Conflict in Early Stuart England

Studies in Religion and Politics 1603-1642

Richard Cust, Ann Hughes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317885016
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This important collection of essays, based on extensive original research, presents a vigorous critique of ` revisionist' analyses of the period, and reasserts the importance of long term ideological and social developments in causing the outbreak of the civil war.

1 Introduction: after Revisionism

Richard Cust and Ann Hughes

I

The English Civil War once had a prime place in an account of Britain's (or rather England's) history as a linear progression towards liberal democracy, religious toleration and world leadership. As recently as the 1960s many historians accepted some version of a 'progressive' interpretation, whether liberal or Marxist in tone. The Civil War was an important event, with long-term causes, social or political, and it had a significant impact on England's later political and economic development. Recently it has been eloquently shown that this framework for the past has crumbled as confidence in Britain's development and in ideas of progress themselves have disappeared.¹ The view of the Civil War as a progressive landmark is particularly vulnerable because it seems an embarrassing exception to the dominant view of England's development whereby change occurs through gradual and consensual mechanisms. Englishmen being engaged in armed struggle over differences of principle was not a phenomenon which fitted easily with this cosy picture. We live now in less hopeful times, when collective social and political action is widely seen as both futile and 'extremist'. It is perhaps unsurprising that many historians now portray the Civil War as a confused and 'accidental' conflict with mainly short-term and 'contingent' causes; and also see it as a largely futile conflict which did little to alter the broad contours of English development. England, it has been alleged, remained an ancien régime state, dominated by divine-right monarchy, the established Church and the landed aristocracy until 1832.²

We do not wish to add to the many comprehensive discussions of the historiography of the Civil War already available, but merely to sketch out the broad lines of recent debate so as to specify the contribution we hope to make in this volume.³ What follows does not do justice to the subtlety of the debate but is intended as a broad account of the main arguments. For the 'Whig' historians, working within a liberal tradition, the Civil War was a constitutional and political struggle between authoritarian, arbitrary monarchy and the rule of law, the property rights and liberties (or even the 'liberty' in some modern sense) of individuals. An 'opposition' based particularly in the House of Commons stood for laws and liberties, and also for a staunch English Protestantism against the superstitious, unpatriotic, near popish religious tendencies espoused by Charles I. In complex and unintended ways this religious struggle paved the way for the toleration of a diversity of Protestant worship. The reckoning of 1642 was the culmination of a long period of increasing tension from the last years of Elizabeth, when the Queen's political skills deserted her, to the 'eleven years' tyranny' of Charles I.

Classic Marxist accounts of political developments are often similar, if less approving, but this 'superstructure' is given a material base in the nature of economic developments and class relationships in England. The Civil War thus becomes in some sense a 'bourgeois revolution', a crucial step in England's transition from a traditional 'feudal' to a modern 'capitalist' society. It is linked to the emergence of a new class, made up in some versions of new men, in others of transformed sections of earlier élites. This was a capitalist class concerned to maximize its profits from agriculture, and involved in industry and trade. For this group the royal government was a 'feudal' barrier to its economic advance – through its pusillanimous foreign policy, its hamfisted attempts at social regulation of enclosure, and its unpredictable and arbitrary interference in private property. Through the Civil War this emerging capitalist class secured a political system that protected their interests. In recent years, it must be admitted, this bourgeoisie has been less prominent in Marxist-influenced interpretations. An understandable disillusion with the hard-faced men who did well out of the war, and the apparent elusiveness of a future transition from capitalism to socialism in Britain, have prompted an examination of the 'middling sort' – always an important element in the emerging bourgeoisie – and of poorer groups, along with the more dramatic if unsuccessful radical movements of the 1640s and 1650s.⁴ For good or ill, however, most Marxists and the mainly American heirs of the Whigs continue to see the Civil War, with its epilogue in 1688—89, as a crucial stage in England's development as a constitutional monarchy and a market economy.

