ABSTRACT
The allied victory over the armies of Louis XIV at the Battle of Blenheim, 13 August 1704, from Colonel Parkes who had been sent by her captain-general, John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough, Queen Anne wrote to her friend, and Marlboroughs wife, Sarah Churchill, that this glorious victory, which, next to God Almighty, is wholly owing to dear Mr Freeman. Causal secularism in military success was not recognised in conflicts prior to the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648. The parliamentary triumph at the battle of Nantwich in 1644, Sir Thomas Fairfax wrote to his wife of the great Victory it hath pleased Him to give us over the Irish army. Clark has subsequently returned to interpretation, albeit shifting the focus to demonstrate the religiosity of early modern British society by laying bare the limited diffusion of Enlightenment ideals of rationality, secular order and progress and the complicity of received historical opinion in marginalising religions organising and explanatory qualities.
