Topic 8: The Fifth Monarchy Men

 

Seminar themes:

• Why did the 5th Monarchist movement take shape in the early 1650s?
• How great a threat did it pose to the Cromwellian regime?
• What were its central religious, political and socio-economic principles?
• How much did it share with other movements, eg. the Levellers?
• Should its millenial dream be seen as a 'dictatorship of the godly' or as a 'just and holy commonwealth'?

Primary Reading

• *A Door of Hope (1661) Manifesto of the 1661 rising
• *J. Rogers To His Excellency A Few Proposals, 1653.
• *An Alarum to the City and Souldiery, 1659 (anti-Fifth Monarchist broadsheet).
• *J. Sanders, An Iron Rod for the Nailers, 1655. Not an orthodox Fifth Monarchist, but a very interesting figure.
• A Standard Set Up 1657 Manifesto of the 1657 rising.
• *Thurloe State Papers:
• *Clarke Papers, ed Firth, Camden Soc; vol. ii, pp. xxxiv-vii 242-6.
• *Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1653-4, pp. 304-8: meeting at Blackfriars.

Secondary Reading

B.S. Capp The Fifth Monarchy Men: a study in English millenarianism.

Andrew Bradstock, Radical Religion in Cromwell’s England (2011), chap. 6

L.F. Brown The Baptists and Fifth Monarchy Men (old but still useful).

Tai Liu Discord in Zion: the Puritan Divines and the Puritan Revolution 1649-1660, chaps. 3,4.

P.G. Rogers The Fifth Monarchy Men (a short, readable introduction).

B.S. Capp 'The Fifth Monarchists and Popular Millenarianism' in McGregor and Reay, eds., Radical Religion.

C. Hill The English Bible (1993), chap. 13.

*A Woolrych From Commonwealth to Protectorate (1982). Excellent study of the Barebones Parliament.

L.F. Solt 'The Fifth Monarchy Men: Politics and the Millennium,' in Church History xxx (1961).

A. Cohen 'The Fifth Monarchy Mind: Mary Cary and the Origins of Totalitarianism,' in Social Research, 31 (1964).

A. Trapnel, The Cry of a Stone, ed. H. Hinds (2000).

J. Holstun, Ehud's Dagger. Class Struggle in the English Revolution (2000), ch.7.

Suellen M. Hoy 'John Rogers: A Disillusioned Fifth Monarchy Man', Albion 4(1972).

R. Greaves Saints and Rebels (1985) chap 4 (on John Simpson).

G. Nuttall The Welsh Saints, chap 3 (Vavasor Powell).

W. Schenk The Concern for Social Justice, chap. 8.

C. Burrage 'The Fifth Monarchy Insurrections', in English Historical Rev., 1910 on microfilm. Contains the minutes of Venner's rebels in 1657.

B.R. White 'Henry Jessey: a Pastor in Politics', Baptist Quarterly, 25 (1973-4).

Essential reading for those not doing the essay: the gobbet material, Capp, Zagorin.