God’s FURY, England’s FIRE

by Braddick, Michael

  As the campaign to get Charles to listen escalated, the Supplicants had sought to explain themselves more publicly. In December a ‘historical narration’ was prepared, and when Charles was finally persuaded of the value of talking to Traquair personally, the Supplicants succeeded in getting Traquair to take it with him. In publicizing their cause they were appealing to opinion in England too, and it is clear that they were being kept well-informed about developments in the south by some well-placed sympathizers in the English government. For those whose notion of reformation conflicted with that of Laud and Charles there was a common cause here, in opposition to a common threat to the progress of reform. The Supplicants were quick to realize that they could make this common cause and there were many others in England who can be presumed to have been hesitant about supporting a war against such an influential vision of reformation.70

  When the Scottish Privy Council met at Stirling on 20 February 1638 it provoked a further escalation: the transformation of the Supplicants into the Covenanters. Traquair returned from London armed with an uncompromising proclamation from Charles which declared, among other things, that future meetings of the Supplicants would be deemed treasonous. The Supplicants had known something of its contents from their English friends before Traquair published it, and that perhaps allowed them to consider their response. Far from backing down, they raised the stakes, forming a band for mutual support. The petitioning campaign of the Supplicants had been organized informally through the bodies representing the four estates of Scotland, and through the presbyteries. Now a new organization was formed, called the Tables. The four estates were represented as in the Scottish parliament – nobles, barons, burgesses and clergy – but in this case the clerical estate was comprised of ministers and excluded (of course) the bishops. Each of the estates had a Table, and a fifth Table, composed of the nobility and representatives of the other three estates, assumed overall control of the campaign. Much of the energy for this mobilization came from Alexander Henderson, a radical minister and, as we have seen, one of the leading figures in the co-ordination of the protests in Edinburgh in the previous July. Equally prominent was Archibald Johnston of Wariston, a lawyer of intense personal piety and considerable energy.71

  A week after the fifth Table acknowledged itself to be head of this movement, the National Covenant was promulgated. It opened by reaffirming the Negative Confession of 1581, the national manifesto prompted by fears of the popish influence of the Earl of Lennox over the crown. It was expressed in terms of opposition to false doctrine and in particular to a number of specific Roman Catholic teachings which were explicitly condemned. Since its initial promulgation, the confession had been reaffirmed in 1590, this time in association with a general band to maintain the true religion thus defined. This Scottish confession had been ‘established and publicly confirmed by sundry Acts of Parliament; and now of a long time hath been openly professed by the King’s Majesty, and whole body of the realm’: there is a fairly plain view of its relationship to royal authority here, albeit one only implicitly stated. A (selective) account of subsequent resolutions by Parliament follows which again serves to establish the historical legitimacy, and legality, of the demands being made. This is followed by a two-fold band between God, king and people, once again on the basis of historical and legal precedent: the first bound subscribers to defend the true religion; the second committed them to ‘maintaining the King’s Majesty, his person and estate’. Of course, from at least one perspective, the need to defend the true religion was currently in conflict with the maintenance of the King’s majesty, but the text does not acknowledge the tension explicitly. Instead it insists, on the basis of past experience, that ‘the true worship of God and the King’s authority being so straitly joined, as that they had the same friends and common enemies, and did stand and fall together’.72

  Finally, there is a long oath, arguing that the measures complained of by the Supplicants contravene the Word of God, and ‘are contrary to the articles of the aforesaid confessions, to the intention and meaning of the blessed reformers of religion in this land, to the above-written Acts of Parliament, and do sensibly tend to the re-establishing of the popish religion and tyranny, and to the subversion and ruin of the true reformed religion, and of our liberties, laws and estates’.73 All subscribers became collectively responsible to the utmost of their power, and with their lives, to ‘stand to the defence of our dread Sovereign the King’s Majesty, his person and authority, in the defence and preservation of the aforesaid true religion, liberties and laws of the kingdom’. This explanation was intended to free them from ‘the foul aspersion of rebellion’ since their actions were ‘well warranted’ and arose from an ‘unfeigned desire’ to defend the true religion, the majesty of the King, the peace of the kingdom ‘for the common happiness of ourselves and our posterity’.74 This was not, in short, treason.

  While it is clear that obedience was due to a covenanted king, however, the real question was left hanging in the air: the Covenant is silent on the obligations due to the king who is not defending the true religion. Given the campaigning of the previous year, this might seem like a statement of conditional loyalty. The King had been bound to this confession by his coronation oath, and if he was not with the Covenanters, they might seem to be suggesting, then he was in contravention of that oath. The double Covenant placed a not very coded limit on obedience.

