The "Six Articles."

Fall of Thomas Cromwell.

Probably the Pilgrimage had some effect in moderating Henry's progress.

The monasteries did not benefit and in 1538-1539 the greater were

involved in the fate which had already overtaken the less. But no

further advances were made towards Protestantism after the publication

and authorization of the "Great" Bible in English. The Lutheran divines

who came to England in 1538 with a project for a theological union were

rebuffed; the parliament elected in 1539 was Catholic, and only the

reforming bishops in the House of Lords offered any resistance to the

Six Articles which reaffirmed the chief points in Catholic doctrine and

practice. The alliance between pope, emperor and French king induced

Henry to acquiesce in Cromwell's scheme for a political understanding

with Cleves and the Schmalkaldic League, which might threaten Charles

V.'s position in Germany and the Netherlands, but could not be of much

direct advantage to England. Cromwell rashly sought to wed Henry to this

policy, proposed Anne of Cleves as a bride for Henry, now once more a

widower, and represented the marriage as England's sole protection

against a Catholic league. Henry put his neck under the yoke, but soon

discovered that there was no necessity; for Charles and Francis were

already beginning to quarrel and had no thought of a joint attack on

England. The discovery was fatal to Cromwell; after a severe struggle in

the council he was abandoned to his enemies, attainted of treason and

executed. Anne's marriage was declared null, and Henry found a fifth

queen in Catherine Howard, a niece of Norfolk, a protegee of Gardiner,

and a friend of the Catholic church.

Nevertheless there was no reversal of what had been done, only a check

to the rate of progress. Cranmer remained archbishop and compiled an

English Litany, while Catherine Howard soon ceased to be queen; charges

of loose conduct, which in her case at any rate were not instigated by

the king, were made against her and she was brought to the block; she

was succeeded by Catherine Parr, a mild patron of the new learning. The

Six Articles were only fitfully put in execution, especially in 1543 and

1546: all the plots against Cranmer failed; and before he died Henry was

even considering the advisability of further steps in the religious

reformation, apart from mere spoliation like the confiscation of the

chantry lands.

Policy in Ireland and Scotland.

But Scotland, Ireland and foreign affairs concerned him most. Something

substantial was achieved in Ireland; the papal sovereignty was abolished

and Henry received from the Irish parliament the title of king instead

of lord of Ireland. The process was begun of converting Irish chieftains

into English peers which eventually divorced the Irish people from their

natural leaders; and principles of English law and government were

spread beyond the Pale. In Scotland Henry was less fortunate. He failed

to win over James V. to his anti-papal policy, revived the feudal claim

to suzerainty, won the battle of Solway Moss (1542), and then after

James's death bribed and threatened the Scots estates into concluding a

treaty of marriage between their infant queen and Henry's son. The

church in Scotland led by Beaton, and the French party led by James V.'s

widow, Mary of Guise, soon reversed this decision, and Hertford's heavy

hand was (1544) laid on Edinburgh in revenge. France was at the root of

the evil, and Henry was thus induced once more to join Charles V. in war

(1543). The joint invasion of 1544 led to the capture of Boulogne, but

the emperor made peace in order to deal with the Lutherans and left

Henry at war with France. The French attempted to retaliate in 1545, and

burnt some villages in the Isle of Wight and on the coast of Sussex. But

their expedition was a failure, and peace was made in 1546, by which

Henry undertook to restore Boulogne in eight years' time on payment of

eight hundred thousand crowns. Scotland was not included in the

pacification, and when Henry died (January 28, 1547) he was busy

preparing to renew his attempt on Scotland's independence.

Edward VI.

Progress of the Reformation.

He left a council of sixteen to rule during his son's minority. The

balance of parties which had existed since Cromwell's fall had been

destroyed in the last months of the reign by the attainder of Norfolk

and his son Surrey, and the exclusion of Gardiner and Thirlby from the

council of regency. Men of the new learning prevailed, and Hertford

(later duke of Somerset), as uncle to Edward VI., was made protector of

the realm and governor of the king's person. He soon succeeded in

removing the trammels imposed upon his authority, and made himself king

in everything but name. He used his arbitrary power to modify the

despotic system of the Tudors; all treason laws since Edward III., all

heresy laws, all restrictions upon the publication of the Scriptures

were removed in the first parliament of the reign, and various

securities for liberty were enacted. The administration of the sacrament

of the altar in both elements was permitted, the Catholic interpretation

of the mass was rendered optional, images were removed, and English was

introduced into nearly the whole of the church service. In the following

session (1548-1549) the first Act of Uniformity authorized the first

Book of Common Prayer. It met with strenuous resistance in Devon and in

Cornwall, where rebellions added to the thickening troubles of the

protector.

Administration of the protector Somerset.

His administration was singularly unsuccessful. In 1547 he won the great

but barren victory of Pinkie Cleugh over the Scots, and attempted to

push on the marriage and union by a mixture of conciliation and

coercion. He made genuine and considerable concessions to Scottish

feeling, guaranteeing autonomy and freedom of trade, and suggesting that

the two realms should adopt the indifferent style of the empire of Great

Britain. But he also seized Haddington in 1548, held by force the

greater part of the Lowlands, and, when Mary was transported to France,

revived the old feudal claims which he had dropped in 1547. France was,

as ever, the backbone of the Scots resistance; men and money poured into

Edinburgh to assist Mary of Guise and the French faction. The

protector's offer to restore Boulogne could not purchase French

acquiescence in the union of England and Scotland; and the bickerings on

the borders in France and open fighting in Scotland led the French to

declare war on England in August 1549. They were encouraged by

dissensions in England. Somerset's own brother, Thomas Seymour, jealous

of the protector, intrigued against the government; he sought to secure

the hand of Elizabeth, the favour of Edward VI. and the support of the

Suffolk line, secretly married Catherine Parr, and abused his office as

lord high admiral to make friends with pirates and other enemies of

order. Foes of the family, such as Warwick and Southampton, saw in his

factious conduct the means of ruining both the brothers. Seymour was

brought to the block, and the weak consent of the protector seriously

damaged him in the public eye. His notorious sympathy with the peasantry

further alienated the official classes and landed gentry, and his

campaign against enclosures brought him into conflict with the strongest

forces of the time. The remedial measures which he favoured failed; and

the rising of Ket in Norfolk and others less important in nearly all the

counties of England, made Somerset's position impossible. Bedford and

Herbert suppressed the rebellion in the west, Warwick that in Norfolk

(July-August 1549). They then combined with the majority of the council

and the discontented Catholics to remove the protector from office and

imprison him in the Tower (October).

Administration of the duke of Northumberland.

Establishment of Protestantism.

The Catholics hoped for reaction, the restoration of the mass, and the

release of Gardiner and Bonner, who had been imprisoned for resistance

to the protector's ecclesiastical policy. But Warwick meant to rely on

the Protestant extremists; by January 1550 the Catholics had been

expelled from the council, and the pace of the Reformation increased

instead of diminishing. Peace was made with France by the surrender of

Boulogne and abandonment of the policy of union with Scotland (March

1550); and the approach of war between France and the emperor, coupled

with the rising of the princes in Germany, relieved Warwick from foreign

apprehensions and gave him a free hand at home. Gardiner, Bonner, Heath,

Day and Tunstall were one by one deprived of their sees; a new ordinal

simplified the ritual of ordination, and a second Act of Uniformity and

Book of Common Prayer (1552) repudiated the Catholic interpretation

which had been placed on the first and imposed a stricter conformity to

the Protestant faith. All impediments to clerical marriage were removed,

altars and organs were taken down, old service books destroyed and

painted windows broken; it was even proposed to explain away the

kneeling at the sacrament. The liberal measures of the protector were

repealed, and new treasons were enacted; Somerset himself, who had been

released and restored to the council in 1550, became an obstacle in

Warwick's path, and was removed by means of a bogus plot, being executed

in January 1552; while Warwick had himself made duke of Northumberland,

his friend Dorset duke of Suffolk, and Herbert earl of Pembroke.

But his ambition and violence made him deeply unpopular, and the failing

health of Edward VI. opened up a serious prospect for Northumberland. He

was only safe so long as he controlled the government, and prevented the

administration of justice, and the knowledge that not only power but

life was at stake drove him into a desperate plot for the retention of

both. He could trade upon Edward's precocious hatred of Mary's religion,

he could rely upon French fears of her Spanish inclinations, and the

success which had attended his schemes in England deluded him into a

belief that he could supplant the Tudor with a Dudley dynasty. His son

Guilford Dudley was hastily married to Lady Jane Grey, the eldest

granddaughter of Henry VIII.'s younger sister Mary. Henry's two

daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, the descendants of his elder sister

Margaret, and Lady Jane's mother, the duchess of Suffolk, were all to be

passed over, and the succession was to be vested in Lady Jane and her

heirs male. Edward was persuaded that he could devise the crown by will,

the council and the judges were browbeaten into acquiescence, and three

days after Edward's death (July 6, 1553), Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed

queen in London. Northumberland had miscalculated the temper of the

nation, and failed to kidnap Mary. She gathered her forces in Norfolk

and Suffolk, Northumberland rode out from London to oppose her, but

defection dogged his steps, and even in London Mary was proclaimed queen

behind his back by his fellow-conspirators. Mary entered London amid

unparalleled popular rejoicings, and Northumberland was sent to a

well-deserved death on the scaffold.

