Scott Jonathan. Commonwealth Principles: Republican Writing of the English Revolution

Cambridge University Press, 2004. — 416 p.The republican writing of the English revolution has attracted a major scholarly literature. Yet there has been no single volume treatment of the subject, nor has it been adequately related to the larger upheaval from which it emerged, or to the larger body of radical thought of which it became the most influential component. Commonwealth Principles addresses these needs, and Jonathan Scott goes beyond existing accounts organised around a single key concept (whether constitutional, linguistic or moral) or author (usually James Harrington). Linking various social, political and intellectual agendas, Professor Scott explains why, when classical republicanism came to England, it did so in the moral service of a religious revolution. The resulting ideology hinged not upon political language, or constitutional form, but upon Christian humanist moral philosophy applied in the practical context of an attempted radical reformation of manners. This opposed not only private interest politics, embodied by monarchy or tyranny, on behalf of the publicly interested virtues of a self-governing civic community. It was part of a more general critique of private interest society: a republican attempt, from pride, greed, poverty and inequality, to go beyond the mere word ‘commonwealth’ and reconstitute what Milton called ‘the solid thing’.
Jonathan Scott is Carroll Amundson Professor of British History at the University of Pittsburgh and is now established as one of the most important historians of the seventeenth century writing today. This association of author and topic will render Commonwealth Principles essential reading for numerous scholars of British history, political theory and English literature.