Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution

by Peter Ackroyd

  Thus was accomplished what was variously called the great or prodigious ‘Revolution’ and what was eventually known as the ‘Glorious Revolution’. A supporter of William, Bishop Burnet, wrote of the king that ‘his whole strength, like a spider’s web, was so irrevocably broken with a touch, that he was never able to retrieve what for want of judgement and heart, he threw up in a day’. It was not a matter of a day, however, but of years. In his obstinacy and fervent piety he had miscalculated the nature of the country; he had advanced where he should have called a halt. He had pitted the power of central government against local government to the ultimate disservice of the nation. By assaulting the sensibilities of both Anglicans and Tories he had alienated his natural supporters, and by advancing the claims of Catholics he had touched upon a very sensitive prejudice. He may not have wanted to become an absolute king, but he acted as if that were his intention. The birth of an heir stretched that prospect indefinitely.

  James II spent the rest of his life in France. It was said, in his court at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, that ‘when you listen to him, you realize why he is here’. Thus ended the public life of the last Stuart king of England. We may leave the scene with the words of John Dryden from The Secular Masque:

  Thy wars brought nothing about;

  Thy lovers were all untrue.

  ’Tis well an old age is out,

  And time to begin a new.

  1. James I of England and James VI of Scotland, in the characteristically regal pose of hand on hip.

  2. Anne of Denmark, James’s spouse, who became a key artistic patron in the ‘Jacobean’ age.

  3. James in front of his lords, temporal and spiritual.

  4. The title page of the King James Bible, one of the lasting memorials of his reign.

  5. The title page of John Milton’s Areopagitica, an eloquent plea against censorship.

  6. George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, loved by two sovereigns and hated by the people.

  7. Henry, prince of Wales, the supposed saviour of Protestant Europe, who did not live long enough to fulfil his destiny.

  8. Charles, the future Charles I, as the prince of Wales in armour.

  9. Elizabeth, daughter of James I, who was briefly queen of Bohemia, otherwise known as the Winter Queen.

  10. A double portrait of the unhappy Charles I and his wife, Henrietta Maria.

  11. Three out of seven of Charles I’s children, painted by Anthony Van Dyck.

  12. A disapproving illustration of the Rump Parliament, after the purge of the Long Parliament in December 1648.

  13. What the Cavaliers are supposed to have done with the Puritans.

  14. Thomas Wentworth, 1st earl of Strafford, the dour supporter of absolute monarchy.

  15. A plan of the Battle of Naseby, the outcome of which wrecked the king’s chances in the summer of 1645.

  16. Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Charles I’s senior commander, brave, but also foolhardy.

  17. The trial of Charles I in Westminster Hall.

  18. The result of the trial: a death warrant.

  19. Cromwell, the chief of men until his death in 1658.

  20. A contemporary tapestry celebrating the restoration of Charles II.

  21. Charles II, the supposedly ‘merry monarch’.

  22. Catherine of Braganza, the wife of Charles II, who was reputed to have introduced tea-drinking to England.

  23. Barbara Villiers, duchess of Cleveland, one of Charles II’s many mistresses, who was described by John Evelyn as ‘the curse of the nation’.

  24. Nell Gwynne, the orange-seller who became a royal courtesan.

  25. Louise de Kérouaille, Charles’s French mistress who became duchess of Portsmouth and who was known by Nell Gwynne as ‘Squintabella’.

  26. The earl of Rochester, rake and poet who did not mince his words.

  27. Samuel Pepys, who turned the diary into an art form.

  28. Sir Christopher Wren, the polymath who transformed London.

  29. Sir Isaac Newton, arguably the greatest experimenter in English history.

  30. Charles II in his role as patron of the Royal Society.

  31. The members of the ‘Cabal’, a group of five self-interested councillors who ran a corrupt coalition around Charles II.

  32. The duke of Monmouth, the illegitimate son who yearned to be king.

  33. The duke of York, soon to become James II, with his wife and daughters.

  34. A confused scene supposedly depicting the covert arrival of an infant, ‘the warming-pan baby’, to be passed off as James II’s son.

