Reviews for History of England From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688

The average rating for History of England From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688 based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-07-10 00:00:00 Ryan Buckman The Roman Catholic Church with all of its superstitions clearly tilts more toward evil than good overall, and even though ‘big-bellied’ women often would hold the shirt of St. Thomas Becket in the highest regard and worthy of adoration the superstitions of the time period (about 1530) needed to be replaced with the rationality of the Anglican Church and moreover those who believed the wafer was the actual body of Christ had wrong-headed beliefs and are anathema to the true reformed faith and their superstitions are not as worthy of those who think otherwise, after all, does not scripture prove the wafer is not the actual body of Christ? Moreover, the Anglicans will not be as reformed minded as those Lutherans who just took things beyond the wafer too far, after all, Henry VIII is the ‘defender of the faith’ for his erudite defense of the true faith even if that faith is no longer the Catholic faith but rather the Anglican faith. Or at least, all of the above is what Hume will try to convince his reader about. There is really nothing not to like about this volume. There is no such thing as an objective centrist perspective when it comes to understanding one’s place in the universe, and Hume is smart enough not to pretend otherwise. In the first volume Hume makes the indigenous inhabitants of the Isles a people, in the second volume he makes the people into a nation within itself, and in this volume he distinguishes the English as a nation among other nations and worthy of having its own religion and not be part of the Romish or the Popery influences and not part of a reform movement that went too far on the continent, at least according to Hume. I suspect Hume read Hobbes’ Leviathan because echoes of Hobbes’ pro Anglican stance echo within this volume. Everything in these first three volumes seemed to be laying the foundation for what is to come, in particular, the reign of Elizabeth I. I can hardly wait to find out what happens next. One would be doing themselves a disservice if they didn’t read the first three volumes which laid the foundation, the context, the background and traditions that enabled what is to come. Adam Smith said, that all he needed was the later part of the history, not the early part. His loss. Overall, this history is as good or better than any other I’ve read covering the same topics.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-09-07 00:00:00 Ty Tacner An intriguing work of history showing humanity at its darkest.