CHAPTER VIII

THE TRIUMPH OF PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND

CONFLICTING POLITICAL TENDENCIES IN ENGLAND: ABSOLUTISM _VERSUS_

PARLIAMENTARIANISM

Through all the wars of dynastic rivalry which have been traced in the

two preceding chapters, we have noticed the increasing prestige of the

powerful French monarchy, culminating in the reign of Louis XIV. We now

turn to a nation which played but a minor rôle in the international

rivalries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Later, from 1689

to 1763, England was to engage in a tremendous colonial struggle with

France. But from 1560 to 1689 England for the most part held herself

aloof from the continental rivalries of Bourbons and Habsburgs, and

never fought in earnest except against Philip II of Spain, who

threatened England's economic and political independence, and against

the Dutch, who were England's commercial rivals. While the continental

states were engaged in dynastic quarrels, England was absorbed in a

conflict between rival principles of domestic government--between

constitutional parliamentary government and unlimited royal power. To

the triumph of the parliamentary principle in England we owe many of

our modern ideas and practices of constitutional government.

[Sidenote: Absolutism of the Tudors, 1485-1603]

Absolutism had reached its high-water mark in England long before the

power and prestige of the French monarchy had culminated in the person

of Louis XIV. In the sixteenth century--the very century in which the

French sovereigns faced constant foreign war and chronic civil

commotion--the Tudor rulers of England were gradually freeing

themselves from reliance upon Parliament and were commanding the united

support of the English nation. From the accession of Henry VII in 1485

to the death of his grand-daughter Elizabeth in 1603, the practice of

absolutism, though not the theory of divine-right monarchy, seemed ever

to be gaining ground.

How Tudor despotism was established and maintained is explained in part

by reference to the personality of Henry VII and to the circumstances

that brought him to the throne. [Footnote: For the character and main

achievements of Henry VII (1485-1500), see above, pp. 4 ff.] It is also

explicable by reference to historical developments in England

throughout the sixteenth century. [Footnote: For the reigns of Henry

VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth, see above, pp. 86, 97 ff., 150

ff.] As Henry VII humbled the nobility, so Henry VIII and Elizabeth

subordinated the Church to the crown. And all the Tudors asserted their

supremacy in the sphere of industry and commerce. By a law of 1503, the

craft gilds had been obliged to obtain the approval of royal officers

for whatever new ordinances the gilds might wish to make. In the first

year of the reign of Edward VI the gilds were crippled by the loss of

part of their property, which was confiscated under the pretext of

religious reform. Elizabeth's reign was notable for laws regulating

apprenticeship, prescribing the terms of employment of laborers,

providing that wages should be fixed by justices of the peace, and

ordering vagabonds to be set to work. In the case of commerce, the

royal power was exerted encouragingly, as when Henry VII negotiated the

_Intercursus Magnus_ with the duke of Burgundy to gain admittance

for English goods into the Netherlands, or chartered the "Merchant

Adventurers" to carry on trade in English woolen cloth, or sent John

Cabot to seek an Atlantic route to Asia; or as when Elizabeth

countenanced and abetted explorers and privateers and smugglers and

slave-traders in extending her country's maritime power at the expense

of Spain. All this meant that the strong hand of the English monarch

had been laid upon commerce and industry as well as upon justice,

finance, and religion.

The power of the Tudors had rested largely upon their popularity with

the growing influential middle class. They had subdued sedition, had

repelled the Armada, had fostered prosperity, and had been willing at

times to cater to the whims of their subjects. They had faithfully

personified national patriotism; and the English nation, in turn, had

extolled them.

Yet despite this absolutist tradition of more than a century's

duration, England was destined in the seventeenth century to witness a

long bitter struggle between royal and parliamentary factions, the

beheading of one king and the exiling of another, and in the end the

irrevocable rejection of the theory and practice of absolutist divine-

right monarchy, and this at the very time when Louis XIV was holding

majestic court at Versailles and all the lesser princes on the

Continent were zealously patterning their proud words and boastful

deeds after the model of the Grand Monarch. In that day a mere

parliament was to become dominant in England.

[Sidenote: Accession of the Stuarts: James I, 1603-1625]

The death of Elizabeth, the last of the Tudors, and the accession

(1603) of her cousin James, the first of the Stuarts, marked the real

beginning of the struggle. When he was but a year old, this James had

acquired through the deposition of his unfortunate mother, Mary Stuart,

the crown of Scotland (1567), and had been proclaimed James VI in that

disorderly and distracted country. The boy who was whipped by his tutor

and kidnapped by his barons and browbeaten by Presbyterian divines

learned to rule Scotland with a rod of iron and incidentally acquired

such astonishing erudition, especially in theology, that the clever

King Henry IV of France called him "the wisest fool in Christendom." At

the age of thirty-seven, this Scotchman succeeded to the throne of

England as James I. "He was indeed," says Macaulay, "made up of two

men--a witty, well-read scholar who wrote, disputed, and harangued, and

a nervous, driveling idiot who acted."

[Sidenote: The Stuart Theory of Absolutist Divine-right Monarchy]

James was not content, like his Tudor predecessors, merely to be an

absolute ruler in practice; he insisted also upon the theory of divine-

right monarchy. Such a theory was carefully worked out by the pedantic

Stuart king eighty years before Bishop Bossuet wrote his classic

treatise on divine-right monarchy for the guidance of the young son of

Louis XIV. To James it seemed quite clear that God had divinely

ordained kings to rule, for had not Saul been anointed by Jehovah's

prophet, had not Peter and Paul urged Christians to obey their masters,

and had not Christ Himself said, "Render unto Cæsar that which is

Cæsar's"? As the father corrects his children, so should the king

correct his subjects. As the head directs the hands and feet, so must

the king control the members of the body politic. Royal power was thus

the most natural and the most effective instrument for suppressing

anarchy and rebellion. James I summarized his idea of government in the

famous Latin epigram, "_a deo rex, a rege lex_, "--"the king is

from God, and law from the king."

[Sidenote: Stuart Theory Opposed to Medieval English Tradition]

It has been remarked already [Footnote: See above, pp. 4-7] that in one

important respect the past governmental evolution of England differed

from that of France. While both countries in the sixteenth century

followed absolutist tendencies, in France the medieval tradition of

constitutional limitations upon the power of the king was far weaker

than in England, with the result that in the seventeenth century the

French accepted and consecrated absolutism while the English gave new

force and life to their medieval tradition and practice of

constitutional government.

[Sidenote: Restrictions on Royal Power in England: Magna Carta]

The tradition of English restrictions upon royal power centered in the

old document of _Magna Carta_ and in an ancient institution called

Parliament. _Magna Carta_ dated back, almost four centuries before

King James, to the year 1215 when King John had been compelled by his

rebellious barons to sign a long list of promises; that list was the

"long charter" or _Magna Carta_, [Footnote: _Magna Carta_ was

many times reissued after 1215.] and it was important in three

respects. (1) It served as a constant reminder that "the people" of

England had once risen in arms to defend their "rights" against a

despotic king, although as a matter of fact _Magna Carta_ was more

concerned with the rights of the feudal nobles (the barons) and of the

clergy than with the rights of the common people. (2) Its most

important provisions, by which the king could not levy extraordinary

taxes on the nobles without the consent of the Great Council, furnished

something of a basis for the idea of self-taxation. (3) Clauses such as

"To no man will we sell, or deny, or delay, right or justice," although

never effectively enforced, established the idea that justice should

not be sold, denied, or delayed.

[Sidenote: Parliament]

Parliament was a more or less representative assembly of clergy,

nobility, and commoners, claiming to have powers of taxation and

legislation. The beginnings of Parliament are traced back centuries

before James I. There had been an advisory body of prelates and lords

even before the Norman conquest (1066). After the conquest a somewhat

similar assembly of the king's chief feudal vassals--lay and

ecclesiastical--had been called the Great Council, and its right to

resist unjust taxation had been recognized by _Magna Carta_.

Henceforth it had steadily acquired power. The "Provisions of Oxford"

(1258) had provided, in addition, for "twelve honest men" to represent

the "commonalty" and to "treat of the wants of the king; and the

commonalty shall hold as established that which these men shall do."

