YouSaid · the spoken record

Anna Keay

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58
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2023-04-19
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2023-04-19
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1
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  1. “And so that's the reason why, of course, although England and Scotland have been part of Great Britain as a political union since 1707, it was never a complete one. The legal systems have always been completely separate, completely distinct. The education systems, much else besides. So although personally, I would be very sad to see the end of the union and very sad to see a breaking apart between England and Scotland. I do think if you think about the 17th century, it does really underscore how much independent identity has always been there in those two nations and how long a history each had before they became a whole.”

    2023-04-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Anna Keay on Historic Architecture, Monarchy, and 17th Century Britain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Well, I think the first thing is, I mean, first of all, I have to declare an interest because I am a Scot. I was born and brought up in Scotland. But I think that if you're interested in the 17th century, the kind of additional, perhaps emphasis or lens that it gives you is, first of all, the memory of how the union came about in the first place, Great Britain, the unit was only in our historical time depth, a relatively recent creation. I mean, it was there for a long time, 300 years, whatever it was, or is. But, of course, what happened was that a sovereign acceded to two kingdoms. And this happens quite often historically. I mean, it happened quite often with other kingdoms or countries in British history. So William III was the king of Great Britain and Ireland, but he was also the overlord of what's now the Netherlands, George I was the elector of Hanover. And none of these things involved a political union. They were just two countries that happened to share a sovereign.”

    2023-04-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Anna Keay on Historic Architecture, Monarchy, and 17th Century Britain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “To climb the ladder and so on. And I just not at all convinced by those arguments myself. I think religion was very, very strongly held factor in people's lives. And you read contemporary diaries and so on. And it really is clear that people felt very strongly that wherever they were on the spectrum between a sort of absolutely kind of Calvinist Puritan or a Catholic in terms of the range that was around at the time, that personal conviction about what was right was really, really a big factor. So I don't mean that it was the only factor, but I think to treat it as somehow a cover for other motives is to do a disservice, I think, to the people of the age.”

    2023-04-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Anna Keay on Historic Architecture, Monarchy, and 17th Century Britain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “How much of that It's an interesting point. I think if you'd ask that question of a lot of historians working a generation or two ago, they would have said it's all about economic forces, it's all about the class struggle, if you like. I don't think that's my view. I think we live in such a secular age, and I would say in the UK much more so than in the States, where really, you know, church-going and religious conviction is very much a minority pursuit. to reimagine ourselves or to imagine the world of 17th century England where religion is such a strong force involves a kind of mental leap that I think sometimes people have been reluctant to do and I think in terms of historians working on this period particularly as in the mid 20th century really influenced actually by Marxist approaches to understanding the past it was all seen as a well this is the rise of this class this is the this is the mercantile urban you know sort of strand of society trying to assert authority”

    2023-04-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Anna Keay on Historic Architecture, Monarchy, and 17th Century Britain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Yeah, it's not the stupid answer. I think the answer is it was really, in my view, overwhelmingly about religion. There's a historian who works on this period who talks about it and says you shouldn't think of it as a kind of revolutionary war. It's really one of the last wars of religion. And so that was the biggest of the issues. There was a sort of related secondary issue about the extent of royal power. So that was in the mix, but it wasn't the first issue. Really, it was about Charles I, who was the king who was being fought against by the parliamentarian forces, wanted English religion, wanted the Protestant religion of England to be more elaborate, more like Catholicism in terms of the way it was performed and the liturgy and so on. And that was something that was anathema to a lot of very sort of committed Protestants. And that in that tension.”

    2023-04-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Anna Keay on Historic Architecture, Monarchy, and 17th Century Britain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “What was needed, and I think that was kind of incompatible with the sort of peaceful set of circumstances because it wasn't widespread enough. So yeah, but I mean, you're right, which is these counterfactual avenues you kind of take you into so many other what ifs that it becomes a bit fruitless after a while.”

    2023-04-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Anna Keay on Historic Architecture, Monarchy, and 17th Century Britain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Well, you could say that, but of course there is a kind of counterfactual parallel because in what's now the Netherlands, what was then called the United Provinces, there had been a revolution, sometimes called the Dutch Revolt that had happened a hundred years earlier in the 1560s, which had both rejected Catholicism and had rejected monarchy. And it became something that was governed by a series of states that institution called the States General where their representatives met. So it wasn't so much that religious turmoil and republicanism were irreconcilable, but in the case of England, the revolution, the throwing off the monarchy didn't have sufficient buy-in from the political nation, let alone the nation as a whole. It was really brought about by an army coup. So I think that meant it was fragile and it was also linked to a kind of strong view held by a minority and very much represented in the army that a kind of very strictly Puritan regime was”

    2023-04-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Anna Keay on Historic Architecture, Monarchy, and 17th Century Britain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Well, it could easily have happened. And I think a lot of people have forgotten that there was a revolution in the British Isles, and it was a republic for 10 years. But I think the trouble was really that it's a classic situation where there was a lot of unhappiness with what had been the case, the monarchy, but the formulation of a stable republic had yet to be worked out. I think if Oliver Cromwell had lived longer or named a better successor than his son Richard, it could have endured. But fundamentally, it was before its time, I would say, and it was not sufficiently deeply rooted. Fundamentally, the people didn't want a republic, even though one was brought about. And so that meant it was always fragile.”

    2023-04-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Anna Keay on Historic Architecture, Monarchy, and 17th Century Britain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source