavior of this social group was very hesitant and inconsistent. The most hostile layer of the bourgeoisie to the crown were non-guild entrepreneurs, organizers of dispersed or centralized manufactories, and initiators of colonial enterprises. Their activities as entrepreneurs were constrained by the guild system of crafts and the policy of royal monopolies, and as merchants they were largely pushed away from overseas and domestic trade by the owners of royal patents. It was in this layer of the bourgeoisie that the feudal regulation of craft and trade met its most fierce enemies. “In the person of their representative, the bourgeoisie, the productive forces rebelled against the system of production represented by feudal landowners and guild masters” ( ).

The mass of workers - small artisans in the city and small peasant farmers in the countryside, as well as a fairly large layer of urban and rural wage workers - made up the predominant part of the country's population; the lower classes, the direct producers of all material values, were politically powerless. Their interests were not represented either in parliament or in local government. The masses of the people, dissatisfied with their situation and actively fighting against the feudal system, were the decisive force that accelerated the maturation of the revolutionary crisis in the country. Only by relying on the popular movement and using it to their advantage, the bourgeoisie and the new nobility were able to overthrow feudalism and absolutism and come to power.

3. Ideological and political prerequisites for the revolution.

Puritanism

With the emergence in the depths of feudal society of a new, capitalist mode of production, bourgeois ideology also arises, entering into a struggle with medieval ideology.

However, being one of the first bourgeois revolutions, the English Revolution clothed this new ideology in a religious form, which it inherited from the mass social movements of the Middle Ages.

According to F. Engels, in the Middle Ages “the feelings of the masses were nourished exclusively by religious food; therefore, in order to cause a violent movement, it was necessary to represent the own interests of these masses to them in religious clothing" ( F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy, K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, vol. II, Gospolitizdat, 1955, p. 374.). And indeed, the ideologists of the English bourgeoisie proclaimed the slogans of their class under the guise of a new, “true” religion, essentially sanctifying and sanctioning a new, bourgeois order.

The English royal reformation of the church, finally enshrined under Elizabeth in the “39 Articles” of the Anglican Confession, was a half-hearted, incomplete reformation. The reformed Church of England got rid of the supremacy of the pope, but submitted to the king. The monasteries were closed and the monastic property was secularized, but the land ownership of bishops and church institutions remained intact. The medieval church tithe, which was extremely burdensome for the peasantry, also remained; the episcopate, noble in its social composition and social status, was preserved.

The Anglican Church has become an obedient servant of the crown. Clerics appointed by the king or with his approval became in fact his officials. Royal decrees were announced from the church pulpit, and threats and curses were rained down on the heads of those who disobeyed the royal will. Parish priests exercised strict supervision over every step of the believer, episcopal courts and, above all, the supreme church court - the High Commission - brutally dealt with people at the slightest suspicion of deviating from the official dogmas of the state church. The bishops, who retained power in the Anglican Church, became a stronghold of absolutism.

The result of such a complete merger of church and state was that the people's hatred of absolutism spread to the Anglican Church. Political opposition manifested itself in the form of a church schism - dissent ( From English, dissent - split, disagreement.). Even in the last years of Elizabeth’s reign, the bourgeois opposition to absolutism outwardly manifested itself in a religious movement that demanded the completion of the reformation of the English Church, that is, its cleansing of everything that even outwardly resembled the Catholic cult, hence the name of this movement - Puritanism ( Puritanism, Puritans - from lat. purus, English, pure - pure.).

At first glance, the demands of the Puritans were very far from politics, from directly threatening the power of the king. But this is one of the most important features of the English Revolution: its ideological preparation, the “enlightenment” of the masses - the army of the future revolution - was carried out not in the form of rationally presented political and moral-philosophical teachings, but in the form of contrasting one religious doctrine with another , one church rituals to another, new organizational principles of the church to the old. The nature of these doctrines, rituals and principles was entirely determined by the requirements of the emerging society. It was impossible to crush absolutism without crushing its ideological support - the Anglican Church, without discrediting in the eyes of the people the old faith that sanctified the old order, but equally it was impossible to rouse the people to fight for the triumph of bourgeois relations without justifying their “sacredness” in the name “ true" faith. Revolutionary ideology, in order to become a popular ideology, had to be expressed in traditional images and ideas. To develop such an ideology, the English bourgeoisie took advantage of the religious teachings of the Genevan reformer John Calvin, which penetrated into Scotland and England in the middle of the 16th century. The English Puritans were essentially Calvinists.

The Puritans demanded the removal from the church of all decorations, images, altar, covers and colored glass; they were against organ music; instead of prayers according to liturgical books, they demanded the introduction of free oral preaching and improvised prayers; Everyone present at the service had to participate in the singing of hymns. The Puritans insisted on eliminating rituals that were still preserved in the Anglican Church from Catholicism (signifying the cross during prayer, kneeling, etc.). Not wanting to take part in official “idolatry,” that is, in the cult of the state, Anglican Church, many Auritans began to worship in private homes, in a form that, as they put it, “would least dim the light of their conscience.” The Puritans in England, like other Protestants on the continent of Europe, demanded, first of all, “simplification” and, therefore, cheaper church. The very life of the Puritans fully corresponded to the conditions of the era of primitive accumulation. Acquisitiveness and stinginess were their main “virtues.” Accumulation for the sake of accumulation became their motto. Puritan-Calvinists viewed commercial and industrial activity as a divine “calling,” and enrichment itself as a sign of special “chosenness” and a visible manifestation of God’s mercy. By demanding the transformation of the church, the Puritans in reality sought to establish a new social order. The radicalism of the Puritans in church matters was only a reflection of their radicalism in political matters.

However, among the Puritans at the end of the 16th century. There were different currents. The most moderate of the Puritans, the so-called Presbyterians, put forward a demand for the purification of the Anglican Church from the remnants of Catholicism, but did not break with it organizationally. Presbyterians demanded the abolition of the episcopate and the replacement of bishops with synods (assemblies) of elders ( Presbyter (from Greek) - elder. In the early Christian church, this was the name given to the leaders of local Christian communities.), chosen by the believers themselves. Demanding a certain democratization of the church, they limited the scope of intra-church democracy only to the wealthy elite of believers.

The left wing of the Puritans were separatists who completely condemned the Church of England. Subsequently, supporters of this trend began to be called independents. Their name comes from the demand for complete independence and self-government for each, even the smallest, community of believers. The Independents rejected not only the bishops, but also the power of the Presbyterian synods, considering the presbyters themselves to be “new tyrants.” Calling themselves “saints,” “an instrument of heaven,” “an arrow in the quiver of God,” the Independents did not recognize any authority over themselves in matters of conscience other than “the authority of God,” and did not consider themselves bound by any human injunctions if they contradicted “ revelations of truth." They built their church in the form of a confederation of autonomous communities of believers independent from each other. Each community was governed by the will of the majority.

On the basis of Puritanism, political and constitutional theories arose that became widespread in opposition circles of the English bourgeoisie and nobility.

The most important element of these theories was the doctrine of the “social contract”. His supporters believed that royal power was established not by God, but by people. For their own good, the people establish the highest power in the country, which they entrust to the king. However, the rights of the crown do not become unconditional; on the contrary, the crown is limited from the very beginning by an agreement concluded between the people and the king as the bearer of supreme power. The main content of this agreement is to govern the country in accordance with the requirements of the people's welfare. Only as long as the king adheres to this agreement, his power is inviolable. When he forgets the purpose for which his power was established and, violating the agreement, begins to rule to the detriment of the interests of the people “like a tyrant,” his subjects have the right to terminate the agreement and take away from the king the powers previously transferred to him. Some of the most radical followers of this teaching drew the conclusion from this that subjects not only can, but are also obliged to disobey the king, who has turned into a tyrant. Moreover, they declared that his subjects were obliged to rebel against him, depose and even kill him in order to restore their violated rights. The most prominent representatives of these tyrant-fighting theories in England in the 16th century. there were John Ponet and Edmund Spencer, in Scotland - George Buchanan. What a huge role the ideas of the tyrant fighters played in the fight against the existing regime can be seen from the fact that Ponet’s “Short Treatise on Political Power”, first published in 1556, was republished on the eve of the revolution - in 1639 and at its height - in 1642 .

In the 30s - 40s of the 17th century. Henry Parker spoke with a number of journalistic works of a Puritan nature on constitutional issues, whose teaching on the origin of power through a social contract and the ensuing fundamental rights of the English people subsequently had a great influence on the literature of revolutionary times.

The famous Independent writer and political activist John Milton later wrote about the mobilizing role of Puritan journalism in the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary years: “Books are not at all a dead thing, for they contain within themselves the potentialities of life, as active as the people who created them.” ... They contain a powerful attractive force and, like the teeth of the dragon of Greek mythology, when sown, they sprout in the form of a crowd of armed people rising from the ground.”

Economic policies of James I Stuart

Productive forces in England in the first half of the 17th century. had already grown so much that within the framework of feudal production relations it became unbearably cramped for them. For the further development of the country's economy, the speedy elimination of feudal orders and their replacement with capitalist social relations was required. But old, moribund forces stood guard over the feudal system. English absolutism played a huge role in defending the old system and opposing the new, bourgeois system.

In March 1603, Queen Elizabeth died, and her only relative, the son of the executed Mary Stuart, King James VI of Scotland, who was called James I in England, ascended the throne.

Already during the reign of the first Stuart, it became abundantly clear that the interests of the feudal nobility, expressed by the crown, came into irreconcilable conflict with the interests of the bourgeoisie and the new nobility. In addition, Jacob was a foreigner for England, who did not know English conditions well and had a completely false idea of ​​both the “ineffable wisdom” of his own person and the power of the royal power inherited to him.