[Sidenote: House of Lords and House of Commons]

For the beginnings of the House of Commons we may go back to the

thirteenth century. In 1254 the king summoned to Parliament not only

the bishops, abbots, earls, and barons, but also two knights from every

shire. Then, in an irregular Parliament, convened in 1265 by Simon de

Montfort, a great baronial leader against the king, two burgesses from

each of twenty-one towns for the first time sat with the others and

helped to decide how their liberties were to be protected. These

knights and burgesses were the elements from which the House of Commons

was subsequently to be formed. Similar bodies met repeatedly in the

next thirty years, and in 1295 Edward I called a "model Parliament" of

archbishops, bishops, abbots, representative clergy, earls, and barons,

two knights from every shire, and two citizens from each privileged

city or borough,--more than four hundred in all. For some time after

1295 the clergy, nobility, and commoners [Footnote: _I.e._, the

knights of the shires and the burgesses from the towns.] may have

deliberated separately much as did the three "estates" in France. At

any rate, early in the fourteenth century the lesser clergy dropped

out, the greater prelates and nobles were fused into one body--the

House of "Lords spiritual and temporal,"--and the knights joined the

burgesses to form the House of Commons. Parliament was henceforth a

bicameral body, consisting of a House of Commons and a House of Lords.

[Sidenote: Powers of Parliament: Taxation]

The primary function of Parliament was to give information to the king

and to hear and grant his requests for new "subsidies" or direct taxes.

The right to refuse grants was gradually assumed and legally

recognized. As taxes on the middle class soon exceeded those on the

clergy and nobility, it became customary in the fifteenth century for

money bills to be introduced in the Commons, approved by the Lords, and

signed by the king.

[Sidenote: Legislation]

The right to make laws had always been a royal prerogative, in theory

at least. Parliament, however, soon utilized its financial control in

order to obtain initiative in legislation. A threat of withholding

subsidies had been an effective way of forcing Henry III to confirm

_Magna Carta_ in 1225; it proved no less effective in securing

royal enactment of later "petitions" for laws. In the fifteenth century

legislation by "petition" was supplanted by legislation by "bill," that

is, introducing in either House of Parliament measures which, in form

and language, were complete statutes and which became such by the

united assent of Commons, Lords, and king. To this day English laws

have continued to be made formally "by the King's most Excellent

Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and

Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the

authority of the same."

[Sidenote: Influence on Administration]

The right to demand an account of expenditures, to cause the removal of

royal officers, to request the king to abandon unpopular policies, or

otherwise to control administrative affairs, had occasionally been

asserted by Parliament, but not consistently maintained.

[Sidenote: Parliament under the Tudors]

From what has been said, it will now be clear that the fulcrum of

parliamentary power was control of finance. What had enabled the Tudors

to incline toward absolutism was the fact that for more than a hundred

years they had made themselves fairly independent of Parliament in

matters of finance; and this they had done by means of economy, by

careful collection of taxes, by irregular expedients, by confiscation

of religious property, and by tampering with the currency. Parliament

still met, however, but irregularly, and during Elizabeth's reign it

was in session on the average only three or four weeks of the year.

Parliament still transacted business, but rarely differed with the

monarch on matters of importance.

[Sidenote: James I and Parliament]

At the end of the Tudor period, then, we have an ancient tradition of

constitutional, parliamentary government on the one hand, and a strong,

practical, royal power on the other. The conflict between Parliament

and king, which had been avoided by the tactful Tudors, soon began in

earnest when James I ascended the throne in 1603, with his exaggerated

notion of his own authority. James I was an extravagant monarch, and

needed parliamentary subsidies, yet his own pedantic principles

prevented him from humoring Parliament in any dream of power. The

inevitable result was a conflict for political supremacy between

Parliament and king. When Parliament refused him money, James resorted

to the imposition of customs duties, grants of monopolies, sale of

peerages, and the solicitation of "benevolences" (forced loans).

Parliament promptly protested against such practices, as well as

against his foreign and religious policies and against his absolute

control of the appointment and operation of the judiciary. Parliament's

protests only increased the wrath of the king. The noisiest

parliamentarians were imprisoned or sent home with royal scoldings. In

1621 the Commoners entered in their journal a "Great Protestation"

against the king's interference with their free right to discuss the

affairs of the realm. This so angered the king that he tore the

Protestation out of the journal and presently dissolved the intractable

Parliament; but the quarrel continued, and James's last Parliament had

the audacity to impeach his lord treasurer.

[Sidenote: Political Dispute Complicated by Religious Difference]

[Sidenote: Calvinists in England]

[Sidenote: The "Puritans"]

The political dispute was made more bitter by the co-existence of a

religious conflict. James, educated as a devout Anglican, was naturally

inclined to continue to uphold the compromise by which the Tudors had

severed the English Church from the Roman Catholic hierarchy, yet had

retained many forms of the Catholic Church and the episcopal

organization by means of which the sovereign was able to control the

Church. During Elizabeth's reign, however, a large part of the middle

class--the townsmen especially--and many of the lower clergy had come

under the influence of Calvinistic teaching. [Footnote: On the

doctrines of Calvinism, see above, pp. 139 ff., 156, 164 ff.] The

movement was marked (1) by a virulent hatred for even the most trivial

forms reminiscent of "popery," as the Roman Catholic religion was

called; and (2) by a tendency to place emphasis upon the spirit of the

Old Testament as well as upon the precepts of the New. Along with

austerity of manner, speech, dress, and fast-day observance, they

revived much of the mercilessness with which the Israelites had

conquered Canaan. The same men who held it a deadly sin to dance round

a may-pole or to hang out holly on Christmas were later to experience a

fierce and exalted pleasure in conquering New England from the heathen

Indians. They knew neither self-indulgence nor compassion. Little

wonder that Elizabeth feared men of such mold and used the episcopal

administration of the Anglican Church to restrain them. Many of these

so-called Puritans remained members of the Anglican Church and sought

to reform it from within. But restraint only caused the more radical to

condemn altogether the fabric of bishops and archbishops, and to

advocate a presbyterian church. Others went still further and wished to

separate from the Established Anglican Church into independent

religious groups, and were therefore called Independents or

Separatists.

[Sidenote: Hostility of James I to the Puritans]

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.

[Sidenote: Continued Conflict between King and Parliament]

[Sidenote: The Petition of Right, 1628]

The difficulties of the administration were augmented not only by this

arbitrary treatment of Parliament but also by the miserable failure of

an English fleet sent against Cadiz, and by the humiliating result of

an attempt to relieve the French Huguenots. Meanwhile, a second

Parliament, more intractable even than its predecessor, had been

dissolved for its insistence on the impeachment of Buckingham. Attempts

to raise money by forced loans in place of taxes failed to remove the

financial distress into which Charles had fallen, and consequently, in

1628, he consented to summon a third Parliament. In return for grants

of subsidies, he signed the _Petition of Right_ (1628), prepared

by the two houses. By it he promised not to levy taxes without consent

of Parliament, not to quarter soldiers in private houses, not to

establish martial law in time of peace, not to order arbitrary

imprisonment.

Even these concessions were not enough. Parliament again demanded the

removal of Buckingham, and only the assassination of the unpopular

minister obviated prolonged dispute on that matter. The Commoners next

attempted to check the unauthorized collection of customs duties, which

produced as much as one-fourth of the total royal revenue, and to

prevent the introduction of "popish" innovations in religion, but for

this trouble they were sent home.

[Sidenote: "Personal" Rule of Charles I, 1629-1640]

Charles was now so thoroughly disgusted with the members of Parliament

that he determined to rule without them, and for eleven years (1629-

1640) he successfully carried on a "personal" as distinct from a

parliamentary government, in spite of financial and religious

difficulties.

Without the consent of Parliament, Charles was bound not to levy direct

taxes. During the period of his personal rule, therefore, he was

compelled to adopt all sorts of expedients to replenish his treasury.

He revived old feudal laws and collected fines for their infraction. A

sum of one hundred thousand pounds was gained by fines on suburban

householders who had disobeyed a proclamation of James I forbidding the

extension of London. The courts levied enormous fines merely for the

sake of revenue. Monopolies of wine, salt, soap, and other articles

were sold to companies for large sums of money; but the high prices

charged by the companies caused much popular discontent.

[Sidenote: "Personal" Rule of Charles I, 1629-1640]

[Sidenote: "Ship money"]

The most obnoxious of all devices for raising money were the levies of

"ship-money." Claiming that it had always been the duty of seaboard

towns to equip ships for the defense of the country, Charles demanded

that since they no longer built ships, the towns should contribute

money for the maintenance of the navy. In 1634, therefore, each town

was ordered to pay a specified amount of "ship-money" into the royal

treasury, and the next year the tax was extended to inland towns and

counties. [Footnote: The first writ of ship-money yielded £100,000

(Cunningham).] To test the legality of this exaction, a certain John

Hampden refused to pay his twenty shillings ship-money, and took the

matter to court, claiming that ship-money was illegal taxation. The

majority of the judges, who held office during the king's pleasure and

were therefore strictly under royal influence, upheld the legality of

ship-money and even went so far as to assert that in times of emergency

the king's prerogative was unlimited, but the country rang with

protests and Hampden was hailed as a hero.

