God’s FURY, England’s FIRE

by Braddick, Michael

  2. Speaking in Parliament in 1625: quoted in Jacqueline Eales, Puritans and Roundheads: The Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Outbreak of the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1990), pp. xi–xii.

  1. From the Bowels of the Whore of Babel

  1. HEH, EL 7852, Castle to Bridgewater, 22 August 1640.

  2. Quoted in Edward J. Cowan, Montrose: For Covenant and King (London, 1977), p. 41.

  3. Jenny Wormald, Court, Kirk and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh, 1997), pp. 6–7.

  4. For an overview of the government of the Borders, and further references, see Michael J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000), esp. pp. 344–6, 371–8.

  5. David Cressy, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution 1640–1642 (Oxford, 2006), p. 94.

  6. HEH, EL 7852, Castle to Bridgewater, 22 August 1640.

  7. Conrad Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies 1637–1642 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 68–70. It is likely that this letter refers to papers prepared following the decision, taken on 3 August, to cross the Tweed: David Stevenson, The Scottish Revolution, 1637–44: The Triumph of the Covenanters (Edinburgh, 2003), p. 206. The Covenanters had directed arguments to English audiences over the previous two years: Peter Donald, An Uncounselled King: Charles I and the Scottish Troubles, 1637–41 (Cambridge, 1990), esp. pp. 85–6, 128–32, 161, 178–9, 186–93, 223–5, 228–30; Russell, Fall, esp. pp. 61–2, 122–3. For the Covenanters” use of the press from 1637 onwards see Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 172–87, esp. pp. 177–81; Joseph Black, ‘“Pikes and Protestations”: Scottish Texts in England, 1639–40’, Publishing History, 42 (1997), 5–19; Cressy, England on Edge, pp. 72, 286–7, 388–90.

  8. The Venetian ambassador’s reports back home suggest that the picture at the English court was pretty bleak: Peter Razzell and Edward Razzell (eds.), The English Civil War: A Contemporary Account, vol. 2: 1640–42 (London, 1996), esp. pp. 21–30.

  9. HEH, EL 7852, Castle to Bridgewater, 22 August 1640. For the proclamation see J. F. Larkin (ed.), Stuart Royal Proclamations (Oxford, 1983), vol. II, pp. 726–8. The Venetian ambassador thought it a ‘labour lost’ on an already pro-Scottish public: Razzell and Razzell (eds.), A Contemporary Account, vol. 2, p. 27. The Castle letter apparently summarizes it inaccurately, adding the claim that failure to support the war effort strenuously was treasonous. For another example of the inaccurate circulation of information in provincial copies see Walter Yonge’s copy of an inaccurate version of a Covenanters” petition in 1637: Donald, Uncounselled King, pp. 176–7.

  10. Stevenson, Scottish Revolution, p. 208.

  11. HEH, EL 7859, Castle to Bridgewater, 8 September 1640. Other copies of this letter survive, see below, ch. 3, n. 98.

  12. Donald, Uncounselled King, pp. 244–51; Peter Donald, ‘New Light on the Anglo-Scottish Contacts of 1640’, HR, 148 (1989), 121–9; Russell, Fall, pp. 151–3; Stevenson, Scottish Revolution, pp. 205–6; David Scott, ‘“Hannibal at our gates””: Loyalists and Fifth-Columnists during the Bishops” Wars – the Case of Yorkshire’, HR, 70 (1997), 269–93. For Castle’s suspicion about collusion see EL 7847, Castle to Bridgewater, 8 August 1640.

  13. For the litmus test see Russell, Fall, pp. 154; See also Stevenson, Scottish Revolution, p. 214. For the politics of the label ‘rebel’ See also the Commons rebuke of a speaker for referring to them as rebels: CJ, ii, p. 25. There is also evidence of problems in publishing the proclamation: Larkin (ed.), Royal Proclamations, p. 727 n. 2. For collusion see John Adamson, The Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I (London, 2007), esp. ch. 1.

  14. Stevenson, Scottish Revolution, p. 43.

  15. For excellent introductions and overviews see Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700 (London, 2003), pp. 106–27, 241–4; Euan Cameron, The European Reformation (Oxford, 1991), ch. 8. For precise summaries with a view to the political implications see Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 2: The Age of Reformation (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 3–12; Francis Oakley, ‘Christian Obedience and Authority, 1520–1550’, in J. H. Burns, with the assistance of Mark Goldie (eds.), The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 159–92, esp. pp. 163–75.

