Robert Sanderson (1587–1663)

Over the course of the reigns of the last two Tudors and first three Stuarts – just in excess of a century – the national established Church of England was disestablished twice and re-established twice. Following the return to Rome under Mary, Elizabeth's settlement re-established the English Church under the royal supremacy, set down church doctrine and liturgy, embarked on a reform of canon law and so consolidated an ecclesial polity which many today see as an Anglican via media between papal Rome and Calvinist Geneva. However, as a compromise, the settlement contained in itself seeds of discord: it outlawed Roman reconciliation and recusancy; it extended lay and clerical discipline by the use of ecclesiastical commissioners; and it drove Puritans to agitate for reform on Presbyterian lines. While James I continued Elizabeth's policy, disappointing both Puritans and Papists, Charles I married a Roman Catholic, sought to impose a prayer book on Calvinist Scotland, asserted divine-right monarchy, engaged in an 11-year personal rule without Parliament and favoured Arminian clergy. With these and other disputes between Crown and Parliament, civil war ensued, a directory of worship replaced the prayer book, episcopacy and monarchy were abolished and a Puritan-style republic was instituted. The republic failed, and in 1660 monarchy was restored, the Church of England was re-established and a limited form of religious toleration was introduced under the Clarendon Code. In all these upheavals, understandings of the nature, source and authority of human law, civil and ecclesiastical, were the subject of claim and counter-claim. Enter Robert Sanderson: a life begun under Elizabeth and ended under Charles II, a protagonist who felt the burdens and benefits of the age, Professor of Divinity at Oxford and later Bishop of Lincoln, and a clerical-jurist who thought deeply on the nature of human law and its place in a cosmic legal order – so much so, he may be compared with three of his great contemporaries: the lawyer Matthew Hale (1609–1676), the cleric Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1678).

Review of Hugh Ross Williamson, Charles and Cromwell (London: Duckworth, 1946)

Wight notes that Williamson’s account of the English Civil War follows ‘the romantic view of history’ as ‘the relationship or interaction of characters’ in sometimes tragic circumstances. Williamson ‘shows a good dramatic sense’, Wight observes, in his narrative of events involving Cromwell and King Charles I of England; but the book fails to show insight on ‘the deeper dialectic of conservative and revolutionary psychology. It illuminates neither the particular clash between the Anglicanism of the King and the Independency of the Lieutenant-General, nor the general problem of political morals in a revolutionary situation.’ Cromwell and Charles were both ‘compelled to political methods which in private circumstances they would have condemned’. Owing in part to Williamson’s ‘life-long Cromwellian fervour’, the book does not attain ‘a high level of political literacy’, nor does it demonstrate deep discernment about the history of these conflicts.

Royal Historian

The turn of the seventeenth century saw a growing interest in political history and a rising appreciation of its propagandist value. Chapter 11 examines Herbert’s acceptance of a commission from the duke of Buckingham to produce an apologia for his disastrous military command when waging war against France in The Expedition to the Isle of Rhé, and from Charles I to write a history of his controversial Tudor predecessor in The Life and Raigne of King Henry the Eighth. It explores the purpose, key arguments, and historical and intellectual context of the two works and compares the different approaches Herbert adopts to defend Buckingham and Henry VIII while preserving his integrity and objectivity as a historian. It highlights his careful and ground-breaking historical methodology based upon critical evaluation of a wide range of primary and secondary sources; his extensive coverage of people, policy, and events; and his use of the Life and Raigne to discreetly influence royal and public opinion and to publicize his irenic solution to religious division and conflict. It suggests that Herbert became a historian by invitation rather than design but that his detailed, wide-ranging, and authoritative account of Henry VIII’s kingship has informed and influenced studies of the reign over succeeding centuries and that he merits acknowledgement alongside William Camden for transforming the writing of British political history.

‘Treacherous Herbert’ or Man of Honour?

The final decade of Herbert’s life was dominated by the breakdown in relations between Charles I and the English Parliament and the outbreak of civil war throughout the British Isles. Chapter 14 traces Herbert’s support for Charles’s military campaigns against the Scots and his cautious support for the king in parliamentary debate in the House of Lords in 1642 which led to his brief imprisonment. It explores his decision to avoid involvement in civil war preparations and hostilities during 1642–3 and his refusal to accept a royalist garrison for Montgomery Castle and surrender of the strategically important fortress to a parliamentary army in 1644. It examines Herbert’s political and constitutional views and considers to what extent he genuinely supported the political agenda of either king or Parliament and whether his behaviour was typical of the nobility. It presents his perceived treachery within its wider political context, places him among the growing number of noblemen who switched their allegiance to Parliament during 1644 and 1645, and acknowledges his success in convincing Parliament of his loyalty and securing repossession of Montgomery Castle. It examines Herbert’s continuing commitment to writing and publishing academic treatises and considers the purpose of his autobiography and Latin advice poem. It explores Herbert’s declining health, parliamentary attendance, visit to Paris, and relations with friends and family during his final years and ends with his much discussed deathbed drama in August 1648.