[Sidenote: Devotion of Charles I to the Anglican Church: Archbishop

Laud]

[Sidenote: Puritan Opposition]

Opposition to financial exactions went hand in hand with bitter

religious disputes. Charles had intrusted the control of religious

affairs to William Laud, whom he named archbishop of Canterbury, and

showed favor to other clergymen of marked Catholic leanings. The laws

against Roman Catholics were relaxed, and the restrictions on Puritans

increased. It seemed as if Charles and his bishops were bent upon

goading the Puritans to fury, at the very time when one by one the

practices, the vestments, and even the dogmas of the Catholic Church

were being reintroduced into the Anglican Church, when the tyrannical

King James was declared to have been divinely inspired, and when

Puritan divines were forced to read from their pulpits a royal

declaration permitting the "sinful" practices of dancing on the green

or shooting at the butts (targets) on the Sabbath. [Footnote: It is an

interesting if not a significant fact that the Puritans with their

austere views about observance of the Sabbath not only decreased the

number of holidays for workingmen, but interfered with innocent

recreation on the remaining day of rest. One aspect of the resulting

monotonous life of the laborer was, according to Cunningham, the

remarkable increase of drunkenness at this period.] So hard was the lot

of the extreme Protestants in England that thousands fled the country

and established themselves in America. [Footnote: In the decade 1630-

1640 some 20,000 Englishmen sailed for the colonies. Many of these,

however, emigrated by reason of strictly economic distress.]

[Sidenote: The Scotch Covenant, and Beginnings of Armed Opposition to

the King]

[Sidenote: Convocation of the Long Parliament, 1640]

In his Scotch policy Charles overreached himself. With the zealous

coöperation of Archbishop Laud, imprudently attempted to strengthen the

episcopacy (system of bishops) in the northern kingdom, and likewise to

introduce an un-Calvinistic order of public worship. Thereupon the

angry Scotch Presbyterians signed a great Covenant, swearing to defend

their religion (1638); they deposed the bishops set over them by the

king and rose in revolt. Failing in a first effort to crush the Scotch

rebellion, the king summoned a Parliament in order to secure financial

support for an adequate royal army. This Parliament--the so-called

Short Parliament--was dissolved, however, after some three weeks of

bootless wrangling. Now unable to check the advance of the rebellious

Scotch forces into northern England, Charles in desperation convoked

(1640) a new Parliament, which, by reason of its extended duration

(1640-1660), has been commonly called the Long Parliament. In England

and Scotland divine-right monarchy had failed.

THE PURITAN REVOLUTION

[Sidenote: Reforms of the Long Parliament]

Confident that Charles could neither fight nor buy off the Scotch

without parliamentary subsidies, the Long Parliament showed a decidedly

stubborn spirit. Its leader, John Pym, a country gentleman already

famous for speeches against despotism, openly maintained that in the

House of Commons resided supreme authority to disregard ill-advised

acts of the Upper House or of the king. Hardly less radical were the

views of John Hampden and of Oliver Cromwell, the future dictator of

England.

The right of the Commons to impeach ministers of state, asserted under

James I, was now used to send to the Tower both Archbishop Laud and

Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, who, since 1629, had been the

king's most valued and enthusiastically loyal minister. [Footnote:

Strafford was accused of treason, but was executed in 1641 in

accordance with a special "bill of attainder" enacted by Parliament.

Laud was put to death in 1645.] The special tribunals--the Court of

High Commission, the Court of Star Chamber, and others--which had

served to convict important ecclesiastical and political offenders were

abolished. No more irregular financial expedients, such as the

imposition of ship-money, were to be adopted, except by the consent of

Parliament. As if this were not enough to put the king under the thumb

of his Parliament, the royal prerogative of dissolving that body was

abrogated, and meetings at least every three years were provided for by

a "Triennial Act."

[Sidenote: Violation of Parliamentary Privileges: Attempted Seizure by

Charles of the Five Members]

[Sidenote: The Great Rebellion, 1642-1646]

All the contested points of government had been decided adversely to

the king. But his position was now somewhat stronger. He had been able

to raise money, the Scotch invaders had turned back, and the House of

Commons had shown itself to be badly divided on the question of church

reform and in its debates on the publication of a "Grand Remonstrance"

--a document exposing the grievances of the nation and apologizing for

the acts of Parliament. Moreover, a rebellion had broken out in Ireland

and Charles expected to be put at the head of an army for its

suppression. With this much in his favor, the king in person entered

the House of Commons and attempted to arrest five of its leaders, but

his dismal failure only further antagonized the Commons, who now

proceeded to pass ordinances without the royal seal, and to issue a

call to arms. The levy of troops contrary to the king's will was an act

of rebellion; Charles, therefore, raised the royal standard at

Nottingham and called his loyal subjects to suppress the Great

Rebellion (1642-1646).

[Sidenote: The Parties to the Civil War: "Cavaliers" and "Roundheads"]

To the king's standard rallied the bulk of the nobles, high churchmen,

and Roman Catholics, the country "squires," and all those who disliked

the austere moral code of the Puritans. In opposition to him a few

great earls led the middle classes--small land-holders, merchants,

manufacturers, shop-keepers, especially in London and other busy towns

throughout the south and east of England. The close-cropped heads of

these "God-fearing" tradesmen won them the nickname "Roundheads," while

the royalist upper classes, not thinking it a sinful vanity to wear

their hair in long curls, were called "Cavaliers."

[Sidenote: Parliament and the Presbyterians]

In the Long Parliament there was a predominance of the Presbyterians--

that class of Puritans midway between the reforming Episcopalians and

the radical Independents. Accordingly a "solemn league and covenant"

was formed (1643) with the Scotch Presbyterians for the establishment

of religious uniformity on a Presbyterian basis in England and Ireland

as well as in Scotland. After the defeat of Charles at Marston Moor

(1644) the Presbyterians abolished the office of bishop, removed altars

and communion rails from the churches, and smashed crucifixes, images,

and stained-glass windows. Presbyterianism became a more intolerant

state religion than Anglicanism had been. Satisfied with their work,

the Presbyterian majority in Parliament were now willing to restore the

king, provided he would give permanence to their religious settlement.

[Sidenote: The Army and the Independents: Oliver Cromwell]

The Independent army, however, was growing restive. Oliver Cromwell, an

Independent, had organized a cavalry regiment of "honest sober

Christians" who were fined 12 pence if they swore, who charged in

battle while "singing psalms," and who went about the business of

killing their enemies in a pious and prayerful, but withal a highly

effective, manner. Indeed, so successful were Cromwell's "Ironsides"

that a considerable part of the Parliamentary army was reorganized on

his plan. The "New Model" army, as it was termed, was Independent in

sympathy, that is to say, it wished to carry on the war, and to

overthrow the tyranny of the Presbyterians as well as that of the

Anglicans.

[Sidenote: Cromwell's Army Defeats the King and Dominates Parliament]

[Sidenote: The "Rump Parliament"]

The "New Model" army, under the command of Fairfax and Cromwell,

defeated Charles and forced him to surrender in 1646. For almost two

years the Presbyterian Parliament negotiated for the restoration of the

king and at last would have made peace with the royalists, had not the

army, which still remembered Charles's schemes to bring Irish and

foreign "papists" to fight Englishmen, now taken a hand in affairs.

Colonel Pride, stationed with his soldiers at the door of the House of

Commons, arrested the 143 Presbyterian Commoners, and left the

Independents--some sixty strong--to deliberate alone upon the nation's

weal (1648). This "Rump" or sitting part of Parliament, acting on its

own authority, appointed a "High Court of justice" by whose sentence

Charles I was beheaded, 30 January, 1649. It then decreed England to be

a Commonwealth with neither king nor House of Lords.

[Sidenote: The Commonwealth, 1649-1660]

The executive functions, hitherto exercised by the king, were intrusted

to a Council of State, of whose forty-one members thirty were members

of the House. The Rump Parliament, instead of calling for new

elections, as had been expected, continued to sit as the

"representatives of the people," although they represented the

sentiments of only a small fraction of the people. England was in the

hands of an oligarchy whose sole support was the vigorous army of

Cromwell.