  16. MacCulloch, Reformation, pp. 126–32; Cameron, European Reformation, chs. 9–11.

  17. For the role of the priesthood see Cameron, European Reformation, pp. 148–51. For Münster and the Peasants” War see ibid., pp. 202–9, 324–5; MacCulloch, Reformation, pp. 157–63, 204–7.

  18. See especially Peter Lake, ‘Anti-Popery: The Structure of a Prejudice’, in Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (eds.), Conflict in Early Stuart England (Harlow, 1989), pp. 72–106; Paul Christianson, Reformers and Babylon: English Apocalyptic Visions from the Reformation to the Eve of the Civil War (Toronto, 1978).

  19. MacCulloch, Reformation, pp. 237–41; Cameron, European Reformation, pp. 151–5; Gordon Donaldson, ‘The Scottish Church, 1567–1625’, in A. G. R. Smith (ed.), The Reign of James VI and I (London, 1972), pp. 40–56, at pp. 44–5. For the wider political background see Oakley, ‘Christian Obedience’, and Robert M. Kingdom, ‘Calvinist Resistance Theory, 1550–1580’, in Burns with Goldie (eds.), History of Political Thought, pp. 193–218.

  20. MacCulloch, Reformation, p. 238.

  21. Cameron, European Reformation, pp. 145–8; Gordon Donaldson, The Scottish Reformation (Cambridge, 1960), pp. 76–80, 107–8.

  22. The Book of Discipline that Knox produced for the kirk was almost certainly completed after the end of the parliamentary session, and the parliament had clearly worked with a draft version: Donaldson, Scottish Reformation, pp. 61–2. For the sceptical view of the heroic view of an irresistible and popular pressure for reformation, and the inevitability of its Presbyterian temper, see, in addition to Donaldson, Alec Ryrie, The Origins of the Scottish Reformation (Manchester, 2006); Alec Ryrie, ‘Congregations, Conventicles and the Nature of Early Scottish Protestantism’, PP, 191 (2006), 45–76.

  23. Donaldson, Scottish Reformation, ch. 5.

  24. Ibid., pp. 135–6, 139–44.

  25. Ibid., ch. 4; Ryrie, ‘Congregations’; Margo Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (New Haven, Conn., 2002), passim, esp. pp. 405–8; Walter Makey, The Church of the Covenant, 1637–1651: Revolution and Social Change in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 6–12; Michael F. Graham, The Uses of Reform: ‘Godly discipline’ and Popular Behaviour in Scotland and Beyond (Leiden, 1996); Julian Goodare, State and Society in Early Modern Scotland (Oxford, 1999), ch. 6, esp. pp. 177–80, 205–11.

  26. Donaldson, Scottish Reformation, pp. 204–8.

  27. Ibid., pp. 67, 144–6.

  28. Ibid., ch. 8.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Ibid., pp. 208–9; Goodare, State and Society, pp. 193–4.

  31. Donaldson, Scottish Reformation, ch. 9; Donaldson, ‘Scottish Church’ (which offers a convenient summary, and takes the story beyond 1592); Goodare, State and Society, pp. 194–6.

  32. Donaldson, Scottish Reformation, ch. 9; Goodare, State and Society, pp. 195–200.

  33. Donaldson, Scottish Reformation, ch. 9; for English views that Presbyters were simply popes in miniature see above, p. 344.

  34. Donaldson, ‘Scottish Church’, pp. 51–3.

  35. For discipline as a mark of the true church see Goodare, State and Society, p. 175; Donaldson, Scottish Reformation, pp. 78–9; Graham, Uses, p. 39; for kirk sessions see above, n. 25.

  36. Gordon Donaldson, The Making of the Scottish Prayer Book (Edinburgh, 1954), pp. 3–40; Goodare, State and Society, pp. 197–8. Donaldson emphasizes the closeness of formal liturgical positions, but the situation in practice was more complicated: Todd, Culture of Protestantism, passim.

  37. Goodare, State and Society, pp. 198–205, 211–13; for the abolition of Yule see MacCulloch, Reformation, pp. 379–80. The practice was more complicated: Todd, Culture of Protes
tantism, pp. 183–90; for self-determination and Scottish Protestant identity see ibid., passim.

  38. MacCulloch, Reformation, ch. 11; Richard Bonney, The European Dynastic States 1494–1660 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 188–205.

  39. Allan I. Macinnes, The British Revolution, 1629–1660 (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 52–4.

  40. MacCulloch, Reformation, pp. 373–8.

  41. For the faltering nature of the official reformation and its sequels see Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors (Oxford, 1993); for the subsequent Protestantization of England see Patrick Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religions and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Basingstoke, 1988); for an overview see Peter Marshall, Reformation England 1480–1642 (London, 2003).

