A history of England principally in the seventeenth century, Volume 1 (of 6)

by Leopold von Ranke

But even within the domain of Protestantism he was now encountered by a similar problem.

The investigation of the influence which the Scots and English have exercised on one another in the last few centuries would be a task of essential importance for the history of intellectual life; for in the development of the prevailing spirit of the nation the Scots as well as the English have had a large share. Even under Elizabeth these relations had begun to exist. The growth of English Puritanism especially, which had already given the Queen much trouble, must be regarded as but the dissemination of the forms and ideas that had arisen in the Church of Scotland. But how much stronger must the action of this cause have become now that a Scottish king had ascended the English throne! The union between two populations which so nearly resembled one another in their original composition, and in the direction taken by their religious development, could not be a merely territorial union: it must lead to the closest relation between the spirit of the two peoples.

It was natural from the state of the case, that on the accession of a Scottish king in England the English clergy who leaned to the Scottish system should embrace the hope of being emancipated to some extent from that strict subordination to their bishops which they endured with reluctance. On the first arrival of James, whilst he was still on his way to London, they laid before him an address signed by eight hundred of the clergy, in which they besought him, in accordance with God's word, to lighten the rigour of this jurisdiction and of their condition in general, and in the first place to allow them to set before him the feasibility of the alteration. They had nourished the hope that the King might be prevailed on to reduce the English episcopate to the level of the Scottish, in the shape in which he had just restored it.[320]

But the tendencies which the King brought with him out of Scotland ran in an altogether different direction. He had often been personally affronted by the Presbyterians: he hated their system; for in his opinion equality in the Church necessarily led to equality in the State. His intention was rather by degrees to develop further on the English model those beginnings of episcopacy which he had introduced into Scotland. In December 1603 he convened, as the Puritans wished, an assembly of the Church at Hampton Court, to which he also invited the leading men among the opponents of uniformity. But he opened the conference at once with a thanksgiving to Almighty God 'for bringing him into the promised land where religion was purely professed, where he sat among grave, learned, and reverend men, not, as before, elsewhere, a king without state, without honour, without order, where beardless boys would brave him to his face.' He declared that the government of the English Church had been approved by manifold blessings from God himself; and he said that he had not called this assembly in order to make innovations in the same, but in order to strengthen it by the removal of some abuses. In the conference which he opened he held the office of moderator himself. Certainly the suggestions of the Puritans were not altogether without result. When they expressed the wish to see the Sunday more strictly observed, to have a trustworthy and faithful translation of the Bible provided, and to have the Apocrypha excluded from the canonical scriptures, they met with a favourable reception; but the King would neither allow the confessions of faith to be tampered with, nor the ceremonies which had been brought under discussion to undergo the least diminution. He thought that they were older than the Papacy, that the decision of deeper questions of doctrine ought to be left to the discussion of the Universities, and that the articles of the faith would only be encumbered by them. And every limitation of episcopal authority he entirely refused to discuss. The bishops themselves were amazed at the zeal with which the King espoused the cause of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and allowed their justification of it even on a point of great importance for the constitution, the imposition of the oath ex officio.[321] They even exclaimed that God had bestowed on them a king, the like of whom had not been seen from the beginning of the world. It had been the intention and custom of other princes to limit the jurisdiction of the clergy, and to diminish their possessions. How much had they suffered from this even under Elizabeth! On the contrary it was one of the first endeavours of James I to put an end for ever to these attacks. For as in Scotland the abolition of bishoprics had been attended with a diminution of the authority of the crown, he had reason to be deeply convinced of the identity of episcopal and monarchical interests. In the heat of the conference at Hampton Court he laid down as his principle, 'No bishop no king.'

But in all this did King James fall in with the spirit of the English constitution? Did he not rather at this point intrude into it the sharpness of his Scottish prejudices? The old statesmen of England had acknowledged the services of the English Puritans in saving the Protestant confession in the struggle with Catholicism. The Puritans only wished not to be oppressed. He confounded them altogether with their Scottish co-religionists with whom he had had to contend for the sovereignty of the realm.

In less than two months from the Hampton Court Conference the Book of Common Prayer was re-issued with some few alterations, with regard to which the King expressly stated that they were the only alterations which were to be expected; for that the safety of states consisted in clinging fast to what had been ordained after good consideration. This was soon followed by a new collection of ecclesiastical laws, in the shape which they had taken under the deliberations of Convocation. In them the royal supremacy was insisted on in the strongest terms, and that over the whole kingdom, Scotland included. The same competence with regard to the Church was therein assigned to the King which had belonged to the pious kings of Judah and to the earliest Christian emperors: their authority was declared to be second only to that of Heaven. Henceforward no one was to be ordained without promising to observe the Book of Common Prayer and to acknowledge the supremacy.[322] And this statute had a retrospective application, even to those who were already in possession of an ecclesiastical benefice. The King and Archbishop Bancroft ordered that a short respite should be given to those who were inclined to acquiesce; but that those who made a decided resistance should without further ceremony be deprived of their benefices.

On this the whole body of Puritans necessarily became agitated. A number of clergymen sought out the King at Royston in December 1604. While they announced to him their decision rather to resign their benefices than to submit to these ordinances, they called his attention to the danger to which the souls of the faithful would be subjected by this severity. In February a petition in favour of those ministers who refused to subscribe was presented to the King by some of the gentry of Northamptonshire. He expressed himself about this with great vehemence at a sitting of the Privy Council. He said that he had from his cradle suffered at the hands of these Puritans a persecution which would follow him to his grave. But in England the tribunals were quite ready to come to his assistance. In the Star Chamber it was declared a proceeding of seditious tendency to assail the King with joint petitions in a matter of religion.

Towards the end of February 1605 the bishops cited the clergy of Puritan views to appear at St. Paul's in London in order to take the oath. There were some members of this party who held it lawful to conform to the Anglican Church because it at least acknowledged the true doctrine. These had time for reflection given them; the rest who persevered in an opposition of principle were deprived of their offices without delay.

These proceedings for the first time recalled most vividly to men's minds the memory of the late Queen. People said that, though she disliked the Puritans, she had never consented to persecute them on religious grounds, for that she well knew how much she owed to them in every other respect. They saw a proof of the King's incapacity in his departure from her example and pattern. They thought him to blame for remitting in favour of Catholic recusants the execution of the penal laws enrolled among the statutes of the realm. And the foreign policy of the King awakened no less disapproval. It was felt as an injury, that he had put an end by the peace to the hostilities against Spain, which had now become even popular. Even the severe edicts issued against the piracy, which had found support in different quarters, produced in many places an unfavourable impression. The King was obliged to compensate the admiral for the losses which he affirmed that he had suffered in consequence.[323] And how much greater were the apprehensions for the future which were connected with this policy! It was remarked that he sacrificed the interests of religion and of the country to those of the Catholics and the Catholic powers.

But there was now an organ of political opposition in the country in which all these hostile feelings found their expression. The resentment of injured interests, the resistance of the Puritans, and the excitement of the capital, impressed themselves on the Parliament.