Queen Mary. Restoration of the old religion.

Unpopularity of the Spanish marriage. Philip II.

Mary was determined from the first to restore papalism as well as

Catholicism, but she had to go slowly. The papacy had few friends in

England, and even Charles V., on whom Mary chiefly relied for guidance,

was not eager to see the papal jurisdiction restored. He wanted England

to be first firmly tied to the Habsburg interests by Mary's marriage

with Philip. Nor was it generally anticipated that Mary would do more

than restore religion as it had been left by her father. She did not

attempt anything further in 1553 than the repeal of Edward VI.'s

legislation and the accomplishment of the Spanish marriage. The latter

project provoked fierce resistance; various risings were planned for the

opening months of 1554, and Wyat's nearly proved successful. Only his

arrogance and procrastination and Mary's own courage saved her throne.

But the failure of this protest enabled Mary to carry through the

Spanish marriage, which was consummated in July; and in the ensuing

parliament (Oct.-Jan. 1554-1555) all anti-papal legislation was

repealed; Pole was received as legate; the realm was reconciled to Rome;

and, although the holders of abbey lands were carefully protected

against attempts at restitution, the church was empowered to work its

will with regard to heresy. The Lollard statutes were revived, and

between February 1555 and November 1558 some three hundred Protestants

were burnt at the stake. They began with John Rogers and Rowland Taylor,

and Bishops Ferrar of St Davids and Hooper of Gloucester. Ridley and

Latimer were not burnt until October 1555, and Cranmer not till March

1556. London, Essex, Hertfordshire, East Anglia, Kent and Sussex

provided nearly all the victims; only one was burnt north of the Trent,

and only one south-west of Wiltshire. But in the Protestant districts

neither age nor sex was spared; even the dead were dug up and burnt. The

result was to turn the hearts of Mary's people from herself, her church

and her creed. Other causes helped to convert their enthusiastic loyalty

into bitter hatred. The Spanish marriage was a failure from every point

of view. In spite of Mary's repeated delusions, she bore no child, and

both parliament and people resisted every attempt to deprive Elizabeth

of her right to the succession. Philip did all he could to conciliate

English affections, but they would not have Spanish control at any

price. They knew that his blandishments were dictated by ulterior

designs, and that the absorption of England in the Habsburg empire was

his ultimate aim. As it was, the Spanish connexion checked England's

aspirations; her adventurers were warned off the Spanish Main, and even

trade with the colonies of Philip's ally Portugal was prohibited. They

had to content themselves with the Arctic Ocean and Muscovy; and they

soon found themselves at war in Philip's interests. Philip himself

refused to declare war on Scotland on England's behalf, but he induced

Mary to declare war on France on his own (1557). The glory of the war

fell to the Spaniards at St Quentin (1557) and Gravelines (1558), but

the shame to England by the loss of Calais (Jan. 1558). Ten months later

Mary died (Nov. 17), deserted by her husband and broken-hearted at the

loss of Calais and her failure to win English hearts back to Rome.

Accession of Elizabeth. English national struggle with Spain.

The Spanish and Venetian ambassadors in London were shocked at what they

regarded as the indecent rejoicings over Elizabeth's accession. The

nation, indeed, breathed a new life. Papal control of its

ecclesiastical, and Spanish control of its foreign policy ceased, and it

had a queen who gloried in being "mere English." There was really no

possible rival sovereign, and no possible alternative policy. The

English were tugging at the chain and Elizabeth had to follow; her

efforts throughout were aimed at checking the pace at which her people

wanted to go. She could not have married Philip had she wished to, and

she could not have kept her sea-dogs off the Spanish Main. They were

willing to take all the risks and relieve her of all responsibility;

they filled her coffers with Spanish gold which they plundered as

pirates, knowing that they might be hanged if caught; and they fought

Elizabeth's enemies in France and in the Netherlands as irregulars,

taking their chance of being shot if taken prisoners. While Elizabeth

nursed prosperity in peace, her subjects sapped the strength of

England's rivals by attacks which were none the less damaging because

they escaped the name of war.

Triumph of the new religion. The Act of Uniformity.

It required all Elizabeth's finesse to run with the hare and hunt with

the hounds; but she was, as Henry III. of France said, _la plus fine

femme du monde_, and she was ably seconded by Cecil who had already

proved himself an adept in the art of taking cover. Nevertheless,

English policy in their hands was essentially aggressive. It could not

be otherwise if England was to emerge from the slough in which Mary had

left it. The first step was to assert the principle of England for the

English; the queen would have no foreign husband, though she found

suitors useful as well as attractive. Spanish counsels were applauded

and neglected, and the Spaniards soon departed. Elizabeth was glad of

Philip's support at the negotiations for peace at Cateau Cambresis

(1559), but she took care to assert the independence of her diplomacy

and of England's interests. At home the church was made once more

English. All foreign jurisdiction was repudiated, and under the style

"supreme governor" Elizabeth reclaimed nearly all the power which Henry

VIII. had exercised as "supreme head." The Act of Uniformity (1559)

restored with a few modifications the second prayer-book of Edward VI.

The bishops almost unanimously refused to conform, and a clean sweep was

made of the episcopal bench. An eminently safe and scholarly archbishop

was found in Matthew Parker, who had not made himself notorious by

resistance to authority even under Mary. The lower clergy were more

amenable; the two hundred who alone are said to have been ejected should

perhaps be multiplied by five; but even so they were not one in seven,

and these seven were clergy who had been promoted in Mary's reign, or

who had stood the celibate and other tests of 1553-1554. Into the

balance must be thrown the hundreds, if not thousands, of zealots who

had fled abroad and returned in 1558-1559. The net result was that a few

years later the lower house of convocation only rejected by one vote a

very puritanical petition against vestments and other "popish dregs."

Elizabeth and Scotland.

Struggle against the Spanish dominion at sea.

The next step was to expand the principle of England for the English

into that of Britain for the British, and Knox's reformation in

1559-1560 provided an opportunity for its application. By timely and

daring intervention in Scotland Elizabeth procured the expulsion of the

French bag and baggage from North Britain, and that French avenue to

England was closed for ever. The logic of this plan was not applied to

Ireland; there it was to be Ireland for the English for many a

generation yet to come; and so Ireland remained Achilles' heel, the

vulnerable part of the United Kingdom. The Protestant religion was

forced upon the Irish in a foreign tongue and garb and at the point of

foreign pikes; and national sentiment supported the ancient faith and

the ancient habits in resistance to the Saxon innovations. In other

directions the expansion of England, the third stage in the development

of Elizabeth's policy, was more successful. The attractions of the

Spanish Main converted the seafaring folk of south-west England into

hardy Protestants, who could on conscientious as well as other grounds

contest a papal allocation of new worlds to Spain and Portugal. Their

monopoly was broken up by Hawkins, Drake, Frobisher, Raleigh, and scores

of others who recognized no peace beyond the line; and although, as far

as actual colonies went, the results of Elizabeth's reign were

singularly meagre, the idea had taken root and the ground had been

prepared. In every direction English influence penetrated, and

Englishmen before 1603 might be found in every quarter of the globe,

following Drake's lead into the Pacific, painfully breaking the ice in

search of a north-east or a north-west passage, hunting for slaves in

the wilds of Africa, journeying in caravans across the steppes of Russia

into central Asia, bargaining with the Turks on the shores of the Golden

Horn, or with the Greeks in the Levant, laying the foundations of the

East India Company, or of the colonies of Virginia and Newfoundland.

Mary, queen of Scots.

This expansion was mainly at the expense of Spain; but at first Spain

was regarded as Elizabeth's friend, not France. France had a rival

candidate for Elizabeth's throne in Mary Stuart, the wife of the dauphin

who soon (1559) became king as Francis II.; and Spanish favour was

sought to neutralize this threat. Fortunately for Elizabeth, Francis

died in 1560, and the French government passed into the hands of

Catherine de' Medici, who had no cause to love her daughter-in-law and

the Guises. France, too, was soon paralysed by the wars of religion

which Elizabeth judiciously fomented with anything but religious

motives. Mary Stuart returned to Scotland with nothing but her brains

and her charms on which to rely in her struggle with her people and her

rival. She was well equipped in both respects, but human passions spoilt

her chance; her heart turned her head. Elizabeth's head was stronger and

she had no heart at all. When Mary married Darnley she had the ball at

her feet; the pair had the best claims to the English succession and

enjoyed the united affections of the Catholics. But they soon ceased to

love one another, and could not control their jealousies. There followed

rapidly the murders of Rizzio and Darnley, the Bothwell marriage, Mary's

defeat, captivity, and flight into England (1568). It was a difficult

problem for Elizabeth to solve; to let Mary go to France was presenting

a good deal more than a pawn to her enemies; to restore her by force to

her Scottish throne might have been heroic, but it certainly was not

politics; to hand her over to her Scottish foes was too mean even for

Elizabeth; and to keep her in England was to nurse a spark in a

powder-magazine. Mary was detained in the hope that the spark might be

carefully isolated.

