The Restless Republic Quotes

“Another change which had been brought about by the 1650s and could not be undone was public interest in news, current affairs and political debate.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“A year had not changed Monck's view that once you had decided on a course of action, even if with reluctance, it paid to espouse it with enthusiasm.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“Taken on his own terms he had an intense integrity rare among rulers; he seldom acted for personal profit and almost always did what he believed to be best for others.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“He warned his pious daughter Bridget of the dangers of self-criticism and the overwhelming importance of love.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“His personal success, combined with his surfeit of self-confidence and shortage of charm, had multiplied his enemies and soon they began to mobilize against him.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“... he was not one to let other people's feelings get in the way when he knew he was right.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“He mocked those who still spent their time bent over books, for 'discoveries and improvements' would not be found in trawling the work of others. He had decided the previous year to stop reading altogether and instead to focus entirely on active experimentation...”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“As soon as the edifice of the knowledge of the ancients had been shaken in the minds of the most inquisitive, questions upon questions arose which now demanded technology, including -- crucially -- the invention of the telescope and the microscope, enabling a generation of scholars to see clearly things which had been absolutely invisible to their forefathers. It was a thrilling, and dangerous, time to be alive.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“In his will he said nothing of war or injustice or personal achievements, but spoke of gratitude, peace and acceptance. He gave thanks for his long life -- the 'great measure of daies' with which God 'had filled my glass of time' -- and for the love and companionship of 'that life of my life my dearest wife'.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“She had a wicked and downright dirty sense of humour, and enjoyed nothing more than sharing funny stories and bawdy jokes. She was practical and unpretentious...”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“... he relived the day he had been ushered into a London house to see an exotic 'great fowle' -- nothing less than a live dodo, one of the very last to be seen in Europe.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“... it was easy to dismiss her as a fraud until you actually met her -- when the possibility became much more real that she might indeed by God's handmaiden.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“... she had foreseen the New Model Army's occupation of London in the tense weeks before Charles I was tried. Two years after that she had experienced a further trance and this time saw an army on the battlefield, led by a figure of valour and courage, God indicating that 'Oliver Cromwell, then Lord General, was that Gideon'. Cromwell's defeat of the Scots at the battle of Dunbar soon afterwards offered Anna confirmation of the truth of her visions.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“A sense of liberation from the restrictions and oppressions of their sex, and a feeling of sisterhood, seems to have been a common experience.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“Furthermore, reformed religious thinking made it possible for women, who were treated as inferior and subservient in almost all spheres of seventeenth-century life, to be taken seriously.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“There appeared before her eyes the figure of Oliver Cromwell, in the guise of the Old Testament military leader Gideon, going into the Commons Chamber and demanding the resignation of the Speaker and the end of the assembly: 'I saw suddenly a departure of them, though they were very loath thereunto.' When, four days later, news reached the Hillingdon vicarage that exactly these events had just occurred in London, Anna's friends were thunderstruck. She was not mad. God himself was speaking through her.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“Even his enemies conceded he was tremendous company, and those who became fond of him liked him though they knew him to be unreliable and unpredictable... He was no the first nor the last person to develop an enduring friendship with those who ought to have despised him, in large part because he made them laugh.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“It was not to be a blunt instrument of instruction, but something subtler. Humour and satire were to be its methos. 'It must be written in a jocular way,' he explained; to sway the opinions of the 'multitude' required not disputation, but amusement and 'phantasie' that would delight and charm.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“His argument was disarmingly simple: the people of England should obey those in authority whoever they were, for the sake of peace and order.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“As in many parts of the country, people's desire for peace and prosperity was stronger than their loyalty to one regime or another.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“Like many a resistance fighter she exploited her sex and her social situation and had few qualms about using deception and violence to advance her cause.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“The light from her windows passed across her chamber in diminishing arcs as the days shortened, the sounds were the cries of seagulls following the fishing fleet into the harbour and the rush of the waves on the shingle shore.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“For decades, indeed centuries, the English legal system had been decried for its unfairness. The lists of its short-comings varied, but most included the sheer time it took to resolve any case and the eye-watering cost in lawyers' fees of legal action. This indefinite imprisonment of debtors and the power of the central courts in London were also causes for repeated complaint, as was the fact that the law was a closed shop, conducted in Latin and French, to the absolute exclusion of non-professionals.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“If the earth could be truly shared, and people could come together to work it, there would be an end to all hunger and want, all greed and envy. The way to realize this vision was to act: words were 'nothing at all, and must die, for action is the life of all',”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“Indeed part of the reason for the fall of the republic was that its protagonists agreed far more on what they did not want than what they sought in its place.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

“This book was born of ignorance.”
― Anna Keay, The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown