ABSTRACT

This paper seeks, firstly, to reinstate the Suffolk lawyer and MP Nathaniel Bacon (1593-1660) whose ideological as well as political importance has been neglected, and, secondly, to propose that his 1647 tract in support of the parliamentary cause may have been an additional prompt to John Milton’s work on his History of Britain, which dates from this period, and which counters the elder statesman’s view of the Saxons as furnishing a legimitising native model of parliamentary government. In what may, in turn, have been a response to Milton, Bacon, in a “summary Conclusion” to The Continuation of this tract (1651), counters the received view of the English/British as courageous but politically unskilled inhabitants of the cold North, which Milton reiterates, notably in the “Digression” to book 3 of his History. Asserting rather the “middle temper” of the people of England Bacon claims for them a native political wisdom like that of Aristotle’s Hellenic race with whom they share a “consanguinity”, while Milton urges the need to look to continental Europe for political as well as cultural models. The stakes of Bacon’s claims are pointed up by their appropriation to support the opposite cause by monarchists who share his nativist ideology, which is not shared by Milton as it is not shared by the monarchist William Temple whose position with respect to the continent of Europe aligns him rather with Milton. The perceived relation of England to its continental European neighbours thus cuts across the political divide between monarchists and parliamentarians.

摘要

本文首先寻求恢复其意识形态和政治重要性被忽视的萨福克律师和议员纳撒尼尔培根 (1593-1660)，其次，提出他 1647 年支持议会事业的传单可能约翰·米尔顿 (John Milton) 在他的《不列颠历史》(History of British History) 中的工作的一个额外提示，该著作可追溯到这一时期，并反驳了这位年长的政治家认为撒克逊人提供了一种合法的本土议会政府模式的观点。反过来，这可能是对培根米尔顿的回应，在对《延续》的“总结结论”中这本小册子（1651 年），反驳了公认的观点，即英国/英国人是寒冷北方的勇敢但在政治上缺乏技能的居民，弥尔顿重申了这一点，特别是在他的历史书第 3 卷的“离题”中. 培根主张英格兰人民的“中性脾气”，为他们主张一种本土的政治智慧，就像亚里士多德的希腊种族一样，他们与他们有“血缘关系”，而弥尔顿则敦促需要向欧洲大陆寻求政治和文化模式。培根的主张的利害关系通过他们的拨款来支持与他的本土主义意识形态相同的君主主义者的相反事业，弥尔顿不同意这种观点，因为君主主义者威廉坦普尔与欧洲大陆的立场一致他宁愿和米尔顿在一起。因此，英国与其欧洲大陆邻国的感知关系跨越了君主主义者和议员之间的政治鸿沟。