STRUGGLE IN ENGLAND FOR CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT
[Sidenote: The question of absolute or limited monarchy in England.]
183. The great question which confronted England in the seventeenth
century was whether the king should be permitted to rule the people, as
God's representative, or should submit to the constant control of the
nation's representatives, i.e., Parliament. In France the Estates
General met for the last time in 1614, and thereafter the French king
made laws and executed them without asking the advice of any one except
his immediate counselors. In general, the rulers on the continent
exercised despotic powers, and James I of England and his son Charles I
would gladly have made themselves absolute rulers, for they entertained
the same exalted notions of the divine right of kings which prevailed
across the English Channel. England finally succeeded, however, in
adjusting the relations between king and Parliament in a very happy way,
so as to produce a limited, or constitutional, monarchy. The long and
bitter struggle between the house of Stuart and the English Parliament
plays an important rôle in the history of Europe at large, as well as in
that of England. After the French Revolution, at the end of the
eighteenth century, the English system began to become popular on the
continent, and it has now replaced the older absolute monarchy in all
the kingdoms of western Europe.
[Sidenote: Accession of James I, 1603-1625.]
On the death of Elizabeth in 1603, James I, the first of the Stuarts,
ascended the English throne. He was, it will be remembered, the son of
Mary Queen of Scots, and was known in Scotland as James VI;
consequently England and Scotland now came under the same ruler. This
did not, however, make the relations between the two countries much
happier, for a century to come at least.
[Sidenote: James' belief in the 'divine right' of kings.]
The chief interest of James' reign lay in his tendency to exalt the
royal prerogative, and in the systematic manner in which he extolled
absolute monarchy in his writings and speeches and discredited it by his
conduct. James was an unusually learned man, for a king, but his
learning did not enlighten him in matters of common sense. As a man and
a ruler, he was far inferior to his unschooled and light-hearted
contemporary, Henry IV of France. Henry VIII had been a heartless
despot, and Elizabeth had ruled the nation in a high-handed manner; but
both of them had known how to make themselves popular and had had the
good sense to say as little as possible about their rights. James, on
the contrary, had a fancy for discussing his high position.
[Sidenote: His own expression of his claims.]
"As for the absolute prerogative of the crown," he declares, "that is no
subject for the tongue of a lawyer, nor is it lawful to be disputed. It
is atheism and blasphemy to dispute what God can do: ... so it is
presumption and high contempt in a subject to dispute what a king can
do, or say that a king cannot do this or that." The king, James claimed,
could make any kind of law or statute that he thought meet, without any
advice from Parliament, although he might, if he chose, accept its
suggestions. "He is overlord of the whole land, so is he master over
every person who inhabiteth the same, having power over the life and
death of every one of them: for although a just prince will not take the
life of one of his subjects without a clear law, yet the same laws
whereby he taketh them are made by himself and his predecessors; so the
power flows always from himself." A good king will act according to law,
but he is above the law and is not bound thereby except voluntarily and
for good-example giving to his subjects.
[Sidenote: The theory of 'divine right.']
These theories, taken from James' work on _The Law of Free Monarchies_,
seem strange and unreasonable to us. But he was really only claiming the
rights which his predecessors had enjoyed, and such as were conceded to
the kings of France until the French Revolution. According to the theory
of "divine right," the king did not owe his power to the nation but to
God, who had appointed him to be the father of his people. From God he
derived all the prerogatives necessary to maintain order and promote
justice; consequently he was responsible to God alone, and not to the
people, for the exercise of his powers. It is unnecessary to follow in
detail the troubles between James and his Parliament and the various
methods which he invented for raising money without the sanction of
Parliament, for all this forms only the preliminary to the fatal
experience of James' son, Charles I.
[Sidenote: James I's foreign policy.]
