ABSTRACT
Revisionists have identified the division of the 1640s in terms of a ‘functional breakdown’ of the centre under the stress of war and fiscal constraint, with relatively little interest or willing involvement in the counties. A new examination of the role of the press and the reception of news and propaganda in the countryside suggests that the conflict was actually more principled in nature and that its development can be traced in the provinces in the decades before 1642. Intellectual historians like Johann Sommervillea describe an ongoing intellectual debate about the constitution in the early seventeenth century; here Richard Cust finds that debate conducted at the local and popular level. Contemporary rhetoric about consensus, order and obedience must be set against his compelling evidence of popular criticism, complaint and confrontation. The distinction frequently made between high and low politics, between court élite and country people, must also be amended in light of apparent popular interest in public affairs and principle. The revisionist notion of popular disinterest in central policy even in the 1640s looks increasingly suspect in the face of these data.
