dissolved in acid can be recovered through chemical means and
enunciated the doctrine that each thing in nature has its own
specific organization.
The king and his court entourage settled for most of the year in
Whitehall instead of traveling around the country. The king let
the public into Hyde Park for recreation. The City of London and
Westminster were still separate, but a mass of hovels was
springing up in between them. The water carrier was still active
and the night transport of sewage necessary. In certain areas
there were houses crowded with those wanted for minor offenses,
small thefts, and debt. Bailiffs did not dare venture into these
areas because the inhabitants hid and defended each other unless
the offense was a major one. The penalty for stealing even small
sums was still death.
Inigo Jones was the first architect of consequence. He had
studied in Italy and designed and built the Banqueting House at
Whitehall in London in 1622. It had classical proportions and nice
shaping and dressing in stone. He was now an arbiter of taste for
the King Charles and his Queen and built many structures for them,
including the Queen's Chapel at St. James Palace and her bedroom
in the Queen's Hose in Greenwich. All over London and the country
he and his pupils built many classical buildings, including
houses, churches, stables, lodgings, out-buildings, staircases,
galleries, watergates, and archways. They stood in stark contrast
to the Tudor buildings around them. In the 1632, Jones started
town planning in London with Covent Garden fruit and vegetable
market with terraced houses around a central piazza surrounded by
open arcades with a Tuscan church at one end. In 1634, a man from
the suburb of Hackney introduced a line of coaches rented at 1s.
per hour. They soon became very popular.
A large part of England was rebuilt as yeomen expanded their
houses and others lower in rank replaced mud and wood hovels with
brick and stone cottages. A separate kitchen appeared. The ground
floors are boarded over to create bedrooms. Permanent stairs
replace ladders. Glass appears in windows. Glass and crockery
replace wood and pewter, Chairs replace benches. Knives and forks
become common.
About 1640 began travel between towns by covered wagons called
stage coaches. They carried passengers and goods and stopped at
inns for stabling and repairs.
Work was begun in 1630 to make canals that would make marsh
waters run to the sea. Barges on canals were the most efficient
mode of transportation. A barge could carry 50 tons on a canal
and only 30 tons on a river. A single horse could haul an 8-ton
wagon on iron rails or on a soft road, but only 1/8 of a ton on
his back.
Real wages, which had been falling, reached their low point and
the gap between the poor and others widened. There were
depressions from 1629-32 and from 1636 to about 1640, which called
for Royal proclamations for the relief and distress, especially
among the poor. The Book of Orders, for the relief of distress in
earlier reigns, was to be reissued. The assize of beer and bread
maintaining quality, prices, weights, and measures, was to be duly
kept. Hoarding of foodstuffs was to be punished. Fish days and
lent were to be observed to maintain the fishers. Abstaining from
suppers on Fridays and on the eves of feasts was ordered in all
taverns and commended to private families. City corporations were
to give up their usual feasts and half the charge given to the
poor. Foreign ships were not to be supplied with food for long
voyages. The revised Book of Orders also covered the regulation of
beggary, the binding of apprentices, and the general relief of the
poor. All magistrates were to enforce the rules and raise special
rates from all parishes, the richer of these to help the poorer.
A new trend of spring-sown crops led to better crop balance and
reduced the risks of scarcity in a bad year. But the economy was
still volatile.
There were riots in London in 1640-1 from a complete breakdown in
political consensus, the factions being the Royalist City elite
versus the middling and lesser merchants and craftsmen.
In 1631, the clock makers broke away from the control of the
Blacksmiths. The gunmakers also broke away from the Blacksmiths.
The tinplate workers broke away from the Ironmongers.
"Searching" for bad cloth became more difficult as the industry
became more diversified. For instance, a new machine called a gig-
mill did the work of many hand finishers. In 1633, Charles issued
a commission for the reformation of the cloth industry with minute
directions for the manufacture of cloth. But there were many
disagreements over the details of manufacture and reform was
difficult to enforce.
