Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals (66 page)

167
The same point was in fact made by Bury: ‘The appearance of the various botanical and animal species which exist and have existed seems to have depended on accidents. There was nothing in the logic of life that made the existence of an oak or a hippopotamus inevitable. Nor can it be proved that there was anything that made the existence of
anthropos
inevitable. At the remote threshold of history we seem to find a primordial contingency - the origin of man’; Bury, ‘Cleopatra’s Nose’, p. 68.

168
Ibid
., pp.238f., 309-21. For some unconvincing attempts to restore determinism in reaction to Gould’s work, see Roger Lewin,
Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos
(London, 1995), pp. 23-72, 130ff. Some of Gould’s critics make themselves ridiculous by their attempt to restore the notion of divine agency and a holistic universe in the guise of an earth goddess Gaia. This is New Age Hegel.

169
Stewart,
Does God Play Dice?
, pp. 2f., 6.

170
Ibid
., 57ff., 95ff. To give a concrete example, the logistic mapping x → kx(1-x) (i.e. the iteration of the non-linear equation x
_t+1
= kx
_t
(1-x
_t
)) seems to become random once k has a value greater than 3. If k is increased very gradually, however, a pattern emerges: when x is plotted against k, the result is a diagram of infinite bifurcation: the so-called ‘fig tree’ (named after its discoverer Mitchell Feigenbaum):
ibid
., pp. 145ff.

171
Ibid
., pp. 289-301.

172
See John Kay, ‘Cracks in the Crystal Ball’,
Financial Times
, 29 September 1995.

173
Stewart,
Does God Play Dice?
, p. 21.

174
Roger Penrose,
Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness
(London, 1994), p. 23.

175
Carl Hempel, ‘The Function of General Laws in History’, in Gardiner (ed.),
Theories of History
, pp. 344-55;
idem
, ‘Reasons and Covering Laws in Historical Explanation’, in Dray (ed.),
Philosophical Analysis
, pp. 143-63. In the later piece, Hempel distinguishes between universal laws and probabilistic explanations, based on statistical relationships, suggesting that many historical explanations are based in the latter rather than the former. See also Nagel, ‘Determinism in History’,
passim.
In his defence of a qualified determinism, Nagel revives the Plekhanov-Bury metaphor of colliding chains to explain apparently ‘chance’ events;
ibid
., p. 373.

176
The key texts are Karl Popper,
The Open Society and its Enemies
(London, 1945) and
The Poverty of Historicism
(London, 1957).

177
R. G. Collingwood,
An Essay on Metaphysics
(Oxford, 1940).

178
Popper,
Poverty of Historicism
, pp. 122, 128ff.

179
Charles Frankel,‘Explanation and Interpretation in History’, in Gardiner (ed.),
Theories of History
, pp. 411-15.

180
Gallie, ‘Explanations in History and the Genetic Sciences’, p. 387. See also Michael Scriven,‘ Causes and Connections and Conditions in History’, in Dray (ed.),
Philosophical Analysis
, pp. 238-64.

181
H. L. A. Hart and Tony Honoré,
Causation in the Law
(2nd edn, Oxford, 1985), pp. 10ff.

182
Ibid
., pp. 22-63.

183
Ibid
., pp. 15f., 21n.

184
Ibid
., pp. 101, 109-14.

185
Patrick Gardiner,
The Nature of Historical Explanation
(London, 1952), pp. 107ff.

186
David Lewis,
Counterfactuals
(Oxford, 1973); Hans Reichenbach,
Laws
,
Modalities and Counterfactuals
(Berkeley, 1976); Igal Kvart,
A Theory of Counterfactuals
(Indianapolis, 1986).

187
Isaiah Berlin,
Historical Inevitability
(London, 1954). See esp. pp. 78f.: ‘Those who hold [determinist views] use history as a method of escape from a world which has, for some reason, grown odious to them into a fantasy where impersonal entities avenge their grievances and set everything right’. See also P. Geyl, ‘Historical Inevitability: Isaiah Berlin’, in
idem
,
Debates with Historians
(The Hague, 1955), pp. 237-41.

188
Isaiah Berlin, ‘Determinism, Relativism and Historical Judgements, in Gardiner’ (ed.),
Theories of History
, pp. 320f. My emphasis.

189
Berlin, ‘Concept of Scientific History’, p. 49.

190
Ibid
., p. 103.

191
Trevor-Roper, ‘History and Imagination’, pp. 363ff. Elton made a similar point in
The Practice of History
; as did Huizinga.