  In the wider context of the European Reformation this can be read as an example of fairly orthodox resistance theory. Protestants had grappled with the problem of the legitimacy of resistance to earthly powers from very early on because it had quickly become clear that the progress of the Reformation might often be blocked by ungodly kings. Resistance was difficult to justify, though, since St Paul had told Christians to ‘obey the powers that be’. One solution to this problem was to concede the right to resist to lesser magistrates: they too were powers enjoying divine sanction, and so they could lawfully use their office to resist another magistrate who was neglecting his. Another solution was federal theology – that a covenanted people constituted a divinely sanctioned power, which might resist an ungodly ruler.75

  In this context the Covenant represents a manifesto for revolution, not in the sense that it called for kingless government, or for the right of any individual to resist an anointed monarch, but because it asserted a corporate intent on the authority of the body of the kirk. Mobilized through a novel institution, the Tables, it made authoritative claims on behalf of the covenanted people about the interpretation of the 1581 confession and subsequent legislation: it appeared, in fact, to make the Tables the custodian of the collective interest.76 In principle, this made the authority of the King conditional, even if the text did not spell out what to do when obligations to godly reformation and kingly authority were in tension. The implication was clear to Charles though, who wrote to Hamilton: ‘so long as this Covenant is in force… I have no more Power in Scotland than as a Duke of Venice; which I will rather die than suffer’.77 But these menaces are present only in the silences – it is also possible to read this as an ambiguous or evasive document, and that was probably a source of its effectiveness. It was possible to commit to this programme without saying out loud that it was a licence to resist an anointed monarch.78

  What gave the Covenant its power was widespread acceptance. This owed much to the organizational powers of the presbyteries and Tables, and probably much also to positive commitment to this vision of Scotland’s past. There was also a degree of coercion, however, in that admission to communion was made conditional on subscription.79 Although the Covenant was a religious document, the movement clearly drew on other currents in Scottish society, and almost certainly other sources of discontent. Significant among these other issues was the difficulty many people found in trusting Charles. At the very least, it cannot be explained simply as a response to what the new Prayer Book actually contained or how it had been introduced.

  Much as he might have di
sliked it, Charles faced a nationally effective mobilization based around something like Calvinist ideas of lawful resistance to an ungodly monarch. It was far more than a rebuttal to a potential treason charge and the Scottish Privy Council was clearly surprised by this escalation, something made obvious at meetings on 1 and 3 March. Attempts to enforce use of the book were suspended and the Privy Council agreed that it could do nothing since the firm royal proclamation of 19 February was being widely ignored.80

  This finally persuaded the King to take more direct control. Arrangements were made for a visit by James Hamilton, Marquess of Hamilton, the most prominent Scot at Charles’s court. He was a veteran of the Thirty Years War, having led a British force under Gustavus Adolphus in 1631-2. His politics were firmly anti-Spanish and he had good Protestant credentials. But he was not ‘rigid’; that is, he did not pursue policies which were not viable when to pursue them threatened the health of the kingdom. This made him appear to some as pliable and untrustworthy, and he ‘changed sides’ several times in the coming years. In the late 1630s, however, he had influence with the King and yet was free of association with the popish religious policies; in fact he held deeply anti-episcopal views. He also had some credit in Scotland: he had lived abroad for much of his life without ever relinquishing his contacts and political influence there.81 As the King’s commissioner, armed with the trust of his king, he had broader powers to deal with the problems in Scotland although he was still limited in his freedom of action.82

  Even now, though, with the stakes very obviously high, it took Hamilton three months to arrive. A Privy Council meeting was arranged for 6 June 1638, by which time the Covenant had gathered signatures widely and in every part of the country except Aberdeen. Hamilton was carrying two proclamations demanding obedience, although one was slightly more conciliatory in that it did not demand surrender of all signed copies of the National Covenant. Moreover, the fact that the King had also begun military preparations suggests that Hamilton was not being sent primarily to listen. The Covenanters clearly had word of this and were also planning firm responses. When Hamilton became aware of these tensions, by the time he had got to Berwick, he wrote to the King advising him to accelerate military preparations.83

  When Hamilton stepped off the boat at Leith he must have lost any lingering illusions about the possibility of overawing the Covenanters. Thirty nobles were waiting for him at the end of the sands between Leith and Musselburgh and the gentry were standing in ranks all along the sands for a distance of a mile and a half. At the end of Leith links stood 600 ministers and between Leith and Edinburgh another 20,000 people were said to be waiting.84 If accurate, these estimates reflect an astonishing level of mobilization: there were 105 Scottish nobles in 1641, and between 900 and 1,000 parishes: one third of the nobility were present and up to two thirds of Scottish parishes were physically represented. The total population of Edinburgh and its suburbs was probably between 25,000 and 30,000 at this time.85 It was a demonstration of the whole community – nobility, pastors and people. The political costs of confronting this phalanx of opinion would not be restricted to Scotland, either. On 20 June Hamilton wrote to Charles that he could not see how the King could impose his will in Scotland ‘without the hazarding of your three Crowns’.86

  The political situation was now pretty intractable since bullying would not work and Charles would not make concessions, fearing the larger implications of accepting this lay influence over the direction of his church. Even given the intractability of the problem, however, it is difficult to fathom Charles’s tactics: he had made almost no effort to court moderate opinion in Scotland and nor was he careful to win the support of his English subjects. Although he was preparing to use English military and financial resources to resolve this problem he did not formally raise the issue with his English Privy Council until 1 July. This was the correct position in constitutional terms, since the two kingdoms shared a king but not their other governing institutions: Scottish affairs were for the Scottish Privy Council, and there was no formal body with responsibility for British affairs. But the consensus of most modern commentators is that this was stiff-necked as much as it was principled.87 In any case, it clearly left Hamilton with little more room for manoeuvre than had been enjoyed by the reviled Traquair. There is certainly little doubt that Hamilton, on behalf of the King, was seeking to buy time rather than to resolve the conflict.

