As a result militia reform was at best patchily and intermittently impressive. Attempts at reform under Charles I were no more popular than previous efforts. After 1625, in the light of the war in Europe, Charles had pursued an ‘exact’ or ‘perfect’ militia. Pressure was applied to hold regular musters, at which meaningful training took place and appropriate weapons were produced. In order to overcome a common evasion, weapons were to be marked, so that the same weapon could not be produced in different places on different days. Overall, said Charles, he was no longer prepared to accept the appearance; he wanted a real performance. After the fractious parliaments of the 1620s Charles had sought peace in order to avoid having to call them, and treaties were signed with France and Spain. In the early 1630s, it seems that there was little pressure to improve the militia, but with a worsening diplomatic situation in 1635, the Privy Council turned once again to militia reform. One feature of this campaign was to ensure that local militias appointed, and paid, muster masters – men of professional experience who could oversee the arms and training of the militia, and ensure that higher standards of preparedness were maintained. This was not the first time that this had been urged and, not for the first time, it produced political problems in the counties.83
Administration by local officeholders did not just bring the burden of military mobilization into the villages and towns, but also the negotiation of that burden – the politics of administration. Questions about the wisdom and legality of crown policies could get a wide airing. For example, in Shropshire at the Easter meeting of the quarter sessions, the Grand Jury presented the muster master’s fee as a grievance, saying that the office was unnecessary.84 In making presentments Grand Juries responded to the information and representations of a wider circle of men of similar status – village constables and their superiors, the high constables. A presentment by the Grand Jury, therefore, was understood to be the voice and opinion of the county, expressed by its respectable inhabitants to leading figures from gentry circles, sitting as JPs. It was also a very public statement since meetings of the sessions were major events in the county year. In addition to the JPs, jurymen and constables, they were attended by the sheriff and numerous petitioners. The promulgation of Privy Council orders, the hearing and redress of grievances, and the prosecution of crime were the focal point of a larger event, and the practice of meeting in a number of towns in rotation may have reflected a desire to spread the commercial benefits.85
There had been grumbling and foot-dragging in Shropshire over the muster master and his fee for many years. In fact, Edward Burton, the muster master during the 1630s, had himself opposed the establishment of the office during the 1620s.86 The Grand Jury’s position was shrewdly chosen: they did not complain that it was illegal, although it was possible to make that case, but rather that it was unnecessary. Even if this was at root tight-fistedness, it was politically informed. Local reputations were at stake, though, in such a public forum and the Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Bridgewater, felt his honour had been slighted. At the sessions his interest had been defended by Timothy Tourneur, JP and close associate of the earl, who had told the Grand Jury that they were ‘too busy’ in making this presentment. This was a common insult for minor officials, suggesting that they should be less meddlesome. Such rebukes exercised a considerable influence over how officeholders behaved towards their neighbours.87
But the Grand Jury had an eminent defender: John Corbett, another JP. He leaped to their defence, saying that they were simply doing their job, and calling for a reading of the Petition of Right. When the statute book was produced, despite Tourneur’s objection, Corbett pointed to the relevant section. Tourneur said that he need not ‘digitate’, to which Corbett replied, ‘Nor you be so touchy’. This evidently counted as a serious defeat in a battle of wits and news of this public embarrassment spread rapidly. It seems to have encouraged resistance in the rest of Shropshire later in the year, and Bridgewater heard of the exchange by ‘flying report’ before his subordinates had had a chance to write to him: ‘I heard a great noise of the business about the town before I was able to give any answer to such questions (upon such an occasion) might have been demanded of me’. The Privy Council could not afford to ignore this public expression of dissent, and Corbett ended up in prison in London during a plague outbreak. He also had to enter a bond of £2,000 to answer for his conduct before Star Chamber, a central law court with a particular responsibility for overseeing the conduct of officeholders.88
This was more than a kerfuffle, since Corbett at least was willing to risk death in prison rather than apologize. Shropshire was not alone in hearing these arguments. Essex also produced a petition at quarter sessions and in many counties there is evidence of reluctant or partial payment of the fee.89 In Leicestershire opposition to the militia programme was led by Sir William Faunt and Sir Arthur Haselrig, both JPs, who were hostile to the Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Huntingdon. Faunt refused his contribution to the muster master’s fee, publicly declared that Huntingdon was oppressing the county and questioned whether the money was actually being spent on the militia. He may have had some grounds in the latter case – Huntingdon was more eminent than rich and it seems he was not above using public or family money to help him over short-term problems. Here too a division in the county’s governing elite ended up in Star Chamber. The authority of the Lieutenant was upheld by a swingeing fine, which at this distance in time seems to be barely warranted by the evidence produced.90
In the absence of Parliament, problems relating to military and financial questions continued to resonate deeply in English society. Local officeholders had an eye on what would make them popular or unpopular, and what would be difficult to achieve, or lead to accusations of ‘busy-ness’. This made local government responsive to influential local opinion since it depended on a degree of consensus-building and informal negotiation. It also delivered significant practical power to local officeholders, who were expected to be representatives as well as leaders of their local community and who, for practical reasons, had to respond to wider local opinion. Policies which were potentially unpopular, or not in the immediate interests of local elites, might not be vigorously enforced: on receipt of administrative instructions local officeholders took decisions about what to push and what to leave alone; and institutions such as the Grand Jury and quarter sessions offered a platform for the expression of these local preferences. Sanctions existed to discipline officeholders, and were effective on individuals who might be quite anxious to retain their position, but the crown could not dismiss all its volunteers. A powerful man like the Earl of Bridgewater could bully and cajole, but there were evidently limits there too. Policies that were widely unpopular, such as expensive militia reform, created a level of foot-dragging and evasion that was difficult to deal with.
