Who Framed Charles I? The Forged Commission for the Irish Rebellion of 1641 Revisited

Cunningham, John

doi:10.1093/ehr/ceab001

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…This evidently compromises the prerogative of the monarch when handling Irish policy, in ways that subtly allude to a covert Catholic influence; the imagery of counterfeiting, for example, evokes a form of icon-making which is indicative of idolatry. 26 If Churchill resents the Irish rebels' appropriation of the king's name, then he discerns political opportunism in the English anti-monarchists' reaction to the rebellion, making Ireland a pawn in any future political settlement by establishing a bridgehead in that country. The description of the rebels effecting a "Self-condemnation within themselves" is not too dissimilar to the failure of Scotland to establish a "Democracy" (p. 357) after turning Charles over to the parliamentarians.…”

Section: Irelandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Winston Churchill’s Divi Britannici (1675) and Archipelagic Royalism

Maley¹,

Stacey²

2022

Humanities

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Divi Britannici (1675) is a major restoration history that deserves to be more widely known. The work’s author, Sir Winston Churchill (1620–1688), is certainly less well-known than his celebrated descendant of the same name. Seldom mentioned in discussions of seventeenth-century historiography, Divi Britannici can be read alongside contemporary histories, including John Milton’s History of Britain (1670). If British historians have generally overlooked Divi Britannici then Churchill’s work did come to the notice of Michel Foucault, who recognized its arguments around conquest, rights and sovereignty as crucial to the development of political thought in the period. In this essay we excavate Churchill’s arguments, sift through the scattered critical legacy, and locate Divi Britannici both within the context of Restoration histories, with their warring interpretations of England and Britain’s past, and within a tradition of British historiography that associates monarchical rule with national stability. What scholars have missed, however, is the propensity of Churchill to align the restored Stuart monarchy with a form of ethnic co-operation between Scotland, Ireland and England, designed to counter the perceived divisions which were exacerbated by the policies of Cromwell and the parliamentarians.

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Section: Irelandmentioning

confidence: 99%