Both versions of the progressive interpretation have been subjected to a formidable 'revisionist' assault in recent years. The origins of this are very diverse. They include the critique of Tawney's thesis on the 'rise of the gentry' by Cooper, Hexter, Trevor-Roper and others; Everitt's work on 'county communities', stressing the importance of local loyalties and the harmony within local society; Ball's and Barnes' work on Sir John Eliot and Sir Robert Phelips showing that such MPs do not fit easily into models of conflict based on 'court' v. 'country' or government v. opposition; and Elton's challenge to one of the accepted milestones on 'the High Road to Civil War', the Commons' Apology of 1604. Several of these threads were drawn together in Russell's introduction to The Origins of the English Civil War, with its argument that this was 'an accidental war', arising out of 'a state of chronic misunderstanding, terror and distrust'.⁵ This view has crucially influenced the work of, amongst others, John Morrill, Mark Kishlansky and Kevin Sharpe.⁶ These historians do not necessarily accept that they form a 'revisionist' school, and they differ in their positive interpretations of the early seventeenth century. Nevertheless it is possible to trace certain common themes and similarities, particularly in their criticisms of earlier work.

They are generally united in their rejection of Marxist interpretations. In fact these have received relatively little in the way of detailed consideration, but, for reasons which will be discussed below, it has been possible to dismiss attempts to link the political conflict with processes of social change. The developments highlighted by Marxists are regarded as illusory, ambiguous or irrelevant, and at best as unproven assertions. Their efforts to trace long-term causes for the Civil War, rooted in economic and social shifts, have generally been rejected as deterministic or based on hindsight. And the designation of the resistance to the monarchy as 'progressive' by both Whigs and Marxists is also discarded. In some versions it is the monarchy which is innovative as kings, especially Charles I, sought to maximize their resources, evade the limitations of an obstructive Parliament and make an impact on European affairs. It was the Crown's opponents, especially in the House of Commons, who were 'conservative', stubbornly clinging to outmoded customs and rights. In other revisionist writing the progressive-conservative split is meaningless, partly because seventeenth-century ideas did not include a view of progress or willed forward-looking change, but also because the ideological divide implied in such a split did not exist.

I his last point is amongst the most fundamental made by the revisionists. In place of the sharp and increasing political and religious divisions perceived by earlier writers, revisionists posit a fundamental ideological consensus: a political consensus which survived to the eve of the Civil War and religious unity which lasted until the accession of Charles I. In political terms, it is argued, there was general agreement that kings ruled with divine approval, should take the advice of leading men through their council and meet with Parliaments whose role was generally subordinate and focused on the provision of finance, advice and information. As well as agreement on the structure of the political system there was a wide degree of unity on how it should function. Division and conflict were almost universally seen as illegitimate and abhorrent. Since only the king could form a government and make decisions on high policy there was no place for the existence of 'an opposition' in the modern sense of the term. Political parties and 'adversary politics' were widely regarded as factious and divisive. The first duty of all participants in the political process was to strive for unity and harmony. Thus debate and procedure in the House of Commons were designed to secure consensus and agreement; and MPs saw themselves as constructive critics rather than opponents of royal policies. Conflicts occurred, but, it is argued, they do not reflect any straightforward division between government and opposition or 'court' and 'country'. For the government itself included those advocating a forward Protestant foreign policy and rule in partnership with Parliament; and clashes in Parliament in the early seventeenth century, as in the late sixteenth, were often a by-product of rivalries and divisions within the council and the court.⁷

In keeping with these views revisionists also reject the Whig notion that conflict arose because Parliament, and in particular the Commons, was becoming stronger and more assertive. The Commons' 'winning of the initiative' over legislation has been shown to have been less significant than Notestein supposed because in this period the Crown had little wish to legislate on matters of major political significance. In general the Commons sought to avoid responsibilities rather than assume them. Parliament, Russell argues, remained an event rather than an institution, dependent on the whim of the monarch for its existence and made up for the most part of MPs who had no wish to see it become a permanent arm of government. These were conservative men, whose local interests took priority over more general concerns and who had no real understanding of the legitimate financial needs of the monarchy. Their refusal to provide kings with an adequate revenue made it increasingly counter-productive for monarchs to work with parliaments. And their inability to use successfully the weapon of supply to obtain concessions brought a very real threat of Parliament's extinction by the late 1620s. In any case, revisionists argue, the Whigs placed too much emphasis on the Commons. The crucial political actors in an hierarchical, deferential society were to be found mainly in the House of Lords, in the council and at court.⁸