In his foreign policy James showed as little sense as in his relations
with his own people. He refused to help his son-in-law when he became
king of Bohemia.[335] But when the Palatinate was given by the emperor
to Maximilian of Bavaria, James struck upon the extraordinary plan of
forming an alliance with the hated Spain and inducing its king to
persuade the emperor to reinstate the "winter king" in his former
possessions. In order to conciliate Spain, Charles, Prince of Wales, was
to marry a Spanish princess. Naturally this proposal was very unpopular
among the English Protestants, and it finally came to nothing.
[Sidenote: Literature in the time of Elizabeth and James I.]
[Sidenote: Shakespeare, 1564-1616.]
[Sidenote: Francis Bacon, 1561-1626.]
[Sidenote: The King James translation of the Bible.]
Although England under James I failed to influence deeply the course of
affairs in Europe at large, his reign is distinguished by the work of
unrivaled writers who gave England a literature which outshone that of
any other of the European countries. Shakespeare is generally admitted
to have been the greatest dramatist the world has ever produced. While
he wrote many of his plays before the death of Elizabeth, _Othello_,
_King Lear_, and _The Tempest_ belong to the reign of James. Francis
Bacon, philosopher and statesman, did much for the advancement of
scientific research by advocating new methods of reasoning based upon a
careful observation of natural phenomena instead of upon Aristotle's
logic. He urged investigators to take the path already indicated over
three centuries earlier by his namesake, Roger Bacon.[336] The most
worthy monument of the strong and beautiful English of the period is to
be found in the translation of the Bible, prepared in James' reign and
still generally used in all the countries where English is spoken.[337]
[Sidenote: Charles I, 1625-1649.]
184. Charles I was somewhat more dignified than his father, but he was
quite as obstinately set upon having his own way and showed no more
skill in winning the confidence of his subjects. He did nothing to
remove the disagreeable impressions of his father's reign and began
immediately to quarrel with Parliament. When that body refused to grant
him any money, mainly because they thought that it was likely to be
wasted by his favorite, the duke of Buckingham, Charles formed the plan
of winning their favor by a great military victory.
After James I had reluctantly given up his cherished Spanish alliance,
Charles had married a French princess, Henrietta Maria, the daughter of
Henry IV. In spite of this marriage Charles now proposed to aid the
Huguenots whom Richelieu was besieging in their town of La Rochelle. He
also hoped to gain popularity by prosecuting a war against Spain, whose
king was energetically supporting the Catholic League in Germany.
Accordingly, in spite of Parliament's refusal to grant him the
necessary funds, he embarked in war. With only the money which he could
raise by irregular means, Charles arranged an expedition to take Cadiz
and the Spanish treasure ships which arrived there once a year from
America, laden with gold and silver. The expedition failed, as well as
Charles' attempt to help the Huguenots.
[Sidenote: Charles' exactions and arbitrary acts.]
In his attempts to raise money without a regular grant from Parliament,
Charles had resorted to vexatious exactions. The law prohibited him from
asking for _gifts_ from his people, but it did not forbid his asking
them to _lend_ him money, however little prospect there might be of his
ever repaying it. Five gentlemen who refused to pay such a forced loan
were imprisoned by the mere order of the king. This raised the question
of whether the king had the right to send to prison those whom he wished
without showing legal cause for their arrest.
[Sidenote: The Petition of Right.]
This and other attacks upon the rights of his subjects roused
Parliament. In 1628 that body drew up the celebrated Petition of
Right,[338] which is one of the most important documents in the history
of the English Constitution. In it Parliament called the king's
attention to his illegal exactions, and to the acts of his agents who
had in sundry ways molested and disquieted the people of the realm.
Parliament therefore "humbly prayed" the king that no man need
thereafter "make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, tax, or such like
charge" without consent of Parliament; that no free man should be
imprisoned or suffer any punishment except according to the laws and
statutes of the realm as presented in the Great Charter; and that
soldiers should not be quartered upon the people on any pretext
whatever. Very reluctantly Charles consented to this restatement of the
limitations which the English had always, in theory at least, placed
upon the arbitrary power of their king.
[Sidenote: Religious differences between Charles and the Commons.]
The disagreement between Charles and Parliament was rendered much more
serious by religious differences. The king had married a Catholic
princess, and the Catholic cause seemed to be gaining on the continent.