Contrary to the bourgeoisie’s desire for free enterprise, its tireless search for new ways to enrich itself, James I imposed a system of monopolies, that is, exclusive rights granted to individuals or companies to produce and trade any goods. The monopoly system gradually covered many branches of production, almost all foreign and a significant part of domestic trade. The royal treasury received significant sums from the sale of patents, which went into the pockets of a small clique of court aristocrats. Monopolies also enriched individual capitalists associated with the court. But the bourgeoisie as a whole clearly lost from this monopoly policy. It was deprived of freedom of competition and freedom to dispose of bourgeois property - necessary conditions for capitalist development.

Government regulation of industry and trade was equally hostile to the interests of the bourgeoisie. The requirement of a seven-year apprenticeship as a precondition for engaging in any craft, the meticulous supervision of government agents not only over the quality of products, but also over the number and nature of tools, over the number of apprentices and journeymen employed in one workshop, over production technology, made it extremely difficult to -or technical innovations, consolidation of production, its restructuring on capitalist principles.

In the papers of the justices of the peace, one continually encounters long lists of persons against whom prosecutions were instituted for violating royal statutes that regulated crafts and trade in a purely medieval spirit. For example, in Somerset, four clothiers were brought to trial “for hot ironing cloth in violation of the statute.” Five other clothiers were fined “for stretching and pulling the cloth and for mixing tow and hair into the cloth and for having short threads not woven.” A tanner was put on trial for selling leather without a mark.

This government guardianship over industry and trade, carried out at first glance in the interests of the consumer, in fact pursued only the goal of fleecing the treasury of merchants and artisans through fines and extortion.

Feudal barriers to the development of industry made manufacturing, despite the cruel exploitation of manufacturing workers, a less profitable area for investing capital. Money was invested in industrial enterprises extremely reluctantly. As a result, the development of manufacturing was sharply slowed down, and a lot of technical inventions remained unused. Numerous craftsmen from Germany, Flanders, and France, who appeared in England under the Tudors and introduced technical innovations, are now leaving England and moving to Holland.

Foreign trade became virtually a monopoly of a narrow circle of large, mainly London, merchants. London accounted for the overwhelming majority of foreign trade turnover. Back at the beginning of the 17th century. London trade duties were 160 thousand pounds. Art., while all other ports combined accounted for 17 thousand pounds. Art. The development of domestic trade everywhere collided with the medieval privileges of city corporations, which in every possible way blocked access to city markets for “outsiders.” The growth of both domestic and foreign trade was stunted, with British exports particularly affected. The balance of England's foreign trade became passive: in 1622, imports into England exceeded exports by almost 300 thousand pounds. Art.

Stuarts and Puritanism

The onset of the feudal-absolutist reaction was clearly manifested in the church policy of James I. The new nobility and bourgeoisie, who profited from the lands of the monasteries closed under Henry VIII, were most afraid of the restoration of Catholicism, but the fight against the “Catholic danger” receded into the background under the Stuarts. The government's priority was the fight against puritanism.

Having hated the Presbyterian order back in Scotland, James I, having become king of England, immediately took a hostile position towards the English Puritans. In 1604, at a church conference at Hampton Court, he told the English priests: “You want a meeting of elders in the Scottish style, but it is as little consistent with the monarchy as the devil with God. Then Jack and Tom, Wil and Dick will begin to gather and will condemn me, my Council, our entire policy...” “No bishop, no king,” he further said. Realizing that “these people” (i.e., the Puritans) were starting with the church only to give themselves a free hand in relation to the monarchy, James threatened to “throw out of the country” the stubborn Puritans or “do something even worse to them.” . The persecution of the Puritans soon assumed vast proportions, as a result of which a stream of emigrants poured from England, fleeing prisons, whips and huge fines by fleeing to Holland, and later overseas to North America. The emigration of the Puritans actually marked the beginning of the founding of England's North American colonies.

Foreign policy of James I

James I did not take into account the interests of the bourgeoisie at all in his foreign policy. The development of English overseas and, first of all, the most profitable colonial trade everywhere encountered the colonial dominance of Spain. Elizabeth's entire reign was spent in a fierce struggle with this “national enemy” of Protestant England. Elizabeth's popularity in the City of London largely depended on this.

However, James I, instead of continuing the traditional policy of friendship and alliance with Protestant Holland, a policy directed against a common enemy - Catholic Spain, began to seek peace and alliance with Spain.

In 1604, a peace treaty was concluded with the Spanish government, in which the issue of English trading interests in the Indian and West Indian possessions of Spain was completely bypassed. To please Spain, Jacob grants pardon to some participants in the “gunpowder plot” ( In 1605, barrels of gunpowder prepared for explosion were discovered in the basement of the palace where parliament was meeting and the meeting of which the king was to be present. Catholics were involved in this conspiracy.), turns a blind eye to the strengthening of the activities of Catholics and Jesuits in England, completely distances himself from the struggle of English capital for colonies, throws into prison and then sends to the chopping block the most prominent of Elizabeth’s “royal pirates” - Walter Raleigh.

The Spanish ambassador Count Gondomar, who arrived in London in 1613, became the closest advisor to James I. “Without the Spanish ambassador,” wrote the Venetian ambassador, “the king does not take a step.”

Jacob's sluggish and passive policy during the Thirty Years' War contributed to the defeat of Protestantism in the Czech Republic, as a result of which his son-in-law, Elector of the Palatinate Frederick V, lost not only the Czech crown, but also his hereditary lands - the Palatinate. In response to a request for help, James attacked Frederick V with accusations of inciting the Czechs to “rebellion.” “So,” he angrily declared to the ambassador of the ill-fated elector, “you are of the opinion that subjects can overthrow their kings. It is very opportune for you to come to England to spread these principles among my subjects.” Instead of armed action against the Habsburgs, James I began planning the marriage of his son, the heir to the throne, Charles, with the Spanish Infanta, which he saw as a guarantee of further strengthening of the Anglo-Spanish alliance and a means of replenishing the empty treasury with a rich dowry. Thus, internal English and international feudal reaction came together; In feudal-Catholic Spain, the English feudal aristocracy saw its natural ally.

Consolidation of the bourgeois opposition in parliament

But to the same extent that absolutism ceased to take into account the interests of bourgeois development, the bourgeoisie ceased to take into account the financial needs of absolutism. The financial dependence of the crown on Parliament was the most vulnerable aspect of English absolutism. Therefore, the acute political conflict between the feudal class, on the one hand, and the bourgeoisie, on the other, was most clearly manifested in the refusal of parliament to vote new taxes to the crown. “The English revolution, which brought Charles I to the scaffold, began with the refusal to pay taxes,” emphasizes K. Marx. - “Refusal to pay taxes is only a sign of a split between the crown and the people, only proof that the conflict between the government and the people has reached a tense, threatening degree” ( K. Marx, Trial against the Rhine District Committee of Democrats, K. Maox and F. Engels, Works, vol. 6, p. 271.).

In contrast to James’s desire to establish in England the principles of absolute, unlimited and uncontrolled royal power, referring to its “divine” origin, the first parliament assembled during his reign declared: “Your Majesty would be misled if anyone assured you that that the King of England has any absolute power in himself, or that the privileges of the House of Commons are based on the good will of the King, and not on his original rights...”

Neither the first (1604-1611) nor the second (1614) parliaments provided James with sufficient funds that would have made him at least temporarily independent of parliament. Meanwhile, the acute financial need of the crown was intensifying as a result of embezzlement, wastefulness of the court and the unheard-of generosity of the king to his favorites, among whom the first was the Duke of Buckingham. The usual income of the royal treasury during the reign of Elizabeth was 220 thousand pounds. Art. per year, the income of her successor averaged 500 thousand f. Art. But the debts of the crown already in 1617 reached the figure of 735 thousand pounds. Art. Then the king decided to try to replenish the treasury bypassing parliament.

Jacob introduces new increased duties without the permission of parliament; trades in titles of nobility and patents for various trade and industrial monopolies; auctions off crown land holdings. He restores long-forgotten feudal rights and collects feudal payments and "subsidies" from holders of knightly rights, and fines them for alienating land without permission. Yakov abuses the right of priority to purchase food for the courtyard at a cheap price, resorting to forced loans and gifts. However, all these measures do not eliminate, but only alleviate for a short time the financial need of the crown.

In 1621, James was forced to convene his third parliament. But already at its first meetings, both the king’s domestic and foreign policies were sharply criticized. The project of a “Spanish marriage,” that is, the marriage of the heir to the English throne with a Spanish infanta, caused particular indignation in parliament. During the second session, parliament was dissolved. This was done not without the advice of the Spanish ambassador.

However, Jacob failed to implement the plan for an Anglo-Spanish alliance. The Anglo-Spanish contradictions were too irreconcilable, although Jacob tried with all his might to smooth them out. The matchmaking of Crown Prince Charles at the Spanish court ended in failure, and along with this, plans to return the lands to Frederick of the Palatinate peacefully collapsed, as well as plans to replenish the treasury with the Spanish dowry. Forced loan in the amount of 200 thousand pounds. Art. brought only 70 thousand. Trade and industry in England, as a result of the unbridled distribution of trade and industrial monopolies by the king, found themselves in an extremely difficult situation.

Exacerbation of class contradictions. Popular uprisings

The decisive struggle against the feudal-absolutist regime of the Stuarts took place, however, not under the arches of Parliament, but in the streets and squares of cities and villages. The dissatisfaction of the broad masses of the peasantry, artisans, manufacturing workers and day laborers with growing exploitation, tax robbery and the entire policy of the Stuarts increasingly erupted either in the form of local or in the form of wider uprisings and unrest that arose in different parts of the country.

