“The Fittest Subject for A King's Quarrel”: An Essay on the Militia Controversy 1641-1642

1971 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lois G. Schwoerer
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Fundamental Issue ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
King Charles I

The struggle between King and Parliament in 1641-42 for command of the militia was to King Charles I “the Fittest Subject for a King's Quarrel.” As the King himself and a group of pamphleteers, preachers and members of Parliament realized, the controversy was not just a contest for control of military power. The fundamental issue was a change in England's government, a shift in sovereignty from King or King-in-Parliament to Parliament alone. As Charles explained, “Kingly Power is but a shadow” without command of the militia. His contemporaries, representing various political allegiances, also testified to the significance of the contest over the militia. They described it as the “avowed foundation” of the Civil War, “the greatest concernment” ever faced by the House of Commons, and the “great quarrel” between the King and his critics. To some men it was this dispute over military authority and the implications for government which were inherent in it, rather than disagreements about religion, taxes or foreign policy, that made civil war unavoidable.Concern about military authority first erupted in the fall of 1641 in response to a series of events – rumors of plots involving the King, the presence in London of disbanded soldiers who had returned from the war with Scotland, the “Incident” in Scotland, and above all the rebellion in Ireland which required the levying of an army to subdue those rebels.

Edward Gee and the Matter of Authority

1976 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Michael Smart
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Drastic Change ◽  
Adult Males ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Charles I ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
King Charles I ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Civil Authority ◽  
The Church

Edward Gee, rector at Eccleston, near Chorley in Lancashire, from 1643 until 1660, was born in 1612 or 1613, at Banbury (Oxon.). During the years following the reorganisation of the Church in Lancashire along Presbyterian lines in 1646, he achieved recognition as a leading member of the clergy in that county. In 1650 he was said to possess the parsonage-house and glebe at Eccleston, with tithes and a water cornmill. Although he had agreed with the parliamentary cause in the Civil War, he opposed the more revolutionary changes carried out in 1648 and 1649, years in which the House of Commons was purged by the army, king Charles I executed, and the monarchy and the House of Lords abolished. The decision of the new republican Commonwealth regime to exact a promise of allegiance, known as the Engagement (first, in 1649 from a number of important Englishmen, and then in 1650 from all adult males in England) provoked a major pamphlet debate. This Engagement Controversy was the occasion of a lengdiy and detailed exchange of opinions and interpretations concerning the whole problem of how the subject should in conscience behave with respect to a drastic change of government, or, as many would have it, a usurpation of civil authority.

Could Charles I Be Trusted? The Royalist Case, 1642-1646

1966 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. W. Daly
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
General Public ◽  
Veto Power ◽  
English History ◽  
James I ◽  
Charles I ◽  
King Charles I ◽  
Constitutional Analysis

The followers of King Charles I in the Civil War, long among the whipping boys of English history, have been receiving better treatment since the Whig interpretation of the seventeenth century lost its pristine vigour. This is particularly true of their constitutional position as set forth in the great outpouring of manifestoes and pamphlets during the war. Edward Hyde, perhaps the key figure in this aspect of royalism, has recently profited from a capable defence of his opinions and policy. Similarly, pamphleteers such as Henry Ferne, Dudley Digges, and John Bramhall are now fairly well known, thanks largely to J. W. Allen's pioneering study of their writings. From work like this it is clear that the royalist spokesmen accepted the increased importance of Parliament, the end of prerogative courts and nonparliamentary taxation, and the supremacy of common and statute law. Like their armies in the field, they were defending the monarchy as overhauled in 1641, not as the Tudors left it, much less as James I may have conceived it. Indeed the classical doctrine of the mixed or balanced constitution, glorified by Blackstone and widely accepted until nearly 1830, is now credited, not to Philip Hunton, but to the royalists. Such rehabilitation has done much to remove the patronizing label of “wrong but romantic,” which was once the best which they could hope for from historians or the general public.Allen and those who followed him naturally concentrated on the legal and constitutional analysis of the origins of authority, the veto power, sovereignty, nonresistance, and so forth.

The Royal Plays at Christ Church in 1636: A New Document

1985 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Elliott ◽  
John Buttrey
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Charles I ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
Floating Island ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
King Charles I ◽  
In Christ ◽  
The University

On 29 August 1636, King Charles I and his Queen, Henrietta Maria, paid a royal visit to the University of Oxford at the invitation of Archbishop Laud, Chancellor of the University. They lodged in Christ Church, a royal foundation and the largest of the Oxford colleges, which was to become the seat of their court during the Civil War. During the two days they spent in Oxford on this occasion, the King and Queen and their entourage were entertained with three plays: William Strode's The Floating Island, in Christ Church hall on the night of 29 August; George Wilde's Love's Hospital, in St. John's College hall on the afternoon of 30 August; and William Cartwright's The Royal Slave, again in Christ Church hall on the night of 30 August.

Radical Parliamentarians and the English Civil War

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Como
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Press ◽  
King Charles I ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

This book charts the way the English Civil War of the 1640s mutated into a revolution (paving the way for the later execution of King Charles I and the abolition of the monarchy). Focusing on parliament’s most militant supporters, the book reconstructs the origins and nature of the most radical forms of political and religious agitation that erupted during the war, tracing the process by which these forms gradually spread and gained broader acceptance. Drawing on a wide range of manuscript and print sources, the study situates these developments within a revised narrative of the period, revealing the emergence of new practices and structures for the conduct of politics. In the process, the book illuminates the appearance of many of the period’s strikingly novel intellectual currents, including ideas and practices we today associate with western representative democracy—notions of retained natural rights, religious toleration, freedom of the press, and freedom from arbitrary imprisonment. The book also chronicles the way the civil war shattered English Protestantism—leaving behind myriad competing groupings, including congregationalists, baptists, antinomians, and others—while examining the relationship between this religious fragmentation and political change. Finally, the book traces the gradual appearance of openly anti-monarchical, republican sentiment among parliament’s supporters. Radical Parliamentarians provides a new history of the English Civil War, enhancing our understanding of the dramatic events of the 1640s, and shedding light on the long-term political and religious consequences of the conflict.

