| | by admin | | posted on 1st May 2023 in The English Revolution | | views 2165 | |
The English Revolution of the mid 17th century was a freethinking people's uprising where the world was turned upside down.
The World Turn’d Upside Down was an English ballad that reflected the turmoil of the time. It was first published in pamphlet form in 1647 (pictured above) as a popular protest against the policies of Parliament relating to the celebration of Christmas during the revolution's English Civil War Period (1642 – 1651). Parliament, influenced by Puritanism, believed the holiday should be a solemn occasion and outlawed traditional English Christmas celebrations.
Such protests over Christmas were just one strand in a much wider upheaval that came together to form the English Revolution – a movement in English history that saw rebellion, radicals and revolutionaries fighting for the freedoms they believed in.
The English Revolution is the term often used to describe a 20-year period of events between 1640 and 1660. This span of English history includes the build-up to the civil war, the fighting itself, the execution of King Charles I, and the final eleven years in which England was governed as a commonwealth before the monarchy was restored in 1660.
This radical history is rarely taught in schools. It was a period in which ordinary people organised themselves in a variety of freethinking groups, demanding fairness for all rather than for the privileged few. History here was made by men and women not of noble birth, but drawn from everyday life.
To achieve this, they demanded nothing less than that the world be turned upside down. Ultimately, however, the revolution faltered and was curtailed by those it had sought to empower.
As such, the common people's story of struggle and suffering survives in fragments – a pamphlet here and a letter there. Yet collectively their voices speak in a chorus for change that echoes down the centuries and remains as persuasive today as it was then.
The freethinking common people of the mid-17th century may have died in defeat, but their ideas lived on to influence the generations that followed them.