The largest peasant uprising under James I broke out in 1607 in the central counties of England (Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, etc.), where enclosures during the 16th - early 17th centuries. accepted the widest sizes. About 8 thousand peasants, armed with stakes, pitchforks and scythes, told the magistrates that they had gathered “to destroy the fences that turned them into poor people dying of want.” One of the rebels’ proclamations said about the nobles: “Because of them, villages were depopulated, they destroyed entire villages... It is better to die courageously than to slowly perish from want.” Hedge destruction has become widespread in the midlands.

During this uprising, the names Levellers (levelers) and Diggers (diggers) were first used, which would later become the names of the two parties of the popular wing of the revolution. The uprising was suppressed by military force.

A wave of peasant uprisings then swept in the 20s of the 17th century. across the western and southern counties in connection with the transformation of common forests into private parks of the lords. The uprisings in the 1930s in Central England were caused by the renewed enclosure of common lands, and the uprisings of the 1930s and 1940s in East and North-East England were caused by the draining of the “great marsh plain” and the conversion of drained lands into private property, which deprived the peasants their communal rights to wetlands.

A typical example of these unrest can be seen in the events that took place in 1620 in the possessions of Lord Berkeley. When the lord tried to fence off communal lands in one of the manors, peasants armed with shovels filled up the ditch, drove away the workers and beat the magistrates who had arrived for the judicial investigation. The same struggle was waged in dozens of other manors.

Popular demonstrations in cities were just as frequent at that time. The protracted commercial and industrial crisis sharply worsened the already plight of artisans, apprentices and journeymen engaged in the production of cloth. The working day of a craft and manufacturing worker lasted 15-16 hours, while real wages were increasingly declining due to rising prices for bread and other food products. At the beginning of the 16th century. a rural artisan earned 3 shillings. per week, and in 1610 - 6 shillings. per week, but during this time the price of wheat increased 10 times. Unemployed artisans, apprentices, and manufacturing workers posed a particularly great threat in the eyes of the government. They often destroyed grain warehouses, attacked tax collectors and justices of the peace, and set fire to the houses of the rich.

In 1617, a rebellion of artisan apprentices broke out in London, and in 1620 there were serious unrest in the cities of the western counties. The threat of an uprising was so great that the government, by a special decree, obliged clothiers to provide work to the workers they employed, regardless of market conditions.

All these popular movements were a clear manifestation of the revolutionary crisis brewing in the country. Parliamentary opposition to the Stuarts could only emerge and emerge in an atmosphere of increasingly intensifying popular struggle against feudalism.

James's last parliament met in February 1624. The government had to make a number of concessions: abolish most monopolies and start a war with Spain. Having received half of the requested subsidy, Jacob sent a hastily assembled expeditionary force to the Rhine, which suffered complete defeat from the Spaniards. But Yakov did not live to see this. In 1625, the throne of England and Scotland was inherited by his son Charles I.

Political crisis of the 20s of the 17th century.

The change on the throne did not entail a change in political course. Too limited to understand the complex political situation in the country. Charles I stubbornly continued to cling to his father's absolutist doctrine. It took only a few years for the break between the king and parliament to become final.

Already the first parliament of Charles I, convened in June 1625, before approving new taxes, demanded the removal of the all-powerful temporary Duke of Buckingham. The British foreign policy led by him suffered failure after failure. Naval expeditions against Spain ended in complete defeat: English ships failed to capture the Spanish “silver fleet”, which was carrying precious cargo from America, and the attack on Cadiz was repulsed with heavy losses for the English fleet. While still at war with Spain, England began a war with France in 1624. However, the expedition, which Buckingham personally led and which had the immediate goal of providing assistance to the besieged Huguenot fortress of La Rochelle, ended in shameful failure. The outrage in England against Buckingham became general. But Charles I remained deaf to public opinion and defended his favorite in every possible way. The king dissolved the first and then the second (1626) parliaments, which demanded a trial of Buckingham. He openly threatened: either the House of Commons would submit to the monarch’s will, or there would be no parliament at all in England. Left without parliamentary subsidies, Charles I resorted to a forced loan. But this time even the peers refused the government money.

Foreign policy failures and the financial crisis forced Charles I to turn to parliament again. The third parliament met on March 17, 1628. The opposition of the bourgeoisie and the new nobility in the House of Commons now appeared in a more or less organized form. Eliot, Hampden, Pym - coming from the ranks of the squires - were its recognized leaders. In their speeches, they attacked the government for its incompetent foreign policy. Parliament protested against the king's collection of taxes not approved by the chamber and against the practice of forced loans. Eliot expressively characterized the significance of the opposition’s demands: “...This is not only about our property and possessions, everything that we call ours is at stake, those rights and privileges thanks to which our naked ancestors were free.” In order to put a limit to the absolutist claims of Charles I, the chamber developed a “Petition of Right”, the main demands of which were to ensure the inviolability of person, property and freedom of subjects. The extreme need for money forced Charles I to approve the Petition on June 7. But soon the parliamentary session was suspended until October 20. During this time, two important events occurred: Buckingham was killed by Officer Felton; One of the leaders of the parliamentary opposition, Wentworth (the future Earl of Strafford), came over to the king's side.

The second session of Parliament opened with sharp criticism of the ecclesiastical policies of Charles I. Until assurances were received that the royal policy would be changed, the House of Commons refused to approve customs duties. On March 2, 1629, when the king ordered the session to be interrupted, the chamber for the first time showed open disobedience to the royal will. Forcibly holding the speaker in the chair ( Without a speaker, the chamber could not sit, and its decisions were considered invalid.), the House, behind closed doors, passed the following 3 resolutions: 1) anyone who seeks to introduce papist innovations into the Anglican Church should be considered the main enemy of the kingdom; 2) anyone who advises the king to levy duties without the consent of parliament should be considered an enemy of this country; 3) anyone who voluntarily pays taxes not approved by Parliament is a traitor to the freedoms of England.

Government without parliament

Charles I dissolved the House of Commons and decided to henceforth rule without parliament. Having lost Buckingham, the king made his main advisers the Earl of Strafford and Archbishop Laud, who were the inspirers of the feudal-absolutist reaction over the next 11 years. To gain free rein within the country, Charles I hastened to make peace with Spain and France. A regime of terror reigned in England. Nine leaders of the parliamentary opposition were thrown into the royal prison of the Tower. The strictest censorship of the printed and spoken word was supposed to silence the “seditious” Puritan opposition. Extraordinary courts for political and ecclesiastical matters - the Star Chamber and the High Commission - were in full swing. Failure to attend the parish church and reading forbidden (Puritan) books, a harsh review of the bishop and a hint of the queen's frivolity, refusal to pay taxes unapproved by parliament and speaking out against the forced royal loan - all this was sufficient reason for immediate involvement in an incredibly cruel court.

In 1637, the Star Chamber passed a brutal verdict in the case of the lawyer Prynne, Dr. Bastwick and the priest Burton, whose entire guilt was the composition and publication of Puritan pamphlets. They were put in the pillory, publicly flogged, branded with a hot iron, then, having their ears cut off, they were thrown into prison for life imprisonment. In 1638, the London merchant apprentice John Lilburne, accused of distributing Puritan literature, was sentenced to public flogging and indefinite imprisonment. Merchant Chambers was sentenced to imprisonment in the Tower for 12 years for refusing to pay duties. The Puritan opposition was driven underground for a time. Many thousands of Puritans, fearing persecution, moved overseas. The “great exodus” from England began. Between 1630 and 1640 65 thousand people emigrated, 20 thousand of them to America, to the New England colonies.

The brutal terror against the Puritans was accompanied by an increasing rapprochement between the Anglican Church and Catholicism. Archbishop Laud of Canterbury listened favorably to the proposals of the papal legate to accept the cardinal's hat from the pope, and a Catholic mass was openly celebrated in the queen's chapel ( Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I, a French princess by origin, remained a Catholic upon her arrival in England.). This aroused indignation among the bourgeoisie and the new nobility, which largely owed their land wealth to the secularization of the lands of Catholic monasteries.

In the early 1930s, due to the increased demand for English goods caused by the war on the continent of Europe, there was some revival in foreign trade and industry. Favorable market conditions temporarily reduced the irritation of the bourgeois opposition. During these years, absolutism seemed to achieve complete triumph. All that remained was to find permanent sources of replenishment of the treasury so that the crown could get rid of parliament forever. Strafford and Secretary of the Exchequer Weston frantically searched for such sources. Customs duties were collected contrary to the mentioned resolutions of the parliament of 1628-1629. Trade in patents for industrial monopolies developed on a large scale. In 1630, a law was pulled out of the dust of the archives, obliging all persons who had at least 40 pounds. Art. land income, appear at court to receive a knighthood. Those who evaded this expensive honor were fined. In 1634, the government decided to check the boundaries of the royal reserve forests, many of which had long since passed into private hands. Violators (and among them there were many representatives of the nobility) were forced to pay heavy fines. The extent to which the feudal rights of the crown were intensively exploited is evidenced by the growth in the income of the chamber of guardianship and alienation: in 1603 its receipts amounted to 12 thousand pounds. Art., and by 1637 they reached a huge amount of 87 thousand f. Art.

The greatest indignation in the middle and lower strata of the population was caused by the collection of “ship money” in 1634 - a long-forgotten duty of the coastal counties, once introduced to combat pirates attacking the coast of the kingdom. In 1635 and 1637 this duty has already been extended to all counties of the country. Even some royal lawyers pointed out the illegality of this tax. Refusal to pay ship money became widespread. The name of Squire John Hampden became known throughout the country, demanding that the court prove to him the legality of this tax.

To please the king, the judges by a majority vote recognized his right to collect “ship money” as often as he saw fit, and Hampden was convicted. A permanent extra-parliamentary source of income seemed to have been found. “The King is now and forever free from parliamentary interference in his affairs,” this is how the royal favorite Lord Strafford assessed the significance of the court decision in the Hampden case. “All our freedoms have been destroyed in one blow” - this is how Puritan England perceived this sentence.