By the 1630s, many parishes had a resident intellectual for the
first time. The parish priests came from gentry, upper yeomanry,
urban tradesmen and clerical families. They were educated and
highly learned. They had libraries and were in touch with
contemporary religious debates. They saw their role primarily as
pastoral care. Many wanted to improve the religious knowledge and
moral conduct of their parishioners. Puritan influence deepened as
they forbade dancing, games, minstrels, and festivals. They
punished superstitious conduct. They initiated prosecutions in
church courts for sexual lapses and drunkenness. The church court
had little coercive power and its punishments were restricted to
penance or excommunication. Many Puritan sects espoused equality
for women. By the 1640s women were preachers, e.g. in the Baptist
and Anabaptist religions and, until 1660, prophetesses. These
sects were mostly composed of the lower echelons of society.
The poor people did not respond to sermons as did the well-to-do.
Nor were they as involved in church activity, attending church
only for marriages, baptisms, and funerals.
Charles I not only believed in the divine right of kings and was
authoritarian; he was the ultimate autocrat. He had an unalterable
conviction that he was superior to other men, who were
insignificant and privileged to revolve around him. He issued
directives to reverse jury verdicts. Parliamentarians Oliver
Cromwell and other educated men opposed this view. The Commons
voted not to grant Charles the usual custom-dues for life, making
it instead renewable each year, conditioned on the king's
behavior. Charles dissolved Parliament before this passed. He
continued to take tonnage and poundage.
He wanted money for war so he imposed many taxes, but without the
consent of Parliament. They included many of which had fallen into
disuse. He imposed a compulsory "loan" on private individuals,
which the courts held was illegal, and imprisoned those who
refused. Bail was denied to these men. Simpler people who refused
were threatened with impressment into the Navy, which included
being landed on shore to fight as marines and soldiers. They
sought to revive the old writ of habeas corpus [produce the body]
to get released, but to no avail. The old writ had been just to
bring to court those persons needed for proceedings, but Coke in
1614 had cited the writ with a new meaning "to have the body
together with the cause of detention". Charles billeted unpaid and
unruly soldiers in private homes, which they plundered. It was
customary to quarter them in inns and public houses at royal
expense. Martial law was declared and soldiers were executed. But
the citizens did not want martial law either.
The Magna Carta was now seen as a protector of basic liberties.
Both attorneys and laymen read "The Pastyme of People" written by
John Rastell in 1529, which described the history of the Magna
Carta from 1215 to 1225. Also read was the "Great Abridgment" of
the English law written by Rastell in 1527, and Coke's volume of
his Institutes which dealt with the Magna Carta, which the Crown
took to prevent being published until 1642, when Parliament
allowed it. Broad-scale pamphleteering turned England into a
school of political discussion. Oxford University favored the
established church and Cambridge University was Puritan.
The estates of the members of the House of Commons were three
times the extent of the members' of the House of Lords. Bishops'
estates had diminished considerably because of secularization. The
members of the House of Commons were elected [chosen] by the
people. For these reasons, the House of Commons asserted a
preeminence to the House of Lords.
The House of Commons drew up a Petition of Right in 1627, which
expanded upon the principles of Magna Carta and sought to fix
definite bounds between royal power and the power of the law. It
protested the loans compelled under pain of imprisonment and
stated that no tax or the like should be exacted without the
common consent of Parliament. It quoted previous law that "...no
freeman may be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his
freeholds or liberties, or his free customs, or be outlawed or
exiled; or in any manner destroyed, but by the lawful judgment of
his peers, or by the law of the land" and that "...no man of what
estate or condition that he be, should be put out of his land or
tenements, nor taken, nor imprisoned nor disinherited, nor put to
death without being brought to answer by due process of law". It
continued that "... divers of your subjects have of late been
imprisoned without any cause showed; and when for their
deliverance they were brought before your Justices by your
Majesty's writs of Habeas Corpus, there to undergo and receive as
the court should order, and their keepers commanded to certify the
causes of their detainer, no cause was certified, but that they
were detained by your Majesty's special command, signified by the
Lords of your Privy Council, and yet were returned back to several
prisons, without being charged with anything to which they might
make answer according to the law." It also protested the billeting
of soldiers in private houses and martial law trying soldiers and
sailors. If these terms were agreed to by the King, he was to be
given a good sum of money. Since he needed the money, he yielded.