Biography and Memory: Sandal Castle and the English Civil War

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Askew
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Social Discourse ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Charles I ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
King Charles I ◽  
Biographical Approach

The post-medieval castle is often neglected in English archaeology, with most analyses focusing on whether the castle was built for status or defence, a debate which has become known as ‘the Battle for Bodiam’. However, in the English Civil War between 1642 and 1651, many castles were fortified either for King Charles I or his rebellious Parliament. Although the fortification of castles during this period is often attributed to acts of desperation and a lack of more suitable defences, an examination of the Royalist occupation of Sandal Castle in West Yorkshire demonstrates how this view is simplistic. The decision to fortify Sandal can be directly linked to the Battle of Wakefield in 1460, when Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, the father of King Edward IV and Richard III, was killed outside its walls. This episode heavily influenced subsequent events, culminating in the occupation of the castle at the outbreak of the English Civil War. The importance of the past during this later conflict is reinforced by the faunal and artefactual assemblages, and the locations in which they were found (and consumed). The complexity of the social discourse at Sandal challenges current approaches in castle studies and highlights the need for a biographical approach which sees the interpretation and interaction of the castle through time and space as far more important than the motivations behind its initial construction. Such a way of proceeding complements existing methodologies but also relies on material culture and history to create a subtler interpretation of these complex buildings.

Legislation, Foreign Policy, and the “Proper Business” of the Parliament of 1624

1991 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark E. Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
James I ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Parliamentary History ◽  
Proper Functions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Parliamentary Politics

A dozen years ago Conrad Russell initiated a major historiographical debate when he rejected the traditional interpretation of seventeenth-century parliamentary history expounded in the classic studies of S. R. Gardiner and Wallace Notestein, whose work on early Stuart parliaments dominated the field for three quarters of a century. According to Russell, Gardiner's and Notestein's conviction that Jacobean and Caroline parliaments were the scene of escalating constitutional conflicts between the Crown and the House of Commons was the result of the two historians' failure to understand either the nature of early Stuart politics or seventeenth-century notions of Parliament's proper functions. Politics in general and parliamentary politics in particular were devoid of ideological content, and the provincial gentry who filled the benches of the House of Commons were as certain as the rest of their countrymen that the “proper business” of Parliament was the passing of bills, not the debating of issues of national or constitutional significance. Russell, of course, did not suggest that the conflicts so crucial to the traditional interpretation were made out of whole cloth, but he did deny that disagreements between Crown and Parliament were due to the emergence of a constitutional opposition. Instead, such disagreements were the inevitable product of the pervasive tension that marked the relationship between the royal government in London and the local communities in the provinces. During the reigns of James I and Charles I, the Crown's incompetent parliamentary management made it more difficult than usual for local gentlemen to reconcile their obligations to their king with their loyalties to their communities. The result was some remarkably unhappy parliaments, but since no important issue of principle divided parliamentary leaders from privy councilors or officers of state, there could be no organized, ideologically based opposition, no constitutional crisis leading inexorably to civil war.

Calvinist Bishops, Church Unity, and the Rise of Arminianism

1986 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-427
Author(s):  
Jonathan M. Atkins
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Relative Ease ◽  
Common Bond ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Church Unity ◽  
King Charles I ◽  
The Church

According to Nicholas Tyacke, the doctrine of predestination worked as a “common and ameliorating bond” between conformists and nonconformists in the late Elizabethan and Jacobean Church of England. Anglicans and Puritans both accepted Calvin's teachings on predestination as a “crucial common assumption.” Puritans were stigmatized either because of their refusal to conform to the church's rites and ceremonies or because of their rejection of the church's episcopal government, but their agreement with the episcopacy on predestinarian Calvinism imposed “important limits” on the extent of persecution. The Synod of Dort, a Dutch conference held in 1619 which included several English representatives, repudiated Arminianism and affirmed the Calvinist view of salvation, Tyacke calls “an event which has never received the emphasis it deserves from students of English religious history,” because the Synod “served to emphasize afresh the theology binding conformist and nonconformist together, and the limits which that common bond imposed on persecution.” The rise of Arminianism broke this common bond and contributed to the causes of the Civil War. To the Arminians, Puritans were those who opposed the new religious policies of King Charles I and archbishop William Laud. The Arminians' elimination of Calvinist influence in the church and at court, along with intensified persecution of Puritans, “generated a Puritan militancy” that erupted in 1640. By that date, Tyacke concludes, predestinarian Calvinism had been “transformed with relative ease into a call for ‘root and branch’ remedies”; at the same time, presbyterianism emerged as “the cure of Arminian disease.”

The Origins of the Petition of Right Reconsidered

1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Guy
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Due Process ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
Legal Procedures

Whatever their differing interpretations of the prehistory of the Civil War, historians of early Stuart England have long recognized the unsolved problems raised by the parliament of 1628. Did Charles I abuse the legal procedures of King's Bench in the five knights’ case in order to defy the spirit of English ‘due process’ legislation? In starting the chain of events which led to the petition, who were the innovators? Why did the house of commons pass resolutions which were an absolute denial of Charles I's right of discretionary imprisonment in any circumstances? And why did M.P.s endure the ugliest parliamentary scenes before 1640 in their desire to secure an explanatory document in the spirit of their resolutions? In view of the wealth of literature on the petition, it is perhaps surprising that these issues have never been satisfactorily addressed.

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