However, one external push was enough to reveal the weakness of absolutism. This was the impetus for the war with Scotland.

War with Scotland and defeat of English absolutism

In 1637, Archbishop Laud tried to introduce the Anglican church service in Sstlapdia, which, despite the dynastic union with England (since 1603), retained complete autonomy in both civil and church affairs. This event made a great impression in Scotland and caused a general uprising. Initially, it resulted in the conclusion of the so-called covenant (social contract), in which all the Scots who signed it swore to defend the Calvinist “true faith” “until the end of their lives with all their might and means.” The Lord Chancellor assured Charles I that the Anglican prayer book could be imposed on the Scots with the help of 40 thousand soldiers. However, the matter was more serious. The struggle against Laud’s “papist innovations” was in reality a struggle of the Scottish nobility and bourgeoisie to preserve the political independence of their country, against the threat of introducing absolutist orders into Scotland, the bearer of which was the Anglican Church.

The king's punitive expedition against the Scots began in 1639. However, the 20,000-strong army he had recruited at the cost of enormous efforts fled without even engaging in battle. Charles had to conclude a truce. On this occasion, the bourgeoisie of London staged an illumination: the victory of the Scots over the English king was a holiday for all opponents of absolutism. But Karl only needed to buy time. Lord Strafford was summoned from Ireland and tasked with “teaching the rebels a lesson.” For this a large army was needed. However, there were not enough funds for its organization and maintenance. On the advice of Strafford, the king decided to convene parliament in April 1640. Charles immediately demanded subsidies, trying to play on the national feelings of the British. But in response to the intimidation of Parliament by the “Scottish danger,” one member of the House of Commons said: “The danger of a Scottish invasion is less formidable than the danger of a government based on arbitrariness. The danger that was outlined in the ward is far away... The danger that I will talk about is here at home...” The opposition-minded House of Commons was sympathetic to the cause of the Covenanters: Charles’s defeats not only did not upset her, but even pleased her, since she was well aware that “the worse the affairs of the king in Scotland, the better the affairs of the parliament in England.” On May 5, just three weeks after convening, parliament was dissolved. It was called in history the Short Parliament.

The war with Scotland resumed, and Charles I did not have the money to continue it. Strafford, appointed commander-in-chief of the English army, was unable to improve matters. The Scots went on the offensive, invaded England and occupied the northern counties of Northumberland and Durham (Derham).

The maturation of a revolutionary situation

The defeat of English absolutism in the war with Scotland accelerated the maturation of a revolutionary situation in England. The ruling feudal aristocracy, led by the king, became confused in its domestic and foreign policies, found itself in the grip of a severe financial crisis and by this time felt a clearly hostile attitude towards itself from the bourgeoisie and the broad masses of England. Since 1637, the state of industry and trade in England had deteriorated catastrophically. The policy of government monopolies and taxes, the flight of capital from the country and the emigration to America of many Puritan merchants and industrialists caused a reduction in production and mass unemployment in the country.

The discontent of the masses in the late 30s and early 40s, manifested in the form of peasant movements, mass protests and unrest in the cities, was growing. In London in 1639 and 1640. There were violent demonstrations of artisans and working people, exhausted by poverty and unemployment. From various counties, especially Eastern and Central England, London received information about the growing hostility of the peasants towards the lords and towards all large landowners in general. “Such gatherings and conspiracies are taking place among the people that you cannot imagine,” reported a witness to the events. “The rural people harm us as much as they can,” complained one landowner and fencer. “The neighboring villages joined together and formed an alliance to protect each other in these actions.”

The population's payment of royal taxes almost completely ceased; the "Ship Money" did not bring the government even one tenth of the expected amount.

History of state and law of modern times

Revolution of the 17th century and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in England

PLAN

1. English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century: causes, features, main stages.

2. Political trends during the English bourgeois revolution. Overthrow of the monarchy.

3. Cromwell's Protectorate. "Control tool"

4. The formation of a constitutional monarchy in England.

5. Completion of the formation of the English parliamentary system in the 18th-19th centuries.

6. Law of England in the modern period.

English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century: causes, features, main stages.

The economy of England in the 1st half of the 17th century. determined two economic structures: the old - feudal, and the new - capitalist. The leading role belonged to the capitalist structure.

In industry, the guild system was decomposing, which limited production.

Social tension also arose in trade due to the policy of trade monopolies. The government issued monopolies for the trade of certain goods to large companies, because they were easier to control. Founded in 1600 East India Company (it was forbidden for anyone other than her to import spices into England). Trading companies pushed wide sections of the merchant class away from overseas trade.

The most intensive breakdown of the feudal structure began in agriculture (much earlier than in the city). The most profitable object of capital investment was sheep breeding. The consequence of this was the “fencing” of communal lands.

The most important social cause Revolution in England resulted in a split in the nobility into old and new nobility ( gentry- actively adapted agriculture to new capitalist relations).

Ideological reasons

The ideology of the future revolution was the Puritan religion (from the Latin “puritas” - purity). Criticism of the old feudal order was clothed by the Puritans in religious form.

In the 16th century was held in England Reformation . As a result, the king became the head of the Anglican Church. The Church lost its former independence. Bishops were now appointed by the king. The will of the king was now above the Holy Scriptures for the priests. Royal decrees were announced from the church pulpit. The priests exercised strict police supervision over every step of the believer. Higher courts - "Star Chamber" And "High commission" dealt with cases on charges of apostasy from the dominant church, and were in charge of censorship.

The Puritans believed that the reformation in England was not completed and was half-hearted.

The ideal of the Puritans was the teaching of the French theologian John Calvin, who considered the main human virtues to be hard work, frugality and stinginess. Extravagance and idleness aroused the contempt of the Puritans. Sin is everything that interferes with accumulation. Passion for entertainment, joyful holidays, hunting, paintings - all this is the service of Satan; as well as the luxury of church rituals.

Calvin's teaching stated that people are divided into those God chose, and those from whom he turned away. If labor brings wealth to a person, it is a sign of being chosen. The Puritans regarded mundane everyday work as the performance of a religious cult. Therefore, the Puritans believed that the old order, which interfered with their work and enrichment, should be destroyed. The Puritans despised the poor and considered them rejected by God.

She went through several stages:

2) 1642 - 1646 - first civil war;

3) 1646 - 1649 - the struggle to deepen the democratic content of the revolution;

4) 1649 - 1653 - Independent Republic.

The Long Parliament repealed all illegal decrees of the king, abolished the "ship tax", dissolved the Star Chamber and the High Commission, expelled bishops from the House of Lords, and also adopted Three Year Bill. It obliged the king to convene parliament every three years. The most important provision was that the House of Commons could only be dissolved with its own consent.

The decisive battle took place at Nesby 14 June 1645 The “new model” army defeated the royalists. Soon the forces of Parliament entered Oxford, where the king's headquarters was located. But he managed to escape to Scotland and surrendered to the local authorities there.

Introduction

In the last centuries of the Middle Ages, new productive forces and corresponding new economic relations—capitalist relations—developed in the depths of feudal society. The old feudal relations of production and the political dominance of the nobility delayed the development of the new social system. The political system of Europe at the end of the Middle Ages had a feudal-absolutist character in most European countries. A strong centralized state was an instrument of the feudal nobles to protect the feudal order, to curb and suppress the working masses of the countryside and city who fought against feudal oppression. The elimination of old feudal economic relations and old feudal-absolutist political forms, which hindered the further growth of capitalism, could only be achieved through revolutionary means. The transition of European society from feudalism to capitalism was carried out mainly as a result of the English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century.

English revolution of the 17th century. the first proclaimed the principles of bourgeois society and state and established the bourgeois system in one of the largest countries in Europe. It was prepared by the entire previous development of Europe and occurred simultaneously with serious socio-political upheavals in France, Italy, Germany, Poland, and Russia. The English Revolution evoked numerous ideological responses in Europe back in the 17th century.

Thus, the English revolution of the 17th century. can be seen as the line between the Middle Ages and modern times. It marked the beginning of a new era and made irreversible the process of formation of bourgeois socio-political orders not only in England, but also in Europe as a whole.

Features of the economic development of England on the eve of the revolution. Economic prerequisites.

On the eve of the revolution, England was an agrarian country. Of its 4.5 million population, about 75% were rural residents. But this did not mean that there was no industry in England. The metallurgical, coal and textile industries had already achieved significant development at this time, and it was in the industrial sphere, especially in the textile industry, that the features of the new capitalist structure most clearly manifested themselves.

New technical inventions and improvements, and most importantly, new forms of organization of industrial labor and production clearly indicated that English industry was increasingly imbued with capitalist tendencies and the spirit of commerce.

England had quite large reserves of iron ore. Gloucestershire was especially rich in ore. Ore processing was carried out mainly in the counties of Cheshire, Sussex, Heryfordshire, Yorkshire, and Somersetshire. Copper ore was mined and processed on a significant scale. England also had large coal reserves, mainly in the county of Northumberland. Coal had not yet been used as fuel in metallurgy, but was widely used in everyday life (especially in London). The need for coal both for domestic consumption and for export abroad was very great.

In both the metallurgical and stone industries in the 17th century, there were already quite a few fairly large manufactories, where hired workers worked and there was a division of labor. Despite the importance of these industries, they, however, had not yet become the main ones in the English economy at that time.

The most widespread industry in England was textiles, especially the production of woolen fabrics. It existed to a greater or lesser extent in all counties. Many counties specialized in the production of one or two types of material. The wool industry was most widespread in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, Devonshire, the West Riding (Yorkshire) and eastern England, where sheep breeding was highly developed.

The flax industry developed mainly in Ireland, where there were climatic conditions suitable for growing flax.

In the 17th century, the cotton industry appeared, the raw materials for which were brought from the Levant, Smyrna and the island of Cyprus. Manchester became the center of this industry.