192
See Lewis Wolpert,
The Unnatural Nature of Science
(London, 1992), pp. 20f.

193
Indeed, Fischer adds several more types of causation: those based on ‘abnormal antecedents’, ‘tructural antecedents’, ‘ontingentseries antecedents’ and ‘precipitant antecedents’. However, the utility of this typology seems questionable, as the distinctions are far from clear.

194
Dray,
Laws and Explanation in History
. See also
idem
, ‘The Historical Explanation of Actions Reconsidered’, in Sidney Hook (ed.),
Philosophy and History
(New York, 1963), pp. 105ff. For other critics of Hempel, see Alan Donagan, ‘The Popper-Hempel Theory Reconsidered’, in Dray (ed.),
Philosophical Analysis
, pp. 127-59.

195
Thomas Kuhn,
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
(2nd edn, Chicago, 1970).

1
I am grateful to Dr Niall Ferguson, Professor Allan Macinnes, Dr John Morrill, Professor the Earl Russell and Dr David Scott for reading and commenting upon earlier drafts of this essay.

2
For the dating and analysis of this extensive series of plans and drawings by Webb, see the brilliant discussion by Margaret Whinney, ‘John Webb’s Drawings for Whitehall Palace’, in
Proceedings of the Walpole Society
, 31 (1942-3), pp. 45-107. Although one of these drawings is marked as ‘taken’ by the King (plate XVIII), assessments of the chances of realising this project have usually been highly sceptical; see Timothy Mowl and Brian Earnshaw,
Architecture without Kings: The Rise of Puritan Classicism under Cromwell
(Manchester, 1995), pp. 85-7.

3
S. R. Gardiner,
History of the Great Civil War, 1642-49
, 4 vols (1893), vol. IV, p. 242. Gardiner was writing of the proposals put forward by Cromwell and Ireton in November 1648.

4
Caroline Hibbard,
Charles I and the Popish Plot
(Chapel Hill, 1983); Peter Donald,
An Uncounselled King: Charles I and the Scottish Troubles
(Cambridge, 1990); Conrad Russell,
The Causes of the English Civil War
(Oxford, 1990), and
The Fall of the British Monarchies, 1637-42
(Oxford, 1991); Allan I. Macinnes,
Charles I and the Making of the Covenanting Movement, 1625-41
(Edinburgh, 1991); Kevin Sharpe,
The Personal Rule of Charles I
(New Haven, 1992); Mark Charles Fissel,
The Bishops’ Wars: Charles I’s Campaigns against Scotland
,
1638-40
(Cambridge, 1994); John Morrill’s important contributions to the debate are conveniently collected in his
The Nature of the English Revolution: Essays
(London, 1993).

5
See, e.g., Esther S. Cope,
Politics without Parliaments, 1629-40
(London, 1987); L.J. Reeve,
Charles I and the Road to Personal Rule
(Cambridge, 1989). While Dr Reeve denies that ‘England was on a high road to civil war from the beginning of the century’, he argues that Charles I’s personality was such that he stood ’to inherit the wind’ (
ibid
., pp. 293, 296): catastrophe, at some point, was virtually certain.

6
For the best modern account, see Macinnes,
Charles I and the Making of the Covenanter Movement
, chs 5-7.

7
Russell,
Fall of the British Monarchies
, ch. 9.

8
Nevertheless, a handful of studies have given serious consideration to some of these possibilities; see Geoffrey Parker, ‘If the Armada Had Landed’,
History
, 61 (1976), pp. 358-68; Roy Strong,
Henry, Prince of Wales and England’s Lost Renaissance
(London, 1986); Conrad Russell, ‘The Catholic Wind’, in
idem
,
Unrevolutionary England
,
1603-4
(London, 1990), pp. 305-8; Charles M. Gray, ‘Parliament, Liberty and the Law’, in J. H. Hexter (ed.),
Parliament and Liberty from the Reign of Elizabeth to the English Civil War
(Stanford, 1992), pp. 195-6.

9
Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘History and Imagination’, in Valerie Pearl, Blair Worden and Hugh Lloyd-Jones (eds),
History and Imagination: Essays in Honour of H. R
.
Trevor-Roper
(London, 1981), p. 364.

10
British Library (hereafter BL), Add. MS 11045, fo. 45r-v, [Edward Rossingham to Viscount Scudamore], 13 August 1639.

11
Bodleian Library, Oxford (hereafter Bodl. Lib.), MS Tanner 65, fo. 100v, Sir Thomas Jermyn to Sir Robert Crane, 20 August 1640. (I owe this reference to Dr David Scott.)