  35. The baby grows into James Francis Edward Stuart, better known to posterity as the ‘Old Pretender’ or the ‘King Over the Water’.

  36. James II throwing the great seal into the Thames as he escapes from England into France.

  Further reading

  This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it represents a selection of those books the author found most useful in the preparation of this third volume.

  GENERAL STUDIES

  G. E. Aylmer: The Struggle for the Constitution (London, 1963).

  J. C. D. Clark: Revolution and Rebellion (Cambridge, 1986).

  Thomas Cogswell, Richard Cust and Peter Lake (eds): Politics, Religion and Popularity (Cambridge, 2002).

  Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (eds): Conflict in Early Stuart England (London, 1989).

  Godfrey Davies: The Early Stuarts (Oxford, 1959).

  Kenneth Fincham (ed.): The Early Stuart Church (London, 1993).

  S. R. Gardiner: History of England, 1603–1642. In ten volumes (London, 1899).

  William Haller: The Rise of Puritanism (New York, 1938).

  Christopher Hill: Puritanism and Revolution (London, 1958).

  Derek Hirst: Authority and Conflict (London, 1986).

  Ronald Hutton: Debates in Stuart History (London, 2004).

  J. P. Kenyon: The Stuart Constitution (Cambridge, 1966).

  Peter Lake: Anglicans and Puritans? (London, 1988).

  Peter Lake and Steven Pincus (eds): The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2007).

  John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc: The History of England. Volumes seven to ten (New York, 1912).

  Judith Maltby: Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Cambridge, 1998).

  Brian Manning: The English People and the English Revolution (London, 1976).

  John Morgan: Godly Learning (Cambridge, 1986).

  John Morrill, Paul Slack and Daniel Woolf (eds): Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth Century England (Oxford, 1993).

  J. F. H. New: Anglican and Puritan (London, 1964).

  Linda Levy Peck: Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (London, 1990).

  H. S. Reinmuth Jnr. (ed.): Early Stuart Studies (Minneapolis, 1970).

  Conrad Russell: Parliament and English Politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979).

  ——— Unrevolutionary England (London, 1990).

  Kevin Sharpe, Politics and Ideas in Early Stuart England (London, 1989).

  ——— Image Wars (New Haven, 2010).

  ——— (ed.): Faction and Parliament (London, 1978).

  Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake: Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England (London, 1994).

  Alan Smith: The Emergence of a Nation State (London, 1984).

  J. P. Sommerville: Politics and Ideology in England, 1603–1640 (London, 1986).

  David Starkey (ed.): The English Court (London, 1987).

  Margot Todd (ed.): Reformation to Revolution (London, 1995).

  Howard Tomlinson (ed.): Before the English Civil War (London, 1983).

  Hugh Trevor-Roper: Historical Essays (London, 1957).

  ——— Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans (London, 1987).

  Nicholas Tyacke: Anti-Calvinists (Oxford, 1987).

  ——— (ed.) The English Revolution (Manchester, 2007).

  David Underdown: Revel, Riot and Rebellion (Oxford,
1985).

  J. Dover Wilson (ed.): Seventeenth Century Studies (Oxford, 1938).

  Andy Wood: Riot, Rebellion and Popular Politics in Early Modern England (London, 2002).

  JAMES VI AND I

  Robert Ashton: James by his Contemporaries (London, 1969).

  Bryan Bevan: King James (London, 1990).

  Caroline Bingham: James of England (London, 1981).

  Thomas Birch: The Court and Times of James. In two volumes (London, 1848).

  Glenn Burgess: Absolute Monarchy (London, 1996).

  Irene Carrier: James (Cambridge, 1998).

  Thomas Cogswell: The Blessed Revolution (Cambridge, 1989).

  James Doelman: King James and the Religious Culture of England (Cambridge, 2000).

  Kenneth Fincham: Prelate as Pastor (Oxford, 1990).

