British Monarchy and its influence upon governmental institutions
James' twenty-nine years of Scottish kingship did
little to prepare him for the English monarchy: England and Scotland, rivals
for superiority on the island since the first emigration of the Anglo-Saxon
races, virtually hated each other. This inherent mistrust, combined with
Catholic-Protestant and Episcopal-Puritan tensions, severely limited James'
prospects of a truly successful reign. His personality also caused problems: he
was witty and well-read, fiercely believed in the divine right of kingship and
his own importance, but found great difficulty in gaining acceptance from an
English society that found his rough-hewn manners and natural paranoia quite
unbecoming. James saw little use for Parliament. His extravagant spending
habits and nonchalant ignoring of the nobility's grievances kept king and
Parliament constantly at odds. He came to the thrown at the zenith of
monarchical power, but never truly grasped the depth and scope of that power.
Religious dissension was the basis of an event that
confirmed and fueled James' paranoia: the Gunpowder Plot of November 5, 1605.
Guy Fawkes and four other Catholic dissenters were caught attempting to blow up
the House of Lords on a day in which the king was to open the session. The
conspirators were executed, but a fresh wave of anti-Catholic sentiments washed
across England. James also disliked the Puritans who became excessive in their
demands on the king, resulting in the first wave of English immigrants to North
America. James, however, did manage to commission an Authorized Version of the
Bible, printed in English in 1611.
The relationship between king and Parliament steadily
eroded. Extravagant spending (particularly on James' favorites), inflation and
bungled foreign policies discredited James in the eyes of Parliament.
Parliament flatly refused to disburse funds to a king who ignored their concerns
and were annoyed by rewards lavished on favorites and great amounts spent on
decoration. James awarded over 200 peerages (landed titles) as, essentially,
bribes designed to win loyalty, the most controversial of which was his
creation of George Villiers (his closest advisor and homosexual partner) as
Duke of Buckingham. Buckingham was highly influential in foreign policy, which
failed miserably. James tried to kindle Spanish relations by seeking a marriage
between his son Charles and the Spanish Infanta (who was less than receptive to
the clumsy overtures of Charles and Buckingham), and by executing Sir Walter
Raleigh at the behest of Spain.
James was not wholly unsuccessful as king, but his
Scottish background failed to translate well into a changing English society.
He is described, albeit humorously, in 1066 and All That, as such: "James
I slobbered at the mouth and had favourites; he was thus a bad king"; Sir
Anthony Weldon made a more somber observation: "He was very crafty and
cunning in petty things, as the circumventing any great man, the change of a
Favourite, &c. inasmuch as a very wise man was wont to say, he believed him
the very wisest fool in Christendom."
CHARLES I (1625-49)
Charles I was born in
Fife on 19 November 1600, the second son of James VI of Scotland (from 1603
also James I of England) and Anne of Denmark. He became heir to the throne on
the death of his brother, Prince Henry, in 1612. He succeeded, as the second
Stuart King of England, in 1625.
Controversy and disputes dogged Charles throughout his
reign. They eventually led to civil wars, first with the Scots from 1637 and
later in England (1642-46 and 1648). The Civil Wars deeply divided people at
the time, and historians still disagree about the real causes of the conflict,
but it is clear that Charles was not a successful ruler.
Charles was reserved (he had a residual stammer),
self-righteous and had a high concept of royal authority, believing in the
divine right of kings. He was a good linguist and a sensitive man of refined
tastes. He spent a lot on the arts, inviting the artists Van Dyck and Rubens to
work in England, and buying a great collection of paintings by Raphael and
Titian (this collection was later dispersed under Cromwell). His expenditure on
his court and his picture collection greatly increased the crown's debts.
Indeed, crippling lack of money was a key problem for both the early Stuart
monarchs.
Charles was also deeply religious. He favoured the
high Anglican form of worship, with much ritual, while many of his subjects,
particularly in Scotland, wanted plainer forms. Charles found himself ever more
in disagreement on religious and financial matters with many leading citizens.
Having broken an engagement to the Spanish infanta, he had married a Roman
Catholic, Henrietta Maria of France, and this only made matters worse. Although
Charles had promised Parliament in 1624 that there would be no advantages for
recusants (people refusing to attend Church of England services), were he to
marry a Roman Catholic bride, the French insisted on a commitment to remove all
disabilities upon Roman Catholic subjects. Charles's lack of scruple was shown
by the fact that this commitment was secretly added to the marriage treaty,
despite his promise to Parliament.
Charles had inherited disagreements with Parliament
from his father, but his own actions (particularly engaging in ill-fated wars
with France and Spain at the same time) eventually brought about a crisis in
1628-29. Two expeditions to France failed - one of which had been led by
Buckingham, a royal favourite of both James I and Charles I, who had gained
political influence and military power. Such was the general dislike of
Buckingham, that he was impeached by Parliament in 1628, although he was
murdered by a fanatic before he could lead the second expedition to France. The
political controversy over Buckingham demonstrated that, although the monarch's
right to choose his own Ministers was accepted as an essential part of the
royal prerogative, Ministers had to be acceptable to Parliament or there would
be repeated confrontations. The King's chief opponent in Parliament until 1629
was Sir John Eliot, who was finally imprisoned in the Tower of London until his
death in 1632.
Tensions between the King and Parliament centred
around finances, made worse by the costs of war abroad, and by religious
suspicions at home (Charles's marriage was seen as ominous, at a time when
plots against Elizabeth I and the Gunpowder Plot in James I's reign were still
fresh in the collective memory, and when the Protestant cause was going badly
in the war in Europe). In the first four years of his rule, Charles was faced
with the alternative of either obtaining parliamentary funding and having his
policies questioned by argumentative Parliaments who linked the issue of supply
to remedying their grievances, or conducting a war without subsidies from
Parliament. Charles dismissed his fourth Parliament in March 1629 and decided
to make do without either its advice or the taxes which it alone could grant
legally.
Although opponents later called this period 'the
Eleven Years' Tyranny', Charles's decision to rule without Parliament was
technically within the King's royal prerogative, and the absence of a
Parliament was less of a grievance to many people than the efforts to raise
revenue by non-parliamentary means. Charles's leading advisers, including
William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Earl of Strafford, were
efficient but disliked. For much of the 1630s, the King gained most of the
income he needed from such measures as impositions, exploitation of forest
laws, forced loans, wardship and, above all, ship money (extended in 1635 from
ports to the whole country). These measures made him very unpopular, alienating
many who were the natural supporters of the Crown.
Scotland (which Charles had left at the age of 3,
returning only for his coronation in 1633) proved the catalyst for rebellion.
Charles's attempt to impose a High Church liturgy and prayer book in Scotland
had prompted a riot in 1637 in Edinburgh which escalated into general unrest.
Charles had to recall Parliament; however, the Short Parliament of April 1640
queried Charles's request for funds for war against the Scots and was dissolved
within weeks. The Scots occupied Newcastle and, under the treaty of Ripon,
stayed in occupation of Northumberland and Durham and they were to be paid a
subsidy until their grievances were redressed.
Charles was finally forced to call another Parliament
in November 1640. This one, which came to be known as The Long Parliament,
started with the imprisonment of Laud and Strafford (the latter was executed
within six months, after a Bill of Attainder which did not allow for a
defence), and the abolition of the King's Council (Star Chamber), and moved on
to declare ship money and other fines illegal. The King agreed that Parliament
could not be dissolved without its own consent, and the Triennial Act of 1641
meant that no more than three years could elapse between Parliaments.
The Irish uprising of October 1641 raised tensions
between the King and Parliament over the command of the Army. Parliament issued
a Grand Remonstrance repeating their grievances, impeached 12 bishops and
attempted to impeach the Queen. Charles responded by entering the Commons in a
failed attempt to arrest five Members of Parliament, who had fled before his
arrival. Parliament reacted by passing a Militia Bill allowing troops to be
raised only under officers approved by Parliament. Finally, on 22 August 1642
at Nottingham, Charles raised the Royal Standard calling for loyal subjects to
support him (Oxford was to be the King's capital during the war). The Civil
War, what Sir William Waller (a Parliamentary general and moderate) called
'this war without an enemy', had begun.
The Battle of Edgehill in October 1642 showed that
early on the fighting was even. Broadly speaking, Charles retained the north,
west and south-west of the country, and Parliament had London, East Anglia and
the south-east, although there were pockets of resistance everywhere, ranging
from solitary garrisons to whole cities. However, the Navy sided with
Parliament (which made continental aid difficult), and Charles lacked the
resources to hire substantial mercenary help.
Parliament had entered an armed alliance with the
predominant Scottish Presbyterian group under the Solemn League and Covenant of
1643, and from 1644 onwards Parliament's armies gained the upper hand -
particularly with the improved training and discipline of the New Model Army.
The Self-Denying Ordinance was passed to exclude Members of Parliament from
holding army commands, thereby getting rid of vacillating or incompetent
earlier Parliamentary generals. Under strong generals like Sir Thomas Fairfax
and Oliver Cromwell, Parliament won victories at Marston Moor (1644) and Naseby
(1645). The capture of the King's secret correspondence after Naseby showed the
extent to which he had been seeking help from Ireland and from the Continent,
which alienated many moderate supporters.
In May 1646, Charles placed himself in the hands of the
Scottish Army (who handed him to the English Parliament after nine months in
return for arrears of payment - the Scots had failed to win Charles's support
for establishing Presbyterianism in England). Charles did not see his action as
surrender, but as an opportunity to regain lost ground by playing one group off
against another; he saw the monarchy as the source of stability and told
parliamentary commanders 'you cannot be without me: you will fall to ruin if I
do not sustain you'. In Scotland and Ireland, factions were arguing, whilst in
England there were signs of division in Parliament between the Presbyterians
and the Independents, with alienation from the Army (where radical doctrines
such as that of the Levellers were threatening commanders' authority).