There was a significant variety of organizational forms of production in the textile industry. In London and in many old cities, craft guilds with their medieval rules that hampered the free development of industry still remained. In rural areas and in those settlements where there were no workshops, a large number of independent small artisans worked, and in rural areas they, as a rule, combined crafts with agriculture.

But along with workshops and small artisans, a new form of organization of production gradually took shape - manufactory, which was a transitional form from small-scale production of artisans to large-scale capitalist industry. In the 17th century, centralized manufacturing already existed in England. But in most industries, the predominant one was the so-called dispersed manufacturing, associated with the processing at home of raw materials owned by the entrepreneur. Sometimes workers also used the owner's tools. These were already former independent artisans. They essentially turned into hired workers subjected to capitalist exploitation, although in some cases they still retained a tiny piece of land that served as an additional source of livelihood. Manufacture workers were recruited from among the landless and ruined peasants.

A very important moment in the history of the decomposition of English feudalism was the penetration of capitalist relations into agriculture. English agriculture developed in close interaction with the development of capitalism in other areas of the national economy - in industry, trade, and maritime affairs.

The English village turned out to be very early connected with the market - first with the external, and then increasingly with the internal. Enormous amounts of wool were exported from England to the continent of Europe back in the 11th - 12th centuries. and especially from the XIII - XIV centuries. The growing demand for English wool in foreign and domestic markets led to the extraordinary development of sheep breeding in England. And this, in turn, was the impetus for the beginning of the famous “enclosures” (the forced removal of peasants from the land by feudal lords) in the 15th, 16th and first half of the 17th centuries. Mass breeding of sheep and the transformation of arable land into pasture entailed major socio-economic consequences. Enclosures were the main method of so-called primitive accumulation, carried out in the English countryside by the landowning class in the most brutal forms of open violent exploitation of the masses. A feature of the 17th century enclosures. was that their motive was no longer so much sheep breeding as the development of intensive agriculture. The immediate result of enclosures was the separation of the mass of producers, peasants, from their main means of production, i.e. from the earth.

In an English village in the 16th - 17th centuries. capitalist farming developed, which was economically analogous to manufacturing in industry. The farmer-entrepreneur exploited agricultural workers from the village poor on a large scale. However, the central figure of the village of the Stuart period was not yet large farmers - tenants of other people's land, and not landless cottagers - rural farm laborers, but the numerically predominant yeomen - independent tillers, owners of hereditary allotments.

The peasant population (yeomen) experienced a process of property and legal stratification and were to a greater or lesser extent from the landowners. The wealthiest peasants, who approached the position of full owners of the land, were called freeholders (free holders). In the south-eastern part of the country they made up about a third of the peasantry, and in the north-west there were much fewer of them. The bulk of the peasants were represented by the so-called copyholders (holders by copy, or by agreement), who were in a much worse position. Some of them were considered eternal hereditary holders of the land, but usually landowners tended to view this holding as temporary and short-term. Short-term holders were called lessees or leaseholders. Copyholders were obliged to pay the landowner a constant cash rent, but when the allotment was transferred to a new holder by inheritance or as a result of purchase and sale, the landowners increased the rent. Heavy exactions were fains - special payments to the landowner when the allotment passed into other hands, as well as posthumous contributions (heriots). Landlords collected taxes for the use of pastures, forests, mills, etc. In the north-west of the country, rent in kind and corvee work were often preserved. The copyholder answered before the landowner's court in minor cases that were not within the jurisdiction of the special judicial authorities.

The poorest part of the village consisted of landless farm laborers, day laborers, apprentices and workers in village workshops who had only their own hut or cottage - they were called kotters. Among the rural poor, the desire for equalization of property and hostility towards rich landowners intensified.

Thus, England in the 16th century and in the first half of the 17th century became a major economically developed power with highly developed industry and a capitalist form of production. “Having built a strong navy, the British were able to participate in the Great Geographical Discoveries and in the seizure of many overseas territories. In 1588, they defeated the fleet of their main rival in colonial conquests, Spain. England's colonial possessions expanded. The merchants and the growing bourgeoisie profited from their robbery, and the new nobility profited from the “enclosure” that was taking place. The economic power of the country was actually concentrated in the hands of these sections of the population, and they began to strive through parliament (the House of Commons) to direct public policy in their own interests.”

The alignment of social forces on the eve of the revolution. Social preconditions.

The political and economic appearance of society in pre-revolutionary England was determined, as mentioned above, by the simultaneous presence of two economic structures: the new - capitalist and the old - feudal. The leading role belonged to the capitalist structure. England, as already noted, moved much faster along the capitalist path than other European countries, and the peculiarity of the development of this country was that the active disruption of the medieval economic structure began in the countryside much earlier than in the city, and proceeded along a truly revolutionary path . English agriculture, much earlier than industrial agriculture, became a profitable object of profitable investment of capital, a sphere of capitalist type of management.

The beginning of the agrarian revolution in the English countryside provided industry with the necessary raw materials and simultaneously pushed out a mass of “surplus population”, which could be used by capitalist industry in various types of home and concentrated manufacturing production.

For these reasons, it was the English countryside that became the center of social conflict. In the English countryside, two processes took place in a class form - the dispossession of the peasantry and the formation of a class of capitalist tenants. The dispossession of peasants, largely caused by the notorious enclosures of common lands, went so far that many villages disappeared and thousands of peasants became vagabonds. It was at this time that there was a rise in the movement of the peasantry and the urban poor. The immediate cause for protests by the peasantry was given by one or another oppression (most often fencing or deprivation of peasants from communal swampy pastures under the pretext of draining the swamps). The real reasons for the rise of the peasant movement lay deeper. The peasantry strove for the elimination of feudal rent, for a radical agrarian reform that would transform the unsecured feudal land holding of the peasants into their complete “free” property.

Scattered protests by peasants were an almost constant occurrence. At the same time, in the first decades of the 17th century. “Riots” of the urban plebeians broke out from time to time in various cities. All these popular unrest, of course, were not yet the beginning of the revolution. But they undermined the existing “order” and created among the bourgeois leaders the feeling that if only they gave an impetus, the forces necessary for victory would be set in motion throughout the country. This is what happened in the 40s. Engels, speaking about the revolutionary uprising in England, points out: “The urban bourgeoisie gave it the first impetus, and the middle peasantry of the rural districts, the yeomanry, led it to victory. An original phenomenon: in all three great bourgeois revolutions, the fighting army is the peasants; and it is the peasants who turn out to be the class which, after winning a victory, is inevitably ruined by the economic consequences of these victories... Thanks to the intervention of this yeomanry and the plebeian element of the cities, the struggle was brought to the last decisive end, and Charles I landed on the scaffold. In order for the bourgeoisie to get at least those fruits of victory that were then already quite ripe for harvesting, it was necessary to carry the revolution much further than such a goal.”

Thus, in the course of the English bourgeois revolution, rather complex and contradictory relationships between the bourgeoisie and the peasant-plebeian masses were inevitably to be revealed. An alliance with this mass, capable of leading to victory, could not at the same time not frighten the bourgeoisie, since it was fraught with the danger of excessive activation of the masses. The English bourgeoisie, therefore, in practice only used the movement of the masses, but did not enter into an alliance with them; All the time she never ceased to be afraid of overly shaking and shaking the old state machine that curbed the masses.

For a long time, the feudal-absolutist state skillfully used these fluctuations of the bourgeoisie. Throughout the 16th century. During the Tudor dynasty, it made partial concessions to the bourgeoisie, provided it with economic protection and thereby separated it from a possible alliance with those who were silently bubbling in the 16th century. peasant-plebeian revolutionary forces.

The main social support of absolutism was the nobility. But the peculiarity of the social structure of England in the 16th-17th centuries. was that the English nobility itself, in some part, underwent a capitalist degeneration, approaching in its socio-economic appearance more and more to the bourgeoisie.

Absolutism, which hampered the development of capitalism, could not solve the problem of jobs for the huge mass of peasants who had become unemployed. The government's activities boiled down to the adoption of legislation against vagrants and able-bodied beggars, providing for punishment and forced labor, and the creation of a system of “relief to the poor.” Nine-tenths of the population of England were persons deprived of the right to participate in the elections of members of parliament. Only one tenth of the male population were gentlemen, burghers, and wealthy peasants who had access to management.

The most remarkable feature of the social structure of England in the pre-revolutionary period is the split of the noble class into two social classes, largely antagonistic - the old and the new (bourgeois) nobility. About the English nobility, Marx wrote: “This class of large landowners, associated with the bourgeoisie... was... not in contradiction, but, on the contrary, in complete agreement with the conditions of existence of the bourgeoisie.” Gentry (small nobility), being nobles by class status, were bourgeois by economic structure. The history of industry and trade in England in the pre-revolutionary period was largely created by representatives of the new nobility. This feature gave the revolution of the 40s. XVII century historical originality predetermined both its character and the final result.

So, various sections of the population were drawn into the social conflict between feudal England and bourgeois England.

Puritanism - the ideology of revolution

One of the most important features of the English revolution of the 17th century. is a kind of ideological formulation of its social, class and political goals. The role of the rebels’ combat theory was played by the ideology of the Reformation in the form of Puritanism, i.e. the struggle for the “purification” of the faith, which performed an ideological function in the process of mobilizing the forces of the revolution.

Puritanism as a religious movement arose long before the revolutionary situation in the country, but in the 20-30s of the 17th century. turned into the ideology of a broad anti-absolutist opposition. The most important consequence of this movement was the spread of awareness among large sections of society of the urgent need for change both in the church and in the state.

