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The Burden of Proof: J.H. Hexter and Christopher Hill

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

William G. Palmer
William G. Palmer*
Affiliation:
University of Maine
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Extract

“If I desire to pass over a part in silence,” wrote Claudian in his account of Stilicho, the consul, “whatever I omit will seem most worthy to have been recorded. Shall I pursue his old exploits and early youth? His recent merits recall themselves to mind. Shall I dwell on his justice? The glory of the warrior rises resplendent before me. Shall I relate his strength in arms? He performed yet greater things unarmed.” Such was a fifth-century poet's assessment of some of the historian's most persistent problems: how should the historian select his evidence and, once selected, when can this evidence be said to constitute a historical proof? That this problem has not been solved to everyone's satisfaction is evidenced by the recent exchange between two historians of the seventeenth century, J.H. Hexter and Christopher Hill.

Few historians are more qualified to enter the vast historical minefield known as the history of seventeenth-century England than J.H. Hexter. Though he has done some narrative studies, most of his work has been devoted to attacks on conventional ideas. In these works, Hexter has revealed himself as a gifted critic and polemicist, performing the same sort of demolition of established ideas about the English Revolutionary era that Alfred Cobban has provided for the French period. At various times Hexter has denounced theories of new monarchy, the Tudor middle class, the rise of the gentry, the fall of the gentry, historical relativism, and history as social science.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , Fall 1979 , pp. 122 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1979

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References

1 Claudian, , De Laudibus Stilicho, i, p. 13Google Scholar.

2 Hexter, J.H., “The Burden of Proof,” Times Literary Supplement, (hereafter, TLS), 24 October 1975Google Scholar; Hill, Christopher, “Reply to Hexter,” TLS, 7 November 1975Google Scholar; and Hexter, J.H., “Reply to Hill,” TLS, 28 November 1975Google Scholar.

3 See such works by Hexter, as Doing History (Bloomington, 1971)Google Scholar, The History Primer (New York, 1971)Google Scholar, and several of the essays in Reappraisals in History (Evanston, 1961)Google Scholar. For an excellent review of Reappraisals and general appraisal of Hexter as a historian see the review by Stone, Lawrence in EHR, LXXVIII, 309, 1963Google Scholar.

4 Hexter, , “The Burden of Proof,” p. 1252Google Scholar.

5 Hill, Christopher, Change and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1974), p. 99Google Scholar.

6 Hexter, , “The Burden of Proof,” p. 1251Google Scholar.

7 Hill makes this point himself in “Reply to Hexter,” TLS, p. 1333Google Scholar. Hexter's position may be found in “The Myth of the Middle Class in Tudor England” in Reappraisals in History.

8 Hexter, , “The Burden of Proof,” p. 1251Google Scholar.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid., pp. 1251-52.

11 Ibid., p. 1252. A similar distinction between all kinds of thinkers was suggested by Isiah Berlin in his famous study of Tolstoy's view of history, The Hedgehog and the Fox.

12 Hexter, , “The Burden of Proof,” p. 1252Google Scholar.

13 Hexter sees Change and Continuity as a “representative sample” (p. 1250); he claims it can be used to get at the “essential Hill” (p. 1250); and that he has endured a “long and almost total immersion” in Hill's works (p. 1251).

14 See reviews of the Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution, by Aylmer, G.E. in EHR, LXXXI, 321 (October, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Zagorin, Perez in AHR, LXXI, 3 (April, 1966)Google Scholar, and the review-essay by Trevor-Roper, H.R. in History and Theory, Vol. 1, (1966)Google Scholar. See also the debate between Hill and H.F. Kearney in Past and Present. This includes Kearney, H.F., “Puritanism and Science: Problems of Definition,” 26 (July, 1965)Google Scholar and “Puritanism, Capitalism, and the Scientific Revolution,” X, 28 (July, 1964)Google Scholar, and Hill, Christopher, “Reply to Kearney,” X, 29 (December, 1964)Google Scholar. These reviewers, especially Aylmer and Trevor-Roper, complain about precisely the same points Hexter does.

15 Hill, , “Review-Essay,” History and Theory, VI, 1(1967), pp. 117–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Hexter, , “The Burden of Proof,” p. 1251Google Scholar.

17 Stone, Lawrence, The Causes of the English Revolution (New York, 1972), p. 35Google Scholar.

18 Hill, , The English Revolution (London, 1940), p. 1Google Scholar

19 Hill, , Puritanism and Revolution (London, 1958)Google Scholar.

20 Hill, , Reformation to Industrial Revolution (New York, 1967), p. 4Google Scholar.

21 Stone, , Causes of the Revolution, pp. 40,43Google Scholar.

22 Hexter, , “The Burden of Proof,” p. 1252Google Scholar.

23 Hill, , Intellectual Origins, p. viiGoogle Scholar. Hexter might have added that Hill also admitted some of the weaknesses of his method and that he claimed in the same introduction that his intent in Intellectual Origins was “to provoke” and start a debate. He was well aware that his methodology was not the soundest and that he was not presenting definitive answers.

24 Hexter, , “The Burden of Proof,” p. 1252Google Scholar.

25 Hexter, , “Reply to Hill,” p. 1419Google Scholar.

26 Hexter, , Reappraisals in History, p. xviiGoogle Scholar.