Edward Alford and the Making of Country Radicalism

Resentment of monopoly and purveyance, weariness with the burdens of a long war, and the fears and hopes attendant upon the accession of a new and foreign dynasty were all focussed by the meeting of James I's first parliament in 1604. If there was nothing entirely new in these elements, there was novelty and danger in the concurrence of so many grievances at a time when the sense of external crisis which had unified the country for the preceding quarter century was at last relaxed. The new political climate, parochial, isolationist, and hostile to government intrusion whether of church or state, was soon associated with the term “Country.” In one sense, this climate was merely a moderate intensification of perennial English localism, and as such devoid of ideological implication. But allied with the persistent failures of the early Stuart administration, particularly in dealing with parliament, it became a medium in which genuine political opposition began to develop.