  Antonia Fraser: King James (London, 1974).

  S. J. Houston: James (London, 1972).

  Robert Lockyer: James (London, 1998).

  David Matthew: The Jacobean Age (London, 1938).

  ——— James (London, 1967).

  W. M. Mitchell: The Rise of the Revolutionary Party (New York, 1957).

  W. B. Patterson: King James and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge, 1997).

  Linda Levy Peck (ed.): The Mental World of the Jacobean Court (Cambridge, 1991).

  Menna Prestwich: Cranfield (Oxford, 1966).

  Walter Scott: Secret History of the Court of James. In two volumes (London, 1811).

  Alan G. R. Smith (ed.): The Reign of James (London, 1973).

  Alan Stewart: The Cradle King (London, 2003).

  Roy Strong: Henry, Prince of Wales (London, 2000).

  Roland Usher: The Reconstruction of the English Church. In two volumes (New York, 1910).

  D. H. Willson: King James (London, 1956).

  CHARLES I

  G. E. Aylmer: The King’s Servants (London, 1961).

  Thomas Birch and Cyprien de Gamache: The Court and Times of Charles I. In two volumes (London, 1848).

  Charles Carlton: Charles I: The Personal Monarch (London, 1983).

  Hester Chapman: Great Villiers (London, 1949).

  H. P. Cooke: Charles I and his Earlier Parliaments (London, 1939).

  E. S. Cope: Politics without Parliaments (London, 1987).

  Richard Cust: Charles I: A Political Life (London, 2005).

  C. W. Daniels and John Morrill: Charles I (Cambridge, 1988).

  Isaac Disraeli: Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles I. In five volumes (London, 1828–1831).

  Christopher Durston: Charles I (London, 1998).

  J. H. Hexter: The Reign of King Pym (Cambridge, Mass., 1961).

  Christopher Hibbert: Charles I (London, 2007).

  F. M. G. Higham: Charles I (London,1932).

  Clive Holmes: Why Was Charles I Executed? (London, 2006).

  David Matthew: The Social Structure in Caroline England (Oxford, 1948).

  ——— The Age of Charles I (London, 1951).

  Brian Quintrell: Charles I (London, 1993).

  L. J. Reeve: Charles I and the Road to Personal Rule (Cambridge, 1989).

  Conrad Russell: The Fall of the British Monarchies (Oxford, 1991).

  Kevin Sharpe: The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, 1992).

  Hugh Trevor-Roper: Archbishop Laud (London, 1940).

  C. V. Wedgwood: The King’s Peace (London, 1955).

  ——— Thomas Wentworth (New York, 1962).

  G. M. Young: Charles I and Cromwell (London, 1935).

  OLIVER CROMWELL

  Maurice Ashley: The Greatness of Oliver Cromwell (London, 1957).

  Hilaire Belloc: Cromwell (London, 1934).

  John Buchan: Cromwell (London, 1934).

  Barry Coward: Oliver Cromwell (London, 1991).

  J. C. Davis: Oliver Cromwell (London, 2001).

  C. H. Firth: Cromwell (London, 1901).

  Antonia Fraser: Cromwell (London, 1973).

  S. R. Gardiner: Oliver Cromwell (London, 1901).

  Peter Gaunt: Oliver Cromwell (Oxford, 1996).

  François Guizot: Oliver Cromwell (London, 1879).

  Christopher Hill: God’s Englishman (London, 1971).

  Roger Howell: Cromwell (London, 1977).

  Frank Kitson: Old Ironsides (London, 2004).

  John Morley: Oliver Cromwell (London, 1904).

  John Morrill (ed.): Oliver Cromwell (Oxford, 2007).

  Micheál Ó Siochrú: God’s Executioner (London, 2008).

  C. V. Wedgwood: Oliver Cromwell (London, 1973).

  CIVIL WAR

  John Adamson: The Noble Revolt (London, 2007).

