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Britain Reformed 27
and under him an attempt was made to supplant the clerical functions of the chancellor. The emergence of a new office that managed the king’s business in more efficient manner was undeniably important. This post would be used by a later Tudor servant, William Cecil, Lord Salisbury, to establish the post of secretary of state, a major position in modern government.
Cromwell’s work also influenced the unique English system of local government, which depended on the unpaid services of the justices of the peace in each county. He sent circular letters to the justices of the peace (JPs) in the king’s name, handwritten by his clerks. These directives, coupled to the reports he received from the JPs and justices on circuit, created a network of government with two novel features: it took precedence over the church hierarchy, and it took power away from the many local feudal jurisdictions that had arisen during the Middle Ages.
There are other ways in which royal government, especially that of Henry VIII, was reformed in the mid-16th century. The king’s martial endeavors have been noted, and their expense seems foolish next to a pragmatic view of England’s power in Europe. However, in two ways they added to monarchic reformation: Henry’s ambition prompted him to push for early development of an English royal navy, and the expense of this, plus his other ventures, applied enormous pressure to royal finances. However wasteful, that pressure forced innovation in organization and finance, and these processes continued into the later 16th century. Finally, there was the king’s relationship with Parliament. Historically that body was an enlarged council summoned by kings, mainly for the approval of revenue measures. Certainly that role continued, but with the Parliament that met during the Reformation, there was an important development. The preamble to the Act in Restraint of Appeals (drafted by Cromwell) stated:
This realm of England is an empire and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one supreme head and king having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial crown of the same . . ., he being also institute and furnished by the goodness and sufferance of Almighty God with plenary, whole, and entire power, preeminence, authority, prerogative and jurisdiction . . .
This act, like all others, was passed at the instigation of the Crown, and with its approval. And yet the action was more than the proverbial rubber stamp. Kings had never included Parliament in the definition of their fundamental power; hereafter they mutually endorsed a stream of statutory definitions and ratifications. Parliament was a very useful tool for the Crown, although a tool that would someday become a check on royal power. The strength of the “imperial crown” was also being employed in other ways in the 16th century, as it extended its power throughout Britain.
REFORMING THE BRITISH STATE
The “empire” cited in Henry’s Act in Restraint of Appeals referred to the myth of an ancient British kingdom, when in fact the Crown was creating a much
28 Great Britain
more modern British state in the middle of the 16th century. The driving force was the church’s reformation, which was allied with traditional motives of security and dominion.
The map of the British Isles in 1500 showed an England hedged about with buffer zones: the Scottish borders; the Welsh marches; and, outside Britain, the Irish Pale, the Channel Islands, and Calais. Within England, in fact, there were semiautonomous zones in Chester, Lancaster, and Durham—palatine counties whose feudal authority showed that there was as yet no fully dominant central power in England. These special jurisdictions were similar to the delegated royal authority of the marcher lordships in Wales, wardens of the marches on the Scottish border, and a lord deputy in Ireland. One of the major accomplishments of Tudor rule was the centralization of power at the expense of these jurisdictions.
Edward I had formally annexed the principality of Wales, and most of the country was held by marcher lords, perhaps as many as 130 of them in the early 16th century. During Henry VIII’s reign it was decided to end those lordships and bring all of Wales into the system of shires, with members of Parliament and with the institutions of local government and laws as they were in England. This process was completed by statutes in 1536 and 1543. The stated reason was to end disorder and bring good government to Wales. But the real aim was to secure the country against a backlash directed at the Reformation and the dissolution. Wales was already within the English church province of Canterbury, so no new action was required on that front. But the possibility of papal counterattack was taken seriously.
Irish government, or that of the small area around Dublin known as the Pale, was in the hands of a lord deputy, an Anglo-Irish nobleman ruling in the king’s name. Under Henry VIII this system was replaced by English deputies, and the king himself assumed the title king of Ireland in 1541. No such simple step would solve the myriad problems of Irish rule, but this was part of a larger effort to import the reformed church and to extend English-style government institutions to the Irish. These measures had limited success, and only the creation of plantations (with English and Scottish settlers) and the military defeat of Irish clan leaders would eventually give English authority effective control, which was achieved by the end of the Elizabeth I’s reign.
