'We are all one in the eyes of the lord': Christopher Hill and the historical meanings of radical religion

History Workshop Journal

Volumn 58, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 110-127

  Corfield, Penelope J ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61949136081     PISSN: 13633554     EISSN: 14774569     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hwj/58.1.110     Document Type: Article

References (126)

1. Christopher Hill (1912-2003) was Fellow (1938-65) and then Master (1965-78) of Balliol College, Oxford. As one of the founders of the journal Past and Present (1952-), he appears in Stephen F. G. Farthing's group portrait of 'Historians of Past and Present' (1999) in the National Portrait Gallery.
2. See M. F. Roberts, A Select Bibliography, 1938-77', in Puritans and Revolutionaries: Essays in Seventeenth-Century History Presented to Christopher Hill, ed. Donald Pennington and Keith Thomas, Oxford, 1978, pp. 382-402. During the following twenty years 1977-97, Hill continued to publish voluminously, until halted by ill-health.
3. Harvey J. Kaye, The British Marxist Historians: an Introductory Analysis, Basingstoke, 1995.
4. As in Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714, Edinburgh, 1961.
5. Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution, London, 1972.
6. Bible, Acts, 10:34.
7. Bible, Luke, 1:53.
8. Christopher Hill, World Turned Upside Down, p. 311.
9. Quoted in The Good Old Cause: the English Revolution of 1640-60 - Its Causes, Course and Consequences, ed. Christopher Hill and Edmund Dell, London, 1949, p. 474.
10. Ronald Willis, Nonconformist Chapels of York, 1693-1840, York, 1964, pp. 27, 31-33; and illus. facing p. 18.
11. John Lyth, Glimpses of Early Methodism in York and the Surrounding District, York, 1885, pp. 272-3.
12. See W. T. A. Barber, David Hill: an Apostle to the Chinese, London, 1906;
13. H. B. Burgoyne, David Hill, Friend of China: a Modern Portrait, London, 1949;
14. and P. Yates, 'Friendly Foreign Devil': David Hill of China, London, 1939.
15. Information from Irene Corfield (née Hill), who is Christopher Hill's only sibling.
16. V. H. Galbraith helped to draw out the shy and stammering Christopher on his first arrival at Balliol College: information from Christopher Hill.
17. Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution, London, 1993.
18. Howard Marks, Mr Nice, London, 1996, p. 459.
19. Christopher Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution, Oxford, 1965, p. v: this referred to the Rev. Theophilus Stephen Gregory (1897-1975).
20. Hill, Intellectual Origins, p. ix.
21. T. S. Gregory, They Shall See God, London, 1926, p. 21.
22. See Who's Who Online, 1897-1996, and Gregory's account of his conversion, in T. S. Gregory, The Unfinished Universe, London, 1935.
23. The dedication was updated in the revised edition: see Christopher Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution Revisited, Oxford, 1997, p. vii.
24. See for example Alastair MacLachlan, The Rise and Fall of Revolutionary England: an Essay on the Fabrication of Seventeenth-Century History, Basingstoke, 1996, p. 134.
25. Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century: Donne to Butler, ed. H. J. C. Grierson, Oxford, 1921.
26. T. S. Eliot, 'The Metaphysical Poets', Times Literary Supplement, 20 Oct. 1921;
27. and repr. in Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot, ed. Frank Kermode, London, 1975, pp. 59-67, esp. p. 64.
28. Henry Vaughan, 'The World (I) ', in Henry Vaughan: the Complete Poems, ed. A. Rudrum, New Haven, 1976, p. 228.
29. Much the best discussion is that in Raphael Samuel, 'The British Marxist Historians, 1880-1980: Part One', New Left Review 120, March/April 1980, pp. 41-55.
30. See Bryan D. Palmer, The Making of E. P. Thompson, Toronto, 1981;
31. Kaye, British Marxist Historians, pp. 167-220;
32. and E. P. Thompson: Critical Perspectives, ed. Harvey J. Kaye and Keith McClelland, Cambridge, 1990.
33. Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution, London, 1993, p. [iv].
34. As noted by Rodney Hilton, 'Some Reminiscences', in Puritans and Revolutionaries, ed. Pennington and Thomas, pp. 8-9;
35. and Eric Hobsbawm, 'The Historians' Group of the Communist Party', in Rebels and their Causes, ed. Maurice Cornforth, London, 1978, pp. 33-4.
36. Hobsbawm, 'Historians' Group', pp. 21-48;
