Charles I and the End of Conciliar Government in Scotland

1980 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 315-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice Lee
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Recent Survey ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Complex Problems ◽  
Ground Stone ◽  
The Government

That complex problems like the causes of the English civil war are constantly subject to reinterpretation is an obvious truism. Twenty years ago we were all embroiled in the gentry controversy; now it is the fashion to lay more stress on the blunders and failures of the government of Charles I. Lawrence Stone's recent survey is a case in point. Though his title, The Causes of the English Revolution 1529-1642, promises a long running start, this quondam disciple of R. H. Tawney places a surprising amount of emphasis on what he calls precipitants and triggers, which, it turns out, are the blunders and failures of the government of Charles I. Among these is the mishandling of the situation in Scotland. It is well known, of course, that the attempt to impose the new service book in 1637 touched off the chain of events which led to the Long Parliament, but historians have pointed out that this was by no means the first of Charles's errors there. At the very beginning of his reign came the act of revocation, which among other things rescinded “all grants made of crown property since 1540, … all disposition of ecclesiastical property and the erections of such property into temporal lordships.” No such sweeping change came about, of course, but in the view of most scholars this act, though in some sense successful, since it achieved the purpose both of increasing clerical stipends and of providing a machinery for their continuing adjustment, made the Scottish landed classes so mistrustful and fearful for their property that Charles could never gain their confidence. The comment of Sir James Balfour is always quoted: the act “in effect was the ground stone of all the mischief that followed after.”

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.

The Concept of Opposition in Early Stuart England

1980 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Zaller
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Revolution

To Clarendon, the English Civil War was an exercise in folly, pride, and the tragic corruption of the species. Since then, many a thesis has been advanced to explain the Great Rebellion, only to fall before fresh generations of skeptics, each demolishing a predecessor's orthodoxy to set up their own. But old notions die hard. They linger in the words and concepts that once expressed them, which remain impregnated with the old meaning even when the nominal definitions have changed. Such a concept is that of the “Opposition” in early Stuart England. Its history is virtually coextensive with the historiography of the English Revolution, and it remains today at the center of the debate on the origins and meaning of the Revolution.The concept of an Opposition in prerevolutionary England can be traced back to the eighteenth century. David Hume, writing of the 1620s, saw party conflict as an inherent and fundamentally progressive element in the clash between privilege and prerogative. The “wise and moderate,” he asserted, “regarded the very rise of parties as a happy prognostic of the establishment of liberty.” Here already is the germ of the Whig interpretation, which emerges full-blown a century later in Macaulay: [W]hen, in October of 1641, the Parliament reassembled after a short recess, two hostile parties, essentially the same with those which, under different names, have ever since contended, and are still contending, for the direction of public affairs, appeared confronting each other. During some years they were designated as Cavaliers and Roundheads. They were subsequently called Tories and Whigs; nor does it seem that these appellations are likely soon to become obsolete.

The Baronetcy of the Skellingthorpe Vavasor

1985 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-312
Author(s):  
Kenneth E. Cutler
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Social History ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Interesting Study ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Made In

On 22 June 1631 the government of Charles I issued Letters Patent proclaiming Captain Sir Charles Vavasor of Skellingthorpe, Lines., a baronet. The grant of honors to Sir Charles Vavasor was among the most distinctive made in England during the seventeenth century. By its special terms, Sir Charles became the first baronet (of approximately 285) to receive rights of precedence—in spite of parliamentary statutes opposing such rights. A clause of precedency declared the title retroactive to 29 June 1611, and that, in turn, made Sir Charles's father, Sir Thomas Vavasor, who had died in 1620, a baronet post mortem. The baronetcy of Sir Charles Vavasor is also unusual as one of the few which did not depend upon the patronage of the Duke of Buckingham, as the only one created during the whole of 1631, and as the last one created before the eve of Civil War.The competition for honors among the gentry is an important element in the social history of early seventeenth century England, and a factor in the complex origins of the Civil War. The full dimensions of that competition can be illuminated by studying the motives of individual families, and the processes by which they achieved their titles. The Skellingthorpe Vavasor make an especially interesting study because of the unusual distinctions which attend their title.Heretofore, however, paucity of evidence made it nearly impossible to reconstruct the quest for honors of the Skellingthorpe Vavasor. The evidence did show that before he died in 1620, Sir Thomas Vavasor sought the title of baronet without success, and that eleven years later, Sir Thomas's son, Charles, finally received a baronetcy with precedency. The intervening years, 1620-1631, had to be filled with conjectures about Charles Vavasor's motives, timing, and patronage, and also with some conjectures about why the government granted him honors of dubious legality.

