General History of Civilisation in Europe, From the Fall of the Roman Empire Till the French Revolution. A Treatise on Death Punishments.

by François Guizot

The political state of England in the sixteenth century was thus quite different from that of the continent. In spite of the tyranny of the Tudors, and in spite of the systematic predominance of pure monarchy, there was nevertheless a substantial basis and assured means of action for the new spirit of liberty.

Two national demands were therefore coincident at this epoch in England. On the one hand, a demand for religious revolution and liberty amidst the reformation already introduced; and on the other, a demand for political liberty amidst the pure monarchy then in progress. These two spirits were also enabled to adduce, for their own advancement, what had previously occurred in either the one or the other direction. As was natural, they formed an alliance. The party bent on the pursuit of religious reform, invoked political liberty to the succour of its faith and its conscience against the king and the bishops; and the friends of political liberty courted the aid of the popular reformation. The two parties united to struggle against absolute power in temporal and in spiritual affairs—a power altogether concentrated in the hands of the king. Such was the origin and meaning of the English revolution.

It was essentially consecrated to the defence or the conquest of liberty. To the religious party it was a means, to the political party an object; but with both, the question at issue was one of liberty, and they were obliged to pursue it in common. There was not any real religious quarrel between the Episcopal and the Puritanical parties; the contest was not joined upon dogmas, upon objects of faith, properly so called; not that there were not between them substantial differences of opinion upon important and grand points, but that was not the principal and capital matter in dispute between them. Practical liberty was what the Puritan party wished to wrest from the Episcopal party, and it was for that it struggled. There was, undoubtedly, also a religious party, which had a system to found, and peculiar dogmas, an ecclesiastical discipline and constitution of its own, to make prevalent—namely, the Presbyterian party; but although it laboured to attain its objects with all its might, it was not in a condition to put forward all its claims in these respects. Placed upon the defensive, oppressed by the bishops, and unable to effect anything without the sanction of the political reformers—its necessary allies and chiefs—liberty was for it the predominant interest; it was, indeed, the general interest and common object of all the parties which co-operated in the movement, however great their diversity. Taking everything, therefore, into consideration, the English revolution was essentially political. It was accomplished amidst a religious people, and in a religious age, and religious ideas and passions served it as instruments; but its fundamental purpose and definitive end were political—the establishment of liberty, and the abolition of absolute power.

I shall go through the different phases of this revolution, and decompose it into the great parties which followed each other in it. I will afterwards connect it with the general course of European civilisation, and denote its place and influence therein. It will be seen by the detail of facts, as it appeared at first sight, that it was really the earliest shock of the free spirit of inquiry with pure monarchy, the earliest explosion of the antagonistic principles of those two great powers.

Three principal parties came forward in this influential crisis; three revolutions were in some sort continued and successively produced upon the stage. In each party, in each revolution, two several parties were allied and marched in conjunction—the one of a political, and the other of a religious cast. The first took the lead, and the second followed, but each was necessary to the other; insomuch that the twofold character of the event is distinctly marked in all its phases.

The first party which appeared—that under whose banner all the others at first ranged themselves—was the party aiming at legal reform. When the English revolution commenced, when the Long Parliament assembled in 1640, everyone said, and many sincerely believed, that a legal reform would meet all difficulties, and that there was sufficient in the ancient laws and usages of the country to afford a remedy for all abuses, and to establish a system of government in perfect conformity with the public desire. This party loudly blamed, and was sincerely anxious to prevent illegal taxation, arbitrary imprisonments, and all acts, in fact, condemned by the recognised laws of the land. At the base of its ideas was the belief in the sovereignty of the king—that is to say, in absolute power. A secret instinct forewarned it that there was in that dogma something false and dangerous, so it would willingly have avoided allusion to it; but urged to extremity, and forced to explain itself, it admitted that there resided in royalty a power superior to all human origin and all control, and defended it when needful. It held, at the same time, that this sovereignty, absolute in principle, was bound to respect in its exercise certain rules and forms, and that there were certain limits beyond which it could not go; and furthermore, that these rules, forms, and limits were sufficiently established and guaranteed in Magna Charta, in the confirmative statutes, and in the old common law of the country. Such was its political creed.

In religious matters, the legal party thought that episcopacy had greatly encroached, that the bishops had too much power, that their jurisdiction was too extensive, and that it was necessary to restrict it, and keep guard over its exercise. Nevertheless, it strongly adhered to episcopacy, not only as an ecclesiastical institution, and as a system of church government, but also as a necessary support to the royal prerogative, and as a means for defending and sustaining the supremacy of the king in religious affairs. The doctrines of the sovereignty of the king, in the political order of things, to be exercised according to legal recognised forms and within the like limits, and of the supremacy of the king in religious matters, administered and supported by episcopacy, were maintained in the twofold system of the legal party. Its chief men were Clarendon, Colepepper, Lord Capel, and even Lord Falkland, although a warmer advocate for popular liberties, and it reckoned in its ranks almost all the great lords who were not servilely devoted to the court.

Behind them advanced a second party, which I will call that of political revolution. This held that the ancient guarantees, the ancient legal barriers, had been, and were, insufficient; that a great change, a veritable revolution, was required, not in the forms, but in the real essence, of the government; that it was necessary to deprive the king and his council of their independent power, and place political preponderance in the House of Commons; and that the government, properly so called, belonged to that assembly and its chiefs. This party did not investigate its own ideas or intentions so clearly or systematically as I have done, but these were the main features of its political doctrines and tendencies. Instead of the absolute sovereignty of the king, or of pure monarchy, it rested its belief in the sovereignty of the House of Commons as representing the country. Under this idea was concealed that of the sovereignty of the people, an idea of which the party was far from estimating all the bearings, or from intending all the consequences, but which suggested itself to it, and was embraced under the form of the sovereignty of the House of Commons.