The king of Denmark had just been defeated by Wallenstein and Tilly, and
Richelieu had succeeded in depriving the Huguenots of their cities of
refuge. Both James and Charles had shown their readiness to enter into
engagements with France and Spain to protect English Catholics, and
there was evidently a growing inclination in England to revert to the
older ceremonies of the Church, which shocked the more strongly
Protestant members of the House of Commons. The communion table was
again placed by many clergymen at the eastern end of the church and
became fixed there as an altar, and portions of the service were once
more chanted.
[Illustration: Charles I (After a painting by Vandyke)]
[Sidenote: Charles dissolves Parliament (1629) and determines to rule by
himself.]
These "popish practices," with which the king was supposed to
sympathize, served to widen the breach between him and the Commons which
had been opened by the king's attempt to raise taxes on his own account.
The Parliament of 1629, after a stormy session, was dissolved by the
king, who determined to rule thereafter by himself. For eleven years no
new Parliament was summoned.
185. Charles was not well fitted by nature to try the experiment of
personal government. Moreover, the methods resorted to by his ministers
to raise money without recourse to Parliament rendered the king more and
more unpopular and prepared the way for the triumphant return of
Parliament.
[Sidenote: Charles' financial exactions.]
According to an ancient law of England, those who had a certain amount
of land must become knights; but since the decay of the feudal system,
landowners had given up the meaningless form of qualifying themselves as
knights. It now occurred to the king's government that a large amount of
money might be raised by fining these delinquents. Other unfortunates
who had settled within the boundaries of the royal forests were either
heavily fined or required to pay enormous arrears of rent.
In addition to these sources of income, Charles applied to his subjects
for _ship money_.[339] He was anxious to equip a fleet, but instead of
requiring the various ports to furnish ships, as was the ancient custom,
he permitted them to buy themselves off by contributing to the fitting
out of large ships owned by himself. Even those living inland were asked
for ship money. The king maintained that this was not a tax but simply a
payment by which his subjects freed themselves from the duty of
defending their country. John Hampden, a squire of Buckinghamshire, made
a bold stand against this illegal demand by refusing to pay twenty
shillings of ship money which was levied upon him. The case was tried
before the king's judges, a bare majority of whom decided against
Hampden. But the trial made it tolerably clear that the country would
not put up long with the king's despotic policy.
[Sidenote: William Laud made Archbishop of Canterbury.]
In 1633 Charles made William Laud Archbishop of Canterbury. Laud
believed that the English Church would strengthen both itself and the
government by following a middle course which should lie between that
of the Church of Rome and that of Calvinistic Geneva. He declared that
it was the part of good citizenship to conform outwardly to the services
of the state church, but that the state should not undertake to oppress
the individual conscience, and that every one should be at liberty to
make up his own mind in regard to the interpretation to be given to the
Bible and to the church fathers. As soon as he became archbishop he
began a series of visitations through his province. Every clergyman who
refused to conform to the Prayer Book, or opposed the placing of the
communion table at the east end of the church, or declined to bow at the
name of Jesus, was, if obstinate, to be brought before the king's
special Court of High Commission to be tried and if convicted to be
deprived of his benefice.
[Sidenote: The different sects of Protestants.]
Laud's conduct was no doubt gratifying to the High Church party among
the Protestants, that is, those who still clung to some of the ancient
practices of the Roman Church, although they rejected the doctrine of
the Mass and refused to regard the pope as their head. The Low Church
party, or _Puritans_, on the contrary, regarded Laud and his policy with
aversion. While, unlike the Presbyterians, they did not urge the
abolition of the bishops, they disliked all "superstitious usages," as
they called the wearing of the surplice by the clergy, the use of the
sign of the cross at baptism, the kneeling posture in partaking of the
communion. The Presbyterians, who are often confused with the Puritans,
agreed with them in many respects, but went farther and demanded the
introduction of Calvin's system of church government.[340]
[Sidenote: The Independents.]
[Sidenote: The Pilgrim Fathers.]