  42. Culpeper Letters, pp. 273–4.

  43. The fundamental works are Nicholas Tyacke, ‘Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution’, reprinted in Nicholas Tyacke, Aspects of English Protestantism, c. 1530–1700 (Manchester, 2001), pp. 132–59 (See also chs. 6–9); and Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c. 1590–1640 (Oxford, 1987). Peter White, Predestination, Policy and Polemic: Conflict and Consensus in the English Church from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge, 1992), gives a strong counter-case. For the debate see Kenneth Fincham (ed.), The Early Stuart Church, 1603–1642 (Basingstoke, 1993); Marshall, Reformation England, pp. 126–35.

  44. Marshall, Reformation England, p. 134; Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge, 1994), chs. 2, 3, 9 and conclusion; Anthony Milton, ‘The Church of England, Rome and the True Church: The Demise of a Jacobean Consensus’, in Fincham (ed.), Early Stuart Church, pp. 187–210.

  45. P. G. Lake, ‘Calvinism and the English Church, 1570–1635’, PP, 114 (1987), 32–76; Marshall, Reformation England, pp. 129–30; Patrick Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559–1625 (Oxford, 1982), ch. 6.

  46. Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London, 1967); Nicholas Tyacke, ‘The Fortunes of English Puritanism, 1603–40’, reprinted in Tyacke, Aspects, pp. 111–31. For a clear narrative see Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Later Reformation in England, 1547–1603 (Basingstoke, 1990), chs. 3–4; John Spurr, English Puritanism 1603–1689 (Basingstoke, 1998), chs. 4–6.

  47. Tyacke, Aspects, chs. 5–9; Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists; Lake, ‘Calvinism’; Peter Lake, ‘The Laudian Style: Order Uniformity and the Pursuit of Holiness in the 1630s’, in Fincham (ed.), Early Stuart Church, pp. 161–85; Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake, ‘The Ecclesiastical Policies of James I and Charles I’, in ibid., pp. 23–49. The debate is summarized in Marshall, Reformation England, pp. 194–205.

  48. Lake, ‘Anti-Popery’, pp. 81–2, 87–92. This was indeed the analysis presented in the Grand Remonstrance: see above, pp. 169–70. For court Catholicism see above, p. 73. For conspiracy theories as a product of a system in which personal influence was crucial, and competing world views contended for influence, see Peter Lake, ‘The Monarchical Republic of Elizabeth I Revisited (by Its Victims) as a Conspiracy’, in Barry Coward and Julian Swann (eds.), Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in Early Modern Europe: From the Waldensians to the French Revolution (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 87–111; and Peter Lake, ‘Anti-Puritanism: The Structure of a Prejudice’, in Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake (eds.), Religious Politics in post-Reformation England: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Tyacke (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 80–97.

  49. Stevenson, Scottish Revolution, pp. 43–6; John Morrill, ‘The National Covenant in Its British Context’, in John Morrill (ed.), The Scottish National Covenant in Its British Context 1638-51 (Edinburgh, 1990), pp. 1–30, esp. pp. 7–11. These conflicts may have been anticipated well in advance by those planning the ceremonies: Dougal Shaw, ‘St Giles’ Church and Charles I’s Coronation Visit to Scotland’, HR, 77 (2004), 481–502.

  50. Russell, Fall, pp. 37–42. For the importance of religious unity see Patrick Collinson, ‘William Shakespeare’s Religious Inheritance and Environment’, reprinted in Patrick Collinson, Elizabethan Essays (London, 1994), pp. 219–52; Conrad Russell, ‘Arguments for Religious Unity in England, 1530–1650’, reprinted in Conrad Russell, Unrevolutionary England 1603–1642 (London, 1990), pp. 179–204; and the summary in Braddick, State Formation, pp. 56–60.

  51. For the dissemination of this image see Christopher Brown and Hans Vlieghe (eds.), Van Dyke, 1599-1641 (London, 1999), p. 304.

  52. For influential views of Charles I see Conrad Russell, The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford, 1990), ch. 8; Richard Cust, Charles I: A Political Life (Harlow, 2005); Richard Cust, ‘Charles I and Popularity’, in Thomas Cogswell, Richard Cust and Peter Lake (eds.), Politics, Religion and Popularity in Early Stuart Britain: Essays in Honour of Conrad Russell (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 235-58; Richard Cust, ‘Charles I and Providence’, in Fincham and Lake (eds.), Religious Politics, pp. 193–208. An elegant statement of the standard view is Alan Cromartie, The Constitutionalist Revolution: An Essay on the History of England, 1450–1642 (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 234–5. Charles now has a powerful advocate in Mark Kishlansky, ‘Charles I: A Case of Mistaken Identity?’, PP, 189 (2005), 41–80.