Ethics in the Marketplace: Gerrard Winstanley's London Bankruptcy, 1643

1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. D. Alsop
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Gerrard Winstanley ◽  
Whole Earth

One of the casualties of the economic malaise occasioned by the English Civil War was the business career of an obscure thirty-four-year-old junior freeman of the London Merchant Taylors' Company. Had circumstances been otherwise, Gerrard Winstanley would never have gone on to become the eventual leader and spokesman of the Diggers or to develop some of the most innovative and challenging socioeconomic theories of the seventeenth century. Winstanley's bankruptcy of 1643 did not, of course, create by itself one of the foremost radicals of the English Revolution. But scholars are agreed that the failure provoked a significant break in the continuity of Winstanley's life that forced him to change his livelihood and to transport himself from London to Cobham in Surrey, the location of his Digger radicalism. Furthermore, Winstanley never forgot the experience. Throughout his writings of the later 1640s, the bitter contempt and frustration engendered by his financial failings were obvious. They also colored his perceptions of England's current character and its errors. His portrayal of all commerce as dishonest and corrupt is one of the most striking features of his writings:For matter of buying and selling, the earth stinks with such unrighteousnesse, that for my part, though I was bred a tradesmen, yet it is so hard a thing to pick out a poor living, that a man shall sooner be cheated of his bread, then get bread by trading among men, if by plain dealing he put trust in any.And truly the whole earth of trading, is generally become the neat art of thieving and oppressing fellow-creatures, and so laies burdens, upon the Creation, but when the earth becomes a common treasury this burden will be taken off.

Office under Queen Elizabeth: the Case of Lord Hunsdon and the Lord Chamberlainship in 1585

1967 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Stone
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Small Minority ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Political Evolution ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Advancement ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
Similar Letter

In recent years considerable attention has been focused on the role played by the Court and government office in the social and political evolution of Elizabethan and Early Stuart England. Professor Trevor-Roper has treated office under the Crown as a smooth highroad to economic advancement, one of the principal causes of such rise of the gentry as may have occurred. According to this view, the political antecedents of the English Civil War are best interpreted in terms of the polarities of Court and Country: it was reaction against an overgrown and corruptly lucrative Court that inspired the opposition in 1640; it was desire to dismantle the whole centralizing apparatus which inspired the policy of the Independents in the late 1640s and the 1650s. Others, including Professor Aylmer and myself, have subjected officialdom to detailed inspection and have concluded that its rewards were usually modest, especially under Elizabeth and Charles I, its personnel was restricted in numbers, and its more spectacular beneficiaries were a very small minority. The recently published letter of Sir Edward Stanhope to Thomas Viscount Wentworth, advising him to refuse the Deputyship of Ireland in 1631, has cast a flood of light on contemporary attitudes towards the acceptance of at least one high office. Forty-six years before, when Henry Carey, 1st Earl of Hunsdon, was offered the Lord Chamberlainship of the Royal Household, he received a similar letter of warning from a close follower.

scholarly journals Church and People in Interregnum Britain

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Social Order ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Relationship

The English Civil War was followed by a period of unprecedented religious toleration and the spread of new religious ideas and practices. From the Baptists, to the “government of saints”, Britain experienced a period of so-called ‘Godly religious rule’ and a breakdown of religious uniformity that was perceived as a threat to social order by some and a welcome innovation to others. The period of Godly religious rule has been significantly neglected by historians- we know remarkably little about religious organisation or experience at a parochial level in the 1640s and 1650s. This volume addresses these issues by investigating important questions concerning the relationship between religion and society in the years between the first Civil War and the Restoration.

scholarly journals ‘Foretelling the judgements of God’: authorship and the prophetic voice in Elizabeth Poole’s A Vision (1648)

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Carme Font Paz
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Rare Case ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
General Council ◽  
Direct Involvement ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Prophetic Voice ◽  
Authorial Voice ◽  
Sectarian Group

A Vision: Wherein is Manifested the Disease and Cure of the Kingdome (1648) is Elizabeth Poole’s account of the prophecies she delivered before Cromwell and the Puritan Army’s General Council as they debated the regicide of Charles I at the end of the first English Civil War in 1648-49. This article discusses the prophetic voice in Elizabeth Poole’s texts as she uses strategies of ‘self’ and ‘others’ to establish her authority before her audience and her own sectarian group. While the circumstances surrounding Poole’s participation in the Whitehall deliberations are unclear, her appearance represents a rare case of a woman’s direct involvement in the mid-seventeenth-century discussions of the scope and legitimacy of government. With her defying anti regicidal speech, Poole builds her authorial voice beyond the divine mandate of her prophetic identity.

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