He expected tonnage and poundage for the Navy for life, as was the
custom. But he got it only for one year, to be renewable yearly.
The King agreed to the petition, quietly putting his narrow
interpretation on it, and it was put into the statute book.
In 1629 Parliament distinguished between treason to the king and
treason to the Commonwealth.
The Chief Justice held in 1638 that acts of Parliament to take
away the King's royal power in the defense of his kingdom were
void; the king may command his subjects, their persons, their
goods, and their money and acts of Parliament make no difference.
But the people refused to pay these taxes.
Charles thought of more ways to obtain money and disregarded his
agreement to the Petition of Right.
Without the consent of Parliament, he extended ship money to all
the kingdom instead of just the ports. It was used to outfit ships
for the protection of the coasts. Hampden refused to pay it on
principle and the courts ruled against him in the case of King v.
John Hampden and he was sent to prison. When distraints were
tried, the common people used violence to prevent them. The
bailiffs were pelted with rocks when they came to distrain. One
man used his pitchfork to take back his steer being taken by the
bailiff. If distraint were successful, people would refuse to buy
the distrained property of their neighbors.
Charles revived the right of the Crown to force knighthood on the
landed gentry for a fee.
Charles sold monopolies in such goods as soap, leather, salt,
wine, coal, and linen rags although they had been abolished in the
last Parliament of James. This made employment uncertain for
workers and prices high for the public, and put masters in danger
of loss of capital.
Fines were levied on people for the redress of defects in their
title deeds. Crown forest boundaries were arbitrarily extended and
landowners near Crown forests were heavily fined for their
encroachments on them. Money was extorted from London by an
illegal proclamation by which every house had to pay three years'
rental to the Crown to save itself from demolition.
But what incensed the people more than the money issue were the
changes in the established church. High churchmen, called
Ritualists, enforced ceremonies offensive to Puritan feeling in
every parish. The centrally placed communion tables were to be
placed at the east end within railings and called "altars", or
"mercy seats" as if for mass. They were to be ornamented with
crucifixes, images, pretty trifles, books, candles and rich
tapestries. Bowing was to be done when approaching them.
Clergymen were to be called "priests" and their authority treated
as divine. Worship was to be done in accordance with the
prescribed forms of Romish Breviars, Rituals, and Mass-books.
Its ritual was to have pomp and ceremony, including kneeling for
communion. Rings were to be used in marriages and crosses used in
baptisms. Churches, fonts, tables, pulpits, chalices and the like
were to be consecrated, thereby putting holiness in them. Churches
that did not do this but used unconsecrated or "polluted" articles
were closed by interdiction. Regard was to be had with regard to
days, postures, meats, and vestments. The clergy was to wear
supplices [white linen vestments flowing to the foot with lawn
sleeves] and embroidered copes [vestment over the head]. A Bishop
wore a four-cornered cap, cope and surplice with lawn-sleeves,
tippet (long, black scarf), hood, and canonical coat.
Churchwardens were to take oaths to inform against any who
disobeyed. The law still required that all attend Sunday sermons.
But parishes had some control over who was their preacher, even
though a minister could be assigned to a parish by the bishops
without the consent of the patron of the church or parish people.