Rebellion of 1569 and excommunication of Elizabeth.

Plots against Elizabeth. Relations with France and Spain.

But there was too much inflammable material about. The duke of Norfolk

was a Protestant, but his convictions were weaker than his ambition, and

he fell a victim to Mary's unseen charms. The Catholic north of England

was to rise under the earls of Westmorland and Northumberland, who

objected to Elizabeth's seizure of their mines and jurisdictions as well

as to her proscription of their faith; and the pope was to assist with a

bull of deposition. Norfolk, however, played the coward; the bull came

nearly a year too late, and the rebellion of the earls (1569) was easily

crushed. But the conspiracies did not end, and Spain began to take a

hand. Elizabeth, partly in revenge for the treatment of Hawkins and

Drake at San Juan de Ulloa, seized some Spanish treasure on its way to

the Netherlands (Dec. 1569). Alva's operations were fatally handicapped

by this disaster, but Philip was too much involved in the Netherlands to

declare war on England. But his friendship for Elizabeth had received a

shock, and henceforth his finger may be traced in most of the plots

against her, of which the Ridolfi conspiracy was the first. It cost

Norfolk his head and Mary more of her scanty liberty. Elizabeth also

began to look to France, and in 1572, by the treaty of Blois, France

instead of Spain became England's ally, while Philip constituted himself

as Mary's patron. The massacre of St Bartholomew placed a severe strain

upon the new alliance, but was not fatal to it. A series of prolonged

but hollow marriage negotiations between Elizabeth and first Anjou

(afterwards Henry III.) and then Alencon (afterwards duke of Anjou)

served to keep up appearances. But the friendship was never warm;

Elizabeth's relations with the Huguenots on the one hand and her fear of

French designs on the Netherlands on the other prevented much

cordiality. But the alliance stood in the way of a Franco-Spanish

agreement, limited Elizabeth's sympathy with the French Protestants, and

enabled her to give more countenance than she otherwise might have done

to the Dutch.

The Jesuit missions.

Execution of Mary, queen of Scots, 1587.

The Great Armada, 1588.

Gradually Philip grew more hostile under provocation; slowly he came to

the conclusion that he could never subdue the Dutch or check English

attacks on the Spanish Main without a conquest of England.

Simultaneously the counter-Reformation began its attacks; the "Jesuit

invasion" took place in 1580, and Campion went to the block. A papal and

Spanish attempt upon Ireland in the same year was foiled at Smerwick.

But more important was Philip's acquisition of the throne of Portugal

with its harbours, its colonies and its marine. This for the first time

gave him a real command of the sea, and at least doubled the chances of

a successful attack upon England. But Philip's mind moved slowly and

only on provocation. It took a year or two to satisfy him that Portugal

was really his; not until 1583 was the fleet of the pretender Don

Antonio destroyed in the Azores. The victor, Santa Cruz, then suggested

an armada against England, but the English Catholics could not be

brought into line with a Spanish invasion. The various attempts to

square James VI. of Scotland had not been successful, and events in the

Netherlands and in France disturbed Philip's calculations. But his

purpose was now probably fixed. After the murder of William the Silent

(1584) Elizabeth sided more openly with the Dutch; the Spanish

ambassador Mendoza was expelled from England for his intrigues with

Elizabeth's enemies (1586); and on the discovery of Babington's plot

Elizabeth yielded to the demand of her parliament and her ministers for

Mary's execution (1587); her death removed the only possible centre for

a Catholic rebellion in case of a Spanish attack. It also removed

Philip's last doubts; Mary had left him her claims to the English

throne, and he might, now that she was out of his path, hope to treat

England like Portugal. Drake's "singeing of Philip's beard" in Cadiz

harbour in 1587 delayed the expedition for a year, and a storm again

postponed it in the early summer of 1588. At length the armada sailed in

July under the incompetent duke of Medina Sidonia; its object was to

secure command of the narrow seas and facilitate the transport of

Parma's army from the Netherlands to England. But Philip after his

twenty years' experience in the Netherlands can hardly have hoped to

conquer a bigger and richer country with scantier means and forces. He

relied in fact upon a domestic explosion, and the armada was only to be

the torch. This miscalculation made it a hopeless enterprise from the

first. Scarcely an English Catholic would have raised a finger in

Philip's favour; and when he could not subdue the two provinces of

Holland and Zeeland, it is absurd to suppose that he could have

simultaneously subdued them and England as well. English armies were not

perhaps very efficient, but they were as good as the material with which

William of Orange began his task. Philip, however, was never given the

opportunity. His armada was severely handled in a week's fighting on its

way up the Channel, and was driven off the English ports into the German

Ocean; there a south-west gale drove it far from its rendezvous, and

completed the havoc which the English ships had begun. A miserable

remnant alone escaped destruction in its perilous flight round the north

and west of Scotland.

The defeat of the armada was the beginning and not the end of the war;

and there were moments between 1588 and 1603 when England was more

seriously alarmed than in 1588. The Spaniards seized Calais in 1596; at

another time they threatened England from Brest, and the "invisible"

armada of 1599 created a greater panic than the "invincible" armada of

1588. It was not till the very end of the reign that what was in some

ways the most dangerous of Spanish aggressions was foiled at Kinsale.

Nor were the English counter-attacks very happy; the attempt on Portugal

in 1589 under Drake and Norris proved a complete failure. The raid on

Cadiz under Essex and Raleigh in 1596 was attended with better results,

but the "Islands" voyage to the Azores in 1597 was a very partial

success. Still it was now a war upon more or less equal terms, and there

was little more likelihood that it would end with England's than with

Spain's loss of national independence. The subjection of the Netherlands

was now almost out of the question, and although Elizabeth's help had

not enabled the Protestant cause to win in France, Henry IV. built up a

national monarchy which would be quite as effectual a bar to the

ambitions of Spain.

Last years of Elizabeth.

Elizabeth had in fact safely piloted England through the struggle to

assert its national independence in religion and politics and its claim

to a share in the new inheritance which had been opened up for the

nations of Europe; and the passionate loyalty which had supported her as

the embodiment of England's aspirations somewhat cooled in her declining

years. She herself grew more cautious and conservative than ever, and

was regarded as an obstacle by the hotheads in war and religion. She

sided with the "scribes," Burghley and Sir Robert Cecil, against the men

of war, Essex and Raleigh; and she abetted Whitgift's rigorous

persecution of the Puritans whose discontent with her _via media_ was

rancorously expressed in the Martin Marprelate tracts. Essex's folly and

failure to crush Hugh O'Neill's rebellion (1599), the most serious

effort made in the reign to throw off the English yoke in Ireland,

involved him in treason and brought him to the block. Parliament was

beginning to quarrel with the royal prerogative, particularly when

expressed in the grant of monopolies, and even Mountjoy's success in

Ireland (1602-1603) failed to revive popular enthusiasm for the dying

queen. Strange as it may seem, the accession of James I. was hailed as

heralding a new and gladder age by Shakespeare, and minor writers (March

24, 1603). (A. F. P.)

VIII. THE STUART MONARCHY, THE GREAT REBELLION AND THE RESTORATION

(1603-1689)

James I. 1603-1625.

The defeat of the Spanish armada in 1588 had been the final victory

gained on behalf of the independence of the English church and state.

The fifteen years which followed had been years of successful war; but

they had been also years during which the nation had been preparing

itself to conform its institutions to the new circumstances in which it

found itself in consequence of the great victory. When James arrived

from Scotland to occupy the throne of Elizabeth he found a general

desire for change. Especially there was a feeling that there might be

some relaxation in the ecclesiastical arrangements. Roman Catholics and

Puritans alike wished for a modification of the laws which bore hardly

on them. James at first relaxed the penalties under which the Roman

Catholics suffered, then he grew frightened by the increase of their

numbers and reimposed the penalties. The gunpowder plot (1605) was the

result, followed by a sharper persecution than ever (see GUNPOWDER

PLOT).

The Puritans were invited to a conference with the king at Hampton Court

(1604). They no longer asked, as many of them had asked in the beginning

of Elizabeth's reign, to substitute the presbyterian discipline for the

episcopal government. All they demanded was to be allowed permission,

whilst remaining as ministers in the church, to omit the usage of

certain ceremonies to which they objected. It was the opinion of Bacon

that it would be wise to grant their request. James thought otherwise,

and attempted to carry out the Elizabethan conformity more strictly than

it had been carried out in his predecessor's reign.