Lastly, there was an ever-increasing number of Separatists, or
Independents. These rejected both the organization of the Church of
England and that of the Presbyterians, and desired that each religious
community should organize itself independently. The government had
forbidden these Separatists to hold their little meetings, which they
called _conventicles_, and about 1600 some of them fled to Holland. The
community of them which established itself at Leyden dispatched the
_Mayflower_, in 1620, with colonists--since known as the Pilgrim
Fathers--to the New World across the sea.[341] It was these colonists
who laid the foundations of a _New England_ which has proved a worthy
offspring of the mother country. The form of worship which they
established in their new home is still known as Congregational.[342]
[Sidenote: Charles summons Parliament once more, to aid him in fighting
the Scotch Presbyterians, 1640.]
186. In 1640 Charles found himself forced to resort to Parliament, for
he was involved in a war with Scotland which he could not carry on
without money. There the Presbyterian system had been pretty generally
introduced by John Knox in Queen Mary's time, but the bishops had been
permitted to maintain a precarious existence in the interest of the
nobles who enjoyed their revenues. James I had always had a strong
dislike for Presbyterianism. He once said, "A Scottish presbytery
agreeth as well with the monarchy as God with the devil. Then Jack and
Tom and Will and Dick shall meet and at their pleasure censure me and my
council." He much preferred a few bishops appointed by himself to
hundreds of presbyteries over whose sharp eyes and sharper tongues he
could have little control. So bishops were reappointed in Scotland in
the early years of his reign and got back some of their powers. The
Presbyterians, however, were still in the majority, and they continued
to regard the bishops as the tools of the king.
[Sidenote: The National Covenant, 1638.]
An attempt on the part of Charles to force the Scots to accept a
modified form of the English Prayer Book led to the signing of the
National Covenant in 1638. This pledged those who attached their names
to it to reëstablish the purity and liberty of the Gospel, which, to
most of the Covenanters, meant Presbyterianism. Charles thereupon
undertook to coerce the Scots. Having no money, he bought on credit a
large cargo of pepper, which had just arrived in the ships of the East
India Company, and sold it cheap for ready cash. The soldiers, however,
whom he got together showed little inclination to fight the Scots, with
whom they were in tolerable agreement on religious matters. Charles was
therefore at last obliged to summon a Parliament, which, owing to the
length of time it remained in session, is known as the Long Parliament.
[Sidenote: The measures of the Long Parliament against the king's
tyranny.]
The Long Parliament began by imprisoning Strafford, the king's most
conspicuous minister, and Archbishop Laud in the Tower of London. The
help that Strafford had given to the king in ruling without Parliament
had mortally offended the House of Commons. They declared him guilty of
treason, and he was executed in 1641, in spite of Charles' efforts to
save him. Laud met the same fate four years later. Parliament also tried
to strengthen its position by passing the Triennial Bill, which provided
that it should meet at least once in three years, even if not summoned
by the king. The courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, which had
arbitrarily condemned a number of the king's opponents, were abolished,
and ship money declared illegal.[343] In short, Charles' whole system of
government was abrogated. The efforts of the queen to obtain money and
soldiers from the pope, and a visit of Charles to Scotland, which
Parliament suspected was for the purpose of forcing the Scots to lend
him an army to use against themselves, led to the Grand Remonstrance. In
this all of Charles' errors were enumerated and a demand was made that
the king's ministers should thereafter be responsible to Parliament.
This document Parliament ordered to be printed and circulated throughout
the country.
[Sidenote: Charles' attempts to arrest five members of the House of
Commons.]
Exasperated at the conduct of the Commons, Charles attempted to
intimidate the opposition by undertaking the arrest of five of its most
active leaders, whom he declared to be traitors. But when he entered the
House of Commons and looked around for his enemies, he found that they
had taken shelter in London, whose citizens later brought them back in
triumph to Westminster.
[Sidenote: The beginning of civil war, 1642.]
[Sidenote: Cavaliers and Roundheads.]