By increasing the meager pay of a parish clergyman, they could
chose one with a compatible theology or employ a lecturer from
outside. The Ritualists scolded clergymen for "gospel preaching"
and suppressed Puritan preaching in public meetings. Preaching or
printing matter concerning the controversy of free will versus
predestination was forbidden. Geneva Bibles, which were popular
among laymen, were prohibited from being imported. Many were
excommunicated for sitting instead of kneeling at communion. The
clergy prohibited marriage if they liked by withholding their
license, and they licensed marriages without banns. The Ritualists
encouraged certain sports to be played after church on Sunday. The
Puritans protested vehemently to this because they wanted to
strictly observe the Sabbath. The Puritans saw the high churchmen
as wanting to return to the doctrine and customs they thought to
be Papist. The Ritualists were absolutists in their political
views and accepted the King's intervention in church matters. The
ecclesiastical Court of High Commission enforced the edicts of the
church, excommunicating those who did not conform and expelling
clergymen who, for instance, did not bow at the name of Jesus or
wear the surplice. It was used against the Puritans and imposed
high fines and imprisonment for religious eccentricity and Puritan
preaching. Charles supported the established church in this
endeavor because it agreed that he had a divine right to rule.
The universities and high churchmen were beginning to adopt the
doctrine of free will over predestination. Parliamentarian and
Puritan Oliver Cromwell and others feared this presaged a return
to justification by works and the popish faith. In Parliament, he
spoke out against the tyranny of the bishops, whose offices he
wanted abolished, and the elaborateness of church services.
To avoid persecution, many Puritans emigrated to Virginia and New
England. They were led by magistrates, country gentlemen,
prominent businessmen, attorneys, and other professionals. In
1629, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was chartered at the
instigation of John Winthrop as a Puritan refuge. Its leaders led
a migration of Puritans organized to include five each of
armorers, bakers, blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, merchants;
three each of clothiers, chandlers, coopers, military officers,
physicians, and tailors; two each of fishermen, herdsmen, and
masons; on tanner, and one weaver. The fare was five pounds and an
applicant was interviewed to make sure he was a Puritan. He got 50
acres, or more for a larger family. But if he paid 50 pounds into
the common stock he received 200 acres of land, plus 50 more for
each dependent. Maryland was founded in 1632 as a haven for
Catholics, but its charter precluded a government-established
religion. It was granted to Lord Baltimore to hold in free socage
and was named after King James II's Queen, who was overtly
Catholic. Catholics in England could practice their religion only
in their homes and could not carry arms.
As hostility grew, censorship of books and plays accelerated and
the number of authorized printers was reduced in 1637 by decree of
the Star Chamber. In 1640s effective government control of the
press collapsed. Then there were many pamphlets and newspapers
with all variety of interpretation of the Bible and all sorts of
political opinion, such as on taxation, law and the liberties of
the subject, religion, land and trade, and authority and property.
Twenty-two pamphlets were published in 1640 and 1,996 in 1642.
In 1640 the canons of the church included a requirement for
parsons to exclaim divine right of kings every year. The Commons
soon resolved that this was contrary to the fundamental laws and
liberties of the realm.
The Short Parliament of 1640 was dissolved soon because the
Commons demanded redress of its grievances. The Long Parliament of
1640-1653 requested by the House of Lords was agreed to by Charles
because he still wanted money. In election of members to the Long
Parliament, voters wanted to know where contenders stood on
certain political issues. In this Parliament, the Commons ceased
to agree on all issues and started to rely on majority rule.
The House of Commons was led by John Pym, a middle class
landholder with extensive commercial interests. The Commons
treated the King's refusal to act with them as a relinquishment of
his power to Parliament. When it met at the Long Parliament, Pym
expressed the grievances of the King's actions against the
privileges of Parliament, against religion, and against the
liberties of the subjects. Specifically, he decried the disregard
of free speech and of freedom from prosecution afterward, and the
arbitrary dissolution of Parliament. Secondly, he alleged popery
had been encouraged and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction enlarged.
Thirdly, he protested the patent monopolies given to favorites to
the detriment of the buying public, the imposition of ship money
levies beyond the need of national defense and without the consent
of Parliament, the revival of the feudal practice of imposing a
fine for refusal to accept a knighthood with its attendant
obligations, the enlargement of the King's forests and driving out
from hence tenants with lucrative holdings, extra judicial
declarations of justices without hearing of counsel or argument in
many criminal matters, and the abuses of the prerogative courts in
defending monopolies. Parliament's assertion into religious
matters and foreign affairs was unprecedented, those areas having
been exclusively in the power of the King.