James I. and the Commons.

In 1604 the Commons agreed with Bacon. They declared that they were no

Puritans themselves, but that, with such a dearth of able ministers, it

was not well to lose the services of any one who was capable of

preaching the gospel. By his refusal to entertain their views James

placed himself in opposition to the Commons in a matter which touched

their deeper feelings. As a necessary consequence every dispute on

questions of smaller weight assumed an exaggerated importance. The king

had received a scanty revenue with his crown, and he spent freely what

little he had. As the Commons offered grudging supplies, the necessity

under which he was of filling up the annual deficit led him to an action

by which a grave constitutional question was raised.

From the time of Richard II. to the reign of Mary no attempt had been

made to raise duties on exports and imports without consent of

parliament. But Mary had, under a specious pretext, recommenced to a

slight extent the evil practice, and Elizabeth had gone a little further

in the same direction. In 1606 a merchant named John Bates (q.v.)

resisted the payment of an imposition--as duties levied by the sole

authority of the crown were then called. The case was argued in the

court of exchequer, and was there decided in favour of the crown.

Shortly afterwards new impositions were set to the amount of L70,000 a

year. When parliament met in 1610 the whole subject was discussed, and

it was conclusively shown that, if the barons of the exchequer had been

right in any sense, it was only in that narrow technical sense which is

of no value at all. A compromise attempted broke down, and the

difficulty was left to plague the next generation. The king was always

able to assert that the judges were on his side, and it was as yet an

acknowledged principle of the constitution that parliament could not

change the law without the express consent of the crown, even if, which

was not the case in this matter, the Lords had sided with the Commons.

James's attempt to obtain further supplies from the Commons by opening a

bargain for the surrender of some of his old feudal prerogatives, such

as wardship and marriage, which had no longer any real meaning except as

a means of obtaining money in an oppressive way, broke down, and early

in 1611 he dissolved his first parliament in anger. A second parliament,

summoned in 1614, met with the same fate after a session of a few weeks.

The dissolution of this second parliament was followed by a short

imprisonment of some of the more active members, and by a demand made

through England for a benevolence to make up the deficiency which

parliament had neglected to meet. The court represented that, as no

compulsion was used, there was nothing illegal in this proceeding. But

as the names of those who refused to pay were taken down, it cannot be

said that there was no indirect pressure.

Attempted union with Scotland.

The colonization of Ulster.

The most important result of the breach with the parliament of 1614,

however, was the resolution taken by James to seek refuge from his

financial and other troubles in a close alliance with the king of Spain.

His own accession had done much to improve the position of England in

its relation with the continental powers. Scotland was no longer

available as a possible enemy to England, and though an attempt to bind

the union between the two nations by freedom of commercial intercourse

had been wrecked upon the jealousy of the English Commons (1607), a

legal decision had granted the status of national subjects to all

persons born in Scotland after the king's accession in England. Ireland,

too, had been thoroughly overpowered at the end of Elizabeth's reign,

and the flight of the earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel in 1607 had been

followed by the settlement of English and Scottish colonists in Ulster,

a measure which, in the way in which it was undertaken, sowed the seeds

of future evils, but undoubtedly conduced to increase the immediate

strength of the English government in Ireland.

The Spanish alliance.

Without fear of danger at home, therefore, James, who as king of

Scotland had taken no part in Elizabeth's quarrel with Philip II., not

only suspended hostilities immediately on his accession, and signed a

peace in the following year, but looked favourably on the project of a

Spanish marriage alliance, so that the chief Protestant and the chief

Catholic powers might join together to impose peace on Europe, in the

place of those hideous religious wars by which the last century had been

disfigured. In 1611 circumstances had disgusted him with his new ally,

but in 1614 he courted him again, not only on grounds of general policy,

but because he hoped that the large portion which would accompany the

hand of an infanta would go far to fill the empty treasury.

In this way the Spanish alliance, unpopular in itself, was formed to

liberate the king from the shackles imposed on him by the English

constitution. Its unpopularity, great from the beginning, became greater

when Raleigh's execution (1618) caused the government to appear before

the world as truckling to Spain. The obloquy under which James laboured

increased when the Thirty Years' War broke out (1618), and when his

daughter Elizabeth, whose husband, the elector palatine, was the unhappy

claimant to the Bohemian crown (1619), stood forth as the lovely symbol

of the deserted Protestantism of Europe. Yet it was not entirely in pity

for German Protestants that the heart of Englishmen beat. Men felt that

their own security was at stake. The prospect of a Spanish infanta as

the bride of the future king of England filled them with suspicious

terrors. In Elizabeth's time the danger, if not entirely external, did

not come from the government itself. Now the favour shown to the Roman

Catholics by the king opened up a source of mischief which was to some

extent real, if it was to a still greater extent imaginary. Whether the

danger were real or imaginary, the consequence of the distrust resulting

from the suspicion was the reawakening of the slumbering demand for

fresh persecution of the Roman Catholics, a demand which made a complete

reconciliation between the crown and the Lower House a matter of the

greatest difficulty.

Parliament and the monopolies.

In 1621 the third parliament of James was summoned to provide money for

the war in defence of his son-in-law's inheritance, the Palatinate,

which he now proposed to undertake. But it soon appeared that he was not

prepared immediately to come to blows, and the Commons, voting a small

sum as a token of their loyalty, passed to other matters. Indolent in

his temper, James had been in the habit of leaving his patronage in the

hands of a confidential favourite, and that position was now filled by

George Villiers, marquess and afterwards duke of Buckingham. The

natural consequence was that men who paid court to him were promoted,

and those who kept at a distance from him had no notice taken of their

merits. Further, a system of granting monopolies and other privileges

had again sprung up. Many of these grants embodied some scheme which was

intended to serve the interests of the public, and many actions which

appear startling to us were covered by the extreme protectionist

theories then in vogue. But abuses of every kind had clustered round

them, and in many cases the profits had gone into the pockets of

hangers-on of the court, whilst officials had given their assistance to

the grantors even beyond their legal powers. James was driven by the

outcry raised to abandon these monopolies, and an act of Parliament in

1624 placed the future grant of protections to new inventions under the

safeguard of the judges.

Fall of Bacon.

The attack on the monopolies was followed by charges brought by the

Commons before the Lords against persons implicated in carrying them

into execution, and subsequently against Lord Chancellor Bacon as guilty

of corruption. The sentence passed by the Lords vindicated the right of

parliament to punish officials who had enjoyed the favour of the crown,

which had fallen into disuse since the accession of the house of York.

There was no open contest between parliament and king in this matter.

But the initiative of demanding justice had passed from the crown to the

Commons. It is impossible to overestimate the effect of these

proceedings on the position of parliament. The crown could never again

be regarded as the sum of the governmental system.

When the Commons met after the summer adjournment a new constitutional

question was raised. The king was at last determined to find troops for

the defence of the Palatinate, and asked the Commons for money to pay

them. They in turn petitioned the crown to abandon the Spanish alliance,

which they regarded as the source of all the mischief. James told them

that they had no right to discuss business on which he had not asked

their opinion. They declared that they were privileged to discuss any

matter relating to the commonwealth which they chose to take in hand,

and embodied their opinion in a protest, which they entered on their

journals. The king tore the protest out of the book and dissolved

parliament.

Then followed a fresh call for a benevolence, this time more sparingly

answered than before. A year of fruitless diplomacy failed to save the

Palatinate from total loss. The ill-considered journey to Madrid, in

which Prince Charles, accompanied by Buckingham, hoped to wring from the

Spanish statesmen a promise to restore the Palatinate in compliment for

his marriage with the infanta, ended also in total failure. In the

autumn of 1623 Charles returned to England without a wife, and without

hope of regaining the Palatinate with Spanish aid.

The French alliance.

He came back resolved to take vengeance upon Spain. The parliament

elected in 1624 was ready to second him. It voted some supplies on the

understanding that, when the king had matured his plans for carrying on

the war, it should come together in the autumn to vote the necessary

subsidies. It never met again. Charles had promised that, if he married

a Roman Catholic, he would grant no toleration to the English Catholics

in consideration of the marriage. In the autumn he had engaged himself

to marry Henrietta Maria, the sister of the king of France, and had

bound himself to grant the very conditions which he had declared to the

Commons that he never would concede. Hence it was that he did not

venture to recommend his father to summon parliament till the marriage

was over. But though there was but little money to dispose of, he and

Buckingham, who, now that James was sick and infirm, were the real

leaders of the government, could not endure to abstain from the

prosecution of the war. Early in 1625 an expedition, under Count

Mansfeld, was sent to Holland that it might ultimately cut its way to

the Palatinate. Left without pay and without supplies, the men perished

by thousands, and when James died in March the new king had to meet his

first parliament burthened by a broken promise and a disastrous

failure.