With Scotland the English king faced a poor but formidable adversary. The Tudors managed to complete the Scots’ military defeat, which Edward I had sought. But even though the English destroyed Scottish armies at Flodden (1513) and Solway Moss (1542), and both cases resulted in the death of the Scottish king (James IV and James V, respectively), the Scots remained independent. Part of the reason for this was their alliance with France; the other part was their bitter hatred of the English. This was given renewed life when Henry VIII invaded in the 1540s, attempting to force the dynastic union set out by the Treaty of Greenwich. But Edward VI never married Mary, who briefly became the bride of the king of France. It was Elizabeth who smoothed the road to union by negotiating the withdrawal of the French and English armies from Scotland in 1560. England and Scotland would ultimately be joined through the royal
Britain Reformed 29
marriage of English princess Margaret to Scottish king James IV, arranged by Henry VII in 1503. The unifier would be their great-grandson, the son of Mary, queen of Scots. When his mother abdicated he became James VI of Scotland (1567), and at Elizabeth’s death he became James I of England (1603).
In the week Elizabeth died, the Irish who had fought against her in Hugh O’Neill’s rebellion in Ulster surrendered to the English deputy. This brought the English conquest of Ireland to a conclusion. England now commanded all of the British Isles, although the new king of “Great Britain” would find that many liabilities came with these assets.
THE ELIZABETHAN AGE
Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603) had the longest reign of any Tudor and oversaw the Church of England’s settlement, victory over the Spanish Armada, and less dramatic but equally important economic and social changes during the 16th century. The Elizabethan Age, as it was known, also witnessed the flowering of intellectual life known as the English Renaissance.
The church’s settlement was the climax of the English reformation after the turmoil of Henry VIII’s break with Rome and the succeeding swings under Edward and Mary. The Marian bishops would not serve under Elizabeth, and the exiles who began returning from Geneva and elsewhere were determined to build a sound Protestant church. The queen’s dexterity and determination produced a moderate settlement, one in which she took the title “supreme governor” of the church. In 1559 a prayer book was adopted, much like that of 1552. An Act of Uniformity of 1559 put the enforcement powers of the civil government behind the new church. But its detailed doctrine was still to be decided. In a convocation in 1563 this was hammered out in the 39 Articles of Faith, which had just enough ambiguity at critical points that most of the diverse Protestant flock could support them. Elizabeth’s via media resulted in powerful challenges from both Protestant and Catholic adversaries. From the Protestants came continuing agitation over clergy vestments, forms of prayer, and the allowance for individual interpretation. The last of these led Elizabeth to sack Archbishop Edmund Grindal in 1583 and to promote John Whitgift, who became a symbol of Puritan persecution in the queen’s later years. On the Catholic side, Elizabeth had to deal with a rebellion of nobles in the north in 1569, her own excommunication in 1570, and a series of plots against her life, ending with the trial and execution of her cousin Mary, queen of Scots, in 1587.