187. Both Charles and Parliament now began to gather troops for the
inevitable conflict, and England was plunged into civil war. Those who
supported Charles were called _Cavaliers_. They included not only most
of the aristocracy and the papal party, but also a number of members of
the House of Commons who were fearful lest Presbyterianism should
succeed in doing away with the English Church. The parliamentary party
was popularly known as the _Roundheads_, since some of them cropped
their hair close because of their dislike for the long locks of their
more aristocratic and worldly opponents.
[Illustration: Oliver Cromwell]
[Sidenote: Oliver Cromwell.]
The Roundheads soon found a distinguished leader in Oliver Cromwell[344]
(b. 1599), a country gentleman and member of Parliament, who was later
to become the most powerful ruler of his time. Cromwell organized a
compact army of God-fearing men, who indulged in no profane words or
light talk, as is the wont of soldiers, but advanced upon their enemies
singing psalms. The king enjoyed the support of northern England, and
also looked for help from Ireland, where the royal and Catholic causes
were popular.
[Sidenote: Battles of Marston Moor and Naseby.]
[Sidenote: The losing cause of the king.]
The war continued for several years, and a number of battles were fought
which, after the first year, went in general against the Cavaliers. The
most important of these were the battle of Marston Moor in 1644, and
that of Naseby the next year, in which the king was disastrously
defeated. The enemy came into possession of his correspondence, which
showed them how their king had been endeavoring to bring armies from
France and Ireland into England. This encouraged Parliament to prosecute
the war with more energy than ever. The king, defeated on every hand,
put himself in the hands of the Scotch army which had come to the aid of
Parliament (1646), and the Scotch soon turned him over to Parliament.
During the next two years Charles, while held in captivity, entered into
negotiations with the various parties in turn, but played fast and loose
with them all.
[Sidenote: Pride's Purge.]
There were many in the House of Commons who still sided with the king,
and in December, 1648, that body declared for a reconciliation with the
monarch, whom they had safely imprisoned in the Isle of Wight. The next
day Colonel Pride, representing the army,--which constituted a party in
itself and was opposed to all negotiations between the king and the
Commons,--stood at the door of the House with a body of soldiers and
excluded all the members who took the side of the king. This outrageous
act is known in history as Pride's Purge.
[Sidenote: Execution of Charles, 1649.]
In this way the House was brought completely under the control of those
most bitterly hostile to Charles, whom they now proposed to bring to
trial. They declared that the House of Commons, since it was chosen by
the people, was supreme in England and the source of all just power, and
that consequently neither king nor House of Lords was necessary. The
mutilated House appointed a special High Court of Justice made up of
Charles' sternest opponents, who alone would consent to sit in judgment
on him. They passed sentence upon him, and on January 30, 1649, Charles
was beheaded in front of his palace of Whitehall, London. It must be
clear from the above account that it was not the nation at large which
demanded Charles' death, but a very small group of extremists who
claimed to be the representatives of the nation.[345]
[Sidenote: England becomes a commonwealth or republic.]
[Sidenote: Cromwell at the head of the government.]
188. The Rump Parliament, as the remnant of the House of Commons was
contemptuously called, proclaimed England to be thereafter a
commonwealth, that is, a republic, without a king or House of Lords.
Cromwell, the head of the army, was the real ruler of England. He
derived his main support from the Independents; and it is very
surprising that he was able to maintain himself so long, considering
what a small portion of the English people was in sympathy with the
religious ideas of that sect and with the abolition of kingship. Even
the Presbyterians were on the side of Charles II, the legal heir to the
throne. Yet Cromwell represented the principles for which the opponents
of tyranny had been contending. He was, moreover, a vigorous and
skillful administrator, and had a well-organized army of fifty thousand
men at his command; otherwise the republic could scarcely have lasted
more than a few months.
[Sidenote: Ireland and Scotland subdued.]
