Hill Christopher - The Century of Revolution: 1603-1714

The arrangement of this book calls for a word of explanation. In order to avoid repeating at length what can be found in many textbooks, and to have more space for attempts at explanation, I have, in the narrative chapters, given merely a bald summary of events. The reader should be patient when, for instance, he finds the Cokayne Project mentioned without explanation on p. 10. It is discussed at length on pp. 345. The index indicates where definitions of technical terms are to be found, and gives biographical details of persons not fully identified in the text. Quotations from seventeenth-century sources have been modernised. Dates are given in the Old Style. Seventeenth-century England was ten days behind the New Style used on the Continent. But I have taken the year as beginning on 1st January, not on 25th March as most seventeenth-century Englishmen usually did.

The plan of this series did not allow full documentation. When I have consciously used someone else's idea, or quoted a phrase from a historian not easily identifiable from the context, I hope I have normally given the reference in a footnote. But I have taken so much from Sir G. N. Clark, Professor W. Haller, Professor W. K. Jordan, Mr E. Lipson, Mr David Ogg, and Professor R. H. Tawney, that I can express only my general gratitude here. Extracts from Clarendon's History of the Rebellion and his Life have been included by kind permission of the Clarendon Press. I have taken advantage of hearing Professor F. J. Fisher talk about the cultivation of forests and waste lands, and of discussions with Dr Eric Hobsbawm, Mr A. L. Morton, and Mr Lionel Munby. Again and again, though this cannot be documented, I am conscious that my ideas are at least less half-baked than they would have been if I had not had to defend them in tutorial discussions with pupils, extending now over twenty-five years.

Dr J. B. Owen, Mr Lawrence Stone, and Mr Angus Walker read this book in typescript, and it has benefited greatly from their searching criticisms. The general editors of the series were encouraging but vigilant, and Mr Denis Mack Smith devoted a great deal of time to helping me to say what I meant. Mr Richard Grassby very kindly read the proofs. My greatest debt, as always, is to my wife.

1960 C.H.

I am most grateful to Mr R. Barnes, Dr G. R. Elton, Dr H. Koeppler, Professor V. de Sola Pinto, Mrs Menna Prestwich, and especially Mr John Cooper for pointing out errors in the first impression. If I have obstinately refused to accept all their good advice the blame is mine alone.

1961 C.H.

I have taken the opportunity of a new impression to correct some slips which reviewers have pointed out. I am particularly grateful for corrections suggested by Professor John Bromley and Mr Ivan Roots. I have also made some corrections arising from Professor Habakkuk's article on Interregnum finance in Economic History Review, August 1962.

1962 C. H.

During the 20 years since this book was written, a great deal of valuable work has been done on 17th-century English history. For this edition I have made a number of small revisions to incorporate what seem to me its most important conclusions, and I have added postscripts on pp. 41, 99, and 141 drawing attention to especially significant books.

I have retained diagrams 2 and 3, based on Thorold Rogers's figures, and have not replaced them by diagrams based on the more recent calculations of E. H. Phelps Brown and S. V. Hopkins, as some critics have suggested that I should. Phelps Brown and Hopkins state that, in respect of wages, until 1700 we have depended on Thorold Rogers (Seven Centuries of Building Wages, Economica, New Ser., XXII, 1955, p. 195: cf. the same authors in Economica, XXIII and XXIV, 1956 and 1957). A graph of the movement of prices can most conveniently be found in Inflation in Tudor and Early Stuart England, by R. B. Outhwaite (Economic History Soc., Studies in Economic History, 1969, p. 11). This is based on the figures of Phelps Brown and Hopkins. Its main advantage over my Diagram 2 is that it shows annual fluctuations, not decennial averages. But the general movement is substantially the same.

I am grateful to too many people for help in revising to thank them all by name, but I should like particularly to mention Mr John Dunn, since I failed in 1962 to correct a mis-statement about Locke which he had pointed out to me. I hope I have got it right now!

1979 C. H.