Menacing conditions confronted the newly born Commonwealth. War with

Scotland and with Holland was imminent; mutiny and unrest showed that

the execution of Charles had infused new life into the royalists;

Catholic-royalist rebels mastered all of Ireland except Dublin. Under

these circumstances, the Commonwealth would have perished but for three

sources of strength: (1) Its financial resources proved adequate:

customs duties were collected, excise taxes on drinks and food were

levied, and confiscated royalist estates were sold; (2) its enemies had

no well-drilled armies; and (3) its own army was remarkably powerful.

[Sidenote: Cromwell and the Restoration of Order]

Cromwell, victor in a series of bloody engagements in Ireland, after

butchering thousands of the defeated royalists and shipping others as

slaves to Barbados, was able to return to London in 1650, declaring, "I

am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these

barbarous wretches [the Irish] who have imbrued their hands in so much

innocent blood, and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood

for the future." The next movement of Cromwell, as Parliamentary

commander-in-chief, was against the Scotch, who had declared for

Charles II, the son of Charles I. The Scotch armies were annihilated,

and Prince Charles fled in disguise to France.

[Sidenote: Navigation Act, 1651]

Meanwhile the members of the Rump, still the nominal rulers of England,

finding opportunity for profit in the sale of royalist lands and in the

administration of finance, had exasperated Cromwell by their

maladministration and neglect of the public welfare. The life of the

Rump was temporarily prolonged, however, by the popularity of its

legislation against the Dutch, at this time the rivals of England on

the seas and in the colonies. In 1651 the Rump passed the first

Navigation Act, forbidding the importation of goods from Asia, Africa,

or America, except in English or colonial ships, and providing that

commodities of European production should be imported only in vessels

of England or of the producing country. The framers of the Navigation

Act intended thereby to exclude Dutch vessels from trading between

England and other lands. The next year a commercial and naval war

(1652-1654) broke out between England and Holland, leading to no

decisive result, but, on the whole, increasing the prestige of the

English navy. With renewed confidence the Rump contemplated

perpetuating its narrow oligarchy, but Cromwell's patience was

exhausted, and in 1653 he turned Parliament out of doors, declaring,

"Your hour is come, the Lord hath done with you!" Cromwell remained as

military and religious dictator.

[Sidenote: Oliver Cromwell]

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) is the most interesting figure in

seventeenth-century England. Belonging by birth to the class of country

gentlemen, his first appearance in public life was in the Parliament of

1628 as a pleader for the liberty of Puritan preaching. When the Long

Parliament met in 1640, Cromwell, now forty-one years of age, assumed a

conspicuous place. His clothes were cheap and homely, "his countenance

swollen and reddish, his voice sharp and untuneable," nevertheless his

fervid eloquence and energy soon made him "very much hearkened unto."

From the Civil War, as we know, Cromwell emerged as an unequaled

military leader, the idol of his soldiers, fearing God but not man. His

frequent use of Biblical phrases in ordinary conversation and his

manifest confidence that he was performing God's work flowed from an

intense religious zeal. He belonged, properly speaking, to the

Independents, who believed that each local congregation of Christians

should be practically free, excepting that "prelacy" (_i.e._, the

episcopal form of church government) and "popery" (_i.e._, Roman

Catholic Christianity) were not to be tolerated. In private life

Cromwell was fond of "honest sport," of music and art. It is said that

his gayety when he had "drunken a cup of wine too much" and his taste

in statuary shocked his more austere fellow-Puritans. In public life he

was a man of great forcefulness, occasionally giving way to violent

temper; he was a statesman of signal ability, aiming to secure good

government and economic prosperity for England and religious freedom

for Protestant Dissenters.

[Sidenote: Radical Experiments under Cromwell]

After arbitrarily dissolving the Rump of the Long Parliament (1653),

Cromwell and his Council of State broke with tradition entirely by

selecting 140 men to constitute a legislative body or convention. This

body speedily received the popular appellation of "Barebone's

Parliament" after one of its members, a certain leather merchant, who

bore the descriptive Puritan name of Praisegod Barebone. The new

legislators were good Independents--"faithful, fearing God, and hating

covetousness." Recommended by Independent ministers, they felt that God

had called them to rule in righteousness. Their zeal for reform found

expression in the reduction of public expenditure, in the equalization

of taxes, and in the compilation of a single code of laws; but their

radical proposals for civil marriage and for the abolition of tithes

startled the clergy and elicited from the larger landowners the cry of

"confiscation!" Before much was accomplished, however, the more

conservative members of "Barebone's Parliament" voted to "deliver up

unto the Lord-General [Cromwell] the powers we received from him."

[Sidenote: The Protectorate, 1653-1659]

Upon the failure of this experiment, Cromwell's supporters in the army

prepared an "Instrument of Government," or constitution. By this

Instrument of Government--the first written constitution in modern

times--a "Protectorate" was established, which was a constitutional

monarchy in all but name. Oliver Cromwell, who became "Lord Protector"

for life, was to govern with the aid of a small Council of State.

Parliaments, meeting at least every three years, were to make laws and

levy taxes, the Protector possessing the right to delay, but not to

veto, legislation. Puritanism was made the state religion.

[Sidenote: Parliament under the Protectorate]

The first Parliament under the Protectorate was important for three

reasons. (1) It consisted of only one House; (2) it was the Parliament

of Great Britain and Ireland rather than of England alone; (3) its

members were elected on a reformed basis of representation,--that is,

the right of representation had been taken from many small places and

transferred to more important towns.

[Sidenote: Practical Dictatorship of Cromwell, 1655-1658]

Although royalists were excluded from the polls, the Independents were

unable to control a majority in the general election, for, it must be

remembered, they formed a very small, though a powerful, minority of

the population. The Presbyterians in the new Parliament, with

characteristic stubbornness, quarreled with Cromwell, until he abruptly

dismissed them (1655). Thenceforth Cromwell governed as a military

dictator, placing England under the rule of his generals, and

quarreling with his Parliaments. To raise money he obliged all those

who had borne arms for the king to pay him 10 per cent of their rental.

While permitting his office to be made hereditary, he refused to accept

the title of king, but no Stuart monarch had ruled with such absolute

power, nor was there much to choose between James's "_a deo rex, a

rege lex_" and Cromwell's, "If my calling be from God and my

testimony from the people, God and the people shall take it from me,

else I will not part from it."

The question is often raised, how Cromwell, representing the

numerically insignificant Independents, contrived to maintain himself

as absolute ruler of the British Isles. Three circumstances may have

contributed to his strength. (1) He was the beloved leader of an army

respected for its rigid discipline and feared for its grim

mercilessness. (2) Under his strict enforcement of law and order, trade

and industry brought domestic prosperity. (3) His conduct of foreign

affairs was both satisfactory to English patriotism and profitable to

English purses. Advantageous commercial treaties were made with the

Dutch and the French. Industrious Jews were allowed to enter England.

Barbary pirates were chastised. In a war against Spain, the army won

Dunkirk; and the navy, now becoming truly powerful, sank a Spanish

fleet, wrested Jamaica from Spain, and brought home ship-loads of

Spanish silver.

The weakness of Cromwell's position, however, was obvious. Cavaliers

were openly hostile to a régime of religious zealots; moderate

Anglicans would suffer the despotism of Cromwell only as long as it

promoted prosperity; Presbyterians were anxious to end the toleration

which was accorded to all Puritan sects; radicals and republicans were

eager to try new experiments.

[Sidenote: Disorganization following the Death of Oliver Cromwell]

The death of Cromwell (1658) left the army without a master and the

country without a government. True, Oliver's son, Richard Cromwell

(1626-1712), attempted for a time to fill his father's place, but soon

abdicated after having lost control of both army and Parliament. Army

officers restored the Rump of the Long Parliament, dissolved it, set it

up again, and forced it to recall the Presbyterian members who had been

expelled in 1648, and ended by obliging the reconstituted Long

Parliament to convoke a new and freely elected "Convention Parliament."

Meanwhile, General Monck opened negotiations for the return of Charles

II.

THE RESTORATION: THE REIGN OF CHARLES II

[Sidenote: Popular Grievances against the Protectorate]

The widespread and exuberant enthusiasm which restored the Stuarts was

not entirely without causes, social and religious, as well as

political. The grievances and ideals which had inspired the Great

Rebellion were being forgotten, and a new generation was finding fault

with the Protectorate. The simple country folk longed for their may-

poles, their dances, and games on the green; only fear compelled them

to bear with the tyranny of the sanctimonious soldiers who broke the

windows in their churches. Especially hard was the lot of tenants and

laborers on the many estates purchased or seized by Puritans during the

Rebellion. Many townsmen, too, excluded from the ruling oligarchy,

found the Puritan government as oppressive and arbitrary as that of

Charles I.

