A history of England principally in the seventeenth century, Volume 2 (of 6)

by Leopold von Ranke

Let us now sum up the position which England under the Stuarts occupied in these great questions.

From the posterity of Mary Stuart, who at the same time were the successors of Queen Elizabeth, and to whom the alliances of both queens descended, nothing else could be expected than that they should interfere but little in the religious struggles of the continent. They sought to keep on good terms, and even in alliance with both parties. They had certainly been implicated in the great struggle by the affair of the Palatinate: Charles I had on one occasion even taken up a position at the head of the Protestant party; but he had suffered a defeat in that character. This connexion had even turned out ruinous to the Protestants: henceforward he left them to shift for themselves as far as the principal question was concerned, and followed only his private end, the restoration of his nephew, the Elector Palatine.

In his disputes with the two great continental powers, James I had carried out still further the policy for which Elizabeth had paved the way. He had contributed to the emancipation of the Republic of the Netherlands from Spain, for the ascendancy of this monarchy by land and sea was obnoxious to James himself. But he would go no further. It was altogether contrary to his wish and intention that he A.D. 1637. was involved at the end of his days in a quarrel with Spain. As in the religious, so also in the political conflict, the Stuarts did not wish, properly speaking, to take the side either of France or Spain. From this radical tendency of their policy they sometimes deviated, but always returned to it again.

In both those great questions in fine which decided the future of the world, Charles I, after his interference had once resulted in failure, no longer took a pronounced and independent part. We saw what was the issue of his wish to be the ally at the same time of Sweden and of Spain. In domestic affairs on the contrary he had fixed his eyes upon a definite aim. Here, although the questions which were agitated might be altogether native to the English soil and atmosphere, his policy had some analogy with that which prevailed on the continent. He also, like the great Catholic sovereigns, sought to crush the pretensions of the Estates in political affairs; and he, like them, endeavoured to strengthen the royal power by means of the attributes of the spiritual.

It was not that Charles I had thought of subjecting himself to the Papacy. We know how far his soul was averse to this: he could not come to an understanding with the Pope even about the formula in which the Catholics were to promise their obedience, in order to make their toleration possible for him. The English crown could not be strengthened, as was the case with other powers, by encouraging the ideas of Catholicism: on the contrary, it was rather supported by the authority which it had wrested from the Papacy. The royal supremacy over the Church was intended, by means of the closest alliance with the Protestant bishops, to become, in the hands of the supreme power, a weapon which should be employed in all three kingdoms. The bishops were confirmed in their possessions and dignity; moreover the common opposition to their opponents, who had been hated by the Stuarts before they left Scotland, united the bishops as closely as possible with the sovereign, whose cause they defended as their own. When the crown found that its interest lay in sparing the Catholics and suppressing the Puritans, an extraordinary effect followed; A.D. 1637. the ecclesiastical power which had grown out of the Reformation proved more favourable to the adherents of the old creed than to the zealous champions of the new.

This was completely in harmony with the position of the Stuarts when they received their crown. They wished to be Protestants, but to avoid the hostility of the Catholics and, if possible, to annihilate Puritanism. Their relation with the Episcopal Church was on the whole the same with that which Elizabeth had established; but it differed from it, inasmuch as the Queen persecuted the Catholics with decided hostility and tolerated the Presbyterians as her indispensable allies in this conflict, while the Stuarts hated the Presbyterians, and wished to grant toleration to the Catholics.

The hereditary right of the Stuarts, which was acknowledged by both religious parties, had been the ground of the union between Scotland and England, and of the greater obedience of Ireland: it was therefore natural that the Parliaments should appear to these monarchs to be subordinate provincial bodies, which had only a limited influence on the government of the whole monarchy. They thought themselves fully warranted in enforcing the rights which the monarchy derived either from the abstract idea they had formed of it, or from the customs of their predecessors, without regard to the Parliaments. They regarded them as assemblies of counsellors which they might consult or not at their discretion, and whose duty it was to support the crown, without the right of dictating to it in any way, or of obstructing it in its movements.

The whole system arose out of the views, experiences, and intentions which James I brought with him to the English throne. But this sovereign was as skilful in practice as he was aspiring in theory. Incessant oscillation between opposite parties had in him become a second nature. He avoided driving the adversaries with whom he contended to desperation: he never pushed matters to an extremity. He never lost sight of his end for a moment, but he sought to effect his designs if necessary by circuitous paths, and by means of clever and pliant tools; he had no scruple about sacrificing A.D. 1637. any one who did not serve his purpose. Charles I deemed it important to avoid this vacillation. He loved to be served by men of decided tone and colour, and thought it a point of honour to maintain them against all assaults. He adhered without wavering to those maxims and theories which he had received from his father, and which he considered as an heirloom. He always threw himself directly upon the object immediately before him. In the world which surrounded him, Charles I always passed for a man without a fault, who committed no excesses, had no vices, possessed cultivation and knowledge to the fullest extent, without wishing to make a show in consequence: not indeed by nature devoid of severity, which however he tempered with feelings of humanity;—for instance, he could hardly be brought to sign a sentence of death. Since the death of Buckingham he appeared to choose his ministers by merit and capacity, and no longer by favouritism: even his queen seemed to exercise no political influence over him. But this calm, artistic, religious sovereign, certainly did not add to his qualities the cleverness which marked the administration of his father. James could never be really affronted: he put up with everything which he could not alter. Charles I had a very lively and irritable sense of personal honour: he was easily wounded and sought to revenge himself; and then perhaps he committed himself to enterprises, the scope of which he did not perceive. He wanted that general sense of the state of affairs which distinguishes what is attainable from what is not. He prosecuted the quarrels in which he was involved as zealously and as long as possible, and then suddenly renounced them. People compared him to a miser, who turns over every penny, as we say, before he parts with it, but then suddenly throws away a large sum. Yet still when Charles I made concessions, he never made them unconditionally. This trustworthy man could bring himself to balance the promises he made in public by a secret reservation which absolved him from them again. With Charles I nothing was more seductive than secrecy. The contradictions in his conduct entangled him in embarrassments, in which his declarations, if always true in the sense he privately gave them, were only a hair’s-breadth removed A.D. 1637. from actual and even from intentional untruth. His method of governing the State was in itself of an equivocal character, inasmuch as he declared that he wished to uphold the laws of England, and then notwithstanding made dispositions which rested on obsolete rights and ran counter to what all the world deemed lawful: he affirmed that he did not wish to encroach upon Parliamentary government, and then nevertheless did everything to relieve himself for a long period from the necessity of summoning Parliament. Notwithstanding all the forbearance from shedding human blood which he had imposed on himself, yet he had the severest punishment inflicted upon the opponents of his system, by which even their lives were endangered. For his political aim outweighed all other considerations, and he did not hesitate to employ any means to attain it.

