{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.029170090386195564, 'fraction_numerical': 0.019309778142974528, 'mean_word_length': 4.534090909090909, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The Outbreak of the English Civil War . By Anthony Fletcher. London: Edward Arnold, 1981. Pp. xxx+ 446. £24. - The Royalist War Effort 1642-1646 . By Ronald Hutton. London: Longman, 1981. Pp. xvi + 271. £12.

It is a tribute to S. R. Gardiner's scholarship that only recently has his narrative come under substantial revision. What Professor Underdown began a decade ago for the late 1640s and Professor Russell undertook for the 1620s is now being extended into other years. Sharing the growing realization that we cannot know why things happened until we know what happened, Mr Fletcher aims to tell as nearly as possible in one volume the whole story of 1640-2; while Dr Hutton gives us the outlines for a picture of the mid-1640s very different from the traditional one. The strengths of Fletcher's book are where we might expect them. The closeness of the detail allows him to identify key shifts of opinion that we have missed. In his valuable The English Civil War, Robert Ashton's concern with conservatism led him to concentrate more on the reaction against Pym and the consequent growth of a royalist party. Mr Fletcher, with some justice, regards as at least equally fundamental the question of how Pym was able to persuade a sizeable body of men to take the extreme step of fighting the king. This leads him in an important direction. Several recent historians, sharing Ashton's estimate of the significance of conservatism, have argued the extremely reluctant radicalization of the parliamentary majority: the Houses were driven onwards by the demands of crisis and war. Professor Aylmer's concept of'functional radicalism' provides the key to this analysis. Fletcher very plausibly qualifies this interpretation by, for example, studying the progress of Root and Branch. Although the Root and Branch Bill indeed originated half-heartedly, as a device to put pressure on the lords, many in the commons became committed to their progeny by the fact of paternity. Fletcher is able to show that by late 1641 many M.P.s who a year before were episcopalians had become genuine Rootand-Branchers. It was not mere reluctant acquiescence, but a real sea-change. And of course the most vital element in changing men's minds about many things was the spectre of the popish plot. A major contribution of Fletcher's book is its stress on the role of fear: apprehensions of monstrous conspiracy hurried Pym's allies down unknown ways.