To change the administration and overthrow the bishops was the purpose which the majority of the Lower House had pursued since the commencement of the new session. The last contest had broken out because the King would not give A.D. 1642. way on these points. After this battle had been decided, and the King defeated, nothing else was to be expected than that Parliament would proceed without further hesitation to accomplish its purpose. It had already taken care to have an armed force at command for the maintenance of the position it had won.
But to what had the British monarchy of the Stuarts been reduced! Its aim was to form the three kingdoms into an union which should consult the interests of all equally. The prerogative of royalty by the grace of God, and Episcopacy, were to form the foundations of public power, and peace abroad serve to maintain tranquillity at home. Not unsuccessfully the first Stuart supported this system which originated in his own brain, more by a clever and versatile management of affairs according to the circumstances of the moment, which he moulded to his will with tenacious perseverance, than through great qualities which might have availed to bind men’s hearts to his cause, or institutions which might have given it independent permanence. The system had not strength to bear the test of a war, in which the second Stuart let himself be entangled, and Great Britain remained far below the rank which properly belonged to her. At home the war was a signal for all contending elements to show themselves. Charles I was by nature at once lawyer-like and priest-like, deeply convinced that the doctrines which he believed, the rights which he claimed, were true and pleasing to God, and (after the precedent of ‘his wise father’) that both possessed intrinsic power. His opponents were in his eyes the enemies of the cause of God, which was also his own, and which he was born to defend. Of the rights of others he had little understanding, and but a slight opinion of their strength, as if they did not much signify so long as external order lasted. Then it came to pass that through action and reaction this order was broken through at the most vulnerable point. The policy in which the King saw a divine necessity, and the safety and future greatness of Great Britain, was regarded by the greater portion of his subjects as violence and oppression A.D. 1642. at home, weakness abroad, and inclination towards a system detested by them, which was just then threatening the world with subjection. Then the Scots rose, with the strong effort of a long-suppressed religious and national impulse: the idea of independence for their Church spread to the State also. While the King was preparing to master this opposition with the strength of England, the latter also rose in analogous opposition to him. He was obliged to restore Parliament, with which, during the war, he had been fundamentally at variance, after having long avoided it: Parliament claimed its primitive rights in their fullest extent, and would assent to nothing but an unmistakeably Protestant policy. In the course of this struggle the native enthusiasm of the Irish also rose in arms, to cast off the subjection in which they were held by the superior power of the Protestant and Teutonic element.
Charles I was not formed by nature to wage such a war successfully: he was not fully master of his own court and council, which was full of cabals in which foreign powers took part, in the very year of this contest. While he only took counsel with his partisans, he could not prevent some of them from acting with an eye to their own particular interests, which made others adopt the opposite view with embittered pertinacity. He himself was always occupied with his own intentions; the purposes, strength, and probable acts of his opponents he had not the penetration to measure: we see him with the utmost confidence undertaking what was to the last degree ruinous. With this was united a false wisdom: for the sake of some greater end he would assent to things which in-themselves he disapproved. Then when his ultimate views came again to light, beside those which for the moment he had admitted, he appeared in himself untrue and untrustworthy: his opponents held themselves justified in taking security by any means against his returning to his old intentions. His adversaries on the other hand, were consistent, vigilant, and suspicious: in opposition to the notion of a compact power, not weak in itself, but merely represented as such, and always dreaded, they placed the feelings of provincial and constitutional autonomy, which, when once penetrated by the feelings and ideas of individual freedom, disclosed an invincible A.D. 1642. strength. Thus it came to pass that one of the British kingdoms attained to an independence which robbed the crown of all substantial influence: the second was striving to conquer by a bloody insurrection, stained with horrible crimes, the same independence for its Catholic population which was enjoyed in the first by the Protestants: while in the third and greatest an authority was being established which aimed at absorbing the royal power.
The course of events had virtually decided that the original system of the Stuarts could not be established: but what shape the British kingdoms would assume, whether they would hold together or separate, what forms and principles of government would ultimately triumph,—all this lay buried in total darkness.
England had not stopped at the constitutional questions which presuppose an assured social order. We have more than once remarked on the significance of the attempt to overthrow Episcopacy, which formed one of the fundamental conditions of English society, and of the constitution. This had been done earlier still in Scotland, though not without serious danger, in the first stage of the Reformation movement, in which the truth of doctrines and the salvation of men’s souls were at stake. It was otherwise in England, where doctrines in general were undisputed, and the episcopal order, which was most intimately connected with the doctrine, had the deepest root in the nation. That Parliament thought to destroy and uproot this order is, among all its undertakings, the one which most distinctly bore the character of revolution—for where should destruction once begun find an end?—and of one-sided party violence. To the King it was in a measure useful, for by opposing it he regained a tenable position and the possibility of resistance. He could now with obvious truth retort on his opponents the charge which they had made against him, of seeking to overthrow the laws of England. Charles could assert that he would never permit any alteration in the lawful condition of England. ‘Nolumus leges Angliae mutari’ was firmer ground for him than the indefinite and questionable rights of prerogative, which at an earlier time he had sought to maintain and extend.
A.D. 1642.
No words are needed to show the universal historical importance of these contests in Great Britain; both the purely constitutional ones, and those extending into the domain of revolution, of whose development we have undertaken to treat. It was our object to watch the origin of them on this classic ground of all constitutional history. It is an event which concerns all, this shaking of the foundations of the old British state. Whether they would stand the shock, or, if not, what shape public affairs would in that case assume, was a question which must concern the Continent also; the civilised world is still busy day by day with more or less conspicuous complications of the spiritual and political struggles arising from similar opposing principles.
FOOTNOTES:
[300] Mr. Godolphin. Cp. Verney, Notes 3 Dec.