The stress on hierarchy and deference has also done much to shape the revisionists' view of local politics. Whigs and Marxists tended to ignore this or to assume that local people shared the concerns and attitudes of those at Westminster. Revisionists have emphasized the divergence of local and national. Following Everitt they see local society as basically settled and harmonious, with vertical links binding together the different social groupings and a general acceptance of the authority and leadership of the gentry. Thus Kishlansky has stressed that parliamentary elections in this period were more akin to selections, with the ordinary freeholders doing little more than give their assent to candidates presented to them by the leading gentry. Most members of local society are seen as having little understanding or knowledge of national issues and events. Their first concern was with local matters and their first loyalty to their locality, often described as their 'county community'. Consequently revisionists place considerable emphasis on what they see as more or less continual friction between the centre and the localities. The central government in this period was forever making demands and imposing burdens which the localities did their best to withstand.⁹

The traditional picture of religious developments from the 1590s to the 1630s has also been challenged. Where earlier historians saw an Anglican establishment challenged by a Puritan opposition, recent work presents a less clear-cut spectrum of Protestant opinion. The dominant trend is to emphasize matters uniting English Protestants rather than the issues on which they were divided. From the Elizabethan settlement to the period of William Laud's ascendancy most educated English Protestants were Calvinist in their theology; after the decisive defeat of the Presbyterian campaign in Elizabeth's reign, most were Episcopalian in their ecclesiology. They hated popery and supported the preaching of the word. There were, of course, as in politics, differences of emphasis over the need for further reformation, for example, or on the question of conformity to contested ceremonial; but Puritans, it is argued, did not form an alienated opposition. Rather they were the most enthusiastic, the 'hotter sort', of Protestants. Many of their ideas and initiatives were aimed at establishing a more secure, morally reformed social order; their allies included central Elizabethan figures like Burghley and Leicester; and there was sympathy for much of their stance amongst Stuart councillors and members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, not least from James' Archbishop, George Abbot. In this account it is not Puritanism but the rise of Arminianism under Charles and Laud from the mid-1620s which caused a decisive split in English Protestantism. Arminianism was a theologically innovative challenge to Calvinist certainties; it was aggressively conformist and hierarchical, and in its concern for the sacraments, for ceremonial, and for the status of the clergy, was easily seen as the harbinger of a return to popery.¹⁰

In many revisionist explanations or the breakdown in England the 'contingent fact' or accident of Charles' promotion of Arminianism is an important element.¹¹ However, there are several variations in these explanations. One recent tendency holds that the religious developments of the 1630s had much continuity with the earlier conformist position of the Elizabethan Archbishops Whitgift and Bancroft. They were concerned mainly with order and good government in the Church and represented a relatively moderate Anglican' mainstream struggling against Puritan radicalism.¹² A more sweeping and contradictory revisionist account bases its analysis of early-seventeenth-century developments on the work of those Reformation historians who stress the vitality of, and popular support for, the later medieval Church. In this framework, the bulk of the population was only converted to Protestantism reluctantly and slowly. By the seventeenth century there was popular adherence to Protestantism, but it was adherence to an easy-going 'prayer book' Protestantism with a regular pattern of worship through the year, and an element of ceremony and communal parochial festivity. The Puritans were unpopular, over-demanding kill-joys who terrified most people with their sermons about sin and damnation and set neighbour against neighbour with their moralistic prying. On this view Puritanism was not necessarily subversive of monarchical authority; it was an élitist, minority movement, subversive of ideals of good neighbourhood and of settled social relationships.¹³ This casts a different light on the alternatives to Puritanism. Dr Haigh and Dr Sharpe would argue th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: after Revisionism
• 2 Ideology, Property and the Constitution
• 3 Anti-popery: the Structure of a Prejudice Peter Lake
• 4 England and the Spanish Match Thomas Cogswell
• 5 Politics and the Electorate in the 1620s
• 6 Court Politics and Parliamentary Conflict in 1625
• 7 Church Policies of the 1630s Andrew Foster
• 8 Local History and the Origins of the Civil War
• Suggestions for Further Reading
• Notes on Contributors
• Index