These religious radicals, often grouped together as "Puritans," were continually working against Elizabeth's strict enforcement of Anglican orthodoxy. The accession of James was seized by them as an occasion for the presentation of a great petition for a modification of church government and ritual. The petition bore no fruit, however, and in a religious debate at Hampton Court in 1604 James made a brusque declaration that bishops like kings were set over the multitude by the hand of God, and, as for these Puritans who would do away with bishops, he would make them conform or "harry them out of the land." From this time forth he insisted on conformity, and deprived many clergymen of their offices for refusing to subscribe to the regulations framed in 1604.
[Sidenote: Hatred of the Puritans for James I]
The hard rule of this monarch who claimed to govern by the will of God was rendered even more abhorrent to the stern Puritan moralists by reports of "drunken orgies" and horrible vices which made the royal court appear to be a veritable den of Satan. But worst of all was his suspected leaning towards "popery." The Puritans had a passionate hatred for anything that even remotely suggested Roman Catholicism. Consequently it was not with extreme pleasure that they welcomed a king whose mother had been a Catholic, whose wife was suspected of harboring a priest, a ruler who at times openly exerted himself to obtain greater toleration for Roman Catholics and to maintain the Anglican ritual against Puritan modification. With growing alarm and resentment they learned that Catholic conspirators had plotted to blow up the houses of Parliament, and that in his foreign policy James was decidedly friendly to Catholic princes.
The cardinal points of James's foreign policy,—union with Scotland, peace, and a Spanish alliance,—were all calculated to arouse antagonism. The English, having for centuries nourished enmity for their northern neighbors and perceiving no apparent advantage in close union, defeated the project of amalgamating the two kingdoms of England and Scotland. James's policy of non-intervention in the Thirty Years' War evoked bitter criticism; he was accused of favoring the Catholics and of deserting his son-in-law, the Protestant elector of the Palatinate. The most hotly contested point was, however, the Spanish policy. Time and time again, Parliament protested, but James pursued his plans, making peace with Spain, and negotiating for a marriage between his son Charles and the Infanta of Spain, and Prince Charles actually went to Spain to court the daughter of Philip III.
[Sidenote: Interconnection of Puritanism, Commercialism, and
Parliamentarianism]
It was essentially the Puritan middle classes who were antagonized by the king. The strength of the Puritans rested in the middle class of merchants, seamen, and squires. It was this class which had profited by the war with Spain in the days of "good Queen Bess" when many a Spanish prize, laden with silver and dye woods, had been towed into Plymouth harbor. Their dreams of erecting an English colonial and commercial empire on the ruins of Spain's were rudely shattered by James. It was to this Puritan middle class that papist and Spaniard were bywords for assassin and enemy. By his Spanish policy, as well as by his irregular methods of taxation, James had touched the Puritans in their pocketbooks. The Puritans, too, were grieved to see so sinful a man sit on the throne of England, and so wasteful a man squander their money. They were even hindered in the exercise of their religious convictions. Every fiber in them rebelled.
Puritans throughout the country looked to the large Puritan majority in the House of Commons to redress their grievances. The parliamentary struggle became then not only a defense of abstract ideals of democracy but also a bitter battle in defense of class interests. Parliamentary traditions were weapons against an oppressive monarch; religious scruples gave divine sanction to an attack on royalist bishops; consciousness of being God's elect gave confidence in assailing the aristocracy of land and birth. For the present, the class interests of the Puritans were to be defended best by the constitutional limitation of royal power, and in their struggle with James's son and successor, Charles I (1625-1649), they represent by chance the forces of democracy.
[Sidenote: Charles I, 1625-1649]
[Sidenote: A True Stuart in Devotion to Absolutism]
For a time it appeared as if the second Stuart king would be very popular. Unlike his father, Charles seemed thoroughly English; and his athletic frame, his dignified manners, and his purity of life contrasted most favorably with James's deformities in character and physique. Two years before his father's death Charles had been jilted by his Spanish fiancée and had returned to England amid wild rejoicing to aid Parliament in demanding war with Spain. He had again rejoiced the bulk of the English nation by solemnly assuring Parliament on the occasion of his marriage contract with Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII of France, that he would grant no concessions to Roman Catholics in England. As a matter of fact, Charles simultaneously but secretly assured the French government not only that he would allow the queen the free exercise of her religion but that he would make general concessions to Roman Catholics in England. This duplicity on the part of the young king, which augured ill for the harmony of future relations between himself and Parliament, throws a flood of light upon his character and policies. Though Charles was sincerely religious and well-intentioned, he was as devoted to the theory of divine-right monarchy as his father had been; and as to the means which he might employ in order to establish absolutism upon a firm foundation he honestly believed himself responsible only to God and to his own conscience, certainly not to Parliament. This fact, together with a certain inherent aptitude for shirking the settlement of difficulties, explains in large part the faults which historians have usually ascribed to him—his meanness and ingratitude toward his most devoted followers, his chronic obstinacy which only feigned compliance, and his incurable untruthfulness.
Just before Charles came to the throne, Parliament granted subsidies in expectation of a war against Spain, but, when he had used up the war- money without showing any serious inclination to open hostilities with Spain, and had then demanded additional grants, Parliament gave evidence of its growing distrust by limiting a levy of customs duties to one year, instead of granting them as usual for the whole reign. In view of the increasingly obstinate temper manifested by the House of Commons in withholding subsidies and in assailing his worthless favorite, the Duke of Buckingham, Charles angrily dissolved his first Parliament.