  53. Allan I. Macinnes, Charles I and the Making of the Covenanting Movement, 1625–1641 (Edinburgh, 1991), chs. 3–4; Maurice Lee, Jr, The Road to Revolution: Scotland under Charles I, 1625–37 (Urbana, Ill., 1985), ch. 2. For crisp summaries see Macinnes, British Revolution, pp. 86–93; Keith M. Brown, Kingdom or Province? Scotland and the Regal Union, 1603–1715 (Basingstoke, 1992), pp. 101–3; Cromartie, Constitutionalist Revolution, p. 235. For a defence of Charles’s position see Kishlansky, ‘Charles I’, 71–2; Lee suggests, contrary to much conventional wisdom, that some of the heat had in fact gone out of the conflict quite quickly: Lee, Road to Revolution, pp. 66–71.

  54. See, especially, David Stevenson, ‘The English Devil of Keeping State: élite Manners and the Downfall of Charles I in Scotland’, in Roger Mason and Nicholas Macdougall (eds.), People and Power in Scotland: Essays in Honour of T. C. Smout (Edinburgh, 1992), pp. 126–44; Keith M. Brown, ‘Aristocratic Finances and the Origins of the Scottish Revolution’, EHR, 104 (1989), 46–87. For a summary and further references see Braddick, State Formation, at pp. 367–8.

  55. Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, Conn., 1992), pp. 778–83; for Charles’s lack of empathy with Scottish sensibilities see Morrill, ‘National Covenant’, pp. 6–9. For Kishlansky’s defence see ‘Charles I’, p. 70.

  56. Stevenson, Scottish Revolution, pp. 43–4.

  57. For the drawing up of the book and the variations introduced in deference to Scottish opinion see Donaldson, Making of the Scottish Prayer Book, esp. pp. 41–71; Donald, Uncounselled King, pp. 34–7. Kishlansky’s defence of Charles’s role in drawing up the book is contested: Kishlansky, ‘Charles I’, pp. 72–3; Julian Goodare, ‘Charles I: Comment’, PP (forthcoming).

  58. Stevenson, Scottish Revolution, pp. 46–7: ‘The fact that many of those who protested at the prayer book had never read or even seen it is thus no evidence that their opposition concealed non-religious and less worthy motives than they pretended’, p. 47.

  59. Stevenson, Scottish Revolution, pp. 58–61.

  60. Ibid., pp. 61–2; Sharpe, Personal Rule, p. 788. For the claim about the bishop’s accident. see ‘the Bishop was redacted… to such a point of backside necessity, that (as may be supposed) he never in his life got such a laxative purgation… [I]t was constantly affirmed, that when he come out of the coach, he apprehended such danger (notwithstanding of the guards that was about him) that no man could endure the flewre nor stinking smell of his fat carcage’: ‘A breefe and true Relatione of the Broyle’, in John Leslie, A relation of the proceedings concerning the kirk of Scotland… by John Earl of Rothes, Bannatyne Club (Edinburgh, 1830), pp. 198–200, at p. 200.

  61. HEH, EL 7809, Castle t
o Bridgewater, 24 October 1639.

  62. J. R. M. Sizer, ‘stewart, John, First Earl of Traquair (c. 1599–1659)’, ODNB, 52, pp. 718–20. For tensions with bishops see Stevenson, Scottish Revolution, esp. pp. 53, 54–5 and the index entry on his ‘duplicity’, p. 415, sn Stewart, James, 1st Earl of Traquair. See also Donald, Uncounselled King, chs. 1–2 passim.

  63. Donald, Uncounselled King, pp. 45–8; Stevenson, Scottish Revolution, pp. 64–6.

  64. Donald, Uncounselled King, pp. 48–58; Stevenson, Scottish Revolution, pp. 66–79. For the October protests see Makey, Church of the Covenant, p. 21.

  65. Donald, Uncounselled King, chs. 1–2. For Traquair’s permission to travel see pp. 61–2; for the anti-episcopal tone of the petitions see pp. 53–7. See also Stevenson’s verdict: ‘on the eve of the troubles in Scotland the administration was in no condition to meet the crisis thrust upon it by a king who refused to recognise the difficulties involved in imposing his policies’: Scottish Revolution, p. 55.

  66. Makey, Church of the Covenant, pp. 1–6.

  67. For a full discussion of the material grievances which may have lain behind the alienation of the political nation see Macinnes, Charles I, ch. 5.

  68. Ibid., chs. 2–4, Lee, Road to Revolution, ch. 7.

  69. Todd, Culture of Protestantism, conclusion.