Cromwell found himself confronted by every variety of difficulty. The
three kingdoms had fallen apart. The nobles and Catholics in Ireland
proclaimed Charles II as king, and Ormond, a Protestant leader, formed
an army of Irish Catholics and English royalist Protestants with a view
of overthrowing the Commonwealth. Cromwell accordingly set out for
Ireland, where, after taking Drogheda, he mercilessly slaughtered two
thousand of the "barbarous wretches," as he called them. Town after town
surrendered to Cromwell's army, and in 1652, after much cruelty, the
island was once more conquered. A large part of it was confiscated for
the benefit of the English, and the Catholic landowners were driven into
the mountains. In the meantime (1650) Charles II had landed in Scotland,
and upon his agreeing to be a Presbyterian king, the whole Scotch nation
was ready to support him. But Scotland was subdued even more promptly
than Ireland had been. So completely was the Scottish army destroyed
that Cromwell found no need to draw the sword again in the British
Isles.
[Sidenote: The Navigation Act, 1651.]
[Sidenote: Commercial war between Holland and England.]
Although it would seem that Cromwell had enough to keep him busy at
home, he had already engaged in a victorious foreign war against the
Dutch, who had become dangerous commercial rivals of England. The ships
which went out from Amsterdam and Rotterdam were the best merchant
vessels in the world, and had got control of the carrying trade between
Europe and the colonies. In order to put an end to this, the English
Parliament passed the Navigation Act (1651), which permitted only
English vessels to bring goods to England, unless the goods came in
vessels belonging to the country which had produced them. This led to a
commercial war between Holland and England, and a series of battles was
fought between the English and Dutch fleets, in which sometimes one and
sometimes the other gained the upper hand. This war is notable as the
first example of the commercial struggles which were thereafter to take
the place of the religious conflicts of the preceding period.
[Sidenote: Cromwell dissolves the Long Parliament (1653), and is made
Lord Protector by his own Parliament.]
Cromwell failed to get along with Parliament any better than Charles had
done. The Rump Parliament had become very unpopular, for its members, in
spite of their boasted piety, accepted bribes and were zealous in the
promotion of their relatives in the public service. At last Cromwell
upbraided them angrily for their injustice and self-interest, which were
injuring the public cause. On being interrupted by a member, he cried
out, "Come, come, we have had enough of this. I'll put an end to this.
It's not fit that you should sit here any longer," and calling in his
soldiers he turned the members out of the House and sent them home.
Having thus made an end of the Long Parliament (April, 1653), he
summoned a Parliament of his own, made up of God-fearing men whom he and
the officers of his army chose. This extraordinary body is known as
Barebone's Parliament, from a distinguished member, a London merchant,
with the characteristically Puritan name of Praisegod Barebone. Many of
these godly men were unpractical and hard to deal with. A minority of
the more sensible ones got up early one winter morning (December, 1653)
and, before their opponents had a chance to protest, declared Parliament
dissolved and placed the supreme authority in the hands of Cromwell.
[Sidenote: The Protector's foreign policy.]
For nearly five years Cromwell was, as Lord Protector,--a title
equivalent to that of regent,--practically king of England, although he
refused actually to accept the royal insignia. He did not succeed in
permanently organizing the government at home but showed remarkable
ability in his foreign negotiations. He formed an alliance with France,
and English troops aided the French in winning a great victory over
Spain. England gained thereby Dunkirk, and the West Indian island of
Jamaica. The French king, Louis XIV, at first hesitated to address
Cromwell, in the usual courteous way of monarchs, as "my cousin," but
soon admitted that he would have to call Cromwell "father" should he
wish it, as the Protector was undoubtedly the most powerful person in
Europe.
[Sidenote: Death of Cromwell, September, 1658.]
In May, 1658, Cromwell fell ill, and as a great storm passed over
England at that time, the Cavaliers asserted that the devil had come to
fetch home the soul of the usurper. Cromwell was dying, it is true, but
he was no instrument of the devil. He closed a life of honest effort for
his fellow-beings with a last touching prayer to God, whom he had
consistently sought to serve: "Thou hast made me, though very unworthy,
a mean instrument to do Thy people some good and Thee service: and many
of them have set too high a value upon me, though others wish and would
be glad of my death. Pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of a
poor worm, for they are Thy people too; and pardon the folly of this
short prayer, even for Jesus Christ's sake, and give us a good night, if
it be Thy pleasure. Amen."[346]
[Sidenote: The Restoration.]