The most serious threat to Elizabeth, and to her Protestant subjects, was the Spanish Armada in 1588. Philip of Spain had had hopes of taking Elizabeth as his wife after her sister Mary died. But as this prospect faded, it seemed that the Catholic Mary of Scotland might become queen, especially when, in 1562, Elizabeth was stricken with smallpox; however, she managed to recover. There were a number of plots aimed at bringing about Mary’s succession. By 1570 Elizabeth had been excommunicated, and as a heretic she became a legitimate target. Yet it was not until 1585 that Philip declared war on England and set in motion his plan of conquest. He prepared a giant fleet to sail into the English
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Engraving of
Queen Elizabeth I
(Library of Congress)
Channel and rendezvous with an army under his lieutenant, the duke of Parma, governor of the Netherlands. The armada would shield the army’s channel crossing. If that trained force of 30,000 had landed, there is little doubt that it could have overthrown the Elizabethan regime. But the English escaped this fate for several reasons. First, an expedition in 1587 had attacked the port of Cádiz and destroyed some of the Spanish fleet’s stores and equipment. Second, when the armada arrived in the channel in 1588, English long-range guns and tactics proved effective against the closed mass of Spanish ships. Third, when
Britain Reformed 31
the armada anchored at Calais, the English launched fire-ships into the fleet at night, causing havoc. The next day the disorganized Spanish were beaten in the Battle of Gravelines and forced to retreat by sailing around the north of the British Isles. There were several later attempts to mount a similar attack, but none got as far as this, and the victory became a celebrated moment in English naval history. Equally important, though, was the cost of this venture combined with the other expeditions and campaigns of Elizabeth’s reign. Some estimates put the cost of the war against Spain at £250,000 per year. On top of that, the queen ordered expeditions to France and Holland to aid Protestants and campaigns in Ireland to suppress the Gaelic rebels there. She sold off vast amounts of Crown lands, spent the income from privateers, borrowed heavily, and left a debt of £400,000 at her death. In short, the kingdom’s finances suffered, and the expedients used to deal with the problem (grants, sales of offices, new taxation) caused escalating discontent and government weakness.
Government finance faltered in the context of a rapidly changing economy. The population had begun to grow again, and it doubled by the end of the 16th century. At the same time there was astronomical inflation—a 500 percent increase over the course of the century. Real wages fell about 50 percent, and that translated into severe pressure on jobs and a rapid increase in vagrancy. Landowners were under pressure to increase production and profits, forcing many to enclose their land, among other things to convert from crops to pasture, in hopes of greater profits.
Elizabethan society proved resilient throughout this period of rapid religious, economic, and political change. The essential hierarchy of social ranks did not change. The aristocracy consisted of peers, knights, esquires, and gentlemen, amounting to about 5 percent of the population. The vast majority of the elite were the gentlemen, or “gentry,” an amorphous, ill-defined group covering a wide range of wealth and position that provided the bulk of the magistrates and clergy. Below the aristocracy were the “middling sort” of people: merchants, farmers, and craftsmen who made up probably 20 percent of the population. They directed most of the business of society, managed estates, carried on trade, and produced the necessary tools for daily work. The poorer sort, including farm workers, laborers, and the poor, made up the remaining 75 percent.
This society, or at least its upper ranks, experienced a further kind of reform over the course of the 16th century, one which often bears the label “renaissance.” The advent of humanist scholarship combined with Tudor patronage and display were the engines of a major reform of education, the arts, and literature. The church’s reformation was a counterpoint that involved displacement of the arts, the libraries, and the trappings of the old faith into a more public arena. In the later decades of the century, the Elizabethan period saw a revival of patronage, royal and aristocratic, which supported the flourishing construction of country houses and the literary work of Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, and the great William Shakespeare, among others. The century had also seen a notable increase in schools, from the humanist John Colet’s foundation at Westminster (1509) to the more humble town grammar schools, especially numerous after the dissolution of the monasteries caused the loss of
32 Great Britain
many schools. Religion remained the centerpiece of the newer schools. The catechism might be altered, but its method and purpose lost no importance. Elementary schooling probably expanded its audience, but the numbers were small; advanced schooling in Latin—and, less often, Greek grammar—was for an elite destined for the university and, primarily, for the church. As with schools, so the universities went from church to secular control, though with no less emphasis on their divine vocation. Indeed, humanists thought the universities were not fit to train a true gentleman, but as the best established scholarly bodies they became the training schools of the new gentry as well as the vocational schools of the church.
The Tudor era brought a compound of reforms. Settling the Church of England was the central change, and the sometimes brutal impact on society, education, and culture sent shock waves through all of Britain. These waves coincided with secular alterations in the functioning of the English monarchy and in the government of the regions. The new state and society reached a peak of cultural development in Elizabeth’s reign, but her government was weakened by financial erosion while society was still bitterly divided by religious conflict. That combination became the fuel for a century of revolution.
