The Armor of Light by Melissa Scott & Lisa A. Barnett

[james_davis_nicoll]

The Armor of Light by Melissa Scott & Lisa A. Barnett

Comments

[jsburbidge]

There's an argument that's been made regarding the later contretemps in 1688 that Louis-style absolutism (which James II was in favour of) was as much of an innovation as the parliamentary alternative. Charles' views were rather more conservative. An England with no Commonwealth would certainly have had a more powerful monarchy than it ended up having, but it's likely that it would have had a rather different pattern than France. (Filmer is strong on the divine right of kings, but also on their responsibilities to balance between competing interests in the body politic.)

I have no idea what such an England would have been like, but I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't have mirrored France.

[graydon]

There's a least a strong line of thought that France and England started out the same; post-Roman Germanic traditions, where the right to rule as king gets created by some combination of heredity, divine favour, and the approval of the ~tribal assembly.

The decisive point of departure in this model is seen as the Angevins; no one could ascribe piety to Devil Henry (Henry II Plantagenet) with a straight face, even if he paid them. Plus the whole turbulent priest, barefoot in the snow thing.

So by the time of Henry Tudor, it was down not to heredity or divine favour, but Parliament. (Which at that time is nobles and prelates far more than it's the Commons; the English Civil War can be seen as the argument between Lords and Commons over control of Parliament (and thus the power to tax, lodged in a less clearly defined Parliament in the reign of Edward III), with the monarchy as a rhetorical football.) Pretty much entirely settled by the time of the Stuarts since they'd had Great Harry and didn't like it.

So by the time of Elizabeth isn't not at all likely you could get to the kind of divine right thing the French monarchy had going; that had built over a long time and with tangible evidence of divine favour in the form of continuous primogeniture, despite everything. You could maybe get something absolutist -- Great Harry again -- but you then run into the problem of the pirate kingdom and where the money really comes from. It would take a new economy as well as a new construction of government.