Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688

by Clare Jackson

Overview

Among foreign observers, seventeenth-century England was known as Devil-Land: A Diabolical Country of Fallen Angels, torn apart by seditious rebellion, religious extremism and royal collapse. Clare Jackson's dazzling, original account of English history's most turbulent and radical era tells the story of a nation in a state of near continual crisis.

As an unmarried heretic with no heir, Elizabeth I was regarded with horror by Catholic Europe, while her Stuart successors, James I and Charles I, were seen as impecunious and incompetent, unable to manage their three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. The traumatic civil wars, regicide and a republican Commonwealth were followed by the floundering, foreign-leaning rule of Charles II and his brother, James II, before William of Orange invaded England with a Dutch army and a new order was imposed.

Devil-Land reveals England as, in many ways, a 'failed state': endemically unstable and rocked by devastating events from the Gunpowder Plot to the Great Fire of London. Catastrophe nevertheless bred creativity, and Jackson makes brilliant use of eyewitness accounts - many penned by stupefied foreigners - to dramatize her great story. Starting on the eve of the Spanish Armada's descent in 1588 and concluding with a not-so 'Glorious Revolution' a hundred years later, Devil-Land is a spectacular reinterpretation of England's vexed and enthralling past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780141984575
Publisher:	Penguin Random House UK
Publication date:	01/01/2023
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	272,729
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.81(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Clare Jackson is the Senior Tutor of Trinity Hall, Cambridge University. She has presented a number of highly successful programs on the Stuart dynasty for the BBC and is the author of Charles II in the Penguin Monarchs series.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Maps and Family Trees xii

Author's Note xix

Introducing Devil-Land i

1 So Strange a Precedent, 1587 25

2 The Enterprise of England, 1588 45

3 An International Succession Debate, 1589-1601 65

4 Uniting this Sea-Walled Isle, 1601-1605 88

5 Gunpowder, Treason and Scots, 1605-1610 110

6 Dynastic Marriage, Death and Debts, 1610-1618 132

7 Crisis in the Palatinate, 1618-1623 156

8 All Hell against England, 1623-1628 180

9 Between Dons and Monsieurs, 1629-1637 203

10 Allowing Hannibal to Enter, 1637-1641 226

11 Earthquakes of State, 1641-1644 249

12 The Mediation of Strangers, 1644-1648 271

13 England shall become Hell, 1648-1650 294

14 Here was ye King's Head, 1650-1654 316

15 Castles in the Air, 1654-1658 338

16 Now in Another World, 1658-1660 361

17 Hell, France, Rome or Amsterdam, 1661-1667 384

18 Tributary to the French, 1667-1677 407

19 Devils who intend my ruin, 1678-1683 430

20 A New Magna Carta, 1683-1687 453

21 The Dutch Design Anatomized, 1687-1690 476

Epilogue: A Heap of Conspiracies 501

Notes 513

Select Bibliography 617

Acknowledgements 631

Index 635