AT THE death of Elizabeth, England separated from the Continent
in politics, and moved thenceforth in a different direction. Long
before, political observers like Commynes and Fortescue recognised the
distinctive character and the superiority of the insular institutions;
but these were not strong enough to withstand the Tudors, and the work
had to be begun over again. It was begun, upon the ancient ways, with
tradition and precedent; and when that was found to be not quite
convincing, it was pursued by means of new, general, and revolutionary
principles. The combination, or alteration, of these methods of
policy is the peculiar note of the times before us.
When King James of Scotland became King James of England, the country
obtained the benefit of being an island, protected by the sea. There
was no longer a hostile and warlike neighbour, compelling military
preparation and the concentration of power, which made foreign
governments absolute. An English officer once congratulated Moltke on
the splendid army which he had created and led. The marshal shook his
head, and replied that the German army was a terrible burden on the
country, but that the long Russian frontier made it a necessity.
James, who had been helpless at home against the nobles and the Kirk,
conceived high notions of authority, high ideals of what a monarch may
legitimately do for his country, acting by his own lights, his own
will, his own conscience, not as flotsam on the changing and uncertain
wave of opinion. And he came to England expecting that its wealth and
civilisation, and its intellectual culture, which reached just then
its culminating point, would afford a more favourable field for
advanced theories of State. The Stuarts owed something to each of the
two strongest and most obvious currents of political thought in their
time. From Machiavelli they took the idea of the State ruling itself,
for its own ends, through experts, not depending on the forces of
society or the wishes of men uninformed upon complex problems of
international policy, military administration, economy and law. And
they adopted from Luther his new and admired dogma of the divine right
of kings. They consistently rejected an opposite theory, well known
to James from his teacher Buchanan, derived from Knox and his medieval
masters, and wrongly imputed to Calvin--the theory of revolution.
They had the judges with them, that is, the laws of England. They had
the Established Church, the keepers of conscience and consecrated
expounders of the divine will. They had the successful example of the
Tudors, showing that a government may be absolute and at the same time
popular, and that liberty was not the supreme desire of English
hearts. And they had the general drift and concurrence of Europe, as
well as of the intellectual world at home, of Hooker, of Shakespeare,
and of Bacon. The best philosophers, the most learned divines, many
even of the most consummate jurists in the universe sustained their
cause. They were not bound to believe that idle squires or provincial
busybodies understood the national interest and the reason of State
better than trained administrators, and claimed to be trusted in the
executive as they were in the judiciary. Their strength was in the
clergy, and the Anglican clergy professed legitimacy and passive
obedience, in indignant opposition to the Jesuits and their votaries.
The king could not be less monarchical than the divines; he could not
renounce their support; and the bond between them was therefore a
close one. Starting from the position that the sovereign will shall
control and not be controlled, there was no certain evidence that the
opposition to it would be deep, or formidable, or sincere. The quick
increase of the middle class, which was the seat of sectarianism,
could not well be discovered from the returns of taxation. The
Stuarts might fairly be persuaded that they were not only wiser than
their opponents, but more liberal than they, for the Puritans
repeatedly demanded that the wages of heresy should be death. The
distinction in point of liberality between King and parliament is
manifest in the Catholic question.
James I wished to avoid persecution. In discussion with two superior
men, Andrewes and Casaubon, he developed conciliatory views pointing
to eventual reunion. His mother had been the champion and martyr of
Catholic monarchy. His wife was a convert of the Jesuits. He
regarded the Penal Laws as defensible on the ground of political
danger only, not on the ground of religion. He desired to obtain a
working arrangement with Rome, which should ensure the loyalty of the
Catholics, in return for the inestimable benefit of toleration. Pope
Clement VIII, Aldobrandini, was not satisfied, and sent instructions
that James should not be acknowledged unless he pledged himself to
much larger concessions. He feared, he said, to go too far in favour
of a heretic. His briefs were not made public, but they came to the
knowledge of Catesby, to whom they were very welcome. A king who
might not be acknowledged was a king who might be deposed. When his
advances were rejected, James issued a proclamation against the
priests, which was the determining provocation of the plot. The
violence with which Elizabeth defended her life against a multitude of
conspirators was easily understood. But her successor was under no
sentence of deprivation, and the legitimacy of his claim was untouched
by arguments forged against the daughter of Anne Boleyn. The
Catholics had reasonably hoped that the better treatment which they
received at the beginning of the new reign, of the new dynasty, would
be continued.