  Michael Braddick: God’s Fury, England’s Fire (London, 2008).

  Charles Carlton: Going to the Wars (London, 1992).

  Edward, earl of Clarendon: The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England. In six volumes (Oxford, 1888).

  David Cressy: England on Edge (Oxford, 2007).

  Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (eds): The English Civil War (London, 1997).

  Barbara Donagan: War in England, 1642–1649 (Oxford, 2008).

  Anthony Fletcher: The Outbreak of the English Civil War (London, 1981).

  S. R. Gardiner: History of the Great Civil War. In four volumes (London, 1888).

  Peter Gaunt (ed.): The English Civil War (Oxford, 2000).

  Ian Gentles: The English Revolution (London, 2007).

  Christopher Hill: The English Revolution (London, 1940).

  Ann Hughes: The Causes of the English Civil War (London, 1991).

  Ronald Hutton: The Royalist War Effort (London, 1982).

  D. E. Kennedy: The English Revolution (London, 2000).

  John Kenyon: The Civil Wars of England (London, 1988).

  Mark Kishlansky: The Rise of the New Model Army (Cambridge, 1979).

  Jason McElligott and David Smith (eds): Royalists and Royalism during the English Civil Wars (Cambridge, 2007).

  Allan Macinnes: The British Revolution (London, 2005).

  Brian Manning (ed.): Politics, Religion and the English Civil War (London, 1973).

  Michael Mendle (ed.): The Putney Debates (Cambridge, 2001).

  John Morrill: The Revolt of the Provinces (London, 1976).

  ——— The Nature of the English Revolution (London, 1993).

  ——— (ed.) Reactions to the English Civil War (London, 1982).

  Jason Peacey (ed.): The Regicides and the Execution of Charles I (London, 2001).

  R. C. Richardson: The Debate on the English Revolution (London, 1977).

  Ivan Roots: The Great Rebellion (London, 1966).

  Conrad Russell (ed.): The Origins of the English Civil War (London, 1973).

  David Scott: Politics and War in the Three Stuart Kingdoms (London, 2004).

  Lawrence Stone: The Causes of the English Revolution (London, 1972).

  John Stubbs: Reprobates (London, 2011).

  David Underdown: Pride’s Purge (Oxford, 1971).

  Malcolm Wanklyn: The Warrior Generals (London, 2010).

  C. V. Wedgwood: The King’s War (London, 1958).

  Austin Woolrych: Britain in Revolution (Oxford, 2002).

  Blair Worden: The Rump Parliament (Cambridge, 1974).

  ——— The English Civil Wars (London, 2009).

  COMMONWEALTH AND PROTECTORATE

  G. E. Aylmer (ed.): The Interregnum (London, 1972).

  Toby Barnard: The English Republic (London, 1982).

  Jakob Bowman: The Protestant Interest in Cromwell’s Foreign Relations (Heidelberg, 1900).

  Barry Coward: The Cromwellian Protectorate (Manchester, 2002).

  C. H. Firth: The Last Years of the Protectorate. In two volumes (London, 1909).

  S. R. Gardiner: History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate. In four volumes (London, 1903).

  William Haller: Liberty and Information in the Puritan Revolution (New York, 1955).

  Ronald Hutton: The British Republic (London, 1990).

  William Lamont: Godly Rule (London, 1
969).

  Jason McElligott: Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England (Woodbridge, 2007).

  John Morrill (ed.): Revolution and Restoration (London, 1992).

  Robert Paul: The Lord Protector (London, 1955).

  David Smith (ed.): Cromwell and the Interregnum (Oxford, 2003).

  Michael Walzer: The Revolution of the Saints (New York, 1974).

  Austin Woolrych: Commonwealth to Protectorate (London, 1980).

  ——— England without a King (London, 1983).

  CHARLES II

  Maurice Ashley: Charles II (London, 1973).

  Robert Bosher: The Making of the Restoration Settlement (London, 1951).

  Hester Chapman: The Tragedy of Charles II (London, 1964).