Charles I. 1625-1649.

When parliament met (1625) the Commons at first contented themselves

with voting a sum of money far too small to carry on the extensive

military and naval operations in which Charles had embarked. When the

king explained his necessities, they intimated that they had no

confidence in Buckingham, and asked that, before they granted further

supply, the king would name counsellors whom they could trust to advise

him on its employment. Charles at once dissolved parliament. He knew

that the demand for ministerial responsibility would in the end involve

his own responsibility, and, believing as he did that Buckingham's

arrangements had been merely unlucky, he declined to sacrifice the

minister whom he trusted.

The Petition of Right.

Charles and Buckingham did their best to win back popularity by

strenuous exertion. They attempted to found a great Protestant alliance

on the continent, and they sent a great expedition to Cadiz. The

Protestant alliance and the expedition to Cadiz ended in equal failure.

The second parliament of the reign (1626) impeached Buckingham for

crimes against the state. As Charles would not dismiss him simply

because the Commons were dissatisfied with him as a minister, they fell

back on charging him with criminal designs. Once more Charles dissolved

parliament to save Buckingham. Then came fresh enterprises and fresh

failures. A fleet under Lord Willoughby (afterwards earl of Lindsey) was

almost ruined by a storm. The king of Denmark, trusting to supplies from

England which never came, was defeated at Lutter. A new war in addition

to the Spanish war, broke out with France. A great expedition to Re,

under Buckingham's command (1627), intended to succour the Huguenots of

La Rochelle against their sovereign, ended in disaster. In order to

enable himself to meet expenditure on so vast a scale, Charles had

levied a forced loan from his subjects. Men of high rank in society who

refused to pay were imprisoned. Soldiers were billeted by force in

private houses, and military officers executed martial law on civilians.

When the imprisoned gentlemen appealed to the king's bench for a writ of

_habeas corpus_, it appeared that no cause of committal had been

assigned, and the judges therefore refused to liberate them. Still

Charles believed it possible to carry on the war, and especially to send

relief to La Rochelle, now strictly blockaded by the forces of the

French crown. In order to find the means for this object he summoned his

third parliament (1628). The Commons at once proceeded to draw a line

which should cut off the possibility of a repetition of the injuries of

which they complained. Charles was willing to surrender his claims to

billet soldiers by force, to order the execution of martial law in time

of peace, and to exact forced loans, benevolences, or any kind of

taxation, without consent of parliament; but he protested against the

demand that he should surrender the right to imprison without showing

cause. It was argued on his behalf that in case of a great conspiracy it

would be necessary to trust the crown with unusual powers to enable it

to preserve the peace. The Commons, who knew that the crown had used the

powers which it claimed, not against conspirators, but against the

commonwealth itself, refused to listen to the argument, and insisted on

the acceptance of the whole Petition of Right, in which they demanded

redress for all their grievances. The king at last gave his consent to

it, as he could obtain money in no other way. In after times, when any

real danger occurred which needed a suspension of the ordinary

safeguards of liberty, a remedy was found in the suspension of the law

by act of parliament; such a remedy, however, only became possible when

king and parliament were on good terms of agreement with one another.

Crown and parliament.

That time was as yet far distant. The House of Commons brought fresh

charges against Buckingham, whose murder soon after the prorogation

removed one subject of dispute. But when they met again (1629) they had

two quarrels left over from the preceding session. About a third part of

the king's revenue was derived from customs duties which had for many

generations been granted by parliament to each sovereign for life.

Charles held that this grant was little more than a matter of form,

whilst the Commons held that it was a matter of right. But for the other

dispute the difficulty would probably have been got over. The strong

Protestantism of Elizabeth's reign had assumed a distinctly Calvinistic

form, and the country gentlemen who formed the majority of the House of

Commons were resolutely determined that no other theology than that of

Calvin should be taught in England. In the last few years a reaction

against it had arisen especially in the universities, and those who

adopted an unpopular creed, and who at the same time showed tendencies

to a more ceremonial form of worship, naturally fell back on the support

of the crown. Charles, who might reasonably have exerted himself to

secure a fair liberty for all opinions, promoted these unpopular divines

to bishoprics and livings, and the divines in turn exalted the royal

prerogative above parliamentary rights. He now proposed that both sides

should keep silence on the points in dispute. The Commons rejected his

scheme, and prepared to call in question the most obnoxious of the

clergy. In this irritated temper they took up the question of tonnage

and poundage, and instead of confining themselves to the great public

question, they called to the bar some custom-house officers who happened

to have seized the goods of one of their members. Charles declared that

the seizure had taken place by his orders. When they refused to accept

the excuse, he dissolved parliament, but not before a tumult took place

in the House, and the speaker was forcibly held down in his chair whilst

resolutions hostile to the government were put to the vote.

For eleven years no parliament met again. The extreme action of the

Lower House was not supported by the people, and the king had the

opportunity, if he chose to use it, of putting himself right with the

nation after no long delay. But he never understood that power only

attends sympathetic leadership. He contented himself with putting

himself technically in the right, and with resting his case on the

favourable decisions of the judges. Under any circumstances, neither the

training nor the position of judges is such as to make them fit to be

the final arbiters of political disputes. They are accustomed to declare

what the law is, not what it ought to be. These judges, moreover, were

not in the position to be impartial. They had been selected by the king,

and were liable to be deprived of their office when he saw fit. In the

course of Charles's reign two chief justices and one chief baron were

dismissed or suspended. Besides the ordinary judges there were the

extraordinary tribunals, the court of high commission nominated by the

crown to punish ecclesiastical offenders, and the court of star chamber,

composed of the privy councillors and the chief justices, and therefore

also nominated by the crown, to inflict fine, imprisonment, and even

corporal mutilation on lay offenders. Those who rose up in any way

against the established order were sharply punished.

Ship-money.

The harsh treatment of individuals only calls forth resistance when

constitutional morality has sunk deeply into the popular mind. The

ignoring of the feelings and prejudices of large classes has a deeper

effect. Charles's foreign policy, and his pretentious claim to the

sovereignty of the British seas, demanded the support of a fleet, which

might indeed be turned to good purpose in offering a counterpoise to the

growing navies of France and Holland. The increasing estrangement

between him and the nation made him averse from the natural remedy of a

parliament, and he reverted to the absolute practices of the middle

ages, in order that he might strain them far beyond the warrant of

precedent to levy a tax under the name of ship-money, first on the port

towns and then on the whole of England. Payment was resisted by John

Hampden, a Buckinghamshire squire; but the judges declared that the king

was in the right (1638). Yet the arguments used by Hampden's lawyers

sunk deeply into the popular mind, and almost every man in England who

was called on to pay the tax looked upon the king as a wrong-doer under

the forms of law.

The Church.

In his ecclesiastical policy Charles was equally out of touch with the

feelings of his people. He shared to the full his father's dislike and

distrust of the Puritans, and he supported with the whole weight of the

crown the attempt of William Laud (q.v.), since 1633 archbishop of

Canterbury, to enforce conformity to the ritual prescribed by the Prayer

Book. At the same time offence was given to the Puritans by an order

that every clergyman should read the Declaration of Sports, in which the

king directed that no one should be prevented from dancing or shooting

at the butts on Sunday afternoon. Many of the clergy were suspended or

deprived, many emigrated to Holland or New England, and of those who

remained a large part bore the yoke with feelings of ill-concealed

dissatisfaction. Suspicion was easily aroused that a deep plot existed,

of which Laud was believed to be the centre, for carrying the nation

over to the Church of Rome, a suspicion which seemed to be converted

into a certainty when it was known that Panzani and Conn, two agents of

the pope, had access to Charles, and that in 1637 there was a sudden

accession to the number of converts to the Roman Catholic Church amongst

the lords and ladies of the court.

Charles and Scotland.

In the summer of 1638 Charles had long ceased to reign in the affections

of his subjects. But their traditionary loyalty had not yet failed, and

if he had not called on them for fresh exertions, it is possible that

the coming revolution would have been long delayed. Men were ready to

shout applause in honour of Puritan martyrs like Prynne, Burton and

Bastwick, whose ears were cut off in 1637, or in honour of the lawyers

who argued such a case as that of Hampden. But no signs of active

resistance had yet appeared. Unluckily for Charles, he was likely to

stand in need of the active co-operation of Englishmen. He had attempted

to force a new Prayer Book upon the Scottish nation. A riot at Edinburgh

in 1637 quickly led to national resistance, and when in November 1638

the general assembly at Glasgow set Charles's orders at defiance, he was

compelled to choose between tame submission and immediate war. In 1639

he gathered an English force, and marched towards the border. But

English laymen, though asked to supply the money which he needed for the

support of his army, deliberately kept it in their pockets, and the

contributions of the clergy and of official persons were not sufficient

to enable him to keep his troops long in the field. The king, therefore,

thought it best to agree to terms of pacification. Misunderstandings

broke out as to the interpretation of the treaty, and Charles having

discovered that the Scots were intriguing with France, fancied that

England, in hatred of its ancient foe, would now be ready to rally to

his standard. After an interval of eleven years, in April 1640 he once

more called a parliament.