Problems with reform of the militia reveal these features of political life, and they were not the only controversial aspects of Caroline government in England. During the 1630s Charles’s government responded imaginatively to its financial problems. Frustrated at the experience of the 1620s, when parliaments had been productive of political argument rather than cash, Charles raised money by other means during the 1630s. Prerogative rights were exploited for their revenue potential – for example, in a concerted campaign to raise fines for encroachments on the ancient bounds of the royal forests, or in the granting of monopolies in return for payments or loans. In 1629 the Council began to impose fines on men worth more than £40 per annum (not a large sum) who had failed to acknowledge their ancient duty of presenting themselves for knighting at the coronation – a wheeze known as distraint of knighthood. Of course, showing imagination about fiscal solutions is not an easy route to popularity and there were significant signs of dissatisfaction. In some localities the resurrection of forest jurisdictions caused considerable local conflict and in Leicestershire the fines for distraint of knighthood raised very large sums from a large number of people. By 1635 £174,000 had been
raised from 10,000 landowners. Similarly, fines imposed for enclosures of common land that led to depopulation, while laudable for their concern for the victims of economic change, were widely seen as a revenue device. Once again, in Leicestershire, they raised considerable sums of money and again the hostility seems to have attached above all to the Earl of Huntingdon.91 These were useful sums, but not a long-term solution: as the Venetian ambassador noted, fines were ‘false mines for obtaining money, because they are good for once only, and states are not maintained by such devices’.92 And this money came at a high price.
The most unpopular of these non-parliamentary revenues was ship money.93 This transformed a duty on port towns to supply ships for royal service into a payment to build them, and the payment was soon imposed on the whole country, not just in the ports. Like the militia reforms, then, this was an attempt to commute an established duty of service into a cash payment. Although it did not cause a tax rebellion it did cause widespread disquiet and there was a very public dispute about whether or not ship money was legal. In 1637 Charles wrote to the judges asking whether the monarch had the power to command the provision of ships in times of danger, to enforce payment and act as the sole judge of the danger. Five days later all twelve judges replied affirmatively. Their ruling was entered in the courts and publicized at assizes. The danger, of course, is that this procedure gives publicity to the doubts rather than the certainties, and we know that it led to informed debate among the Kentish gentry.94 Elsewhere, refusals continued.95
In Buckinghamshire the doubts were pressed further by John Hampden, who went to court. This was almost certainly promoted as a test case, with the co-operation of William Fiennes, Viscount Saye and Sele. A man of firm and godly religious conviction, Say and Sele became prominent in the parliamentary cause in the 1640s. During the 1630s he was an important member of the Providence Island Company, founded to fund settlement in the New World. This colonization scheme attracted the support of others who became prominent parliamentarians, including John Pym and the Lord Brooke. Say and Sele was a supporter of the international Calvinist cause and no friend to the policies of the Personal Rule. He had intended to bring his own case against ship money, but instead seems to have co-operated with his nephew, Sir Peter Temple, who issued a writ against John Hampden. The King, probably fortified by the judges” ruling, allowed the case to be heard in the Court of Exchequer, even though to lose would be to lose the whole revenue.96
The Earl of Clarendon later recalled that Hampden ‘grew the argument of all tongues, every man enquiring who and what he was that durst at his own charge support the liberty and property of the kingdom, and rescue his kingdom from being made prey to the court’. The hearings were well attended, even by some relatively humble observers, and provincial newsletters reported the arguments widely. As should be expected, with expensive lawyers involved, the issues were not straightforward. Charles’s case rested on the fact that ship money was not a tax – something regulated by common law and statute – but an aspect of his prerogative power. Ship money could be justified as an emergency measure and therefore as one relating to areas not covered by the common law. Oliver St John, representing Hampden, did not challenge the King’s prerogative powers in general terms, arguing instead on a more narrow point: the writ had been issued six months prior to the collection. If there had been an emergency the writ should have mentioned it, and six months clearly permitted the summoning of a parliament to deal with the emergency. Holborne, Hampden’s other lawyer, argued more broadly about the prerogative, and the subsequent hearings ranged over both broad principles and narrow technicalities. Each judge found slightly differently on each issue, so that the count in favour of the King, normally rendered as 7–5, was actually reckoned differently by different observers. Crucial judgements by Bramston and Davenport made it appear closer, but their view was based on a technicality. The writ had demanded a service, which Hampden could not in practice provide (the provision of a portion of a ship). He was being prosecuted for a debt, however. The crown could not have this both ways: if he owed a debt, then this was an unparliamentary tax, and therefore illegal; if it was a service to be performed in emergency conditions he could not be sued for a debt. On the broad principles the King’s victory was clearer.97
