This Sceptred Isle

by Christopher Lee

  As early as January 1604 the Protestants, led by Bishop Bancroft, and the Puritans met the King at a special conference at Hampton Court. James had been brought up by Calvinists, and he disliked them. Nevertheless, the Puritans saw what they thought was an opportunity to persuade the King of the merits of their case.

  The Puritans consisted of the so-called ‘low church’, clergy who wanted to be rid of the more ceremonial features of Rome. Apart from vestments, they objected also to genuflexion, to making the sign of the cross over a child at its baptism, to confirmation and even to wedding rings. They also wanted competent priests who were learned and who lived in the parishes, instead of the long-time practice of giving livings to men who never went near the parish, yet collected a stipend and often an income from glebe (lands that formed part of a clergyman’s benefice).

  The bishops, fearful that the Puritan leaders would have their way with the new King, came up with a plan to load the forthcoming conference with moderate Puritan speakers rather than zealots. The result was a few changes with which the bishops could agree and certain disappointments for the Puritan leaders but, most of all, a declaration that brought non-conformist ministers into some sort of line. There were few moments of accord in that conference; but the leader of the Puritan delegation, the president of Corpus Christi, Oxford, Dr John Reynolds, came up with a suggestion that particularly gained the King’s attention and whose results have had a lasting effect. Reynolds had wanted four points of knowledge. Church doctrine should be preserved in a pure form according to what the Puritans saw as God’s word. Ministers, or pastors, should be worthwhile characters and learned and should replace in each and every parish many of the duffers of the Established Church. He wanted also a better administration of the Church. He was not alone in this matter and the bishops shifted uneasily and at times pompously. His final point was that the Book of Common Prayer should be more pious. In fact, the Puritan notion was that it had very little to do with the Bible and should therefore be either rewritten or tossed out.

  The bishops thought the Puritan demands, which of course they were not hearing for the first time, to be worth little consideration. James had little patience with Reynolds’ intervention. James had grown up with dissent all about him. He saw his task as the new monarch of both countries as maintaining stability and thus being able to rule with fewer difficulties. He knew very well that any suggestion that he approved of the rewriting of the Book of Common Prayer would have the opposite effect. Religious infighting had no history of stability as an outcome. A more imaginative project was the wording of the Bible itself. The matter of the Geneva Bible was not on the conference agenda. There is little evidence to suggest that when James called the conference in October 1603 he intended to do much about that Bible. However, the Puritans, just as the Scottish Protestants had, regarded the Geneva Bible as the definitive translation. Yet he, James, did not think much of it and was not inclined to the Puritan view that it should become the King James Version of the Bible; in other words, authorized. Authorization would have meant that the Geneva Bible would be the official work and therefore held in every church. So how was he to at least partly cheer up the Puritans who had gone to the conference at Hampton Court with so many hopes and looked like going away with very little? The bishops would sit smugly knowing that it had gone their way and that James had protected their prayer book. So what could be done for the Puritans? There had to be some backstairs negotiations.

  The Bishop of Durham, Toby Matthew, who had preached to James’s delight in his cathedral when the new monarch first set foot in England, recorded that the Puritans wanted ‘one only translation of the bible’. This single work would be considered authentic and therefore the only one at the lecterns. Moreover, everyone knew that a Roman Catholic version of the New Testament, and soon the Bible, was being prepared by priests at Douai and Rheims. No matter the schisms within the Protestant Church in England there was one matter that could bring them all together. Not a single one at the conference could bear the thought of any Roman Catholic influence. Puritan and established Churchmen could unite against the Catholics. How much better to have a new translation in place? Thus it was not the King, nor the bishops, but John Reynolds who publicly proposed a new translation of the Bible. The politicking of Hampton Court was successful. James declared that the scholars of Oxford and Cambridge should begin work on a translation that would be ‘made of the whole Bible, as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek and this to be set out and printed without any marginal notes and only to be used in all churches of England in time of Divine service’.

  The Puritans had not really got what they wanted. Equally, the Established Church was not convinced that the King was wholly with them and not inclined to the Puritans. James, who died in 1625, is not remembered for much in English history. His legacy is not in high diplomacy but the King James Version of the Bible is still read in the twenty-first century.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  1625–39

  In 1625 Charles I came to the throne at the age of twenty-five. His father was James I, his mother, Anne of Denmark. The court in which he was brought up was a place of crudeness, immorality and harsh debate. Charles, apparently, was shy and artistic, and he stammered.

  Towards the end of his father’s life, Charles effectively co-ruled with George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham. It was Buckingham who arranged the entrance of Charles into the French royal family with his marriage to Henrietta Maria. Charles and his wife were happy. They had seven children, including the future Charles II and James II. Maryland in America was named after Queen Henrietta Maria. And when he became King, Charles was welcomed by the people and by Parliament. But not for long. The confrontation that was to come was not simply a case of a new King not understanding what Parliament wanted and how much it might be given. Charles was not a stranger to Parliament. James I had sent his son to the Lords in 1621 as part of his education. The Prince was there to learn the ways of the House so that when he became King, he would understand its workings and its importance, and protect it.

