Why the 17th Century Still Defines You: The Invisible Influence of England's Forgotten Revolution

An American Blindspot

“History began on July 4th, 1776. Everything before that was a mistake.” - Ron Swanson

The other day, I was involved in a casual conversation with a friend. In passing, I made an offhand reference to the Scottish Covenanters of the 17th century, assuming that as a Presbyterian he would readily grasp the significance. Not only did he fail to recognize the reference, he also casually dismissed the entire period —the English Civil Wars, the Glorious Revolution—as irrelevant. Naturally, I could not allow this to stand unchallenged, prompting the writing of this Substack to illustrate exactly why I think he is profoundly mistaken. In fact, in my experience my friend's opinion is widely shared by most Americans. This is unfortunate because, as I hope to demonstrate, our fundamental beliefs about politics, society, and religion, have been deeply shaped by events that unfolded in 17th-century England.

The Foundational Influence of 17th-Century England on America

The reason these events are so significant for Americans is best described by Samuel Huntington in his book Who Are We? Huntington, a Princeton political scientist best known for The Clash of Civilizations, makes a crucial sociological distinction: settlers are different from immigrants. Settlers don’t just move to a new place. They bring an entire culture with them and lay the groundwork for everything that follows. The first generations of settlers determine the long-term trajectory of a society, regardless of how many waves of immigrants come after them.

The foundations of our country were laid in the 17th and early 18th centuries, when the dominant settler population came from the British Isles. Their ideas, their culture, and their religious and political structures didn’t just influence America—they became America. David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed provides a detailed examination of the four major British groups that settled in the colonies and how their cultures shaped the United States to this day.

One of the most fascinating aspects of settler culture is that it often preserves elements of the homeland more rigidly than the homeland itself. Linguists, for example, have noted that certain features of American English (especially in the rural South) retain phonetic elements closer to 17th-century British speech than modern-day England does. The same is true for political and religious ideas. In many ways, Americans are 17th-century Englishmen who froze in time. The political upheavals of that century had as lasting an impact on us as they did on England itself.

Political Ideas Forged in Blood: Limited Government and Natural Rights

What are some of these ideas that live rent-free in American minds, shaped inexorably by events in 17th-century England?

First, politically speaking, is the foundational concept of limited government. The English Civil Wars of the 1640s and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 contested the absolute authority of the monarch. Despite misconceptions, English kings never wielded truly absolute power; as far back as 1215, Magna Carta laid foundational limits to royal prerogative, especially concerning taxation. The early 17th-century crisis emerged when King Charles I sought to rule without Parliament and impose unauthorized taxes—ultimately sparking civil war between Parliamentarians and Royalists. The execution of Charles I established an extraordinary precedent: kings were accountable to the people. While the English attempt to establish a republican form of government ultimately failed, the limitations on the power of the monarch had been brutally established. Edmund Ludlow, one of the Parliamentarians who signed Charles I’s death warrant, summarized the conflict as follows:

"[T]he Question in dispute between the King's Party and us being, as I apprehended, Whether the King should govern as a God by his Will, and the Nation be governed by Force like Beasts: or whether the People should be governed by Laws made by themselves, and live under a Government derived from their own Consent."

After Cromwell's military dictatorship and the restoration of the monarchy, James II revisited authoritarian ambitions, ultimately prompting the invasion by William and Mary. They assumed the throne on Parliament's terms, codified in the English Bill of Rights (1689). This seminal document secured parliamentary supremacy and enumerated individual liberties familiar to Americans: the right to bear arms, petition the government, and prohibitions against excessive bail, cruel and unusual punishments, and garrisoning soldiers among the population in peacetime. Until 1776 American colonists considered themselves Englishmen, heirs of these liberties. It was only natural, given their heritage, to contest violations by Parliament (taxation without representation, infringements on jury trials, and quartering soldiers). This understanding of limited government was not an American invention, but an inherited conviction shaped directly by England's 17th-century turmoil. Even the notion of a justified revolution found ample precedent in England's overthrow of James II and execution of Charles I.