The Short Parliament.

The Scottish invasion.

The Short Parliament, as it was called, demanded redress of grievances,

the abandonment of the claim to levy ship-money, and a complete change

in the ecclesiastical system. Charles thought that it would not be worth

while even to conquer Scotland on such terms, and dissolved parliament.

A fresh war with Scotland followed. Wentworth, now earl of Strafford,

became the leading adviser of the king. With all the energy of his

disposition he threw himself into Charles's plans, and left no stone

unturned to furnish the new expedition with supplies and money. But no

skilfulness of a commander can avail when soldiers are determined not to

fight. The Scots crossed the Tweed, and Charles's army was well pleased

to fly before them. In a short time the whole of Northumberland and

Durham were in the hands of the invaders. Charles was obliged to leave

these two counties in their hands as a pledge for the payment of their

expenses; and he was also obliged to summon parliament to grant him the

supplies which he needed for that object.

The Long Parliament.

Attainder of Strafford.

When the Long Parliament met in November 1640 it was in a position in

which no parliament had been before. Though nominally the Houses did not

command a single soldier, they had in reality the whole Scottish army at

their back. By refusing supplies they would put it out of the king's

power to fulfil his engagements to that army, and it would immediately

pursue its onward march to claim its rights. Hence there was scarcely

anything which the king could venture to deny the Commons. Under Pym's

leadership, they began by asking the head of Strafford. Nominally he was

accused of a number of acts of oppression in the north of England and in

Ireland. His real offence lay in his attempt to make the king absolute,

and in the design with which he was credited of intending to bring over

an Irish army to crush the liberties of England. If he had been a man of

moderate abilities he might have escaped. But the Commons feared his

commanding genius too much to let him go free. They began with an

impeachment. Difficulties arose, and the impeachment was turned into a

bill of attainder. The king abandoned his minister, and the execution of

Strafford left Charles without a single man of supreme ability on his

side. Then came rapidly a succession of blows at the supports by which

the Tudor monarchy had been upheld. The courts of star chamber and high

commission and the council of the north were abolished. The raising of

tonnage and poundage without a parliamentary grant was declared illegal.

The judges who had given obnoxious decisions were called to answer for

their fault and were taught that they were responsible to the House of

Commons as well as the king. Finally a bill was passed providing that

the existing House should not be dissolved without its own consent.

It was clearly a revolutionary position which the House had assumed. But

it was assumed because it was impossible to expect that a king who had

ruled as Charles had ruled could take up a new position as the exponent

of the feelings which were represented in the Commons. As long as

Charles lived he could not be otherwise than an object of suspicion; and

yet if he were dethroned there was no one available to fill his place.

There arose therefore two parties in the House, one ready to trust the

king, the other disinclined to put any confidence in him at all. The

division was the sharper because it coincided with a difference in

matters of religion. Scarcely any one wished to see the Laudian

ceremonies upheld. But the members who favoured the king, and who formed

a considerable minority, wished to see a certain liberty of religious

thought, together with a return under a modified Episcopacy to the forms

of worship which prevailed before Laud had taken the church in hand. The

other side, which had the majority by a few votes, wished to see the

Puritan creed prevail in all its strictness, and were favourable to the

establishment of the Presbyterian discipline. The king by his unwise

action threw power into the hands of his opponents. He listened with

tolerable calmness to their Grand Remonstrance, but his attempt to seize

the five members whom he accused of high treason made a good

understanding impossible. The Scottish army had been paid off some

months before, and civil war was the only means of deciding the quarrel.

The civil war.

Presbyterians and Independents.

At first the fortune of war wavered. Edgehill was a drawn battle (1642),

and the campaign of 1643, though it was on the whole favourable to the

king, gave no decisive results. Before the year was at an end parliament

invited a new Scottish army to intervene in England. As an inducement,

the Solemn League and Covenant was signed by all Parliamentarian

Englishmen, the terms of which were interpreted by the Scots to bind

England to submit to Presbyterianism, though the most important clauses

had been purposely left vague, so as to afford a loophole of escape. The

battle of Marston Moor, with the defeat of the Royalist forces in the

north, was the result. But the battle did not improve the position of

the Scots. They had been repulsed, and the victory was justly ascribed

to the English contingent. The composition of that contingent was such

as to have a special political significance. Its leader was Oliver

Cromwell. It was formed by men who were fierce Puritan enthusiasts, and

who for the very reason that the intensity of their religion separated

them from the mass of their countrymen, had learnt to uphold with all

the energy of zeal the doctrine that neither church nor state had a

right to interfere with the forms of worship which each congregation

might select for itself (see CONGREGATIONALISM and CROMWELL, OLIVER).

The principle advocated by the army, and opposed by the Scots and the

majority of the House of Commons, was liberty of sectarian association.

Some years earlier, under the dominion of Laud, another principle had

been proclaimed by Chillingworth and Hales, that of liberty of thought

within the unity of the church. Both these movements conduced to the

ultimate establishment of toleration, but for the present the

Independents were to have their way.

The second civil war.

Execution of the king.

The Presbyterian leaders, Essex and Manchester, were not successful

leaders. The army was remodelled after Cromwell's pattern, and the king

was finally crushed at Naseby (1645). The next year (1646) he

surrendered to the Scots. Then followed two years of fruitless

negotiation, in which after the Scots abandoned the king to the English

parliament, the army took him out of the hands of the parliament, whilst

each in turn tried to find some basis of arrangement on which he might

reign without ruling. Such a basis could not be found, and when Charles

stirred up a fresh civil war and a Scottish invasion (1648) the leaders

of the army vowed that, if victory was theirs, they would bring him to

justice. To do this it was necessary to drive out a large number of the

members of the House of Commons by what was known as Pride's Purge, and

to obtain from the mutilated Commons the dismissal of the House of

Lords, and the establishment of a high court of justice, before which

the king was brought to trial and sentenced to death. He was beheaded on

a scaffold outside the windows of Whitehall (1649).[5]

The Commonwealth.

Cromwell's protectorate.

The government set up was a government by the committees of a council of

state nominally supporting themselves on the House of Commons, though

the members who still retained their places were so few that the council

of state was sufficiently numerous to form a majority in the House.

During eleven years the nation passed through many vicissitudes in its

forms of government. These forms take no place in the gradual

development of English institutions, and have never been referred to as

affording precedents to be followed. To the student of political

science, however, they have a special interest of their own, as they

show that when men had shaken themselves loose from the chain of habit

and prejudice, and had set themselves to build up a political shelter

under which to dwell, they were irresistibly attracted by that which was

permanent in the old constitutional forms of which the special

development had of late years been so disastrous. After Cromwell had

suppressed resistance in Ireland (1649), had conquered Scotland (1650),

and had overthrown the son of the late king, the future Charles II., at

Worcester (1651), the value of government by an assembly was tested and

found wanting. After Cromwell had expelled the remains of the Long

Parliament (1653), and had set up another assembly of nominated members,

that second experiment was found equally wanting. It was necessary to

have recourse to one head of the executive government, controlling and

directing its actions. Cromwell occupied this position as lord

protector. He did all that was in his power to do to prevent his

authority from degenerating into tyranny. He summoned two parliaments,

of only one House, and with the consent of the second parliament he

erected a second House, so that he might have some means of checking the

Lower House without constantly coming into personal collision with its

authority. As far as form went, the constitution in 1658, so far as it

differed from the Stuart constitution, differed for the better. But it

suffered from one fatal defect. It was based on the rule of the sword.

The only substitute for traditional authority is the clearly expressed

expression of the national will, and it is impossible to doubt that if

the national will had been expressed it would have swept away Cromwell

and all his system. The majority of the upper and middle classes, which

had united together against Laud, was now reunited against Cromwell. The

Puritans themselves were but a minority, and of that minority

considerable numbers disliked the free liberty accorded to the sects.

Whilst the worship of the Church of England was proscribed, every

illiterate or frenzied enthusiast was allowed to harangue at his

pleasure. Those who cared little for religion felt insulted when they

saw a government with which they had no sympathy ruling by means of an

army which they dreaded and detested. Cromwell did his best to avert a

social revolution, and to direct the energies of his supporters into the

channels of merely political change. But he could not prevent, and it

cannot be said that he wished to prevent, the rise of men of ability

from positions of social inferiority. The nation had striven against the

arbitrary government of the king; but it was not prepared to shake off

the predominance of that widely spreading aristocracy which, under the

name of country gentlemen, had rooted itself too deeply to be easily

passed by. Cromwell's rule was covered with military glory, and there

can be no doubt that he honestly applied himself to solve domestic

difficulties as well. But he reaped the reward of those who strive for

something better than the generation in which they live is able to

appreciate. His own faults and errors were remembered against him. He

tried in vain to establish constitutional government and religious

toleration (see CROMWELL, OLIVER). When he died (1658) there remained

branded on the national mind two strong impressions which it took more

than a century to obliterate--the dread of the domination of a standing

army, and abhorrence of the very name of religious zeal.

