Hello everyone and welcome to the history of England, episode 347, the English Revolution.

This episode is sponsored now and forever by Simon Hall at Halls Hamad Coins, the online

British Coins specialist and long-term friend to the history of England.

His website can be found at hallshamadcoins.com.

Now you'll find out why it's sponsored by him in a moment.

Now everyone we have arrived at the foothills of the English Revolution, a phrase rarely

used now I believe.

The new orthodoxy from which one must not deviate on pain of death or possibly taxes, being

the requirement to describe the period between 1637 and 1660 as something like the walls

of three kingdoms or the British Civil Wars.

Though you do appear to be allowed to use the phrase Scottish Revolution or at least

no one has shouted at me for doing so.

Well, I shall be using the phrase English Revolution to a degree, while of course giving

due deference to the other kingdoms involved, I would like to salute a Frenchman, one

Francois Guizel, who actually coined the title English Revolution.

Now Guizel was a liberal politician who tried to maintain a constitutional monarchy after

1830, so maybe we better give him the first quote of what will be many quotes.

He wrote a history of European civilization, nothing major then, and described the struggle

to establish constitutional rights, thusly.

The first clash took place in England.

The effort to abolish absolute power in the temporal sphere and in the intellectual sphere,

that is the meaning of the English Revolution.

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