Another concept deeply embedded in American political thought is natural rights, articulated most succinctly by John Locke. A 17^th century enlightenment philosopher, Locke was the driving mind behind the English Bill of Rights. Locke codified these revolutionary ideas into an enduring philosophy: governments are formed to secure people's inherent rights to life, liberty, and property. If governments violate these rights, citizens have the right to rebel—a concept embraced wholly by America's founders. Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, echoing Locke, was no radical innovation; it articulated longstanding beliefs already rooted in English precedent.

Locke articulated ideas that, importantly, did not simply spring fully formed from his mind. Rather, they emerged organically during the radical upheaval of the English Civil Wars, particularly around the execution of Charles I and the subsequent attempt to establish an English republic. As Locke wrote,

“Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.”

These radical notions about equality and natural rights circulated broadly. Famously, Colonel Thomas Rainsborough, a prominent leader among the Levellers, articulated this powerful idea during the Putney Debates of 1647:

“I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it's clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under”

His fellow Roundhead, Richard Overton, put it even more clearly:

“By natural birth all men are equally and alike born to like property, liberty and freedom; and so we are delivered of God by the hand of nature into this world, every one with a natural, innate freedom and property. Even so are we to live, everyone equally and alike to enjoy his birthright and privilege.”

Religious Legacy: Presbyterians, Baptists, and the Crucible of Toleration

“Neither pagan, nor Mahumetan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth, because of his religion” - John Locke

When examining the Parliamentarian religious landscape of the English Civil War period, two distinct camps emerge prominently. First are the Presbyterian types, staunch advocates of a unified national church, yet adamantly opposed to King Charles I’s attempts to push it toward pseudo-Catholicism and Arminianism. They were committed to a firmly Reformed national church under parliamentary oversight. Opposing them was an eclectic coalition of radical Protestants—Baptists, Quakers, Independents, and various smaller sects—unified primarily by their advocacy of religious toleration. They demanded freedom of conscience and the complete dismantling of any government-enforced ties to an official church, resisting all religious coercion by state power.

This deep divide over religion would become the central fault line that doomed the English republican experiment. Though both factions shared common ground in opposing Charles I’s attempted absolutism, their visions for post-war England differed irreconcilably. The Presbyterian camp sought to institutionalize their vision of a distinctly Christian national state church, which by modern definitions might easily place them within a "Christian nationalist" framework. In stark contrast, the tolerationist camp, although equally committed to seeing Christian principles profoundly influence society, categorically rejected any form of coercion in religious matters. Oliver Cromwell himself, leaning toward toleration, famously demonstrated this openness by allowing the formerly banished Jews to return and establish communities in England. Yet despite Cromwell's sympathies, the irreconcilable conflict between these two factions rendered a lasting republican settlement impossible.

Nevertheless, the spirit of religious toleration endured, particularly flourishing in America’s untamed frontier environment. Thus, Baptists, Quakers, and other dissenting religious groups, who found room to breathe only because of England’s 17th-century turmoil, eventually would thrive in the colonies and came to profoundly shape American religious identity. If you are a modern-day Baptist this turbulent era represents your origin story. Without the instability and upheaval of the English Civil Wars, the Baptist tradition, which gained significant traction among common soldiers of the Parliamentary army, might never have secured its critical foothold in the English-speaking world. Indeed, religious toleration was not just a peripheral issue; it became the cause célèbre of Cromwell’s army and a central theme animating its rank-and-file.

Yet what of the other side, those who trace their spiritual lineage through the Presbyterians, advocates of a robust national church? Their story also remains deeply entwined with the upheaval of the 17th century. One key demand Parliament made of Charles I in the lead up to the Civil War was that he cease interfering with religious affairs and approve a national assembly of Presbyterian and Reformed ministers to establish the theology and structure of the English national church. Charles refused. But after Charles lost his head this assemblage would convene, resulting in the famous Westminster Confession of Faith, which remains authoritative for thousands of Presbyterian churches globally.

