#pax britanica podcast

[st-just]

This podcast series about the War of Three Kingdoms just incredibly rubbing in how important it is not to take religion seriously. Thousands upon thousands of people killed because people really truly believed whether the Anglican Church had bishops or not could damn their immortal souls.

[st-just]

Today Cromwell will follow up the sack of Drogheda, the largest siege massacre in Irish history, with the sack of Wexford. The second largest siege massacre in Irish history.

-line from a podcast I probably shouldn't find the delivery of funny.

[st-just]

Given how he's generally just, bad, about most things he was it's kind of surprising what a sincere believer in freedom of conscience and religious toleration* Cromwell was. Hume kind of hypothesizes about how the Commonwealth and Protectorate overall saw continuous defeats for political radicalism but a real triumph for religious independency (to the point that religious confirmism in England has been a dead letter ever since) and I do wonder how much of that as just down to him.

*does not apply to the Irish (all that formerly Catholic-owned land was paying for the army)

[st-just]

If I was a narrow ruling elite that only held uncontested power because the army had already purged parliament of all their ideological opponents and had basically zero organic base of popular or armed support or authentic legitimacy, I would simply not antagonize and try to ice out the military grandees who could (and eventually do!) throw me out at will.