Glimpses of Britain. Reader - стр. 19

Tawney describes the Puritans as early converts to “administrative nihilism”: the doctrine we now call the minimal state. “Business affairs,” they believed, “should be left to be settled by business men, unhampered by the intrusions of an antiquated morality.” They owed nothing to anyone. Indeed, they formulated a radical new theory of social obligation, which maintained that helping the poor created idleness and spiritual dissolution, divorcing them from God.

Of course, the Puritans differed from Bush’s people in that they worshipped production but not consumption. But this is just a different symptom of the same disease. Tawney characterises the late Puritans as people who believed that “the world exists not to be enjoyed, but to be conquered. Only its conqueror deserves the name of Christian.”

There were some, such as the Levellers and the Diggers, who remained true to the original spirit of the Reformation, but they were violently suppressed. The pursuit of adulterers and sodomites provided an ideal distraction for the increasingly impoverished lower classes.

Ronan Bennett’s excellent new novel, Havoc in its Third Year, about a Puritan revolution in the 1630s, has the force of a parable. An obsession with terrorists (in this case Irish and Jesuit), homosexuality and sexual licence, the vicious chastisement of moral deviance, the disparagement of public support for the poor: swap the black suits for grey ones, and the characters could have walked out of Bush’s America.

So why has this ideology resurfaced in 2004? Because it has to. The enrichment of the elite and impoverishment of the lower classes requires a justifying ideology if it is to be sustained. In the US this ideology has to be a religious one. Bush’s government is forced back to the doctrines of Puritanism as an historical necessity. If we are to understand what it’s up to, we must look not to the 1930s, but to the 1630s.

by Martin Wainwright

The Guardian, May 19, 2005

Five blocks of stone prised out of a castle wall are thought to have revealed what may be the first bathroom built in Britain after the long and grubby interlude of the Middle Ages. Archaeologists are carrying out a preliminary search of two chambers unearthed this week in a long-abandoned outbuilding at Bolsover in Derbyshire, where Sir William Cavendish, a fastidious aristocrat, is known to have started a fashion for “bathing rooms” after the English civil war. Inside the room, a narrow slit running round all four walls shows where flagstones once formed a floor at a level leaving ample room for a sunken bath. The main chamber also has a recess at one end the width of lead piping, which tallies with a similar feature on a well house in the castle garden immediately outside. “It is looking very promising,” said John Burditt of English Heritage, which is gradually restoring the castle – a grandiose mixture of mansion and fortress which dominates the pit village constituency of leftwing Labour MP Denis Skinner. “Another piece of evidence is the smaller second chamber which has blackened stone on one wall,” Mr Burditt said. “The historical record describes how Sir William’s bath could be filled with hot water. This room may well turn out to have been the boiler house.” Sir William’s experiments in hygiene were inspired in part by his exile on the continent, following Oliver Cromwell’s victory. In Europe, washing was generally more sophisticated than in England. But Sir William is also thought to have been keen to help his first wife, Lady Madge, overcome her problems in conceiving. “Immersion in warm water was thought to be a way of treating infertility at the time,” said Mr Burditt. “Cavendish had the resources and room to make this possible on a large scale.” The 17th-century bathing room craze was the first real revival in Britain of the fastidious habits of the Romans, whose elaborate public baths were left in ruins during the Dark Ages. Bolsover’s hidden rooms, which were sealed over a century ago when they fell into disrepair and became structurally dangerous, are likely to go on show after a full archaeological survey this summer. The find, if the bathing theory is confirmed, will add another laurel to Britain’s considerable plumbing heritage, which famously includes the perfector of the modern flush lavatory, Thomas Crapper. The first bathroom to be installed in the US was also the work of a man who knew Bolsover well, the 18th-century Leeds architect Benjamin LaTrobe whose other commissions included collaborative design on the White House.