Charles's negotiations continued from his captivity at Carisbrooke Castle on
the Isle of Wight (to which he had 'escaped' from Hampton Court in November
1647) and led to the Engagement with the Scots, under which the Scots would
provide an army for Charles in exchange for the imposition of the Covenant on
England. This led to the second Civil War of 1648, which ended with Cromwell's
victory at Preston in August.
The Army, concluding that permanent peace was
impossible whilst Charles lived, decided that the King must be put on trial and
executed. In December, Parliament was purged, leaving a small rump totally
dependent on the Army, and the Rump Parliament established a High Court of
Justice in the first week of January 1649. On 20 January, Charles was charged
with high treason 'against the realm of England'. Charles refused to plead,
saying that he did not recognise the legality of the High Court (it had been
established by a Commons purged of dissent, and without the House of Lords -
nor had the Commons ever acted as a judicature).
The King was sentenced to death on 27 January. Three
days later, Charles was beheaded on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House in
Whitehall, London. The King asked for warm clothing before his execution: 'the
season is so sharp as probably may make me shake, which some observers may
imagine proceeds from fear. I would have no such imputation.' On the scaffold,
he repeated his case: 'I must tell you that the liberty and freedom [of the
people] consists in having of Government, those laws by which their life and
their goods may be most their own. It is not for having share in Government,
Sir, that is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a sovereign are clean
different things. If I would have given way to an arbitrary way, for to have
all laws changed according to the Power of the Sword, I needed not to have come
here, and therefore I tell you ... that I am the martyr of the people.' His
final words were 'I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no
disturbance can be.'
The King was buried on 9 February at Windsor, rather
than Westminster Abbey, to avoid public disorder. To avoid the automatic
succession of Charles I's son Charles, an Act was passed on 30 January
forbidding the proclaiming of another monarch. On 7 February 1649, the office
of King was formally abolished.
The
Civil Wars were essentially confrontations between the monarchy and Parliament
over the definitions of the powers of the monarchy and Parliament's authority.
These constitutional disagreements were made worse by religious animosities and
financial disputes. Both sides claimed that they stood for the rule of law, yet
civil war was by definition a matter of force. Charles I, in his unwavering
belief that he stood for constitutional and social stability, and the right of
the people to enjoy the benefits of that stability, fatally weakened his
position by failing to negotiate a compromise with Parliament and paid the
price. To many, Charles was seen as a martyr for his people and, to this day,
wreaths of remembrance are laid by his supporters on the anniversary of his
death at his statue, which faces down Whitehall to the site of his execution.
THE COMMONWEALTH INTERREGNUM (1649-1660)
Cromwell's convincing military successes at Drogheda
in Ireland (1649), Dunbar in Scotland (1650) and Worcester in England (1651)
forced Charles I's son, Charles, into foreign exile despite being accepted as
King in Scotland.
From 1649 to 1660, England was therefore a republic
during a period known as the Interregnum ('between reigns'). A series of
political experiments followed, as the country's rulers tried to redefine and
establish a workable constitution without a monarchy.
Throughout the Interregnum, Cromwell's relationship
with Parliament was a troubled one, with tensions over the nature of the
constitution and the issue of supremacy, control of the armed forces and debate
over religious toleration. In 1653 Parliament was dissolved, and under the
Instrument of Government, Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector, later refusing
the offer of the throne. Further disputes with the House of Commons followed;
at one stage Cromwell resorted to regional rule by a number of the army's major
generals. After Cromwell's death in 1658, and the failure of his son Richard's
short-lived Protectorate, the army under General Monk invited Charles I's son,
Charles, to become King.
OLIVER CROMWELL (1649-1658)
Oliver Cromwell, born in Huntingdon in 1599, was a
strict Puritan with a Cambridge education when he went to London to represent
his family in Parliament. Clothed conservatively, he possessed a Puritan fervor
and a commanding voice, he quickly made a name for himself by serving in both
the Short Parliament (April 1640) and the Long Parliament (August 1640 through
April 1660). Charles I, pushing his finances to bankruptcy and trying to force
a new prayer book on Scotland, was badly beaten by the Scots, who demanded Ј850 per
day from the English until the two sides reached agreement. Charles had no
choice but to summon Parliament.
The Long Parliament, taking an aggressive stance,
steadfastly refused to authorize any funding until Charles was brought to heel.
The Triennial Act of 1641 assured the summoning of Parliament at least every
three years, a formidable challenge to royal prerogative. The Tudor
institutions of fiscal feudalism (manipulating antiquated feudal fealty laws to
extract money), the Court of the Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission
were declared illegal by Act of Parliament later in 1641. A new era of
leadership from the House of Commons (backed by middle class merchants,
tradesmen and Puritans) had commenced. Parliament resented the insincerity with
which Charles settled with both them and the Scots, and despised his links with
Catholicism.
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