The Long Parliament begun in 1640 removed many of the King's
ministers and forbade clergy from sitting in Parliament or
exercising any temporal authority. It passed measures which were
not agreed to by the King. It undid the lawless acts of the King
and the court decision in the case of King v. Hampden. Ship money
was declared illegal. The new concept that the present Parliament
should not be dissolved but by its own consent was adopted. The
Star Chamber and Court of High Commission were abolished. The oath
ex officio, an oath to answer all questions, was originally meant
for facts at issue, but had been extended by these courts to
opinions, beliefs, and religion and had led to abuses. The Star
Chamber had been the only court which punished infractions of the
Kings' edicts, so now his proclamations were unenforceable.
Protection against self-incrimination was given by the provision
that no person be forced "to confess or accuse him or herself of
crime, offense, delinquency, or misdemeanor, or any neglect... or
thing whereby, or by reason whereof, he or she shall or may be
liable or exposed to any censure, pain, penalty, or punishment
whatsoever, as had been the practice in the Star Chamber and the
Court of High Commission.
These measures were also adopted: No one may be compelled to take
knighthood nor undergo any fine for not so doing. The forest
boundaries are returned to their former place. All subjects may
now import gunpowder; they may also make and sell gunpowder and
import saltpeter.
The Root and Branch Petition of 1640 complained about pressure on
ministers by bishops on threat of dismissal not to preach about
predestination, free grace, perseverance, original sin remaining
after baptism, the Sabbath, doctrine against universal grace,
election for faith foreseen, free-will against anti-Christ, non-
residents, or human inventions in God's worship. It also
complained about the great increase of idle, lewd, and dissolute,
ignorant and erroneous men in the ministry who wanted only to wear
a canonical coat, a surplice, and a hood, bow at the name of
Jesus, and be zealous of superstitious ceremonies. It also
complained about the swarming of lascivious, idle, and
unprofitable books, pamphlets, play-books, and ballads, such as
Ovid's "Fits of Love", "The Parliament of Women", Barn's "Poems",
and Parker's "Ballads". Further it opposed the restraint of
reprinting books formerly licensed without relicensing. It
protested the growth of popery and increase of priests and
Jesuits, the strict observance of saints' days whereby large fines
were imposed on people working on them, the increase of whoredoms
and adulteries because of the bishops' corrupt administration of
justice and taking of bribes, and the practice of excommunicating
for trivial matters such as working on a holy day or not paying a
fee. It further protested the fining and imprisoning of many
people; breaking up men's houses and studies; taking away men's
books, letters, and writings; seizing upon their estates; removing
them from their callings; and separating them from their wives, to
the utter infringement of the laws and of people's liberties. It
complained that these practices caused many clothiers, merchants,
and others to flee to Holland, thus undermining the wool industry.
It finally complained of the multitude of monopolies and patents,
large increase of customs, and ship-money. Many Londoners signed
this petition.
The House of Commons decided to forbid bowing at the name of
Jesus. When the House of Lords disagreed with this, the House of
Commons claimed that it represented all the people and didn't need
the concurrence of the House of Lords. The House of Commons
ordered that all communion tables be removed from the east end of
churches, that the railings be taken away, and all candles and
basins be removed from it. Further, all crucifixes, images of the
Virgin Mary, and pictures of any of the Trinity were to be
demolished, which was done to even those in markets and streets.
Further, all bowing at the name of Jesus or toward the east end of
the church or toward the communion table was forbidden. All
dancing or other sports on Sunday was forbidden. Enforcement was
to be done by Justices of the Peace and Mayors. But these orders
never became statutes.
Enforcement of the law for not coming to church was not now
regularly enforced, so Catholics had a respite.