[Sidenote: Opposition to Puritanism]

The religious situation was especially favorable for Charles II. The

outrages committed by Cromwell's soldiery had caused the Independents

to be looked upon as terrible fanatics, Even the Presbyterians were

willing to yield some points to the king, if only Independency could be

overthrown; and many who had been inclined to Puritanism were now

unwavering in loyalty to the Anglican Church. Orthodox Anglicanism,

from its origin, had been bound up with the monarchy, and it now

consistently expected a double triumph of the "divine-right" of kings

and of bishops. Most bitter of all against the Cromwellian régime were

the Roman Catholics in Ireland. Though Cromwell as Lord Protector had

favored toleration for Protestants, it would be long before Catholics

could forget the Irish priests whom Cromwell's soldiery had brutally

knocked on the head, or the thousands of Catholic girls and boys whom

Cromwell's agents had sold into horrible slavery in the West Indies.

[Sidenote: Royalist Reaction]

This strong royalist undercurrent, flowing from religious and social

conditions, makes more comprehensible the ease with which England

drifted back into the Stuart monarchy. The younger generation, with no

memory of Stuart despotism, and with a keen dislike for the confusion

in which no constitutional form was proof against military tyranny,

gave ready credence to Prince Charles's promises of constitutional

government. There seemed to be little probability that the young

monarch would attempt that arbitrary rule which had brought his

father's head to the block.

[Sidenote: Charles II, 1660-1685]

The experiment in Puritan republicanism had resulted only in convincing

the majority of the people that "the government is, and ought to be, by

King, Lords, and Commons." The people merely asked for some assurances

against despotism,--and when a throne was thus to be purchased with

promises, Charles II was a ready buyer. He swore to observe _Magna

Carta_ and the "Petition of Right," to respect Parliament, not to

interfere with its religious policy, nor to levy illegal taxes. Bound

by these promises, he was welcomed back to England in 1660 and crowned

the following year. The reinstatement of the king was accompanied by a

general resumption by bishops and royalist nobles of their offices and

lands: things seemed to slip back into the old grooves. Charles II

dated his reign not from his actual accession but from his father's

death, and his first Parliament declared invalid all those acts and

ordinances passed since 1642 which it did not specifically confirm.

The history of constitutional government under the restored Stuarts is

a history of renewed financial and religious disputes. Charles II and

his younger brother and heir, Prince James, duke of York, alike adhered

to the political faith of their Stuart father and grandfather. Cousins

on their mother's side of Louis XIV of France, in whose court they had

been reared, they were more used to the practices of French absolutism

than to the peculiar customs of parliamentary government in England.

Unlike their father, who had been most upright in private life and most

loyal to the Anglican Church, both Charles and James had acquired from

their foreign environment at once a taste for vicious living and a

strong attachment to the Roman Catholic Church. In these two Stuarts

Catholicism was combined with absolutism; and the Englishmen

represented in Parliament were therefore brought face to face not only

with a revival of the earlier Stuart theory of divine-right monarchy

but with a new and far more hateful possibility of the royal

establishment of Roman Catholicism in England. Charles II did not

publicly confess his conversion to Catholicism until his deathbed, but

James became a zealous convert in 1672.

That Charles II was able to round out a reign of twenty-five years and

die a natural death as king of England was due not so much to his

virtues as to his faults. He was so hypocritical that his real aims

were usually successfully concealed. He was so indolent that with some

show of right he could blame his ministers and advisers for his own

mistakes and misdeeds. He was so selfish that he would make concessions

here and there rather than "embark again upon his travels." In fact,

pure selfishness was the basis of his policy in domestic and foreign

affairs, but it was always a selfishness veiled in wit, good humor, and

captivating affability.

[Sidenote: Renewal of Financial Disputes between King and Parliament]

At the beginning of the reign of Charles II, the country gentlemen were

astute enough to secure the abolition of the surviving feudal rights by

which the king might demand certain specified services from them and

certain sums of money when an heiress married or a minor inherited an

estate. This action, seemingly insignificant, was in reality of the

greatest importance, for it indicated the abandonment in England of the

feudal theory that land is held by nobles in return for military

service, and at the same time it consecrated the newer principle that

the land should be owned freely and personally--a principle which has

since been fully recognized in the United States and other modern

countries as well as in England. The extinction of feudal prerogatives

in the early days of the Stuart Restoration benefited the landlords

primarily, but the annual lump sum of £100,000 which Charles II was

given in return, was voted by Parliament and was paid by all classes in

the form of excise taxes on alcoholic drinks. Customs duties of £4

10_s_. on every tun of wine and 5 per cent _ad valorem_ on

other imports, hearth-money (a tax on houses), and profits on the post

office contributed to make up the royal revenue of somewhat less than

£1,200,000. This was intended to defray the ordinary expenses of court

and government but seemed insufficient to Charles, who was not only

extravagantly luxurious, but desirous of increasing his power by

bribing members of Parliament and by maintaining a standing army. The

country squires who had sold their plate for the royalist cause back in

the 'forties and were now suffering from hard times, thought the court

was too extravagant; to this feeling was added fear that Charles might

hire foreign soldiers to oppress Englishmen. Consequently Parliament

grew more parsimonious, and in 1665-1667 claimed a new and important

privilege--that of devoting its grants to specific objects and

demanding an account of expenditures.

Charles, however, was determined to have money by fair means or foul. A

group of London goldsmiths had loaned more than a million and a quarter

pounds sterling to the government. In 1672 Charles announced that

instead of paying the money back, he would consider it a permanent

loan. Two years earlier he had signed the secret treaty of Dover (1670)

with Louis XIV, by which Louis promised him an annual subsidy of

£200,000 and troops in case of rebellion, while Charles was openly to

join the Roman Catholic Church and to aid Louis in his French wars

against Spain and Holland.

[Sidenote: Continued Religious Complications]

[Sidenote: Legislation against Protestant Dissenters]

In his ambition to reëstablish Catholicism in England, Charles

underestimated the intense hostility of the bulk of the English squires

to any religious innovation. During the first decade of the

Restoration, Puritanism had been most feared. Some two thousand

clergymen, mostly Presbyterian, had been deprived of their offices by

an Act of Uniformity (1662), requiring their assent to the Anglican

prayer-book; these dissenting clergymen might not return within five

miles of their old churches unless they renounced the "Solemn League

and Covenant" and swore loyalty to the king (Five-mile Act, 1665); for

repeated attendance at their meetings (conventicles) Dissenters might

be condemned to penal servitude in the West Indies against (Conventicle

Act, 1664); and the Corporation Act of 1661 excluded Dissenters from

town offices.

[Sidenote: Leanings of Charles II toward Roman Catholicism]

As the danger from Puritanism disappeared, the Catholic cloud darkened

the horizon. In 1672 Prince James, the heir to the throne, embraced

Catholicism; and in the same year Charles II issued a "Declaration of

Indulgence," suspending the laws which oppressed Roman Catholics and

incidentally the Dissenters likewise. The Declaration threw England

into paroxysms of fear; it was believed that the Catholic monarch of

France was about to aid in the subversion of the Anglican Church.

[Sidenote: Leanings of Charles II toward Roman Catholicism]

[Sidenote: The Exclusion Bill]

Parliament, already somewhat distrustful of Charles's foreign policy,

and fearful of his leanings toward Roman Catholicism, found in the

Declaration of Indulgence a serious infraction of parliamentary

authority. The royal right to "suspend" laws upon occasion had

undoubtedly been exercised before, but Parliament was now strong enough

to insist upon the binding force of its enactments and to oblige

Charles to withdraw his Indulgence. The fear of Catholicism ever

increased; gentlemen who at other times were quite rational gave

unhesitating credence to wild tales of a "Popish Plot" (1678). In 1679

an Exclusion Bill was brought forward which would debar Prince James

from the throne, because of his conversion to Roman Catholicism.

[Sidenote: The "Whigs"]

In the excitement over this latest assertion of parliamentary power,

[Footnote: In the course of the debate over Exclusion, the

parliamentary party won an important concession--the Habeas Corpus Act

of 1679, which was designed to prevent arbitrary imprisonment.] two

great factions were formed. The supporters of Exclusion were led by

certain great nobles who were jealous of the royal power, and were

recruited from merchants and shop-keepers who looked to Parliament to

protect their economic interests. Since many of the adherents of this

political group were Dissenters, whose dislike of Anglicanism was

exceeded only by their hatred of "popery," the whole party was called

by a nickname--"Whig"--which had formerly been applied to rebellious

Presbyterians in Scotland.

