The English Civil War as a popular revolt against royal power appears in the narrative as a turning point in the relation between the people and the monarchy. Rather than recounting battles, the passage frames 1642 as the moment when popular strength, long credited to the king, is imagined to turn against him. Its central image makes the people both the foundation of royal grandeur and the force capable of overturning it.

Background: The People Beneath the Crown

The discussion begins with a critique of the habit of attributing the people’s actions to their sovereign. The people fight, pay, and sustain the state, yet the glory and generosity are credited to the king. Royal authority thus appears elevated above a populace whose labor and resources support it. The passage develops this imbalance through the image of an equestrian statue: the king is the rider, while the people are the horse carrying him.

The image also describes a shift in popular power. The horse begins in a submissive condition but grows into a lion; the political order depends on whether that strength remains harnessed. The passage’s account of Queen Anne’s popularity supplies a later contrast: it presents the people as having resumed their deference to the crown, even while England’s military and imperial power rests on public resources and effort.

1642 and the Reversal of Power

Within this political allegory, 1642 in England marks the people’s challenge to the royal rider. The metaphor makes the Civil War a rupture in the appearance of natural royal superiority: the king seems taller than the people only because he stands above them, and their continued support is what permits that elevation. When the people turn against the rider, the source of royal power becomes visible as a potential source of resistance.

The passage distinguishes this overturning from the more extreme image attached to 1649. It associates 1642 with the horse throwing its rider, then uses the later year to signify the people going further and consuming him. The distinction gives the Civil War a specific place in a broader account of popular revolt: it begins the reversal of the relationship, while the later event carries that reversal to a more radical conclusion.

Reversal and Historical Meaning

The narrative does not present popular power as a permanent transformation. Its account of Queen Anne’s reign describes England as having returned to an attitude of crown-worship after earlier upheavals. The horse-and-rider figure therefore carries a warning as well as a revolutionary claim: popular strength can overthrow authority, but it can also be reabsorbed into renewed submission.

The Civil War’s significance here lies in this unstable exchange between dependence and rule. The crown receives its apparent grandeur from the people, yet the people may recognize their own strength and cast off the authority they sustain. By placing 1642 beside both 1649 and the later popularity of Queen Anne, the passage presents political history not as a simple progression away from monarchy, but as a recurring contest between popular agency and royal power.