The system of Charles I consisted in making the royal prerogative the basis of government. He had no military forces however which he could employ to secure that object, such as at this time were used in France to maintain the supreme authority: on the contrary, foreigners were surprised to see how completely the King was in the hands of his people; that there were hardly any fortresses to which he could fly for safety in time of need; that everything depended on the laws and their interpretation. This was just what gave importance to the fact that some of the heads of the judicial body, and those too the very men who had formerly belonged to the Parliamentary party, such as Noy and Littleton, now became champions of the prerogative. Their change may have been due to altered convictions and lawyer-like attachment to one side, as there was much found in the laws which could be urged in favour of their present view; or it may have arisen from slavish ambition, animated by the desire to obtain the highest offices. Many persons in England as well as in France, and with the same zeal which was shown in that country, espoused the idea of the sovereignty of the crown; they thought that it was older than all Parliaments, and was acknowledged in the laws. From the duty of defending and ruling the kingdom they inferred the right of the King to demand from his subjects the means of fulfilling that duty. All the provisions of Magna A.D. 1637. Charta, or of the laws of Edward I to the contrary, or the doctrines of law-books, which in fact contained much that was indefinite and dependent upon the circumstances of the time, were of no account in their eyes in comparison with this right. And while the advocates of these views thus had a position which could be regarded as legal, the administration had already found in the Lord Deputy of Ireland a man who had the will and the capacity to develop government by prerogative to its full proportions. And the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had never wavered for a moment, so conducted the government of the Church as to uphold the King’s prerogative of supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs. He appeared to aim at establishing, or rather, properly speaking, already to possess in substance a British patriarchate, such as that which long ago in Constantinople had stood beside the throne of the Greek emperors, and had promoted their views. Although different in procedure, and in the foundation on which they rested, these efforts had a general coincidence with the policy which was being carried out in other great monarchies in the name of the sovereign by ambitious ministers, obsequious tribunals, and devoted bishops. Where in England was the power which could have resisted it? In order to realise the dull dissatisfaction and the despair of the mother-country which was spreading in consequence, we must recollect that the colonisation of New England was due to emigration from English shores. Even at an earlier time a troop of exiled believers, who termed themselves pilgrims, and who in fact were seeking a refuge in Virginia, had been driven further north, where they founded New Plymouth. After existing for ten years, the colony reckoned no more than three hundred members, and it still lacked legal recognition. But the increasing ecclesiastical oppression which prevailed in England now impelled a number of families of some property and position in Suffolk, Rutland, Lincolnshire, and Northamptonshire, to turn their steps in the same direction. Their principal object was to erect a bulwark in these distant regions against the kingdom of Antichrist, which was being extended by the Jesuits[77]. For they thought that they had A.D. 1637. to fear lest the English Church also should fall a victim to the ruin which had overtaken so many others. How much better, they imagined, would the faithful in the Palatinate and in Rochelle have done, if they had seized the right moment to secure an asylum for the exercise of their religion on the other side of the ocean! That country in which they could best serve God seemed to them their fatherland. As it conduced to their safety that they should not cross the sea as fugitives without rights, they obtained for themselves a transfer of Massachusetts Bay and the neighbouring territory, drawn up according to the forms of English law. But even this was not enough to satisfy them, for they did not wish to be governed from England, after the fashion of other colonies. They did not decide on transplanting themselves until they had received by charter the right of transferring the government of the colony to the other continent. John Winthrop, if not in wealth, in which some others surpassed him, yet in descent and position the most distinguished among those who conducted the enterprise was the first governor of the society and of the colony. In the year 1630 the emigrants, numbering about 1500, crossed to America in seventeen ships, sailing from different ports. But year by year other expeditions followed them[78]. For on this side of the water the pre-eminence accorded to the English Church was constantly becoming more decided, while on that side Presbyterianism, in the strict form in which it was now embodied, had free scope. In the year 1638 the colonists were reckoned at 50,000, and they had already established a number of settlements in the country.

And this colony even then appeared a place of refuge for political exiles. We must certainly reject as unfounded what has been so often related and repeated, that Hampden and Pym were hindered by the government itself from going to America: but it is true that they had entertained the thought of going. Their names are found on the list of those to whom A.D. 1637. the Earl of Warwick assigned as a settlement a large tract of coast which he had acquired[79].