Noble Preoccupations

The accession of Charles I exacerbated the tensions experienced between monarch and Parliament under James I and Herbert’s courtly career gradually faded following the deaths of the duke of Buckingham and earl of Pembroke. Chapter 13 examines Herbert’s attempts, after his return from France, to secure noble title, appointment to the Privy Council, and payment of his long-overdue allowances. It explores his efforts, as old age approached, to retain a place for himself among the rising stars at court, carve out a role for himself as a member of the Council of War, avoid active involvement in parliamentary criticism of the royal prerogative, offer occasional (unsolicited) advice to the king, and reassert his authority in county government in Montgomeryshire and Shropshire. It looks at his extensive remodelling of Montgomery Castle to provide a fashionable country house appropriate to his rank, his use of prestigious rental properties in London, and his efforts to increase the income derived from his neglected estates in England, Wales, and Ireland. It charts his difficult relationship with his wife and adult children and neglect of his patriarchal responsibilities, including his failure to marry his daughter and his longstanding dispute with his eldest son, Richard, over his allowance, debts, and inheritance of his mother’s estates. It briefly probes Herbert’s unsuccessful attempt to remarry in the late 1630s.

Reimagining the Family of King Charles I in Nineteenth-Century British Painting

The nineteenth century represents a formative period for the development of historical consciousness in Britain, with texts and, increasingly, images shaping perceptions of the past. This article examines how Stuart history was interpreted and experienced, through a series of historical genre paintings of King Charles I and his family. It explores how Anthony van Dyck's depiction of politicized domesticity in royal portraiture was revised and reworked in these later images. Reimagining Stuart family life, they extended processes of remembering, enlisting audiences in an active, participatory engagement with the past. Probing temporal, visual, and verbal alignments and connections, the article contributes further dimensions to the understanding of historical representation. It argues that these paintings stirred the viewer's intellectual, emotional, and associative responses to encourage a sense of proximity. Establishing an episodic narrative, they initiated processes of recollection and recognition, they reflected sympathetic historiographies, and they encouraged a shared community with their pictorial protagonists. By so doing, nineteenth-century artists diminished historical distance and fashioned a familiarized past.

‘the most beautifully bound book in the University Library’: The Seventeenth-Century Embroidered Wardlaw Bible in the Special Collections of the University of St Andrews

In 2001 Wardlaw family descendants gifted to the University of St Andrews a pair of embroidered seventeenth-century gauntlet gloves and an embroidered seventeenth-century Geneva Bible bound with The CL. Psalmes of David in Meeter. Family tradition purports that the bible and gloves were given by Charles I to Sir Henry and Lady Wardlaw. Although it is feasible that the gloves were gifted to the first Sir Henry by Charles I, the bible was published after 1640—its 1599 date of imprint is false—and it, therefore, cannot have been given to Sir Henry, who died in 1637. It is also questionable if Charles I would have gifted a Geneva Bible, rather than the King James Version. Following a detailed description of the binding and the conservation it has undergone, the Wardlaw family legend is re-examined through comparing the embroidered binding to others of the seventeenth century, examining the provenance within the bible, and discussing the Geneva version of the bible.

Introduction

Your Majesty […] (as the Mirror of her sexe & quality), the most incomparable in generosity and affability by right termed the Queene of ♥.1 So wrote diplomat, spy, and art broker Sir Balthazar Gerbier in a letter of 1639. The recipient was Elizabeth Stuart (1596–1662), daughter of James VI/I, sister to Charles I, and aunt to Charles II. By the time of her death at the age of 65, she had lived through the reigns of her father and brother, the decade of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and seen her nephew restored to the throne of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland. She was at the centre of the political and military struggle that was the Thirty Years War (1618–48), acting as powerbroker between the great families of Europe, not always successfully, and yet forged a dynasty that led directly to the Hanoverian succession of 1714: King George I was her grandson....

Pain, Penance, and Protest

In medieval England, a defendant who refused to plead to a criminal indictment was sentenced to pressing with weights as a coercive measure. Using peine forte et dure ('strong and hard punishment') as a lens through which to analyse the law and its relationship with Christianity, Butler asks: where do we draw the line between punishment and penance? And, how can pain function as a vehicle for redemption within the common law? Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, this book embraces both law and literature. When Christ is on trial before Herod, he refused to plead, his silence signalling denial of the court's authority. England's discontented subjects, from hungry peasant to even King Charles I himself, stood mute before the courts in protest. Bringing together penance, pain and protest, Butler breaks down the mythology surrounding peine forte et dure and examines how it functioned within the medieval criminal justice system.