[Sidenote: The "Tories"]

Opposed to the Whigs were the "Tories" [Footnote: Tory, a name applied

to "popish" outlaws in Ireland.]--squires and country clergymen and all

others of an essentially conservative turn of mind. They were anxious

to preserve the Church and state alike from Puritans and from

"papists," but most of all to prevent a recurrence of civil war. In the

opinion of the Tories, the best and most effective safeguard against

quarreling earls and insolent tradesmen was the hereditary monarchy.

Better submit to a Roman Catholic sovereign, they said, than invite

civil war by disturbing the regular succession. In the contest over the

Exclusion Bill, the Tories finally carried the day, for, although the

bill was passed by the Commons (1680), it was rejected by the House of

Lords.

[Sidenote: Temporary Success of the Tories]

In the last few years of Charles's reign the cause of the Whigs was

discredited. Rumors got abroad that they were plotting to assassinate

the king and it was said that the Whiggish nobles who brought armed

retainers to Parliament were planning to use force to establish

Charles's illegitimate son--the duke of Monmouth--on the throne. These

and similar accusations hurt the Whigs tremendously, and help explain

the violent Tory reaction which enabled Charles to rule without

Parliament from 1681 to his death in 1685. As had been feared, upon the

death of Charles II, the duke of Monmouth organized a revolt, but this,

together with a simultaneous insurrection in Scotland, was easily

crushed, and James II was securely seated on the throne.

THE "GLORIOUS REVOLUTION" AND THE FINAL ESTABLISHMENT OF PARLIAMENTARY

GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN

[Sidenote: James II (1685-1688): His Futile Combination of Absolutism

and Roman Catholicism]

In his short reign of three years James II (1685-1688) succeeded in

stirring up opposition on all sides. The Tories, the party most

favorable to the royal prerogative, upon whom he might have relied,

were shocked by his attempts to create a standing army commanded by

Catholics, for such an army might prove as disastrous to their

liberties as Cromwell's "New Model"; and the Whigs, too, were driven

from sullenness to desperation by James's religious policy and despotic

government. James, like his brother, claiming the right to "suspend"

the laws and statutes which Parliament had enacted against Roman

Catholics and Dissenters, issued a Declaration of Indulgence in 1687,

which exempted Catholics and Dissenters from punishment for infractions

of these laws. Furthermore, he appointed Roman Catholics to office in

the army and in the civil government. In spite of protests, he issued a

second Declaration of Indulgence in 1688 and ordered it to be read in

all Anglican churches, and, when seven bishops remonstrated, he accused

them of seditious libel. No jury would convict the seven bishops,

however, for James had alienated every class, and they were acquitted.

The Tories were estranged by what seemed to be a deliberate attack on

the Anglican Church and by fear of a standing army. The arbitrary

disregard of parliamentary legislation, and the favor shown to Roman

Catholics, goaded the Whigs into fury.

[Sidenote: The "Glorious Revolution" (1688): Dethronement of James II]

So long as Whigs and Tories alike could expect the accession on the

death of James II of one of his Protestant daughters--Mary or Anne--

they continued to acquiesce in his arbitrary government. But the

outlook became gloomier when on 10 June, 1688, a son was born to James

II by his second wife, a Catholic. Most Protestants believed that the

prince was not really James's son; politicians prophesied that he would

be educated in his father's "popish" and absolutist doctrines, and that

thus England would continue to be ruled by papist despots. Even those

who professed to believe in the divine right of kings and had denied

the right of Parliament to alter the succession were dejected at this

prospect, and many of them were willing to join with the Whigs in

inviting a Protestant to take the throne. The next in line of

succession after the infant prince was Mary, the elder of James's two

daughters, wife of William of Orange, [Footnote: See above, pp. 245,

248] and an Anglican. Upon the invitation of Whig and Tory leaders,

William crossed over to England with an army and entered London without

opposition (1688). Deserted even by his army James fled to France.

[Footnote: Risings in favor of James were suppressed in Ireland and in

Scotland. In Ireland the famous battle of the Boyne (1 July, 1690) was

decisive.]

[Sidenote: Accession of William and Mary, 1689]

[Sidenote: Constitutional Settlement: the Bill of Rights (1689) and

Triumph of Parliament]

[Sidenote: The Mutiny Act]

A bloodless revolution was now accomplished and the crown was formally

presented to William and Mary by an irregular Parliament, which also

declared that James II, having endeavored to subvert the constitution

and having fled the kingdom, had vacated the throne. In offering the

crown to William and Mary, Parliament was very careful to safeguard its

own power and the Protestant religion by issuing a Declaration of

Rights (13 February, 1689), which was enacted as the Bill of Rights, 16

December, 1689. This act decreed that the sovereign must henceforth

belong to the Anglican Church, thereby debarring the Catholic son of

James II. The act also denied the power of a king to "suspend" laws or

to "dispense" subjects from obeying the laws, to levy money, or to

maintain an army without consent of Parliament; asserted that neither

the free election nor the free speech and proceedings of members of

Parliament should be interfered with; affirmed the right of subjects to

petition the sovereign; and demanded impartial juries and frequent

Parliaments. The Bill of Rights, far more important in English history

than the Petition of Right (1628), inasmuch as Parliament was now

powerful enough to maintain as well as to define its rights, was

supplemented by the practice, begun in the same year, 1689, of granting

taxes and making appropriations for the army for one year only. Unless

Parliament were called every year to pass a Mutiny Act (provision for

the army), the soldiers would receive no pay and in case of mutiny

would not be punishable by court martial.

[Sidenote: Measures Favorable to Landlords]

[Sidenote: Religious Toleration for Protestant Dissenters: Continued

Persecution of Roman Catholics]

Both Whigs and Tories had participated in the Revolution, and both

reaped rewards. The Tories were especially pleased with the army laws

and with an arrangement by which farmers were given a "bounty" or money

premium for every bushel of grain exported. [Footnote: That is, when

wheat was selling for less than 6s. a bushel.] The Whigs, having played

a more prominent part in the deposition of James II, were able to

secure the long-coveted political supremacy of Parliament, and

religious toleration of Dissenters. The Toleration Act of 1689 did not

go as far as the Dissenters might have desired, but it gave them the

legal right to worship in public, while their enemies, the Roman

Catholics, remained under the ban.

[Sidenote: Commercial Gains for England]

[Sidenote: Union of England and Scotland: the Kingdom of Great Britain,

1707]

In the foreign policy of the reigns of William (1689-1702) and Mary,

and of Anne (1702-1714), Whiggish policies generally predominated. The

merchants and shippers who formed an important wing of the Whig party

were highly gratified by the Wars of the League of Augsburg and the

Spanish Succession, [Footnote: See above, pp. 248 ff., and below, pp.

306 ff.] in which England fought at once against France, her commercial

and colonial rival, and against Louis XIV, the friend of the Catholic

Stuart pretenders to the English throne. [Footnote: Louis XIV openly

supported the pretensions of James (III), the "Old Pretender."] The

Methuen Treaty (1703) was also advantageous: it allowed English

merchants to sell their manufactures in Portugal without hindrance; in

return for this concession England lowered the duties on Portuguese

wines, and "Port" supplanted "Burgundy" on the tables of English

gentlemen. The Act of Union of 1707 was not unfavorable either, for it

established common trade regulations, customs, and excise in England

and in Scotland. To the merely personal union between the crowns of

England and Scotland which had been inaugurated (1603) by the first of

the Stuart monarchs of England now succeeded under the last of the

Stuart sovereigns a corporate union of the two monarchies under the

title of the Kingdom of Great Britain (1707).

[Sidenote: Accession of the Hanoverians (1714); Continued Decline of

Royal Power]

Upon the death of Anne (1714), the crown passed [Footnote: In

accordance with the Act of Settlement (1701).] to her cousin, the son

of Sophia of Hanover, George I (1714-1727). The new king, unable even

to speak the English language, much less to understand the complicated

traditions of parliamentary government, was neither able nor anxious to

rule, but was content merely to reign. The business of administration,

therefore, was handed over to a group of ministers who strove not only

to please their royal master but to retain the good-will of the

predominant party in Parliament.

[Sidenote: Rise of the Cabinet]

Since this practice, with the many customs which have grown up about

it, has become a most essential part of the government of the United

Kingdom today, and has been copied in recent times by many other

countries, it is important to understand its early history. Even before

the accession of the Tudors, the Great Council of nobles and prelates

which had advised and assisted early kings in matters of administration

had surrendered most of its actual functions to a score or so of "Privy

Councilors." The Privy Council in turn became unwieldy, and allowed an

inner circle or "cabal" of its most energetic members to direct the

conduct of affairs. This inner circle was called a cabinet or cabinet

council, because it conferred with the king in a small private room

(cabinet), and under the restored Stuarts it was extremely unpopular.