This public debate about the legality of the levy had resonances at the lowest levels of the administration because constables were being required by sheriffs to assess their neighbours. Debate about whether they had such a power, or about whether it was enforceable, was clearly relevant to local politics and administration. Reluctance to pay was almost universally expressed in technical or bureaucratic complaints – disputes about the details of ratings or the conduct of distraint and so on. For those unwilling to presume much about the political consciousness of ordinary people, this form of expression is often accepted at face value: that there was no larger political or legal principle involved. However, given the level of administrative participation and the elaborated consciousness of legal matters which is evident across the country, it seems difficult to believe that in every case reluctance was only the product of administrative detail. Local officeholders seem to have been increasingly reluctant to take up office, something attributed to the unpopularity of ship money which was surely not simply a matter of rating difficulties. As a result of this reluctance, and unlike the parliamentary taxes of the early seventeenth century, ship money also began to suffer from problems of collection. Clarendon went so far as to claim that the judgement had ‘proved of more advantage and credit to the gentleman condemned, Mr Hampden, than to the King’s service’. Hindsight no doubt exaggerated his view, but it is true that after the crown’s legal victory in 1637 the difficulties of collection in many counties continued to mount.98
English people were encouraged by practice and precept to be active for the public good. Self-government was crucial to the order of local communities and also to the public image of those individuals responsible for it – officeholders cultivated the image of virtue necessary to carry out their duties to the public good. In general this self-government was supportive of, and dependent on, the King’s command, but the two might not always sit well together. Responses to the King’s command were not simply passive and unthinkingly obedient, even when they were in fact obedient. Where there was reluctance, or resistance, it might not be the result of principled objection, but whether for reasons of narrow advantage – personal or local – or because of a wider vision of the public good, the King’s command was appraised and interpreted as well as acted upon. Government depended on the voluntary efforts of substantial local inhabitants, and during the 1630s the imposition of ship money and militia reform made their lives difficult. Those difficulties were not eased by the legal question marks which hung over the extent of their powers. Other grievances affected those in more elevated circles – for example, monopolies and distraint of knighthood – while the forest policy had a deep impact in some regions.
Behind all these policies lay legal questions which were potentially of very general significance and some people certainly invested them with that general significance. The absence of parliaments removed one important means of voicing grievances and the use of the Court of Star Chamber (the authority of which rested on the royal prerogative) to enforce them seemed to be increasingly politicized.99 This was not the stuff of revolution, or even of civil war, but it gave grounds to be reluctant to supply money, men and arms to fight the Covenanters; and to want the King to call a parliament instead.
In 1629 a sub-committee of the House of Commons had complained that persons maintaining ‘papistical, Arminian, and superstitious opinions and practices… are countenanced, favoured and preferred’. An associated protestation of the Commons was one of the measures passed while the Speaker was held down. It announced that anyone promoting Arminianism or popery should be ‘reputed a capital enemy to this Kingdom and Commonwealth’.100 The continued and apparently triumphant rise of Laudianism during the Pe
rsonal Rule was not likely to have spread the blessings of ecclesiastical peace, therefore.101
Closer restrictions on preaching, which affected the freedom to preach predestinarian views, were clearly inflammatory but had less immediate impact on the experience of worshippers than the campaign to promote decency and order in public service and the beauty of holiness: moving the ‘communion table’ ‘altar-wise’, and placing it at the east end of the church, there to be railed off in a raised chancel; bowing to the altar; reintroducing decorative features such as paintings and statues; and reincorporating a number of ceremonies and rituals into worship. Thus, for example, worshippers were expected to register reverence and obeisance to God as a uniform body, so that ‘the whole congregation shall appear in the presence of God as one man, decently kneeling, rising, standing, bowing, praising, praying together… like men of one mind and religion in the house of God’. This was contrasted with a stolid immobility, likened to posts and stones; for its opponents it smelt of popish ritual, a form of mechanical worship which did not encourage a questing, demanding personal piety. A corollary of this was a campaign to enhance the dignity and authority of the clergy. Vestments worn by the clergy were regarded by opponents as ‘rags of popery’ but had previously been defended as adiaphora – ‘things indifferent’ which were not necessary but which were demanded by the civil authority. They were now defended as signs of the special and elevated status of the clergy, an argument that smacked of popery to many hot Protestants. Ceremonial changes, and changes to the decoration and architecture of the church, were intended to set a clearer boundary between the sacred and the profane, and to concentrate the mind of the worshipper on the presence of the former.102
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