The opposition against absolutism developed in England precisely under the religious leadership of Puritanism. The reformation teachings of the 16th century created fertile ground for the ideology of the English bourgeois revolution. This ideology was Calvinism, the dogmas and church-political principles of which, even during the Reformation, served as the basis for the organization of the church in Switzerland, Scotland and Holland and were the beginning of the revolution of 1566 in the Netherlands.

Calvinism in the 16th - 17th centuries. became the ideology of the boldest part of the then bourgeoisie and fully met the needs of the fight against absolutism and the English Church in England. Puritanism in England was a form of Calvinism. The Puritans rejected the doctrine of "grace", the need for the episcopate and the subordination of the church to the king. They demanded the independence of the church from royal power, collegial management of church affairs, and the banishment of “idolatry,” i.e. magnificent rituals, painted windows, worship of icons, rejected altars and utensils used in English churches during worship. They wanted the introduction of free oral preaching, the cheapening and simplification of religion, the abolition of the episcopate, and held services in private homes, accompanying them with accusatory sermons against the luxury and depravity of the court and aristocracy.

Hard work, thrift and avarice were glorified by the Puritans in full accordance with the spirit of enrichment and hoarding characteristic of the young English bourgeoisie. The Puritans were characterized by preaching worldly asceticism and secular entertainment. These features of puritanism, which turned into hypocrisy, clearly expressed the protest of the English middle nobility and the royal court.

During the revolution, Puritanism underwent a split. Among the Puritans, various movements arose that met the interests of various layers and classes of society that were in opposition to absolutism and the English church. The moderate trend among the Puritans was represented by the so-called Presbyterians, who advocated the Presbyterian structure of the church. The Presbyterians wanted to maintain a single church in England with the same worship, but they demanded the cleansing of the church from the vestiges of Catholicism, or papism, and the replacement of bishops by assemblies of elders, or presbyters, elected by believers. They sought the independence of the church from the king. The Presbyterians found their supporters among the wealthy merchants and the top of the new nobility, who hoped, with such a structure of the church, to seize the governing influence on it into their own hands.

A more radical trend among the Puritans were the Independents, or “independents,” who stood for the abolition of any single church with obligatory texts of prayers and dogmas. They advocated complete independence in religious affairs for each religious community, i.e. for the disintegration of a single church into a number of independent communities and sects. This movement was successful among the middle and petty bourgeoisie, peasants, artisans and middle-class village gentry. An analysis of Puritanism shows that its essence was bourgeois, i.e. that it was only a religious shell of bourgeois class demands.

Presbyterianism, uniting the large bourgeois and landed aristocracy, preached the idea of ​​a constitutional monarchy. Independentism found supporters in the ranks of the middle and petty bourgeoisie. Generally agreeing with the idea of ​​a constitutional monarchy, the independents at the same time demanded a redistribution of electoral districts, which would allow them to increase the number of their representatives in parliament, as well as the recognition of such rights as freedom of conscience, speech, etc. for a free person. The most radical movement of the Levellers united artisans and free peasants who demanded the establishment of a republic and equal rights for all citizens.

Conclusion

Gradually, in economic and political life, the absolutism of the Stuarts and the feudal order protected by it became the main obstacle to the development of capitalist relations in the country. The conflict between the growth of the productive forces of the new, capitalist structure, on the one hand, and the old, feudal relations of production, together with their political superstructure in the form of absolutism, on the other, was the main reason for the maturation of the bourgeois revolution in England. This root cause of the revolution should not be confused with the revolutionary situation, i.e. a set of circumstances directly leading to the beginning of the revolution.

A revolutionary situation arose in England in the late 30s and early 40s of the 17th century, when illegal taxes and other restrictions led to a delay in the development of trade and industry and a sharp deterioration in the situation of the people. The mediation of monopolistic merchants interfered with the sale of cloth and increased their prices. Many thousands of pieces of cloth did not find buyers. A large number of apprentices and workers were fired and lost their income. The aggravation of the needs and misfortunes of the working people was combined with the critical situation of the ruling elite. The king and his court were in the grip of a financial crisis: in 1637, a rebellion broke out against the king in Scotland, where Charles I wanted to establish an absolute monarchy and the Episcopal Church; the war with Scotland required large expenses; a large deficit formed in the treasury, and the king was faced with the need to convene parliament to approve new loans and taxes.

Parliament opened on April 13, 1640, but on May 6 the king dissolved it without achieving anything. This parliament went down in history as the Short Parliament. Its dispersal gave a new impetus to the struggle of the masses, the bourgeoisie and the new nobility against absolutism.

IN AND. Lenin noted that in any revolutionary situation there are necessarily 3 signs: a crisis of the “tops”, or the inability for them to govern in the old way, a significant increase in the misfortunes of the masses and events that cause an increase in their political activity. All these signs of a revolutionary situation arose and were evident in England in the early 40s of the 17th century. The political situation in the country has become extremely tense.

Bibliography

1. Tatarinova K.I. "Essays on the history of England" M., 1958

2. Polskaya N.M. "Great Britain" M., 1986

3. New history, ed. V.V. Biryukovich, M., 1951

4. History of the world economy, ed. G.B. Polyak, A.N. Markova, M., 2004

5. Barg M.A. Cromwell and his time. - M., 1950

6. New history, Part 1, ed. A.L. Narochnitsky, M., 1972

Socio-economic: England is an agricultural country by type of economy. 4/5 of the population lived in villages and were engaged in agriculture. Nevertheless, industry appears, with cloth making moving into first place. New capitalist relations are developing => exacerbation of new class divisions. Changes are taking place in the village (fencing, landlessness of peasants => 3 types of peasants: 1) freeholders (free peasants), 2) copyholders (hereditary tenants of landowners' lands, performing a number of duties).

3) agricultural workers - the proletariat (the majority) were deprived of the basic means of subsistence and were forced to go to the city in search of work. The nobility is divided into 2 types: new (gentry) and old (lives off quitrents from the peasant class).

56. Prerequisites for the bourgeois revolution in England (economic, political, ideological).

E. Prerequisites England, earlier than other European countries, embarked on the capitalist path of development. Here the classic version of the establishment of bourgeois relations was realized, which allowed England to seize world economic leadership at the end of the 17th-18th centuries. The main role in this was played by the fact that the field of development of English capitalism was not only the city, but also the countryside. The village in other countries was a stronghold of feudalism and traditionalism, but in England, on the contrary, it became the basis for the development of the most important industry of the 17th-18th centuries - clothmaking. Capitalist relations of production began to penetrate the English countryside as early as the 16th century. They manifested themselves in the fact that, 1) most of the nobility began to engage in entrepreneurial activities, creating sheep farms and turning into a new bourgeois nobility - the gentry. 2) in an effort to increase income, the feudal lords turned arable lands into profitable pastures for livestock, drove the holders from them - peasants (fenced them out) and thereby created an army of paupers - people who had no choice but to become civilian workers. The development of the capitalist system in England led to the aggravation of class contradictions and the division of the country into supporters and opponents of the feudal-absolutist system. All bourgeois elements opposed absolutism: the new nobility (gentry), who sought to become full owners of the land, abolishing knighthood and accelerating the process of enclosure; the bourgeoisie itself (merchants, financiers, industrial merchants, etc.), who wanted to limit royal power and force it to serve the interests of the capitalist development of the country. But the opposition drew its main strength from dissatisfaction with its position among broad sections of the population and, above all, the rural and urban poor. The defenders of feudal foundations remained a significant part of the nobles (the old nobility) and the highest aristocracy, who received their income from the collection of old feudal rents, and the guarantor of their preservation was the royal power and the Anglican Church. I. prerequisites and socio-political aspirations of the opposition. And the prerequisite for the first bourgeois revolutions in Europe was the Reformation, which gave rise to a new model of consciousness based on individualism, practicality and enterprise. In the middle of the 16th century, England, having survived the Reformation, became a Protestant country. The Anglican Church was a mixture of Catholicism and Protestantism. 7 sacraments, rites, order of worship and all 3 degrees of the priesthood were withheld from Catholicism; From Protestantism the doctrine of church supremacy of state power, justification by faith, the meaning of Holy Scripture as the only basis of doctrine, worship in the native language, and the abolition of monasticism were taken. The king was declared the head of the church, so the Anglican Church arose during the reign of Henry VIII, who approved the Anglican Catechism ("42 Articles of Faith" and

special missal) speeches against the church meant speeches against royal power. The ideological opposition to absolutism and the Church of England was the same Protestantism, but more extreme. The most consistent supporters of the Reformation are the English Calvinist Puritans

