Maypoles

Conrad Russell

• The Restoration: A Political and Religious History of England and Wales 1658-1667 by Ronald Hutton
  Oxford, 379 pp, £17.50, June 1985, ISBN 0 19 822698 5

During the years 1659-60, England enjoyed (if that is the right word) more constitutions than in the whole of the remaining eleven hundred and more years of its history as a united country. In an age when historians looking for subjects are almost as thick on the ground as subjects looking for historians, the most remarkable fact about this book is that it remained to be written. Dr Hutton was justified in complaining that hitherto the history of the ‘English Revolution’ has read like ‘a marvellous story with the last chapter missing’. This is so no longer, but what does it tell us about ourselves that we have allowed the concept of ‘revolution’ (itself a French import) to excite us so much that we do not attempt to study other events in proportion? And could it be that our indifference to the rather anti-climactic ending of the story has led us to make bigger statements about the fundamental importance of the ‘English Revolution’ as a watershed in historical development than the events themselves will warrant?