12
Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), SP 16/464/71, fo. 159, Sir Francis Windebanke to Viscount Conway, 22 August 1640.

13
For a recent restatement of the traditional case, see Cope,
Politics without Parliaments
, pp. 153-4, 163-77.

14
Conrad Russell, ‘The Nature of a Parliament in Early Stuart England’, in Howard Tomlinson (ed.),
Before the English Civil War: Essays in Early Stuart Politics and Government
(London, 1983), p. 129.

15
Fissel,
Bishops’ Wars
, p. 8.

16
Historical Manuscripts Commission,
Buccleuch and Queensberry (Montagu House)
MSS, 3 vols (1899-1926), vol. I, p.276, Edward Montagu to the 1st Lord Montagu of Boughton, 9 February 1639. (I owe my knowledge of this reference to Professor Fissel.)

17
For the best recent account of the 1639 campaign, see Fissel,
Bishops’ Wars
, pp. 3-39.

18
Macinnes,
Charles I and the Making of the Covenanter Movement
, p. 193; Fissel,
Bishops
‘
Wars
, p. 5; and for the most thorough assessment of Hamilton’s role see J. J. Scally, ’The Political Career of James, 3rd Marquis and 1st Duke of Hamilton (1606-49) to 1643’ (University of Cambridge, Ph.D. dissertation, 1993).

19
Bodl. Lib., MS Clarendon 16, fo. 20, Sir Francis Windebanke to Sir Arthur Hopton, 15 March 1639.

20
PRO, WO 49/68, fos 22v-23.

21
J. D. Alsop, ‘Government, Finance, and the Community of the Exchequer’, in Christopher Haigh (ed.),
The Reign of Elizabeth I
(London, 1984), pp. 101-23; Fissel,
Bishops’ Wars
, pp. 137-43. Professor Fissel concludes (p. 151): ‘The Exchequer was expected to perform a task which exceeded its capabilities at that time. The fact that the money [required by the King for the war-effort]
ultimately
was paid, however, demonstrates the resiliency of the institution and the tenacity of the staff.’

22
PRO, E 403/2568, fo. 72.

23
PRO, SP 16/414/93, fo. 219, deputy lieutenants of Yorks. to Sir Jacob Astley, c. 14 March 1639.

24
Hamilton, for one, realised the strategic significance of the north-east and diverted three of his warships to Aberdeen early in 1639, an action which did strengthen the royalist resistance to the Covenanting movement in the region. But it was too little to prevent Huntly’s armed royalists from being overwhelmed by Covenanting forces (under Montrose) in April; though something of the potential damage which a properly supported royalist campaign in the north-east might have inflicted is suggested by the renewed campaign by Aboyne (Huntly’s second son) during the spring of 1639. Although he was unaided by English military support, his insurrection was not quashed by the Covenanters until 20 June 1639, two days after the conclusion of the Pacification of Berwick. Macinnes,
Charles I and the Making of the Covenanter Movement
, p. 193; P. Gordon,
A Short Abridgement of Britane’s Distempter, 1639 to 1649
(Spalding Club, Aberdeen, 1844), pp. 12-28. (I am grateful to Professor Allan Macinnes for a discussion of this point.)

25
Sheffield Central Library, Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments, Strafford Papers 10(250-1)a, Viscount Wentworth to the deputy lieutenants of Yorks., 15 February 1639. (I owe this and subsequent references in this paragraph to an important forthcoming paper by Dr David Scott, of the History of Parliament Trust, London, on the reaction of Yorkshire to the two Bishops’ Wars. I am grateful to Dr Scott for generously allowing me to cite from his paper prior to publication.)

26
John Rushworth,
Historical Collections
, Part II (1680), vol. II, p. 908; cf. Sheffield Central Library, Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments, Strafford Papers, 19(29), Sir William Savile to Viscount Wentworth, 26 April 1639.

27
Scottish Record Office, Hamilton MS GD 406/1/11144, 19 April 1639.

28
For the New Model’s size, see Ian Gentles,
The New Model Army in England, Ireland, and Scotland, 1645-53
(Oxford, 1992), pp. 10, 392.

29
Yorks. Archaeological Society Library, Leeds, DD53/III/544 (Annals of York), unfol.

30
Bodl. Lib., MS Ashmole 800 (Misc. political papers), fo. 51v (first series of foliation), Colonel Fleetwood to his father, Sir Giles Fleetwood, York, 5 April 1639.