[Sidenote: Charles II welcomed back as king, 1660.]
189. After Cromwell's death his son Richard, who succeeded him, found
himself unable to carry on the government. He soon abdicated, and the
remnants of the Long Parliament met once more. But the power was really
in the hands of the soldiers. In 1660 George Monk, who was in command of
the forces in Scotland, came to London with a view of putting an end to
the anarchy. He soon concluded that no one cared to support the Rump,
and that body peacefully disbanded of its own accord. Resistance would
have been vain in any case with the army against it. The nation was glad
to acknowledge Charles II, whom every one preferred to a government by
soldiers. A new Parliament, composed of both houses, was assembled,
which welcomed a messenger from the king and solemnly resolved that,
"according to the ancient and fundamental laws of this kingdom, the
government is, and ought to be, by king, lords, and commons." Thus the
Puritan revolution and the ephemeral republic was followed by the
_Restoration_ of the Stuarts.
[Sidenote: Character of Charles II.]
Charles II was quite as fond as his father of having his own way, but he
was a man of more ability. He disliked to be ruled by Parliament; but,
unlike his father, he was unwilling to arouse the nation against him. He
did not propose to let anything happen which would send him on his
travels again. He and his courtiers were fond of pleasure of a
light-minded and immoral kind. The licentious dramas of the Restoration
seem to indicate that those who had been forced by the Puritans to give
up their legitimate pleasures now welcomed the opportunity to indulge in
reckless gayety without regard to the bounds imposed by custom and
decency.
[Sidenote: Religious measures adopted by Parliament.]
[Sidenote: The Act of Uniformity.]
[Sidenote: The Dissenters.]
Charles' first Parliament was a moderate body, but his second was made
up almost wholly of Cavaliers, and it got along, on the whole, so well
with the king that he did not dissolve it for eighteen years. It did not
take up the old question, which was still unsettled, as to whether
Parliament or the king was really supreme. It showed its hostility,
however, to the Puritans by a series of intolerant acts, which are very
important in English history. It ordered that no one should hold a
municipal office who had not received the Eucharist according to the
rites of the Church of England. This was aimed at both the Presbyterians
and the Independents. By the Act of Uniformity (1662), every clergyman
who refused to accept everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer
was to be excluded from holding his benefice. Two thousand clergymen
thereupon resigned their positions for conscience' sake. These laws
tended to throw all those Protestants who refused to conform to the
Church of England into a single class, still known as Dissenters. It
included the Independents, the Presbyterians, and the newer bodies of
the Baptists, and the Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers.
These sects abandoned any idea of controlling the religion or politics
of the country, and asked only that they might be permitted to worship
in their own way outside of the English Church.
[Sidenote: Toleration favored by the king.]
[Sidenote: The Conventicle Act.]
[Sidenote: The Test Act.]
Toleration found an unexpected ally in the king, who, in spite of his
dissolute habits, had interest enough in religion to have secret
leanings toward Catholicism. He asked Parliament to permit him to
moderate the rigor of the Act of Uniformity by making some exceptions.
He even issued a declaration in the interest of toleration, with a view
of bettering the position of the Catholics and nonconformists. Suspicion
was, however, aroused lest this toleration might lead to the restoration
of "popery," and Parliament passed the harsh Conventicle Act (1664).
Any adult attending a conventicle--that is to say, any religious meeting
not held in accordance with the practice of the English Church--was
liable to penalties which culminated in transportation to some distant
colony. Samuel Pepys, who saw some of the victims of this law upon their
way to a terrible exile, notes in his famous diary: "They go like lambs
without any resistance. I would to God that they would conform or be
more wise and not be catched." A few years later Charles issued a
declaration giving complete religious liberty to Roman Catholics as well
as to Dissenters. Parliament not only forced him to withdraw this
enlightened measure but passed the Test Act, which excluded every one
from public office who did not accept the Anglican views.