  And certainly, when he did become King, Parliament was generous towards him. But in one particular matter, it was ungenerous. Parliament wanted rid of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the King’s closest adviser. Perhaps most frustrating for Buckingham’s critics – and they stretched across every corridor, every courtyard and every bench of the agitated Parliament – was Charles’s friendship with Buckingham and his belief that his friend had the good of the State at heart. Parliament blocked the supply of money to the King until he agreed to get rid of Buckingham. Charles regarded this as an affront – which it probably was – and dissolved Parliament, but not before Parliament had impeached Buckingham. Within twelve months of being on the throne, Charles had moved from being a liked and informed member of the Lords to being a King on a terrible collision course with that same institution. The King blamed what he called the ‘violent and ill-advised passions of a few members of the House’. Sir Dudley Carleton, Secretary of State and Member of the Commons, said that in other countries monarchs had started to get rid of their elected bodies when they saw ‘the turbulent spirits of their Parliaments’. The implication was clear: for the King to support Parliament then Parliament had to be worthwhile for the King. If it wasn’t, then the King would look elsewhere for counsel.

  But first he had to look elsewhere for money. He and his Council tried to insist on what was called ‘a Force Loan’ – a tax without Parliament’s approval. Charles went to the law for approval but the judges turned him down and many very senior people in the land refused to pay this illegal tax. He had to summon Parliament and said he would make compromises as long as Buckingham’s impeachment was dropped. He got a promise of some money, enough to carry on his war with Spain (as part of the Thirty Years War), but not unless he agreed to certain rights that Parliament knew he was trampling. Freemen were not be arrested unless they had been accused of law-breaking. The writ of habeas corpu
s was sacrosanct. If, after arrest, no evidence was offered against a freeman, then he should be set free or bailed. No freeman’s property could be taxed without Parliament’s approval. Charles believed that the way Parliament had behaved, and the way he had responded, would win him the affection of the people. But Sir Edward Coke, the man who had been responsible for the prosecutions of Elizabeth’s one-time favourites, Essex and then Ralegh, and who had prosecuted the Gunpowder Plotters, urged the House to frame the Petition of Right. The King knew exactly what this meant.

  This 1628 Petition threatened the Royal Prerogative. It emphasized the common freedoms of the people and started by citing the law from Edward I’s time by which no tallage or aid shall be laid or levied by the King without the consent of magnates and freemen. Nor did the Petition miss a point of great vexation in seventeenth-century England. The militia and sailors were often billeted on civilians. Civilians did not like this. Also, there were times when soldiers, usually a motley lot, many of them mercenaries, were guilty of the cruellest misdemeanours, but escaped the law because they claimed the protection of martial law. Charles could see no way ahead in this debate and instead dismissed the Houses and, with Buckingham, planned an expedition to La Rochelle where Protestant Huguenots were besieged. At least that was the plan. But Buckingham was assassinated by one of his own men before his ship ever left Portsmouth harbour.

  In 1640 Charles, under enormous pressure, summoned another Parliament. It sat for twenty years and so it is little surprise that it became known as the Long Parliament. He called the Parliament to order after his defeat in the Bishops’ War (1639–40), which came about because Charles insisted that the Scots adopt the Anglican Church. The main influence on Charles was William Laud (1573–1645) who had been Archbishop of Canterbury since 1633. Perhaps Charles should have listened to James I, who had a sceptical opinion of clergymen. He was a restless spirit and, said James, one who ‘cannot see when matters are well, but loves to bring things to a pitch of reformation floating in his brain’. It was Laud’s insistence that the Scots use the English Book of Common Prayer that became the first of three steps to war with the bishops. The Scots took one look at it, and believed it to be the work of the Pope. The second mistake was that Charles planned to confiscate Scottish Church lands taken by Scottish nobles since the Reformation. The result was predictable: the nobility turned against him. Charles probably had no idea that what had started out as a simple idea of Laud’s would end in open revolt, but the leaders of the revolt either believed, or found it convenient to believe, that what was happening was an attempt to impose Popery on Scotland. And the third mistake, with Parliament still not yet called, was made by the Marquess of Hamilton who was sent to Scotland by Charles to act as conciliator. He demanded, in 1638, that the General Assembly of Scotland, which had set itself against the King’s order, should be dissolved. Hamilton was determined to use force, when none was necessary, in order to get his way. But force had to be paid for and only Parliament could raise that sort of money. If Charles was going to fight the Scots, he needed money for an army (the monarchy didn’t have an army of its own) so he also needed official backing from the people. And there was only one place to acquire official backing: Parliament. However, the Scots were not about to wait to see what Charles would or wouldn’t do. The supporters of the Assembly were known as Covenanters, and in the powerful lowlands there was a strong Covenanters’ army and, more important than that, it had been reinforced by reserves of war-hardened warriors from Scottish soldiers fighting for the Protestant cause in Germany. The inevitable outcome was a war of sorts in which Scotland saw how strong it was and capitalized on its alliance with France. Good sense did not prevail.