(in Latin "purus" - pure) demanded changes both in the church (cleansing it of the remnants of Catholicism) and in

state. In Puritanism, several movements stood out that were in opposition to absolutism and the Church of England. During the revolution they divided into independent political groups. The moderate stream of Puritans are the Prosbyterians (the top of the new nobility and the wealthy merchants). They believed that the church should not be ruled by a king, but by a meeting of priests - elders (as in Scotland). In the public sphere, they also sought the subordination of royal power to parliament. More to the left was the movement of the Independents (the middle bourgeoisie and the new nobility). In the religious sphere, they advocated the independence of each religious community, and in the state sphere, they wanted the establishment of a constitutional monarchy and demanded a redistribution of voting rights in order to increase the number of their voters in the House of Commons. A radical religious and political group were the Levellers (artisans and free peasants). The Levellers advocated the declaration of a republic and the introduction of universal male suffrage. Even further went the diggers (diggers), (urban and rural poor). They demanded the elimination of private property and wealth inequality. P. prerequisites for the revolution. After the death of Elizabeth I, the English throne passed to her relative - the Scottish king, who was crowned in 1603 under the name of James Stuart, King of England. Leaving the Scottish crown behind him, Jacob moved to London. The leader of the Levellers was John Lilburne. The Levellers believed that if everyone is equal before God, then in life the differences between people should be eliminated by establishing equality of rights. The Diggers got their name because in April 1649 they began jointly cultivating the land on a wasteland hill 30 miles from London. Their leader Gerald Winstanley said: “The earth was created so that all the sons and daughters of the human race could freely use it,” “The earth was created to be the common property of all who live on it.” The first representative of the Stuart dynasty was obsessed with the idea of ​​​​the divine origin of royal power and the need to completely abolish the power of parliament. The course towards strengthening absolutism was continued during the reign of his son, Charles I. The first Stuarts, without the sanction of parliament, regularly introduced new taxes, which did not suit the majority of the population. Two commissions continued to operate in the country: the “Star Chamber”, which dealt with issues of state security, and in fact the persecution of those who dared to speak out against the lawlessness that was happening, and the “High Commission”,

performed the functions of the court inquisition over the Puritans. In 1628, parliament presented the king with a “Petition of Rights”, which contained a number of demands: - not to levy taxes without the general consent of the act of parliament (Article 10); - not to make arrests contrary to the customs of the kingdom (Article 2); - stop the practice of military billets among the population, etc. (Article 6). After some hesitation, the king signed the petition. However, the expected reconciliation did not occur. In 1629, parliament's refusal to approve new royal taxes provoked the anger of Charles I and the dissolution of parliament. Non-parliamentary rule continued until 1640, when, as a result of an unsuccessful war with Scotland, a financial crisis occurred in the country. In search of a way out, Charles I convened a parliament called the “Short” Parliament. By refusing to immediately discuss the issue of financial

subsidies, it was disbanded without even working for a month. The dispersal of parliament gave a decisive impetus to the struggle of the popular masses, the bourgeoisie and the new nobility against absolutism. Thus, in England by the middle of the 17th century. The economic, ideological and political prerequisites for the bourgeois revolution took shape. The country's socio-economic development came into conflict with a more stagnant political system. The situation was aggravated by a severe financial crisis, which caused in the early 40s of the 17th century. revolutionary situation in the country.

Introduction

In the last centuries of the Middle Ages, new productive forces and corresponding new economic relations—capitalist relations—developed in the depths of feudal society. The old feudal relations of production and the political dominance of the nobility delayed the development of the new social system. The political system of Europe at the end of the Middle Ages had a feudal-absolutist character in most European countries. A strong centralized state was an instrument of the feudal nobles to protect the feudal order, to curb and suppress the working masses of the countryside and city who fought against feudal oppression. The elimination of old feudal economic relations and old feudal-absolutist political forms, which hindered the further growth of capitalism, could only be achieved through revolutionary means. The transition of European society from feudalism to capitalism was carried out mainly as a result of the English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century.

English revolution of the 17th century. the first proclaimed the principles of bourgeois society and state and established the bourgeois system in one of the largest countries in Europe. It was prepared by the entire previous development of Europe and occurred simultaneously with serious socio-political upheavals in France, Italy, Germany, Poland, and Russia. The English Revolution evoked numerous ideological responses in Europe back in the 17th century.

Thus, the English revolution of the 17th century. can be seen as the line between the Middle Ages and modern times. It marked the beginning of a new era and made irreversible the process of formation of bourgeois socio-political orders not only in England, but also in Europe as a whole.

Features of the economic development of England on the eve of the revolution. Economic prerequisites.

On the eve of the revolution, England was an agrarian country. Of its 4.5 million population, about 75% were rural residents. But this did not mean that there was no industry in England. The metallurgical, coal and textile industries had already achieved significant development at this time, and it was in the industrial sphere, especially in the textile industry, that the features of the new capitalist structure most clearly manifested themselves.

New technical inventions and improvements, and most importantly, new forms of organization of industrial labor and production clearly indicated that English industry was increasingly imbued with capitalist tendencies and the spirit of commerce.

England had quite large reserves of iron ore. Gloucestershire was especially rich in ore. Ore processing was carried out mainly in the counties of Cheshire, Sussex, Heryfordshire, Yorkshire, and Somersetshire. Copper ore was mined and processed on a significant scale. England also had large coal reserves, mainly in the county of Northumberland. Coal had not yet been used as fuel in metallurgy, but was widely used in everyday life (especially in London). The need for coal both for domestic consumption and for export abroad was very great.

In both the metallurgical and stone industries in the 17th century, there were already quite a few fairly large manufactories, where hired workers worked and there was a division of labor. Despite the importance of these industries, they, however, had not yet become the main ones in the English economy at that time.

The most widespread industry in England was textiles, especially the production of woolen fabrics. It existed to a greater or lesser extent in all counties. Many counties specialized in the production of one or two types of material. The wool industry was most widespread in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, Devonshire, the West Riding (Yorkshire) and eastern England, where sheep breeding was highly developed.

The flax industry developed mainly in Ireland, where there were climatic conditions suitable for growing flax.

In the 17th century, the cotton industry appeared, the raw materials for which were brought from the Levant, Smyrna and the island of Cyprus. Manchester became the center of this industry.

There was a significant variety of organizational forms of production in the textile industry. In London and in many old cities, craft guilds with their medieval rules that hampered the free development of industry still remained. In rural areas and in those settlements where there were no workshops, a large number of independent small artisans worked, and in rural areas they, as a rule, combined crafts with agriculture.

But along with workshops and small artisans, a new form of organization of production gradually took shape - manufactory, which was a transitional form from small-scale production of artisans to large-scale capitalist industry. In the 17th century, centralized manufacturing already existed in England. But in most industries, the predominant one was the so-called dispersed manufacturing, associated with the processing at home of raw materials owned by the entrepreneur. Sometimes workers also used the owner's tools. These were already former independent artisans. They essentially turned into hired workers subjected to capitalist exploitation, although in some cases they still retained a tiny piece of land that served as an additional source of livelihood. Manufacture workers were recruited from among the landless and ruined peasants.

A very important moment in the history of the decomposition of English feudalism was the penetration of capitalist relations into agriculture. English agriculture developed in close interaction with the development of capitalism in other areas of the national economy - in industry, trade, and maritime affairs.

The English village turned out to be very early connected with the market - first with the external, and then increasingly with the internal. Enormous amounts of wool were exported from England to the continent of Europe back in the 11th - 12th centuries. and especially from the XIII - XIV centuries. The growing demand for English wool in foreign and domestic markets led to the extraordinary development of sheep breeding in England. And this, in turn, was the impetus for the beginning of the famous “enclosures” (the forced removal of peasants from the land by feudal lords) in the 15th, 16th and first half of the 17th centuries. Mass breeding of sheep and the transformation of arable land into pasture entailed major socio-economic consequences. Enclosures were the main method of so-called primitive accumulation, carried out in the English countryside by the landowning class in the most brutal forms of open violent exploitation of the masses. A feature of the 17th century enclosures. was that their motive was no longer so much sheep breeding as the development of intensive agriculture. The immediate result of enclosures was the separation of the mass of producers, peasants, from their main means of production, i.e. from the earth.

In an English village in the 16th - 17th centuries. capitalist farming developed, which was economically analogous to manufacturing in industry. The farmer-entrepreneur exploited agricultural workers from the village poor on a large scale. However, the central figure of the village of the Stuart period was not yet large farmers - tenants of other people's land, and not landless cottagers - rural farm laborers, but the numerically predominant yeomen - independent tillers, owners of hereditary allotments.

The peasant population (yeomen) experienced a process of property and legal stratification and were to a greater or lesser extent from the landowners. The wealthiest peasants, who approached the position of full owners of the land, were called freeholders (free holders). In the south-eastern part of the country they made up about a third of the peasantry, and in the north-west there were much fewer of them. The bulk of the peasants were represented by the so-called copyholders (holders by copy, or by agreement), who were in a much worse position. Some of them were considered eternal hereditary holders of the land, but usually landowners tended to view this holding as temporary and short-term. Short-term holders were called lessees or leaseholders. Copyholders were obliged to pay the landowner a constant cash rent, but when the allotment was transferred to a new holder by inheritance or as a result of purchase and sale, the landowners increased the rent. Heavy exactions were fains - special payments to the landowner when the allotment passed into other hands, as well as posthumous contributions (heriots). Landlords collected taxes for the use of pastures, forests, mills, etc. In the north-west of the country, rent in kind and corvee work were often preserved. The copyholder answered before the landowner's court in minor cases that were not within the jurisdiction of the special judicial authorities.

The poorest part of the village consisted of landless farm laborers, day laborers, apprentices and workers in village workshops who had only their own hut or cottage - they were called kotters. Among the rural poor, the desire for equalization of property and hostility towards rich landowners intensified.

Thus, England in the 16th century and in the first half of the 17th century became a major economically developed power with highly developed industry and a capitalist form of production. “Having built a strong navy, the British were able to participate in the Great Geographical Discoveries and in the seizure of many overseas territories. In 1588, they defeated the fleet of their main rival in colonial conquests, Spain. The colonial possessions of England expanded. The merchants and the growing bourgeoisie profited from their robbery, and on the "enclosure" that was taking place - the new nobility. The economic power of the country was actually concentrated in the hands of these sections of the population, and they began to strive through parliament (the House of Commons) to direct public policy in their own interests."

The alignment of social forces on the eve of the revolution. Social preconditions.

The political and economic appearance of society in pre-revolutionary England was determined, as mentioned above, by the simultaneous presence of two economic structures: the new - capitalist and the old - feudal. The leading role belonged to the capitalist structure. England, as already noted, moved much faster along the capitalist path than other European countries, and the peculiarity of the development of this country was that the active disruption of the medieval economic structure began in the countryside much earlier than in the city, and proceeded along a truly revolutionary path . English agriculture, much earlier than industrial agriculture, became a profitable object of profitable investment of capital, a sphere of capitalist type of management.

The beginning of the agrarian revolution in the English countryside provided industry with the necessary raw materials and simultaneously pushed out a mass of “surplus population”, which could be used by capitalist industry in various types of home and concentrated manufacturing production.