  On 9 September 1638 Charles withdrew the Prayer Book and affirmed the Negative Confession of 1581. These measures would have had more effect had they not come after failed attempts to face down opposition: a temporary suspension in August 1637 would almost certainly have been a more effective response, politically. It seems clear, though, that Charles had already decided on English military intervention. On 21 September, when further conciliatory measures were unveiled at a meeting of the Scottish Privy Council, Charles mentioned in a letter to Hamilton that cannon were being sent north to Hull.88 Nonetheless the concessions were significant: a General Assembly was summoned to meet in Glasgow and, in a shrewd manoeuvre, the ‘King’s Covenant’ was launched as an alternative to the National Covenant. This was based on proclamations affirming the 1581 confession and an anti-Catholic band of 1589. Its potential for cutting the ground from under the feet of the Covenanters was immediately appreciated by some of them, and wrangling followed as to whether it was inherently anti-episcopal (as some Covenanters liked to claim) and whether subsequent measures had been compatible with the 1581 confession. Although it did not succeed, it went further towards disrupting the Covenanters” solidarity than any other measure promoted by Charles.89

  When the General Assembly met, the Covenanters were once again successful in mobilizing crowds: there was such a huge press of people around Glasgow Cathedral on the morning of the first meeting that members of the assembly had trouble taking up their places. A week of procedural wrangling was resolved in their favour too and Hamilton, recognizing defeat, walked out of the assembly. Unfortunately his dramatic exit was marred by the fact that the door had been locked behind him and he had to break his way out. The assembly continued to sit and to pass radical measures, all of which were dismissed by the King, who denied the legal powers of the assembly once his commissioner had dissolved it.90

  Charles now planned military action for February or March 1639 using, in part, English money and men, but he did not plan to call an English parliament. The campaign against the Covenanters in 1639 therefore went ahead using prerogative powers. But Charles also intended to draw upon the military resources of his other (largely Catholic) kingdom, Ireland. The prospect of a papistical army being used to put down calls for further reformation was clearly an alarming one. In both respects – the reliance on the prerogative rather than Parliament and the use of armed papists – this policy touched on sensitivities in England about the nature of the regime. Certainly, when mobilization came it did not prompt a straightforwardly loyal response. By the time that Leslie crossed the Tweed, the English army had already been faced down once, and a parliament had failed to support the King’s cause.

  2

  Self-Government at the King's Command

  Politics and Society in Caroline England

  On the face of it Charles’s English subjects were more reconciled to his rule when the Prayer Book rebellion broke out than they had been a decade earlier. In the late 1620s a number of interrelated grievances had reached a public climax, in parliaments, alehouses and presses. The main target of this discontent was the King’s favourite, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.

  On 23 August 1628 the duke was in Portsmouth preparing an expedition to aid the French Protestants in La Rochelle, then besieged by Catholic forces. Between nine and ten o’clock in the morning, having taken breakfast with ‘men of quality and action’, he left the chamber where he had eaten, intending to take his carriage to see the King. In a small passageway outside the chamber, however, he was stabbed by John Felton. The blow was so quick that those around th
e duke did not see it. Villiers himself said only one word, ‘villain’, before plucking the knife from his wound. In fact, those around him thought that it was a fit of ‘apoplexy’, until, that is, they saw the blood gushing from the duke’s mouth. Felton was probably motivated by bitter experience of service under the duke, whose influence over the King and conduct of the military campaigns were widely resented. The parliament of 1626 had prepared charges against Buckingham, intending to impeach him as responsible for a number of perceived acts of misgovernment. However, in killing Buckingham, Felton effectively sacrificed his own life ‘for the honour of God, his King and country’.1

  Felton had obviously expected to die in the act of committing the murder, and for that reason had sewn a note explaining his actions into his hat. The note has not survived, but the various accounts of what it said agree on the main points. The fullest reads:

  That man is cowardly base and deserves not the name of a gentleman or soldier that is not willing to sacrifice his life for the honour of his God, his king and his country. Let no man commend me for doing it, but rather discommend themselves as the cause of it, for if God had not taken away our hearts for our sins he would not have gone so long unpunished.2

  Felton’s claim, then, was that this assassination – of the King’s favourite in the midst of military preparations – was a godly and patriotic act, and one intended for the service of the King.

  Felton could have escaped following the murder, since in the surprise no-one tried to stop him. Indeed no-one seems to have known who had struck the blow, and while people rushed to help the duke and to secure the gates and the ramparts of the town, Felton was able to walk to the nearby kitchen unmolested. As a group of soldiers went through the house calling out for the ‘villain’ and ‘butcher’, Felton, drawing his sword, stepped out ‘amongst them, saying boldly, “I am the man, here I am” ’. It was only hasty action by some of those present that prevented him being killed there and then.3