37. Richard Johnson, 'Culture and the Historians', in Working-Class Culture: Studies in History and Theory, ed. J. Clarke, C. Critcher and R. Johnson, London, 1979, pp. 54-65;
38. Kaye, British Marxist Historians, pp. 10-15;
39. D. Parker, 'The Communist Party and its Historians, 1946-89', Socialist History 12, 1997, pp. 33-58;
40. and Samuel, 'British Marxist Historians', pp. 91-4.
41. MacLachlan, Rise and Fall of Revolutionary England, pp. 116-21.
42. See The Times, 5 March 2003
43. and Anthony Glees, The Secrets of the Service: British Intelligence and Communist Subversion, 1939-51, London, 1987, pp. 279-88.
44. For a rejoinder to Glees, see John Saville, 'Christopher Hill at the Foreign Office, 1944-5'
45. in John Saville, The Politics of Continuity: British Foreign Policy and the Labour Government, 1945-6, London, 1993, pp. 212-17.
46. K. E. Holme [Holme being a rendering of Hill in Russian], Two Commonwealths: the Soviets and Ourselves, London, 1945.
47. Christopher Hill, Lenin and the Russian Revolution, London, 1947; and many reprints.
48. Hill, 'Stalin and the Science of History', Modern Quarterly 8:4, autumn 1953, pp. 198-212.
49. Kaye, British Marxist Historians, p. 17.
50. The major publications of Bridget Hill (1922-2002) were Women, Work and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-Century England, Oxford, 1989;
51. The Republican Virago: the Life and Times of Catherine Macaulay, Oxford, 1992;
52. Servants: English Domestics in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford, 1996;
53. and Women Alone: Spinsters in England, 1660-1850, New Haven, 2001.
54. Hill did join the Labour Party, albeit without enthusiasm; and in the 1990s was, predictably, very hostile to New Labour.
55. H. N. Brailsford, The Levellers and the English Revolution, ed. Christopher Hill, London, 1961;
56. and Christopher Hill, Barry Reay and William Lamont, The World of the Muggletonians, London, 1983.
57. These were, in order of publication: Christopher Hill, Puritanism and Revolution: Studies in Interpretation of the English Revolution of the Seventeenth Century, London, 1958
58. containing one of his best essays 'The Norman Yoke', pp. 50-122;
59. Hill, Change and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century England, London, 1974;
60. Hill, Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, Vol. 1: Writing and Revolution in Seventeenth-Century England, Brighton, 1985;
61. Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, Vol. 2: Religion and Politics in Seventeenth-Century England, Brighton, 1986;
62. Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, Vol. 3: People and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century England, Brighton, 1986;
63. Hill, A Nation of Change and Novelty: Radical Politics, Religion and Literature in Seventeenth-Century England, London, 1990;
64. and Hill, England's Turning Point: Essays on Seventeenth-Century English History, London, 1998.
65. Past and Present's initial sub-title, A Journal of Scientific History, recording Marxist faith in 'scientific socialism', was shed in 1958, when membership of the editorial board was widened.
66. Hill, English Bible, p. 442.
67. Hill, Puritanism and Revolution, p. xx.
68. Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England, London, 1964, p. 510.
69. E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, Harmondsworth, 1980 edn, pp. 385-440.
70. Christopher Hill, God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution, London, 1970
71. amplifying his earlier Oliver Cromwell, 1658-1959, Historical Association pamphlet, 1958.
72. Hill, Milton and the English Revolution, London, 1977.
73. Hill, A Turbulent, Seditious and Factious People: John Bunyan and his Church, 1628-88, Oxford, 1988, p. v:
74. dedicated to Bridget Hill, 'beloved comrade and fellow pilgrim'.
75. Christopher Hill, 'The Mad Hatter', in his Puritanism and Revolution, pp. 314-22.
76. See also R. Bowers, 'Roger Crab: Opposition Hunger Artist in 1650s England', Seventeenth Century 18, 2003, pp. 93-112.
77. Christopher Hill, 'John Mason and the End of the World', in his Puritanism and Revolution, pp. 323-36.
78. Hill, Economic Problems of the Church: From Archbishop Whitgift to the Long Parliament, Oxford, 1956.
79. Contrast the 'revisionist' textbook by Barry Coward, The Stuart Age: a History of England, 1603-1714, London, 1980