William III, more interested in getting money and troops to defend his

native Holland against Louis XIV than in governing England, allowed his

ministers free rein in most matters. So long as the Whigs held a

majority of the seats in the Commons, William found that the wheels of

government turned smoothly if all his ministers were Whigs. On the

other hand, when the Tories gained a preponderance in the Commons, the

Whig ministers were so distasteful to the new majority of the Commons

that it was necessary to replace them with Tories. Queen Anne, although

her sincere devotion to Anglicanism inclined her to the Tories, was

forced to appoint Whig ministers. Only toward the close of her reign

(1710) did Anne venture to dismiss the Whigs.

[Sidenote: Era of Whig Domination, 1714-1761]

[Sidenote: Robert Walpole and his Policies]

Under George I (1714-1727) it became customary for the king to absent

himself from cabinet-meetings. (It will be remembered that George could

not speak English.) This tended to make the cabinet even more

independent of the sovereign, as shown by the fact that Anne was the

last to use her prerogative to veto bills. From 1714 to 1761 was the

great era of Whig domination. Both George I and George II naturally

favored the Whigs, because the Tories were supposed to desire a second

restoration of the Stuarts. Certainly many of the Tories had

participated in the vain attempt of the "Old Pretender" in 1715 to seat

himself on the British throne as James III, and again in 1745 extreme

Tories took part in the insurrection in Scotland, gallantly led by the

Young Pretender, "Prince Charlie" the grandson of James II. Under these

circumstances practically all classes rallied to the support of the

Whigs, who stood for the Protestant monarchy. Great Whig landowners

controlled the rural districts, and the aristocracy of the towns was

won by the Whiggish policy of devotion to public credit and the

protection of commerce. The extensive and continued power of the Whigs

made it possible for Sir Robert Walpole, [Footnote: Created earl of

Orford in 1742.] a great Whig leader, to hold office for twenty-one

years (1721-1742), jealously watching and maintaining his supremacy

under two sovereigns--George I (1714-1727) and George II (1727-1760).

Though disclaiming the title, he was recognized by every one as the

"prime minister"--prime in importance, prime in power. The other

ministers, nominally appointed by the sovereign, were in point of fact

dependent upon him for office, and he, though nominally appointed by

the crown, was really dependent only upon the support of a Whig

majority in the Commons.

[Sidenote: William Pitt, Earl of Chatham]

Walpole's power was based on policy and political manipulation. His

policy was twofold, the maintenance of peace and of prosperity. We

shall see elsewhere how he kept England clear of costly Continental

wars. [Footnote: See above, p. 256, and below, pp. 309 ff., 324 f.] His

policy of prosperity was based on mercantilist ideas and consisted in

strict attention to business methods in public finance, [Footnote:

Walpole was called the "best master of figures of any man of his

time."] the removal of duties on imported raw materials, and on

exported manufactures. In spite of the great prosperity of the period,

there was considerable criticism of Walpole's policy, and "politics"

alone enabled him to persevere in it. By skillful partisan patronage,

by bestowal of state offices and pensions upon members of Parliament,

by open bribery, and by electioneering, he secured his ends and

maintained his majority in the House of Commons.

Walpole's successors,--Henry Pelham and the duke of Newcastle,--like

him represented the oligarchy of Whig nobles and millionaires, and even

outdid him in corrupt methods. Another section of the Whig party under

the leadership of William Pitt the elder (the earl of Chatham) won

great popularity by its condemnation of political "graft." Pitt's fiery

demands for war first against Spain (1739-1748) and then against France

(1756-1763) were echoed by patriotic squires and by the merchants who

wished to ruin French commerce and to throw off the restrictions laid

by Spain on American commerce. Pitt had his way until George III, a

monarch determined to destroy the power of the Whigs, appointed Tory

ministers, such as Lord Bute and Lord North. The attempt of George III

to regain the power his great-grandfather had lost, to rule as well as

to reign, was in the end a failure, and later Hanoverians might well

have joined George II in declaring that "ministers are kings in this

country."

[Sidenote: Significance of English Constitutional Development in the

Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries]

This indeed is the salient fact in the evolution of constitutional

government in England. While in other countries late in the eighteenth

century monarchs still ruled by divine right, in England Parliament and

ministers were the real rulers, and, in theory at least, they ruled by

the will of the people. That England was able to develop this form of

government may have been due in part to her insular position, her

constitutional traditions, and the ill-advised conduct of the Stuart

kings, but most of all it was due to the great commercial and

industrial development which made her merchant class rich and powerful

enough to demand and secure a share in government.

[Sidenote: Great Britain Parliamentarian but not Democratic]

In their admiration for the English government, many popular writers

have fallen into the error of confounding the struggle for

parliamentary supremacy with the struggle for democracy. Nothing could

be more misleading. The "Glorious Revolution" of 1689 was a _coup

d'état_ engineered by the upper classes, and the liberty it

preserved was the liberty of nobles, squires, and merchants--not the

political liberty of the common people.

[Sidenote: The Unreformed Parliament]

The House of Commons was essentially undemocratic. Only one man in

every ten had even the nominal right to vote. It is estimated that from

1760 to 1832 nearly one-half of the members owed their seats to

patrons, and the reformed representatives of large towns were

frequently chosen by a handful of rich merchants. In fact, the

government was controlled by the upper class of society, and by only a

part of that. No representatives sat for the numerous manufacturing

towns which had sprung into importance during the last few decades, and

rich manufacturers everywhere complained that the country was being

ruined by the selfish administration of great landowners and commercial

aristocrats.

Certain it is that the Parliament of the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries, while wonderfully earnest and successful in enriching

England's landlords and in demolishing every obstacle to British

commerce, at the same time either willfully neglected or woefully

failed to do away with intolerance in the Church and injustice in the

courts, or to defend the great majority of the people from the greed of

landlords and the avarice of employers.

Designed as it was for the protection of selfish class interests, the

English government was nevertheless a step in the direction of

democracy. The idea of representative government as expressed by

Parliament and cabinet was as yet very narrow, but it was capable of

being expanded without violent revolution, slowly but inevitably, so as

to include the whole people.

[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF STUART]

[Illustration: THE HANOVERIAN SOVEREIGNS OF GREAT BRITAIN (1714-1915)]

ADDITIONAL READING

GENERAL. Brief surveys: A. L. Cross, _History of England and Greater

Britain (1914)_, ch. xxvii-xli; T. F. Tout, _An Advanced History of

Great Britain (1906)_, Book VI, Book VII, ch. i, ii; Benjamin Terry, _A

History of England (1901)_, Part III, Book III and Book IV, ch. i-iii;

E. P. Cheyney, _A Short History of England (1904)_, ch. xiv-xvi, and,

by the same author, _An Introduction to the Industrial and Social

History of England (1901)_. More detailed narratives: J. F. Bright,

_History of England_, 5 vols. (1884-1904), especially Vol. II,

_Personal Monarchy_, 1485-1688, and Vol. III, _Constitutional Monarchy,

1689-1837_; _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. IV (1906). ch. viii-xi,

xv-xix, Vol. V (1908), ch. v, ix-xi, xv; H. D. Traill and J. S. Mann

(editors), _Social England_, illus. ed., 6 vols. in 12 (1909), Vol. IV;

A. D. Innes, _History of England and the British Empire_, 4 vols.

(1914), Vol. II, ch. x-xvi; G. M. Trevelyan, _England under the

Stuarts_, 1603-1714 (1904), brilliant and suggestive; Leopold von

Ranke, _History of England, Principally in the Seventeenth Century_,

Eng. trans., 6 vols. (1875), particularly valuable for foreign

relations; Edward Dowden, _Puritan and Anglican_ (1901), an interesting

study of literary and intellectual England in the seventeenth century;

John Lingard, _History of England to 1688_, new ed. (1910) of an old

but valuable work by a scholarly Roman Catholic, Vols. VII-X; H. W.

Clark, _History of English Nonconformity_, Vol. I (1911), Book II, ch.

i-iii, and Vol. II (1913), Book III, ch. i, ii, the best and most

recent study of the role of the Protestant Dissenters; W. R. W.

