The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt: 1555-1590.

Elizabeth Skerpan's The Rhetoric of Politics in the English Revolution is a courageous attempt to discuss political discourse of the seventeenth century in its own terms. She uses rhetorical theory to analyze three crises of the English Revolution - taking sides in 1642, regicide in 1649, the restoration in 1660. All educated Englishmen, she claims, had studied rhetoric (5-7). This approach restricts her choice of political thinkers. Cromwell is mentioned but not Ireton nor any other participant in the Putney Debates. Fast Sermons to Parliament are not discussed. Vane is, not Dell. Lilburne, Walwyn and Overton are mentioned but not discussed. Nayler receives passing mention, Fox and other Quaker leaders none. No Cobbler How, no Tyranipocrit Discovered, no Killing No Murder, no Ranters. Gerrard Winstanley's writing, the author says, "combines and radically alters conventional literary genres to forge a new and truly radical discourse" (201-02, 207). This important insight is not followed up. Yet all of those mentioned helped to form political opinion.

"Classical rhetoric works," she tells us, when there are shared "assumptions about the principles and functions of . . . government and society" (16-17). The political status quo is assumed. There is "no room for stepping outside a political or religious system to question or examine fundamental principles" (16-20). "Between 1642 and 1660 the common language broke down. . . . By 1659 and 1660, monarchists and radicals were formally speaking different languages" (31)

She sees Foxe's Book of Martyrs as the model for early Puritan victims like Batwick, Burton and Prynne. They inherit a discourse in which "suffering confirmed patriotism and noble intentions." Their persecutors are pro-papist, threatening another reign of Bloody Mary. "The Laudian persecutions of 1637 reveal nothing less than a reversal of power through rhetoric" (43, 45, 50-51). Divisions which led to civil war are already present - there are no longer agreed assumptions nor even shared language; it is already a pre-revolutionary situation. When the Long Parliament met, "ominously, this difference in discourse appeared not between two communities - a court party and a group of religious dissenters" - but within Parliament, the "centre of the political nation" (59).

Charles's attempt to arrest the Five Members led MPs to see the King and the state as separate entities. "The King himself owes obedience to God and the law; therefore the King himself may commit treason" (72-73). He is alleged to be the tool of "evil counsellors," a fiction which was kept up when civil war broke out. By 1649 "commonality of language had all but disappeared" (80). Regicide "utterly destroyed the conventions and assumptions governing political discourse" (157), and made the split irreparable.

Another useful insight concerns Eikon Basilike, the tract which united anti-Commonwealth opinion. It "echoes the language of the Parliamentarians of 1642, not Charles I," and attempts to arouse pity for the King by attributing to him "the form of heroism made familiar to English readers through Foxe's Book of Martyrs," on which Laud's victims had drawn. On this basis "monarchist pamphleteers could unite old royalists and their new Parliamentarian allies with a shared political discourse" (chapter 5).

Professor Skerpan would have strengthened her case if she had emphasized John Gauden's authorship of Eikon Basilike - now generally accepted, though he may have incorporated some of the King's papers. Gauden obtained a bishopric at the restoration on the strength of his claim to authorship. In 1648-49 he was not one of Charles's chaplains: such access as he had to the King was with the approval of the Parliamentary authorities: on 5 January i649 Gauden printed "fulsome praise of Parliament."

Gauden was well-suited to reunite moderate Parliamentarians with moderate royalists around the icon of the martyred King, whom he represents as accepting the legislation of 1640-42 - as did Charles 11 in 1660. Pro-restoration pamphleteers appealed to the "natural rulers," the gentry, emphasizing their "lands, properties and estates." "Freedom," Professor Skerpan observes, "means the liberties of the traditional ruling class" together with "freedom to obey for others" (183). While monarchists focused on a king, most radicals looked to a reformed Parliament, yet with little agreement on how it should be reformed. Even if there were agreement, the problem remained of finding an electorate which would vote for it. Unlike monarchists, the radicals were hopelessly divided (235).

The only way to resist pro-monarchist pressures in 1659-60, Professor Skerpan insists, lay in "a sceptical critical mind." On Milton, who possessed such a mind, she writes interestingly; his antimonarchical tracts of this period seem to her much the best. But his viewpoint involved accepting "nothing less than the transformation of society." He and his like "were handicapped . . . through their training in classical rhetoric.... No classical genre can truly be adapted to question the fundamental premises of a society." (chapter 6). Milton "fails to break completely with the rhetorical conventions of his times;" his language effectively isolated him (31, 233).

Those advocating restoration of monarchy employed "a conciliatory tone," adopting the Parliamentary rhetoric of 1642 - to the exclusion of traditional royalists breathing vengeance. To radicals like Milton "liberty means freedom to dissent, to these |moderate' monarchists liberty means freedom from dissent" (182-94).

The technical terminology of rhetoric sometimes makes rough reading for simple laymen. Monarchist rhetoric in 1659-60 "is overwhelmingly epideictic, even as it is applied to what appears to be a deliberative situation." This produces "genetic displacement - the epideictic functions as deliberative rhetoric" (171). But hers is a thought-provoking book.

Professor Van Gelderen's book gives a blow-by-blow account of the evolution of political ideas in the Netherlands before and during the revolt against Spain. He traces the slow evolution of a theory of national independence, showing the influence of Huguenot resistance theory but stressing the independent development of Dutch thought. Specialists will find it useful. Its detailed attention to every minor writer, and the absence of any thinker of more than local significance, may render it of less interest to general historians.

Van Gelderen shows that resistance ideas started from defense of freedom of protestant worship against Spanish intolerance. Then civic issues became uppermost, and emphasis was placed on the liberties, privileges and properties of the Dutch people. These, it was argued, were represented by the provincial States; it was their right of resistance that was justified. At this stage the idea that it was a religious revolt was played down, because of the difficulty of defining the limits of toleration. Resistance by the States removed the danger of uncontrolled popular subversion. (We may compare England!) "Liberties" were never theoretically defined; in practice the States decided, and they - as in England - represented property-owners. But in the Netherlands the latter came to see freedom of conscience (not necessarily of worship) as the essence of liberty, because toleration was necessary to political unity against Spain. There was to be no state church. The 1579 Union of Utrecht insisted that no one was to be persecuted because of his religion. Theory evolved pragmatically. England's radicals might have benefited by stronger external pressures.