80. with Hill's Century of Revolution. For his own later rejection of revisionism, see Hill, English Bible, pp. 47-9.
81. For Anglican religious identities, see Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560-1660, ed. Peter Lake and Michael Questier, Woodbridge, 2000.
82. See, for example, Felicity Heal, Of Prelates and Princes: a Study of the Economic and Social Position of the Tudor Episcopate, Cambridge, 1980.
83. Cited in Hill, Society and Puritanism, p. 14, n. 2.
84. The classic interpretations are Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, pub. in German 1904/5;
85. Eng. transl. 1930;
86. and R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, London, 1926.
87. Hill, Economic Problems of the Church, p. xii.
88. This name was popularized by Samuel Rawson Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution, 1603-60, London, 1876; and many later editions.
89. Notably in Christopher Hill, The English Revolution 1640, London, 1940.
90. Hill, Economic Problems of the Church, p. 352.
91. Hill, Society and Puritanism, esp. pp. 124-44, and quotation p. 134.
92. J. H. Hexter, 'The Historical Method of Christopher Hill', Times Literary Supplement, 25 Oct. 1975
93. repr. in his On Historians: Reappraisals of Some of the Makers of Modern History, London, 1979, pp. 227-51.
94. A reply by Hill, 'The Burden of Proof', followed in Times Literary Supplement, 7 Nov. 1975, p. 1, 333.
95. For a case-history, see Gordon Marshall, Presbyteries and Profits: Calvinism and the Development of Capitalism in Scotland, 1650-1707, Edinburgh, 1992.
96. Contrast F. J. Fisher, 'Tawney's Century', in Essays in the Economic and Social History of Tudor and Stuart England, ed. F. J. Fisher, Cambridge, 1961, pp. 1-14
97. with Hill's essay 'Protestantism and Capitalism', in the same volume, pp. 15-39.
98. E. P. Thompson, 'The Patrician and the Plebs', in his Customs in Common, London, 1991, esp. pp. 26, 36, 42, 84.
99. See Hill, Century of Revolution, pp. 187-8, 307-8;
100. Hill, Reformation to Industrial Revolution: a Social and Economic History of Britain, London, 1967, pp. 4-10;
101. and Hill, 'A Bourgeois Revolution', in Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776, ed. J. G. A. Pocock, Princeton, 1980, pp. 109-39, esp. p. 111.
102. For a critique from the left, see A. L. Merson, 'Problems of the English Bourgeois Revolution: Some Reflections on the Recent Work of Christopher Hill', Marxism Today, Oct. 1963, pp. 310-15.
103. Christopher Hill, 'Premature Obsequies?' in After the End of History, ed. Alan Ryan, London, 1992, pp. 10-11.
104. Hill, World Turned Upside Down, p. 13.
105. Hill, Century of Revolution, p. 167.
106. Hill, World Turned Upside Down, p. 256.
107. Maclachlan, Rise and Fall of Revolutionary England, pp. 184-6.
108. J. Colin Davis, Fear, Myth and History: the Ranters and the Historians, Cambridge, 1986, throughout, esp. pp. 134-7.
109. Christopher Hill, 'Abolishing the Ranters', in his Nation of Change and Novelty, pp. 172-218, esp. p. 210.
110. As stressed by Hill, World Turned Upside Down, p. 163
111. and earlier by A. L. Morton, The World of the Ranters: Religious Radicalism in the English Revolution, London, 1970, p. 92.
112. See Gerald Aylmer, 'Did the Ranters Exist?', Past and Present 117, 1987, pp. 208-19;
113. and Jerome Friedman, Blasphemy, Immorality and Anarchy: the Ranters and the English Revolution, Ohio, 1987.
114. Hill, 'Abolishing the Ranters', p. 212.
115. Christopher Hill, Liberty against the Law: Some Seventeenth-Century Controversies, London, 1996.
116. Hill, Liberty against the Law, pp. 295, 297.
117. MacLachlan, Rise and Fall of Revolutionary England.
118. E. P. Thompson sent him an angry letter to that effect in 1956: information from Christopher Hill.
119. For evaluations, see Gareth Stedman Jones, 'The Determinist Fix: Some Obstacles to the Further Development of the Linguistic Approach...', History Workshop Journal 42, 1996, pp. 19-35, esp. p. 33;
120. Kaye, British Marxist Historians, pp. 221-49;
121. MacLachlan, Rise and Fall of Revolutionary England, pp. 314-35;
122. and Matt Perry, Marxism and History, Basingstoke, 2002, pp. 155-9.
123. Stedman Jones, 'Determinist Fix', p. 19.
124. E. M. Forster, Howard's End, London, 1910, in 1989 edn, p. 188.
125. Christopher Hill, 'Abolishing the Ranters', p. 212.
126. Gerrard Winstanley, Fire in the Bush, in The Law of Freedom and Other Writings, ed. Christopher Hill, Harmondsworth, 1973, p. 272.