[Sidenote: War with Holland.]
The old war with Holland, begun by Cromwell, was renewed under Charles
II, who was earnestly desirous to increase English commerce and to found
new colonies. The two nations were very evenly matched on the sea, but
in 1664 the English seized some of the West Indian Islands from the
Dutch and also their colony on Manhattan Island, which was renamed New
York in honor of the king's brother. In 1667 a treaty was signed by
England and Holland which confirmed these conquests. Three years later
Charles was induced by Louis XIV to conclude a secret treaty, by which
he engaged to aid Louis in a fresh war upon Holland. Louis cherished a
grudge against Holland for preventing him from seizing the Spanish
Netherlands, to which he asserted a claim on behalf of his Spanish
wife.[347] In return for Charles' promised aid, Louis was to support him
with money and troops whenever Charles thought fit publicly to declare
himself a Catholic--he had already acknowledged his conversion to a
select circle. But Charles' nephew, William of Orange,--the
great-grandson of William the Silent,--who was later to become king of
England, encouraged the Dutch to withstand, and Louis was forced to
relinquish his purpose of conquering this stubborn people. Peace was
concluded in 1674, and England and Holland soon became allies against
Louis, who was now recognized as the greatest danger which Europe had to
face.
[Sidenote: James II, 1685-1688.]
190. Upon Charles' death he was succeeded by his brother James, who was
an avowed Catholic and had married, as his second wife, a Catholic, Mary
of Modena. He was ready to reëstablish Catholicism in England regardless
of what it might cost him. Mary, James' daughter by his first wife, had
married William, Prince of Orange, the head of the United Netherlands.
The nation might have tolerated James so long as they could look forward
to the accession of his Protestant daughter. But when a son was born to
his Catholic second wife, and James showed unmistakably his purpose of
favoring the Catholics, messengers were dispatched by a group of
Protestants to William of Orange, asking him to come and rule over them.
Charles I, m. Henrietta Maria
(1625-1649) |
|
+-------+------------------+-----------------+
| | |
Charles II Mary, m. William II Anne Hyde, m. James II, m. Mary of Modena
(1660-1685) | Prince of | (1685-1688)|
| Orange | |
| +------+-------+ |
| | | |
William III, m. Mary Anne James Francis Edward,
(1688-1702) (1702-1714) the Old Pretender
[Sidenote: The revolution of 1688 and the accession of William III,
1688-1702.]
William landed in November, 1688, and marched upon London, where he
received general support from all the English Protestants, regardless of
party. James started to oppose William, but his army refused to fight,
and his courtiers deserted him. William was glad to forward James'
flight to France, as he would hardly have known what to do with him had
James insisted on remaining in the country. A new Parliament declared
the throne vacant, on the ground that King James II, "by the advice of
the Jesuits and other wicked persons, having violated the fundamental
laws and withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, had abdicated the
government."
[Sidenote: The Declaration of Rights.]
A Declaration of Rights was then drawn up, condemning James' violation
of the constitution and appointing William and Mary joint sovereigns.
The Declaration of Rights, which is an important monument in English
constitutional history, once more stated the fundamental rights of the
English nation and the limitations which the Petition of Right and Magna
Charta had placed upon the king. By this peaceful revolution of 1688 the
English rid themselves of the Stuarts and their claims to rule by divine
right, and once more declared themselves against the domination of the
Church of Rome.
General Reading.--GARDINER, _The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan
Revolution_ (Charles Scribner's Sons, $1.00). GARDINER,
_Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution_ (Clarendon
Press, $2.25). For Cromwell, CARLYLE, "The Hero as King" in _Heroes
and Hero Worship_. MORLEY, _Oliver Cromwell_ (The Century Company,
$3.50). For the Puritans, CAMPBELL, _The Puritans in Europe,
Holland, England, and America_ (2 vols., Harper, $5.00). FISKE,
_The Beginnings of New England_ (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $2.00).
MACAULAY, _Essay on Milton_.