Here, though, lies a crucial misunderstanding frequently perpetuated today. Many approach the Westminster Confession solely as a theological and scriptural document, almost as if it dropped from heaven independent of history. Undoubtedly, its theology carries profound significance, and perhaps it is even correct in its theological formulations. Yet the historical reality must be acknowledged: the Westminster Confession emerged directly from political and religious conflicts sparked by England's 17th-century revolution and civil war. Its very existence was born out of upheaval, and much of its content implicitly addresses theological opponents, including those advocating radical religious toleration and individual conscience.

This realization should not diminish respect for the Westminster Confession; rather, it calls for an honest engagement with the historical context that shaped it. Far too many read it without understanding these political and social pressures, treating it as a timeless theological creed rather than recognizing it as a humanly crafted document arising from specific struggles. Without grasping the 17th-century context—complete with the fiery debates, violence, and radicalism from which it emerged—we risk a shallow, distorted interpretation of a confession that still defines many of core Presbyterian beliefs today.

Thus, whether one identifies more closely with the Presbyterian tradition or the radical tolerationists like the Baptists and Quakers, the religious fault lines of the 17th century remain unmistakably visible. Even as contemporary American evangelicalism wrestles with questions of Christian nationalism, religious freedom, and the role of faith in public policy, we continue walking paths laid by 17th-century conflicts whose echoes reverberate still. To ignore these historical realities is to remain imprisoned by them, unaware yet profoundly shaped by ideas birthed in the crucible of revolution. Only through careful examination and honest reckoning can we recognize and begin to transcend the invisible grasp the 17th century continues to hold upon us.

Why Does This Matter? Why Should You Care?

Is any of this really relevant to your life? I’d argue it’s profoundly relevant. Until you understand the origins of your mental framework, you are unconsciously enslaved by it. If your beliefs, assumptions, and worldview are shaped by inherited ideas, but you don’t understand where those ideas really came from, then they feel like an immutable baseline of reality. You assume this is just "the way things are," rather than seeing them as contingent—shaped by historical circumstances, debated, fought over, and ultimately passed down to you.

But once you investigate why these ideas exist, who first articulated them, and how they became dominant in your society, you gain the ability to step back. To analyze them. To decide for yourself whether they are as indisputable as they once seemed.

This process happens all the time. As children, we absorb the worldview of our parents, our community, our nation. We are taught that certain things are simply true, that this is how "right-thinking" people view politics, religion, or society. But history allows us to crack open that framework. It lets us glimpse the flesh-and-blood people who first formulated these ideas, not as timeless, Platonic truths floating in the ether, but as concepts forged in specific battles, conflicts, and struggles. And suddenly, we realize that these ideas are pervasive in 21st-century America not because they are necessarily self-evident, but because the people who settled this country were shaped by the events of their time.

This is freeing. It allows us to see these ideas for what they are: products of history. And from there, we can assess them. Maybe, after careful examination, we decide that concepts like limited government and natural rights, or certain theological positions, do in fact reflect deep truths about the world. Or maybe we conclude that while these ideas made sense in a particular historical context, they no longer hold in 21st-century America. Or perhaps we go even further and reject them altogether, recognizing them as a dramatic rupture from more prevalent human traditions—whether political ideals like absolutism or theological traditions such as Catholicism.

But the crucial point is this: we cannot make any of these judgments until we understand the historical conditions that created these ideas in the first place.

And that, I would argue, is one of the greatest gifts history gives us. It frees us from the unexamined assumptions that shape our lives. It reveals the ghosts pulling the strings of our thoughts and institutions—people who lived centuries ago but whose ideas continue to structure our world so thoroughly that we don’t even notice their presence. We don’t even see how we’ve been manipulated—not in a nefarious sense, but in the simple, practical sense that our minds and our culture have been shaped by decisions made long before we were born.

Studying history, then, is very much like becoming aware of “the matrix.” That doesn’t mean we should wipe the slate clean or dismiss all inherited wisdom. Our predecessors were engaging with the same fundamental reality we are. They certainly uncovered profound truths that we can still benefit from. But it does mean we now have the opportunity—the freedom—to examine these ideas critically, to separate what is enduringly true from what is historically contingent.

You may not be interested in 17th century England. But rest assured: 17th century England is very interested in you. The only way to safely dismiss this period of history is to understand the influence it has on you.