  Sir Thomas Wentworth (1593–1641), the soon-to-be-created first Earl of Strafford, advised the King that war with Scotland was the way forward. Sir Thomas was an autocrat, quite ruthless, close to Archbishop Laud and, in 1632, as Lord Deputy of Ireland, had sought to make Ireland English in all its forms. More important to Charles, Wentworth had an Irish army of 8,000 men.

  And so, after nearly eleven years of believing he could do without Parliament, Charles was forced to issue writs for elections to a new session: he needed money to raise and pay for troops. And his chances of avoiding confrontation with Parliament were not helped by his loving, devoted but Catholic Queen.

  Henrietta Maria’s closest adviser was, ironically, a Scotsman called George Con. He had been sent by the Pope to act as Papal Legate to the Queen’s court. Henrietta Maria and Con made it clear they believed that Catholics were the natural supporters of the King. They even tried to raise Catholic troops from the Spanish enclaves of the Netherlands. The Catholic Earl of Nithsdale raised Scottish Roman Catholics for the King and, in Ireland, the Earl of Antrim said he too would raise an army. Many believed that Charles was too influenced by Rome, and that was his greatest single weakness.

  Whatever the truth, all the help promised by Scottish Catholics and Irish peers did not save Charles. The Scots crossed the border. They were in possession of Northumberland and of Durham. And their great allies, the Parliamentary and Puritan party, watched and encouraged them from London. The King, whether he liked it or not, was being led towards the most historically important Parliament ever faced by an English monarch. And as England, in 1640, prepared for the Long Parliament, the public axeman numbered the days of Wentworth, and then of Archbishop Laud.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  1640–49

  Until King Charles I was forced to call the Parliament of 1640, he had governed England without Parliament for eleven years and he was constitutionally within his rights. Charles ruled through his King’s Council, as a sort of Cabinet, and the period became known as the Personal Rule. But, as discussed, Parliament had to be assembled because Charles needed money to put down the Scottish Rebellion. The first Parliament of 1640 became known as the Short Parliament. It lasted for three weeks in April. But under the leadership of a Puritan called John Pym (c.1584–1643), who had encouraged the Scots in their war, Parliament wanted to discuss eleven years of grievances before giving Charles his money. And then John Pym pressed for a petition to the Lords to rid England of the ‘most decrepit age of Popery’. He attacked the King’s demands for money. And Charles, in frustration, or anger, or both, and against Strafford’s advice, dissolved Parliament. But by November 1640, because he was defeated in the second Bishops’ War, Charles was forced to summon Parliament (The Long Parliament). It was the fifth Parliament of Charles’s reign, and his last. It was also the last from some of his closest friends.

  The new Parliament contained formidable political figures and not time-servers. The two most immediately prominent were Pym and John Hampden (1594–1643). Pym, a Puritan, was first noticed because he had been part of the impeachment of Buckingham in 1626. By the Long Parliament, he had become a clever fixer and unifier when others might have given up the purpose of the opposition to the King. The opposition were essentially dividing into two camps: those trying to avoid civil war and those pleading the cause of republicanism. Hampden was less compromising. He would not tolerate what he saw as the dictatorial power assumed by the King. The pair of them had a primary target before aiming at the King himself. The man to bring before the House was Strafford, the person with the most devastating influence on the King.

  Thomas Wentworth, the First Earl of Strafford, had been an opponent of the King inasmuch he could not accept his general policies. But Charles cared for his advice and, among other offices, gave him the lord deputyship of Ireland in 1632 where he earned a reputation as an uncompromising proponent of an Ireland wholly ruled by England in the English manner and without any trace of Irish authority, nor even identity. When the Bishops’ Wars began in Scotland in 1639, Charles brought back Wentworth from Ireland to advise him how to deal with the rebellion. Wentworth’s advice, accepted by Charles and Laud, was that the only language understood by the Scots was the shrieks of anguish from their fellows once the bloodiest swords a
nd guns of the English slashed and struck their terror. Moreover, Wentworth had his Irish army – traditionally well trained in bloody conflict. For his troubles, he was given an earldom, hence Strafford. But by then, 1640, Parliament could call Strafford and others to account. It was Pym who masterminded the impeachment of Strafford. Strafford was charged with treason. But treason is a crime against the Crown, and he had been working on behalf of Charles. Pym simply produced an idea of constructive treason, which he described as ‘against the being of the law’ as opposed to the rule of the law.

  Parliament nearly accepted the Pym version, but many peers felt uneasy that they were being asked to commit one of their number for a crime which was not recognized as a crime. And there were a few at least who saw that what was happening to Strafford could easily happen to them. The speech which Strafford gave in his defence touched the very hearts of the doubters. It was the speech of a man fighting for his life, who but days earlier had decided the lives of others.

  My lords, the shedding of my blood may make a way for the tracing of yours. If every word, intention, circumstance of yours be alleged as treasonable, not because of statute, but a consequence, a construction, heaved up in a high rhetorical strain . . . I leave it to your lordships’ consideration to foresee what may be the issue of so dangerous, so recent precedencies. These gentlemen [Pym et al.] tell me they speak in defence of the Commonweal against their arbitrary treason; for if this latitude is admitted, what prejudice shall follow to the King, to the country, if you and your posterity be disabled by the same from the greatest affairs of the Kingdom.