#providence lost

[j-august]

It was a Puritan's dream come true: the perfect package of virtue and vindictiveness.

Paul Lay, Providence Lost

[j-august]

The quintessential feature of the rule of the major generals was not that it was army rule, nor that it was London rule, but rather that it was godly rule -- and it was as such that it was decisively rejected by the great majority of the English and Welsh people.

Paul Lay, Providence Lost

[j-august]

Cromwell's foreign policy had a strong moral element to it -- rarely an indicator of desirable outcomes.

Paul Lay, Providence Lost

[j-august]

Cromwell's authoritarian streak was exposed. As early as July 1647, he had observed that it was best for governments to rule 'for the people's good, not what pleases them'.

Paul Lay, Providence Lost

[j-august]

'Give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock and he will turn it into a garden,' wrote the agriculturalist Arthur Young. 'Give him a nine years' lease of a garden and he will convert it into a desert.'

Paul Lay, Providence Lost

[j-august]

Cromwell, rather in keeping with his elusive nature, was absent from his own state funeral.

Paul Lay, Providence Lost

[j-august]

A preference for a blanket of mild tyranny over the chaotic discomforts of anarchy is a political mindset not limited to seventeenth-century England. The imposition of po-faced piety, however, is something else entirely.

Paul Lay, Providence Lost