#102 The Rise of the Puritans Part 2: The Crisis of the Late 1620s

The History of the Americans

Jack Henneman

History

4.9 • 632 Ratings

🗓️ 13 January 2023

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode looks at the collapse of trust between Charles I and anti-Puritan royalists and clerics, on the one hand, and Parliament, Puritans, anti-Catholic Anglicans, and lawyers and others concerned with resisting the expansion of royal power on the other, in the second half of the 1620s. The collision would end in a final and very dramatic session of the House of Commons, and would ultimately persuade tens of thousands of Puritans that they had no choice but to leave England. It would be the catalyst for the Puritan Great Migration to New England.

Before we get to any of that, however, we briefly address the Twitter kerfuffle I unwittingly set off with a tweet about a BBC story on Sir Francis Drake, and the circumstances under which I do, and do not, support the renaming of things named after people who have fallen out of favor.

The Twitter thread regarding Sir Francis Drake’s famous change of heart

Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2

Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast

Selected references for this episode

John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul

George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham

Michael B. Young, “Charles I and the Erosion of Trust, 1625-1628,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, Summer 1990.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, episode 102.
0:10.8	I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and I'm recording this on January 13, 2022, in Austin, Texas.
0:19.3	We are telling the history of the lands now encompassed by the United States from the beginning without presentism.
0:26.9	Okay, so I inadvertently set off a bit of a Twitter thing a couple of days ago.
0:34.7	I wrote a short thread on the legacy of Sir Francis Drake over a story from the BBC
0:40.9	about a British primary school, the Sir Francis Drake Primary School, changing its name to the
0:48.7	Twin Oaks Primary School because Drake was, quote, a 16th century slave trader.
0:56.3	My thread pointed out that regarding slavery, Drake's story was actually one of
1:01.9	personal change of heart and that teaching that story might be useful and inspirational.
1:08.4	Mostly, I was offended by the BBC's shallow and a historical take on the whole thing.
1:15.9	Well, apparently I stepped right into British culture war discourse, which in retrospect should
1:22.2	not have surprised me.
1:23.9	My thread was retweeted at least 295 times with more than 125,000 impressions, at least as of
1:31.6	yesterday, whatever any of that means. Generally, people were very respectful, actually, and I
1:37.5	picked up something like 150 mostly British followers. Maybe a few of them are now listening
1:43.9	to this podcast, so if so, welcome aboard.
1:47.7	Regarding the question of renaming schools and such and the removal of statues, I'm for
1:53.6	doing it thoughtfully, specifically, and for using each such decision to educate.
2:00.0	And I oppose it when it's dogmatic, unthinking, or purely political.
2:05.8	Regarding Drake, there have been many such renamings of schools and other things in California
2:11.5	in the last two or three years.
2:14.6	As I've said before, the historical reason to do that is that it's highly unlikely that
	...

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