Stephens and William Hunt (editors), _History of the Church of

England_, the standard history of Anglicanism, of which Vol. V (1904),

by W. H. Frere, treats of the years 1558-1625, and Vol. VI (1903), by

W. H. Hutton, of the years 1625-1714. On Scotland during the period: P.

H. Brown, _History of Scotland_, 3 vols. (1899-1909), Vols. II, III;

Andrew Lang, _A History of Scotland_ from the Roman Occupation, 2d ed.,

4 vols. (1901-1907), Vols. III, IV. On Ireland: Richard Bagwell,

_Ireland under the Tudors_, 3 vols. (1885-1890), and _Ireland under the

Stuarts and during the Interregnum_, 2 vols. (1909). Convenient source-

material: G. W. Prothero, _Select Statutes and Other Constitutional

Documents Illustrative of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I_, 4th ed.

(1913); S. R. Gardiner, _The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan

Revolution_, 1628-1660, 2d ed. (1899); C. G. Robertson, _Select

Statutes, Cases, and Documents, 1660-1832_ (1904); E. P. Cheyney,

_Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources_ (1908);

Frederick York Powell, _English History by Contemporary Writers_, 8

vols. (1887); C. A. Beard, _An Introduction to the English Historians_

(1906), a collection of extracts from famous secondary works.

THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. F. W. Maitland,

_The Constitutional History of England_ (1908), Periods III, IV,

special studies of the English government in 1625 and in 1702 by an

eminent authority; D. J. Medley, _A Student's Manual of English

Constitutional History_, 5th ed. (1913), topical treatment,

encyclopedic and dry; T. P. Taswell-Langmead, _English Constitutional

History_, 7th ed. rev. by P. A. Ashworth (1911), ch. xiii-xvi,

narrative style and brief; Henry Hallam, _Constitutional History of

England from the Accession of Henry VII to the Death of George II_,

an old work, first pub. in 1827, still useful, new ed., 3 vols. (1897).

The best summary of the evolution of English parliamentary government

in the middle ages is A. B. White, _The Making of the English

Constitution, 449-1485_ (1908), Part III. In support of the

pretensions of the Stuart kings; see J. N. Figgis, _The Divine Right

of Kings_, 2d ed. (1914); and in opposition to them, see G. P.

Gooch, _English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century_

(1898).

JAMES I AND CHARLES I. S. R. Gardiner, _The First Two Stuarts and the

Puritan Revolution_, 7th ed. (1887), a brief survey in the "Epochs of

Modern History" Series by the most prolific and most distinguished

writer on the period, and, by the same author, the elaborate _History

of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil

War_, 10 vols. (1883-1884), _History of the Great Civil War, 1642-

1640_, 4 vols. (1893), and _Constitutional Documents of the Puritan

Revolution_ (1899); F. C. Montague, _Political History of England,

1603-1660_ (1907), an accurate and strictly political narrative;

_Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. III, ch. xvi, xvii, on Spain and

England in the time of James I. Clarendon's _History of the Great

Rebellion_, the classic work of a famous royalist of the seventeenth

century, is strongly partisan and sometimes untrustworthy: the best

edition is that of W. D. Macray, 6 vols. (1886). R. G. Usher, _The Rise

and Fall of the High Commission_ (1913), is an account of one of the

arbitrary royal courts. Valuable biographies: H. D. Traill, _Strafford_

(1889); W. H. Hutton, _Laud_ (1895); E. C. Wade, John Pym (1912); C. R.

Markham, _Life of Lord Fairfax_ (1870).

THE CROMWELLIAN RÉGIME. The standard treatise is that of S. R.

Gardiner, _The History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate_, 4 vols.

(1903). Among numerous biographies of Oliver Cromwell, the following

are noteworthy: C. H. Firth, _Cromwell_ (1900). in "Heroes of the

Nations" Series; S. R. Gardiner, _Cromwell_ (1899), and, by the same

author, _Cromwell's Place in History_ (1897); John (Viscount) Morley,

_Oliver Cromwell_ (1899); A. F. Pollard, _Factors in Modern History_

(1907), ch. ix-x; Thomas Carlyle, _Cromwell's Letters and Speeches_,

ed. by S. C. Lomas, 3 vols. (1904). The _Diary_ of John Evelyn, a

royalist contemporary, affords naturally a somewhat different point of

view: the best edition is that of H. B. Wheatley, 4 vols. (1906).

Various special phases of the régime: C. H. Firth, _Cromwell's Army_,

2d ed. (1912); Edward Jenks, _The Constitutional Experiments of the

Protectorate_ (1890); Sir J. R. Seeley, _Growth of British Policy_,

Vol. II (1895), Part III; G. L. Beer, _Cromwell's Policy in its

Economic Aspects_ (1902); Sir W. L. Clowes, _The Royal Navy: a

History_, Vol. II (1898); G. B. Tatham, _The Puritans in Power, a Study

of the English Church from 1640 to 1660_ (1913); W. A. Shaw, _History

of the English Church, 1640-1660_, 2 vols. (1900); Robert Dunlop,

_Ireland under the Commonwealth_, 2 vols. (1913), largely a collection

of documents; C. H. Firth, _The Last Years of the Protectorate_, 2

vols. (1909).

THE RESTORATION. Richard Lodge, _The Political History of England,

1660-1702_, a survey of the chief political facts, conservative in

tone; J. N. Figgis, _English History Illustrated from Original Sources,

1660-1715_ (1902), a convenient companion volume to Lodge's; Osmund

Airy, _Charles II_ (1901), inimical to the first of the restored Stuart

kings. Of contemporary accounts of the Restoration, the most

entertaining is Samuel Pepys, _Diary_, covering the years 1659-1669 and

written by a bibulous public official, while the most valuable, though

tainted with strong Whig partisanship, is Gilbert (Bishop) Burnet,

_History of My Own Times_, edited by Osmund Airy, 2 vols. (1897-1900).

See also H. B. Wheatley, _Samuel Pepys and the World he Lived In_

(1880). Special topics in the reign of Charles II: W. E. Sydney,

_Social Life in England, 1660-1660_ (1892); J. H. Overton, _Life in the

English Church, 1663-1714_ (1885); John Pollock, _The Popish Plot_

(1903); G.B. Hertz, _English Public Opinion after the Restoration_

(1902); C. B. R. Kent, _The Early History of the Tories_ (1908).

JAMES II AND THE "GLORIOUS REVOLUTION." The best brief account is that

of Arthur Hassall, _The Restoration and the Revolution_ (1912). The

classic treatment is that of T. B. (Lord) Macaulay, _History of

England, 1685-1702_, a literary masterpiece but marred by vigorous Whig

sympathies, new ed. by C. H. Firth, 6 vols. (1913-1914). Sir James

Mackintosh, _Review of the Causes of the Revolution of 1688_ (1834), an

old work but still prized for the large collection of documents in the

appendix; _Adventures of James II_ (1904), an anonymous and sympathetic

account of the career of the deposed king; H. B. Irving, _Life of Lord

Jeffreys_ (1898), an apology for a much-assailed agent of James II;

Alice Shield and Andrew Lang, _The King over the Water_ (1907), and, by

the same authors, _Henry Stuart, Cardinal of York, and his Times_

(1908), popular treatments of subsequent Stuart pretenders to the

British throne. A good account of the reign of William III is that of

Sir J. R. Seeley, _Growth of British Policy_, Vol. II (1895), Part V.

GREAT BRITAIN IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. General

histories: _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. VI (1909), ch. i-iii; I. S.

Leadam, _Political History of England, 1702-1760_ (1909), conservative

and matter-of-fact; W. E. H. Lecky, _A History of England in the

Eighteenth Century_, new ed., 7 vols. (1892-1899), especially Vol. I,

brilliantly written and very informing, and, by the same author, _A

History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century_, 5 vols. (1893); C. G.

Robertson, _England under the Hanoverians_ (1911), ch. i, ii, iv; Earl

Stanhope (Lord Mahon), _History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to

the Peace of Versailles, 1713-1783_, 5th ed., 7 vols. (1858),

particularly Vols. I, II, tedious but still useful especially for

foreign affairs. On the union of England and Scotland: P. H. Brown,

_The Legislative Union of England and Scotland_ (1914); W. L.

Matthieson, _Scotland and the Union_, 1695-1747 (1905); Daniel Defoe,

_History of the Union between England and Scotland_ (1709). On the rise

of the cabinet system: Mary T. Blauvelt, _The Development of Cabinet

Government in England_ (1902), a clear brief outline; Edward Jenks,

_Parliamentary England: the Evolution of the Cabinet System_ (1903);

and the general constitutional histories mentioned above. The best

account of _Sir Robert Walpole_ is the biography by John (Viscount)

Morley (1889).