The anarchy.

The eighteen months which followed deepened the impression thus formed.

The army had appeared a hard master when it lent its strength to a wise

and sagacious rule. It was worse when it undertook to rule in its own

name, to set up and pull down parliaments and governments. The only

choice left to the nation seemed to be one between military tyranny and

military anarchy. Therefore it was that when Monk advanced from Scotland

and declared for a free parliament, there was little doubt that the new

parliament would recall the exiled king, and seek to build again on the

old foundations.

The Restoration.

The Restoration was effected by a coalition between the Cavaliers, or

followers of Charles I., and the Presbyterians who had originally

opposed him. It was only after the nature of a great reaction that the

latter should for a time be swamped by the former. The Long Parliament

of the Restoration met in 1661, and the Act of Uniformity entirely

excluded all idea of reform in the Puritan direction, and ordered the

expulsion from their benefices of all clergymen who refused to express

approval of the whole of the Book of Common Prayer (1662). A previous

statute, the Corporation Act (1661), ordered that all members of

corporations should renounce the Covenant and the doctrine that subjects

might in any case rightfully use force against their king, and should

receive the sacrament after the forms of the Church of England. The

object for which Laud had striven, the compulsory imposition of

uniformity, thus became part of the law of the land.

Herein lay the novelty of the system of the Restoration. The system of

Laud and the system of Cromwell had both been imposed by a minority

which had possessed itself of the powers of government. The new

uniformity was imposed by parliament, and parliament had the nation

behind it. For the first time, therefore, all those who objected to the

established religion sought, not to alter its forms to suit themselves,

but to gain permission to worship in separate congregations. Ultimately,

the dissenters, as they began to be called, would obtain their object.

As soon as it became clear to the mass of the nation that the dissenters

were in a decided minority, there would be no reason to fear the utmost

they could do even if the present liberty of worship and teaching were

conceded to them. For the present, however, they were feared out of all

proportion to their numbers. They counted amongst them the old soldiers

of the Protectorate, and though that army had been dissolved, it always

seemed possible that it might spring to arms once more. A bitter

experience had taught men that a hundred of Oliver's Ironsides might

easily chase a thousand Cavaliers; and as long as this danger was

believed to exist, every effort would be made to keep dissent from

spreading. Hence the Conventicle Act (1664) imposed penalties on those

taking part in religious meetings in private houses, and the Five Mile

Act (1665) forbade an expelled clergyman to come within five miles of a

corporate borough, the very place where he was most likely to secure

adherence, unless he would swear his adhesion to the doctrine of

non-resistance.

Doctrine of non-resistance.

The first Dutch war.

The doctrine of non-resistance was evidently that by which, at this

time, the loyal subject was distinguished from those whom he stigmatized

as disloyal. Yet even the most loyal found that, if it was wrong to take

up arms against the king, it might be right to oppose him in other ways.

Even the Cavaliers did not wish to see Charles II. an absolute

sovereign. They wished to reconstruct the system which had been

violently interrupted by the events of the autumn of 1641, and to found

government on the co-operation between king and parliament, without

defining to themselves what was to be done if the king's conduct became

insufferable. Openly, indeed, Charles II. did not force them to

reconsider their position. He did not thrust members of the Commons into

prison, or issue writs for ship-money. He laid no claim to taxation

which had not been granted by parliament. But he was extravagant and

self-indulgent, and he wanted more money than they were willing to

supply. A war with the Dutch broke out, and there were strong suspicions

that Charles applied money voted for the fleet to the maintenance of a

vicious and luxurious court. Against the vice and luxury, indeed, little

objection was likely to be brought. The over-haste of the Puritans to

drill England into ways of morality and virtue had thrown at least the

upper classes into a slough of revelry and baseness. But if the vice did

not appear objectionable the expense did, and a new chapter in the

financial history of the government was opened when the Commons, having

previously gained control over taxation, proceeded to vindicate their

right to control expenditure.

The Commons aim at control over expenditure.

As far, indeed, as taxation was concerned, the Long Parliament had not

left its successor much to do. The abolition of feudal tenures and

purveyance had long been demanded, and the conclusion of an arrangement

which had been mooted in the reign of James I. is only notable as

affording one instance out of many of the tendency of a single class to

shift burdens off its own shoulders. The predominant landowners

preferred the grant of an excise, which would be taken out of all

pockets, to a land-tax which would exclusively be felt by those who were

relieved by the abolition of the tenures. The question of expenditure

was constantly telling on the relations between the king and the House

of Commons. After the Puritan army had been disbanded, the king resolved

to keep on foot a petty force of 5000 men, and he had much difficulty in

providing for it out of a revenue which had not been intended by those

who voted it to be used for such a purpose. Then came the Dutch war,

bringing with it a suspicion that some at least of the money given for

paying sailors and fitting out ships was employed by Charles on very

different objects. The Commons accordingly, in 1665, succeeded in

enforcing, on precedents derived from the reigns of Richard II. and

Henry IV., the right of appropriating the supplies granted to special

objects; and with more difficulty they obtained, in 1666, the

appointment of a commission empowered to investigate irregularities in

the issue of moneys. Such measures were the complement of the control

over taxation which they had previously gained, and as far as their

power of supervision went, it constituted them and not the king the

directors of the course of government. If this result was not

immediately felt, it was because the king had a large certain revenue

voted to him for life, so that, for the present at least, it was only

his extraordinary expenses which could be brought under parliamentary

control. Nor did even the renewal of parliamentary impeachment, which

ended in the banishment of Lord Chancellor Clarendon (1667), bring on

any direct collision with the king. If the Commons wished to be rid of

him because he upheld the prerogative, the king was equally desirous to

be rid of him because he looked coldly on the looseness of the royal

morals.

Charles II. and Louis XIV.

The great motive power of the later politics of the reign was to be

found beyond the Channel. To the men of the days of Charles II., Louis

XIV. of France was what Philip II. of Spain had been to the men of the

days of Elizabeth. Gradually, in foreign policy, the commercial

emulation with the Dutch, which found vent in one war in the time of the

Commonwealth, and in two wars in the time of Charles II., gave way to a

dread, rising into hatred, of the arrogant potentate who, at the head of

the mightiest army in Europe, treated with contempt all rights which

came into collision with his own wishes. Louis XIV., moreover, though

prepared to quarrel with the pope in the matter of his own authority

over the Gallican Church, was a bigoted upholder of Catholic orthodoxy,

and Protestants saw in his political ambitions a menace to their

religion. In the case of England there seemed a special danger to

Protestantism; for whatever religious sympathies Charles II. possessed

were with the Roman Catholic faith, and in his annoyance at the

interference of the Commons with his expenditure he was not ashamed to

stoop to become the pensioner of the French king. In 1670 the secret

treaty of Dover was signed. Charles was to receive from Louis L200,000 a

year and the aid of 6000 French troops to enable him to declare himself

a convert, and to obtain special advantages for his religion, whilst he

was also to place the forces of England at Louis's disposal for his

purposes of aggression on the continent of Europe.

Second Dutch war, and declaration of indulgence.

Charles had no difficulty in stirring up the commercial jealousy of

England so as to bring about a second Dutch war (1672). The next year,

unwilling to face the dangers of his larger plan, he issued a

declaration of indulgence, which, by a single act of the prerogative,

suspended all penal laws against Roman Catholics and dissenters alike.

To the country gentlemen who constituted the cavalier parliament, and

who had long been drifting into opposition to the crown, this was

intolerable. The predominance of the Church of England was the prime

article of their political creed; they dreaded the Roman Catholics; they

hated and despised the dissenters. Under any circumstances an indulgence

would have been most distasteful to them. But the growing belief that

the whole scheme was merely intended to serve the purposes of the Roman

Catholics converted their dislike into deadly opposition. Yet the

parliament resolved to base its opposition upon constitutional grounds.

The right claimed by the king to suspend the laws was questioned, and

his claim to special authority in ecclesiastical matters was treated

with contempt. The king gave way and withdrew his declaration. But no

solemn act of parliament declared it to be illegal, and in due course of

time it would be heard of again.

The Test Act.

The Commons followed up their blow by passing the Test Act, making the

reception of the sacrament according to the forms of the Church of

England, and the renunciation of the doctrine of transubstantiation, a

necessary qualification for office. At once it appeared what a hold the

members of the obnoxious church had had upon the administration of the

state. The lord high admiral, the lord treasurer, and a secretary of

state refused to take the test. The lord high admiral was the heir to

the throne, the king's brother, the duke of York.

Danby's ministry.

The Popish plot.

