DID AMERICA'S REVOLT START WITH REGICIDE? 1/8: The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689 Hardcover – by Jonathan Healey (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 6 July 2025
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
1838 REGICIDE
https://www.amazon.com/Blazing-World-History-Revolutionary-1603-1689/dp/0593318358
The seventeenth century was a revolutionary age for the English. It started as they suddenly found themselves ruled by a Scotsman, and it ended in the shadow of an invasion by the Dutch. Under James I, England suffered terrorism and witch panics. Under his son Charles, state and society collapsed into civil war, to be followed by an army coup and regicide. For a short time—for the only time in history—England was a republic. There were bitter struggles over faith and Parliament asserted itself like never before. There were no boundaries to politics. In fiery, plague-ridden London, in coffee shops and alehouses, new ideas were forged that were angry, populist, and almost impossible for monarchs to control.
But the story of this century is less well known than it should be. Myths have grown around key figures. People may know about the Gunpowder Plot and the Great Fire of London, but the Civil War is a half-remembered mystery to many. And yet the seventeenth century has never seemed more relevant. The British constitution is once again being bent and contorted, and there is a clash of ideologies reminiscent of when Roundhead fought Cavalier.
The Blazing World is the story of this strange, twisting, fascinating century. It shows a society in sparkling detail. It was a new world of wealth, creativity, and daring curiosity, but also of greed, pugnacious arrogance, and colonial violence
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| 0:58.0 | This is CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor. |
| 1:10.0 | Here's John Batchelor. It is 1605 in London. A discovery is made |
| 1:17.9 | in the vaults below the building where the king and his family will gather for an important |
| 1:23.5 | presentation. To court, the king is James I of England, James the 6th of Scotland. |
| 1:31.3 | He is the beginning monarch that understands the challenge ahead of him is to deal with a country |
| 1:38.9 | that is both rich and divided, divided by religion, divided by government, divided by region, divided by the vicissitudes of nature. |
| 1:50.4 | And I now turn to Jonathan Healy. His new book, The Blazing World, introduces James I as a way of understanding what we remember in America as the English revolutionary times, |
| 2:05.4 | very violent, extremely difficult to generalize about, and leading to the glorious revolution |
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