BRITISH REVOLUTIONS
1603–1707
The 17th century was largely a period of civil war and revolution, marked by the execution of Charles I (1649) and the forced exile of James II (1688). These events were the blunt instruments that formed a constitutional monarchy, a change that was amplified by radical religious, social, and economic forces. The upshot was the transformation of Britain by the most comprehensive revolution Europe had seen.
ORIGINS OF THE CIVIL WAR, 1603–1642
In 1603, when James VI of Scotland traveled south to take the English throne as James I, there was general relief and rejoicing. After all, a Protestant king would assure the safety of the religious settlement. In addition, a king who was dedicated to peace would bring an end to European wars, which in turn would lead to reduced government spending. Yet all of these expectations were crushed, and the next king found himself at war with his own subjects within four decades. Clues to the causes of that war can be found in examining the reign of James I (1603–25) and the reign and character of Charles I (1625–49).
James was born in the early days of the Scottish Reformation, and his tutors included staunch Presbyterians, so many of the English Puritans expected a royal ally. They were soon disappointed, for when James convened the Hampton Court Conference to discuss the settlement of the church in 1604, he made it clear that he wanted no part of advanced Protestantism. In fact he valued the role of the bishops, and he did his utmost to restore them in Presbyterian Scotland. James wanted an episcopal church only slightly more reformed than that of Elizabeth. The king was also fiercely opposed by the more extreme Roman Catholics, a group of whom plotted to blow up the houses of Parliament at the opening session in 1605. The so-called Gunpowder Plot was exposed, and the deliverance of the king and his councillors was praised, while the plotters were tortured and executed. Although they were outside the mainstream, they signaled the depth of difficulty in solving religious disputes. This was ominous, for James was conciliatory, albeit strict in the enforcement of the church settlement.
33
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James had ambitious plans for the union of his two monarchies. But their different forms of protestantism, their different institutions (parliaments, courts of law, local governments), and their different social and economic conditions did not aid his plans. James immediately proposed that his parliaments undertake the business of unification, but at once many objections arose. The king unilaterally declared his title to be “king of Great Britain,” and he designed a new royal flag and minted new coins. Yet with two discordant and frustrated parliaments, there was no progress on the wider project of union. Subjects on both sides of the border did not lose their ingrained hostility overnight, but as a matter of law, a suit known as Calvin’s Case found that all persons born in Scotland after James’s accession in 1603 were on an equal footing with English subjects.
In the area of foreign policy, James tried to be a moderating influence in European religious affairs, hoping to bring about a reconciliation between Rome and her Protestant enemies. Likewise, he wanted to pursue a pacific foreign policy with European states, in line with his general desire for CatholicProtestant reconciliation. He was able to make peace with Spain in 1604, ending 20 years of warfare. He also negotiated the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth to Frederick V, the Protestant elector Palatine. He wanted a dynastic marriage for his son Charles with Spain, thinking that these ties would support his role as a mediator. In 1609 James helped to arrange a treaty between Spain and the Netherlands. Although peace with Spain frightened Protestants who remembered the Armada, it also pacified English Catholics and profited English merchants who gained some protection from Spanish imperial power. The whole policy was shattered by the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), which had been, ironically, exacerbated by Frederick’s acceptance of the crown of Bohemia in 1619. After Frederick’s defeat the following year by imperial forces, James was seen as supporting both sides in a war that became especially brutal. His Protestant subjects were outraged by continued overtures to Spain, in particular the sudden trip that Prince Charles and the duke of Buckingham made in 1623 to try to woo the Spanish princess. The escalating conflict in Europe also forced James to seek more financial support from his subjects. But royal finances were in serious jeopardy already.