Charles, as usual, bent before the storm. In Danby (see LEEDS, 1ST DUKE

OF) he found a minister whose views answered precisely to the views of

the existing House of Commons. Like the Commons, Danby wished to silence

both Roman Catholics and dissenters. Like the Commons, too, he wished to

embark on a foreign policy hostile to France. But he served a master who

regarded Louis less as a possible adversary than as a possible

paymaster. Sometimes Danby was allowed to do as he liked, and the

marriage of the duke of York's eldest daughter Mary to her cousin the

prince of Orange was the most lasting result of his administration. More

often he was obliged to follow where Charles led, and Charles was

constantly ready to sell the neutrality of England for large sums of

French gold. At last one of these negotiations was detected, and Danby,

who was supposed to be the author instead of the unwilling instrument of

the intrigue, was impeached. In order to save his minister, Charles

dissolved parliament (1678). He could not have chosen a more unlucky

time for his own quiet. The strong feeling against the Roman Catholics

had been quickened into a flame by a great imposture. The inventors of

the so-called popish plot charged the leading English Roman Catholics

with a design to murder the king. Judges and juries alike were maddened

with excitement, and listened greedily to the lies which poured forth

from the lips of profligate informers. Innocent blood was shed in

abundance.

The Exclusion Bill.

The excitement had its root in the uneasy feeling caused by the

knowledge that the heir to the throne was a Roman Catholic. Three

parliaments were summoned and dissolved. In each parliament the main

question at issue between the Commons and the crown was the Exclusion

Bill, by which the Commons sought to deprive the duke of York of his

inheritance; and it was notorious that the leaders of the movement

wished the crown to descend to the king's illegitimate son, the duke of

Monmouth.

Whigs and Tories.

The principles by which the Commons were guided in these parliaments

were very different from those which had prevailed in the first

parliament of the Restoration. Those principles, to which that party

adhered which about this time became known as the Tory party, had been

formed under the influence of the terror caused by militant Puritanism.

In the state the Tory inherited the ideas of Clarendon, and, without

being at all ready to abandon the claims of parliaments, nevertheless

somewhat inconsistently spoke of the king as ruling by a divine and

indefeasible title, and wielding a power which it was both impious and

unconstitutional to resist by force. In the church he inherited the

ideas of Laud, and saw in the maintenance of the Act of Uniformity the

safeguard of religion. But the hold of these opinions on the nation had

been weakened with the cessation of the causes which had produced them.

In 1680 twenty years had passed since the Puritan army had been

disbanded. Many of Cromwell's soldiers had died, and most of them were

growing old. The dissenters had shown no signs of engaging in plots or

conspiracies. They were known to be only a comparatively small minority

of the population, and though they had been cruelly persecuted, they had

suffered without a thought of resistance. Dread of the dissenters,

therefore, had become a mere chimaera, which only those could entertain

whose minds were influenced by prejudice. On the other hand, dread of

the Roman Catholics was a living force. Unless the law were altered a

Roman Catholic would be on the throne, wielding all the resources of the

prerogative, and probably supported by all the resources of the king of

France. Hence the leading principle of the Whigs, as the predominant

party was now called, was in the state to seek for the highest national

authority in parliament rather than in the king, and in the church to

adopt the rational theology of Chillingworth and Hales, whilst looking

to the dissenters as allies against the Roman Catholics, who were the

enemies of both.

Tory reaction.

Events were to show that it was a wise provision which led the Whigs to

seek to exclude the duke of York from the throne. But their plan

suffered under two faults, the conjunction of which was ruinous to them

for the time. In the first place, their choice of Monmouth as the heir

was infelicitous. Not only was he under the stain of illegitimacy, but

his succession excluded the future succession of Mary, whose husband,

the prince of Orange, was the hope of Protestant Europe. In the second

place, drastic remedies are never generally acceptable when the evil to

be remedied is still in the future. When, in the third of the short

parliaments held at Oxford the Whigs rode armed into the city, the

nation decided that the future danger of a Roman Catholic succession was

incomparably less than the immediate danger of another civil war. Loyal

addresses poured in to the king. For the four remaining years of his

reign he ruled without summoning any parliament. Whigs were brought

before prejudiced juries and partial judges. Their blood flowed on the

scaffold. The charter of the city of London was confiscated. The reign

of the Tories was unquestioned. Yet it was not quite what the reign of

the Cavaliers had been in 1660. The violence of the Restoration had been

directed primarily against Puritanism, and only against certain forms of

government so far as they allowed Puritans to gain the upper hand. The

violence of the Tories was directed against rebellion and disorder, and

only against dissenters so far as they were believed to be the fomenters

of disorder. Religious hatred had less part in the action of the ruling

party, and even from its worst actions a wise man might have predicted

that the day of toleration was not so far off as it seemed.

James II., 1685-1688.

The accession of James II. (1685) put the views of the opponents of the

Exclusion Bill to the test. A new parliament was elected, almost

entirely composed of decided Tories. A rebellion in Scotland, headed by

the earl of Argyll, and a rebellion in England, headed by the duke of

Monmouth, were easily suppressed. But the inherent difficulties of the

king's position were not thereby overcome. It would have been hard, in

days in which religious questions occupied so large a space in the field

of politics, for a Roman Catholic sovereign to rule successfully over a

Protestant nation. James set himself to make it, in his case,

impossible. It may be that he did not consciously present to himself any

object other than fair treatment for his co-religionists. On the one

hand, however, he alienated even reasonable opponents by offering no

guarantees that equality so gained would not be converted into

superiority by the aid of his own military force and of the assistance

of the French king; whilst on the other hand he relied, even more

strongly than his father had done, on the technical legality which

exalted the prerogative in defiance of the spirit of the law. He began

by making use of the necessity of resisting Monmouth to increase his

army, under the pretext of the danger of a repetition of the late

rebellion; and in the regiments thus levied he appointed many Roman

Catholic officers who had refused to comply with the Test Act. Rather

than submit to the gentlest remonstrance, he prorogued parliament, and

proceeded to obtain from the court of king's bench a judgment in favour

of his right to dispense with all penalties due by law, in the same way

that his grandfather had appealed to the judges in the matter of the

post-nati. But not only was the question put by James II. of far wider

import than the question put by James I., but he deprived the court to

which he applied of all moral authority by previously turning out of

office the judges who were likely to disagree with him, and by

appointing new ones who were likely to agree with him. A court of high

commission of doubtful legality was subsequently erected (1686) to

deprive or suspend clergymen who made themselves obnoxious to the court,

whilst James appointed Roman Catholics to the headship of certain

colleges at Oxford. The legal support given him by judges of his own

selection was fortified by the military support of an army collected at

Hounslow Heath; and a Roman Catholic, the earl of Tyrconnel, was sent as

lord-deputy to Ireland (1687) to organize a Roman Catholic army on which

the king might fall back if his English forces proved insufficient for

his purpose.

James's declaration of indulgence.

Trial of the seven bishops.

Thus fortified, James issued a declaration of indulgence (1687) granting

full religious liberty to all his subjects. The belief, that the grant

of liberty to all religions was only intended to serve as a cloak for

the ascendancy of one, was so strong that the measure roused the

opposition of all those who objected to see the king's will substituted

for the law, even if they wished to see the Protestant dissenters

tolerated. In spite of this opposition, the king thought it possible to

obtain a parliamentary sanction for his declaration. The parliament to

which he intended to appeal was, however, to be as different a body from

the parliament which met in the first year of his reign as the bench of

judges which had approved of the dispensing power had been different

from the bench which existed at his accession. A large number of the

borough members were in those days returned by the corporations, and

the corporations were accordingly changed. But so thoroughly was the

spirit of the country roused, that many even of the new corporations

were set against James's declaration, and he had therefore to abandon

for a time the hope of seeing it accepted even by a packed House of

Commons. All, however, that he could do to give it force he did. He

ordered the clergy to read it in all pulpits (1688). Seven bishops, who

presented a petition asking him to relieve the clergy from the burthen

of proclaiming what they believed to be illegal, were brought to trial

for publishing a seditious libel. Their acquittal by a jury was the

first serious blow to the system adopted by the king.

Revolution of 1688.

Another event which seemed likely to consolidate his power was in

reality the signal of his ruin. The queen bore him a son. There was thus

no longer a strong probability that the king would be succeeded at no

great distance of time by a Protestant heir. Popular incredulity

expressed itself in the assertion that, as James had attempted to gain

his ends by means of a packed bench of judges and a packed House of

Commons, he had now capped the series of falsifications by the

production of a supposititious heir. The leaders of both parties

combined to invite the prince of Orange to come to the rescue of the

religion and laws of England. He landed on the 5th of November at

Brixham. Before he could reach London every class of English society had

declared in his favour. James was deserted even by his army. He fled to

France, and a convention parliament, summoned without the royal writ,

declared that his flight was equivalent to abdication, and offered the

crown in joint sovereignty to William and Mary (1689).