For these reasons, it was the English countryside that became the center of social conflict. In the English countryside, two processes took place in a class form - the dispossession of the peasantry and the formation of a class of capitalist tenants. The dispossession of peasants, largely caused by the notorious enclosures of common lands, went so far that many villages disappeared and thousands of peasants became vagabonds. It was at this time that there was a rise in the movement of the peasantry and the urban poor. The immediate cause for protests by the peasantry was given by one or another oppression (most often fencing or deprivation of peasants from communal swampy pastures under the pretext of draining the swamps). The real reasons for the rise of the peasant movement lay deeper. The peasantry strove for the elimination of feudal rent, for a radical agrarian reform that would transform the unsecured feudal land holding of the peasants into their complete “free” property.

Scattered protests by peasants were an almost constant occurrence. At the same time, in the first decades of the 17th century. in various cities, “riots” of the urban plebeians broke out from time to time. All these popular unrest, of course, were not yet the beginning of the revolution. But they shook the existing “order” and created among the bourgeois leaders the feeling that if only they gave an impetus, the forces necessary for victory would set in motion throughout the country. This is what happened in the 40s. Engels, speaking about the revolutionary uprising in England, points out: “The urban bourgeoisie gave it the first impetus, and the middle peasantry of the rural districts, the yeomanry, led it to victory. An original phenomenon: in all three great bourgeois revolutions the fighting army is the peasants; and it is the peasants who turn out to be the class that, after winning a victory, is inevitably ruined due to the economic consequences of these victories... Thanks to the intervention of this yeomanry and the plebeian element of the cities, the struggle was brought to the last decisive end, and Charles I landed on the scaffold. In order that the bourgeoisie could get at least Only those fruits of victory, which were then already quite ripe for harvest, were necessary to bring the revolution much further than such a goal."

Thus, in the course of the English bourgeois revolution, rather complex and contradictory relationships between the bourgeoisie and the peasant-plebeian masses were inevitably to be revealed. An alliance with this mass, capable of leading to victory, could not at the same time not frighten the bourgeoisie, since it was fraught with the danger of excessive activation of the masses. The English bourgeoisie, therefore, in practice only used the movement of the masses, but did not enter into an alliance with them; All the time she never ceased to be afraid of overly shaking and shaking the old state machine that curbed the masses.

For a long time, the feudal-absolutist state skillfully used these fluctuations of the bourgeoisie. Throughout the 16th century. During the Tudor dynasty, it made partial concessions to the bourgeoisie, provided it with economic protection and thereby separated it from a possible alliance with those who were silently bubbling in the 16th century. peasant-plebeian revolutionary forces.

The main social support of absolutism was the nobility. But the peculiarity of the social structure of England in the 16th-17th centuries. was that the English nobility itself, in some part, underwent a capitalist degeneration, approaching in its socio-economic appearance more and more to the bourgeoisie.

Absolutism, which hampered the development of capitalism, could not solve the problem of jobs for the huge mass of peasants who had become unemployed. The government's activities boiled down to the adoption of legislation against vagrants and able-bodied beggars, providing for punishment and forced labor, and the creation of a system of "relief to the poor." Nine-tenths of the population of England were persons deprived of the right to participate in the elections of members of parliament. Only one tenth of the male population were gentlemen, burghers, and wealthy peasants who had access to management.

The most remarkable feature of the social structure of England in the pre-revolutionary period is the split of the noble class into two social classes, largely antagonistic - the old and the new (bourgeois) nobility. About the English nobility, Marx wrote: “This class of large landowners, associated with the bourgeoisie... was... not in contradiction, but, on the contrary, in complete agreement with the conditions of existence of the bourgeoisie.” Gentry (small nobility), being nobles by class status, were bourgeois by economic structure. The history of industry and trade in England in the pre-revolutionary period was largely created by representatives of the new nobility. This feature gave the revolution of the 40s. XVII century historical originality predetermined both its character and the final result.

So, various sections of the population were drawn into the social conflict between feudal England and bourgeois England.

Puritanism - the ideology of revolution

One of the most important features of the English revolution of the 17th century. is a kind of ideological formulation of its social, class and political goals. The role of the rebels’ combat theory was played by the ideology of the Reformation in the form of Puritanism, i.e. the struggle for the “purification” of faith, which performed an ideological function in the process of mobilizing the forces of the revolution.

Puritanism as a religious movement arose long before the revolutionary situation in the country, but in the 20-30s of the 17th century. turned into the ideology of a broad anti-absolutist opposition. The most important consequence of this movement was the spread of awareness among large sections of society of the urgent need for change both in the church and in the state.

The opposition against absolutism developed in England precisely under the religious leadership of Puritanism. The reformation teachings of the 16th century created fertile ground for the ideology of the English bourgeois revolution. This ideology was Calvinism, the dogmas and church-political principles of which, even during the Reformation, served as the basis for the organization of the church in Switzerland, Scotland and Holland and were the beginning of the revolution of 1566 in the Netherlands.

Calvinism in the 16th - 17th centuries. became the ideology of the boldest part of the then bourgeoisie and fully met the needs of the fight against absolutism and the English Church in England. Puritanism in England was a form of Calvinism. The Puritans rejected the doctrine of "grace", the need for episcopacy and the subordination of the church to the king. They demanded the independence of the church from royal power, collegial management of church affairs, and the banishment of “idolatry,” i.e. magnificent rituals, painted windows, worship of icons, rejected altars and utensils used in English churches during worship. They wanted the introduction of free oral preaching, the cheapening and simplification of religion, the abolition of the episcopate, and held services in private homes, accompanying them with accusatory sermons against the luxury and depravity of the court and aristocracy.

Hard work, thrift and avarice were glorified by the Puritans in full accordance with the spirit of enrichment and hoarding characteristic of the young English bourgeoisie. The Puritans were characterized by preaching worldly asceticism and secular entertainment. These features of puritanism, which turned into hypocrisy, clearly expressed the protest of the English middle nobility and the royal court.

During the revolution, Puritanism underwent a split. Among the Puritans, various movements arose that met the interests of various layers and classes of society that were in opposition to absolutism and the English church. The moderate trend among the Puritans was represented by the so-called Presbyterians, who advocated the Presbyterian structure of the church. The Presbyterians wanted to maintain a single church in England with the same worship, but they demanded the cleansing of the church from the vestiges of Catholicism, or papism, and the replacement of bishops by assemblies of elders, or presbyters, elected by believers. They sought the independence of the church from the king. The Presbyterians found their supporters among the wealthy merchants and the top of the new nobility, who hoped, with such a structure of the church, to seize the governing influence on it into their own hands.

A more radical trend among the Puritans were the Independents, or “independents,” who stood for the abolition of any single church with obligatory texts of prayers and dogmas. They advocated complete independence in religious affairs for each religious community, i.e. for the disintegration of a single church into a number of independent communities and sects. This movement was successful among the middle and petty bourgeoisie, peasants, artisans and middle-class village gentry. An analysis of Puritanism shows that its essence was bourgeois, i.e. that it was only a religious shell of bourgeois class demands.

Presbyterianism, uniting the large bourgeois and landed aristocracy, preached the idea of ​​a constitutional monarchy. Independentism found supporters in the ranks of the middle and petty bourgeoisie. Generally agreeing with the idea of ​​a constitutional monarchy, the independents at the same time demanded a redistribution of electoral districts, which would allow them to increase the number of their representatives in parliament, as well as the recognition of such rights as freedom of conscience, speech, etc. for a free person. The most radical movement of the Levellers united artisans and free peasants who demanded the establishment of a republic and equal rights for all citizens.

Conclusion

Gradually, in economic and political life, the absolutism of the Stuarts and the feudal order protected by it became the main obstacle to the development of capitalist relations in the country. The conflict between the growth of the productive forces of the new, capitalist structure, on the one hand, and the old, feudal relations of production, together with their political superstructure in the form of absolutism, on the other, was the main reason for the maturation of the bourgeois revolution in England. This root cause of the revolution should not be confused with the revolutionary situation, i.e. a set of circumstances directly leading to the beginning of the revolution.

A revolutionary situation arose in England in the late 30s and early 40s of the 17th century, when illegal taxes and other restrictions led to a delay in the development of trade and industry and a sharp deterioration in the situation of the people. The mediation of monopolistic merchants interfered with the sale of cloth and increased their prices. Many thousands of pieces of cloth did not find buyers. A large number of apprentices and workers were fired and lost their income. The aggravation of the needs and misfortunes of the working people was combined with the critical situation of the ruling elite. The king and his court were in the grip of a financial crisis: in 1637, a rebellion broke out against the king in Scotland, where Charles I wanted to establish an absolute monarchy and the Episcopal Church; the war with Scotland required large expenses; a large deficit formed in the treasury, and the king was faced with the need to convene parliament to approve new loans and taxes.

Parliament opened on April 13, 1640, but on May 6 the king dissolved it without achieving anything. This parliament went down in history as the Short Parliament. Its dispersal gave a new impetus to the struggle of the masses, the bourgeoisie and the new nobility against absolutism.

IN AND. Lenin noted that in any revolutionary situation there are necessarily 3 signs: a crisis of the “tops”, or the inability for them to govern in the old way, a significant increase in the misfortunes of the masses and events that cause an increase in their political activity. All these signs of a revolutionary situation arose and were evident in England in the early 40s of the 17th century. The political situation in the country has become extremely tense.

Bibliography

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2. Polskaya N.M. "Great Britain" M., 1986

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4. History of the world economy, ed. G.B. Polyak, A.N. Markova, M., 2004

5. Barg M.A. Cromwell and his time. - M., 1950

6. New history, Ch. 1, ed. A.L. Narochnitsky, M., 1972

To prepare this work, materials from the site http://minisoft.net.ru/ were used