There was a tradition that the king was supposed to pay for his government out of ordinary revenues. Profits from land, customs, and routine fees had long since ceased to be adequate due to inflation and the sale of Crown lands, to which Elizabeth had frequently resorted. James inherited Elizabeth’s heavy debts, and he himself was a profligate spender. The king resorted to a range of expedients to increase his revenue: raising customs duties (impositions), collecting money from ancient feudal obligations (purveyance—the supply of food at fixed prices; wardships—the guardianship of minor heirs), and even the sale of titles. Older peerages were not sufficient, and in 1611 James created the new rank of baronet, which initially sold for over £1,000. But all of these tactics were not enough; even in peacetime, the king needed more revenue. This meant frequent demands for funds from Parliament, where there was opportunity to question royal policies. James encountered this kind of opposition in 1604,
British Revolutions 35
King James I
(Library of Congress)
1610, 1614, and 1621. On these occasions the fundamental issue was being defined: the Crown demanded the means to conduct government, and Parliament insisted that grievances be addressed before supply. James had to struggle mightily during his reign, but his long experience and his political skills preserved a basic harmony. This was not to be the case for his son.
Charles I was a very different ruler: fastidious where his father was uncouth; rigid in his faith, where his father wanted moderation; youthfully dogmatic regarding his power, where his father was stubborn but also learned and studious. Charles was primarily responsible for the estrangement that brought on civil war. This occurred through a string of poor decisions and attempts to assert his power.
Charles pursued belligerent policies toward France and Spain, but in 1626 Parliament refused to fund his military operations. The king nevertheless continued to collect taxes, and he resorted to a forced loan. There was widespread resistance, and some 70 gentlemen were arrested for their refusal to pay the
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money demanded from them. Five were tried and convicted in 1627, raising the central questions of whether the king could levy taxes without Parliament’s consent, and whether the Crown had the power to arrest without a specific charge. The following year Parliament passed a “Petition of Right,” which held that the king should have Parliament’s approval for taxation, that subjects should not be arrested arbitrarily, and that billeting of troops and martial law should not be used (as they had been in the recent situation). Charles gave his approval but claimed that the petition merely affirmed traditional rights and that it placed no new limits on his prerogative. If he truly believed this, he was ill-advised. In 1629 Charles ordered Parliament to dissolve. In the heated atmosphere, several members of the Commons held the Speaker in his chair so that he could not dismiss them, while they read a set of resolutions on the rights of Parliament. The king’s next move was to decide to govern without Parliament.
It was entirely lawful for the king to summon or not summon a Parliament. The typical occasion for a parliamentary session was when the Crown needed revenues. Those occasions had become routine by the 1630s, but Charles decided to try executive government. He might have succeeded, as long as there was peace and as long as his financial expedients worked. One particular expedient was called ship money. In the past, coastal towns had been expected to raise funds to operate a ship during a maritime emergency. In 1635 this obligation was extended to all towns regardless of emergency. For a while the income from ship money assessments was substantial, but it fell off after the tax was challenged in court and only narrowly approved in 1638.
The period of personal rule was brought to an end by disputes over the Scottish kirk (church). Charles had continued his father’s efforts to bring the kirk into line with the episcopal church in England. But with less sympathy and understanding, his archbishop, William Laud, ordered the adoption of new church canons (1636) and the introduction of a new prayer book (1637). These touched off a broad campaign of Scottish resistance, the signing of a national covenant against the innovations, and the meeting of a general assembly that abolished the office of bishop. A Scottish army entered England in 1639, but there was no fighting. A treaty made in 1639 was merely a cease-fire, and in 1640 a Scottish army again crossed the border and occupied Newcastle and much of northern England. Charles had summoned Parliament in April, but dissolved this “Short” Parliament in the midst of debate over the rights of subjects. Now he had to summon another, and the “Long” Parliament was about to remake the English constitution.
The leaders of Parliament were determined to achieve their demands, and Charles was forced to accept serious inroads on his power. He surrendered his principal minister, Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, who was tried and executed; the prerogative courts (Star Chamber and High Commission) were abolished; and acts were passed requiring a meeting of Parliament at least every three years, while the current Parliament was not to be dissolved without its consent. When a rebellion broke out in Ireland in October 1641, even more radical demands were made. Now the issue was whether or not an army would be provided to meet the rebels—an army that might also be used to discipline