Under the shock of disappointment some deemed themselves absolved from
allegiance, and left to their own means of self-defence. They
regarded James as their aggressor. We cannot tell how much they knew
of the odious filthiness of his private life and conversation, which
foreign envoys described in language which nobody has ever had the
courage to print. In any group there might be desperate and
passionate men capable of devising crimes which they disguised under
the gilding of a higher purpose. We have seen some of them at the
murder of Riccio and the defenestration of Prague. But here there
were deeper waters. Some of the accomplices, such as Digby, were men
otherwise of blameless and honourable character, who could not be
accused of hypocrisy. Then certain leading Jesuits were implicated.
They were so far from encouraging the scheme that they procured from
Rome a formal prohibition of violent designs. But they gave no hint
of danger, and their silence was defended on the ground that although
a general warning might have been given to save a Catholic prince, the
seal of confession was absolute as against a Protestant.
A belief arose that these people were incorrigible. The precedent of
1572 established the right of murder. The doctrinaires of the League
and their contemporaries added to it the right of revolution, applying
to princes the rule followed against less exalted Protestants. How
theorists were divided, or by what subtle exceptions the theory was
qualified, nobody rightly knew. The generation that had beheld Guy
Fawkes remained implacable. Not so King James. He resolved to
perpetuate a broad division between the men of blood and their
adversaries, and he founded thereon the oath of allegiance, which did
no good. The Stuarts could honestly believe that the motives of
persecuting parliaments were not inspired by a genuine sense of public
duty, and that they themselves were defending the sacred cause against
furious oppressors. The issues are not as plain, the edge is not as
sharp as we suppose when we look back on the result. The question to
be fought out between king and parliament was not monarchy or
republic, democracy or aristocracy, freedom or the proteus that
resists or betrays freedom. At many points the Stuart cause resembles
that of constitutional monarchy on the Continent, as it was in France
under Lewis XVIII, and in Prussia under the Emperor William. If
Bismarck had been there he would have been the strength of the
Royalists, and Cromwell might have met his match.
On almost every occasion, under James I, opposition made itself felt,
and it became practically important, and anticipated the future in
1621. Then the Commons, guided by the most famous English lawyer,
Coke, struck down Bacon, and deprived the Stuarts of the ablest
counsellor they ever had. Impeachment and responsibility of ministers
remained.
James's reign is also the beginning of colonial empire. Virginia was
a cavalier settlement, proceeding from the epoch of exploration and
the search for gold; and New England was a plebeian and sectarian
establishment, planted by men who fled from oppression. They did not
carry with them very clear notions of human right; but these ripened
under their oppressive rule among those whom they persecuted. There
were local self-government and federation in Connecticut, and spiritual
self-government and toleration in Rhode Island; and from there the two
institutions spread to the United States, and when the time came, the
cavaliers of Virginia, who went out under James I, surpassed the
fugitives of the Mayflower. They produced the Declaration of
Independence, and bequeathed to America religious liberty and the
political function of the Supreme Court. Of the first five
presidents, four were Virginians. And in our own history, the ablest
of the men who resisted Cromwell had studied practical politics in
Massachusetts Bay.
The third political event by which the reign of the first Stuart
profoundly influenced the modern world is the rise of those whom we
call Congregationalists when we think of them as a Church, and
Independents when we mean a party. It is on their account that this
epoch is more fitly called the Puritan Reformation than the Puritan
Revolution. For it is by the sects, including the Independents, that
the English added to what was done by Luther and Calvin, and advanced
beyond the sixteenth-century ideas. Continental Protestantism reacted
on the Anglican settlement, and our exiled sectaries, before crossing
the Atlantic, came into touch, in Holland, with the most original and
spiritual remnant of the German Reformation. There Robinson completed
the system of Robert Browne, a secondary and uninspiring figure, of
whom we read: "Old father Browne, being reproved for beating his old
wife, distinguished that he did not beat her as his wife, but as a
curst old woman."
The power of Independency was not in relation to theology, but to
Church government. They did not admit the finality of doctrinal
formulas, but awaited the development of truth to come. Each
congregation governed itself independently, and every member of the
Church participated in its administration. There was consociation, but
not subordination. The Church was governed, not by the State or by
bishops or by the presbytery, but by the multitude of which it was
composed. It was the ideal of local self-government and of
democracy. Institutions which are the work of History were abolished
in favour of popular control; and an Established Church, a Church
connected with the State, was the supreme abomination, and went by the
name of Babylon.
The political consequences reached far. The supremacy of the people,
being accepted in Church government, could not be repudiated in the
State. There was a strong prejudice in its favour. "We are not over
one another," said Robinson, "but one with another." They inclined
not only to liberty, but to equality, and rejected the authority of
the past and the control of the living by the dead. The sovereignty
of the yellow parchment fell before the light of reason. As there
was no State Church, there could be no right of coercion over
consciences. Persecution was declared to be spiritual murder. The
age of Luther and the Reformation was an age of darkness. All sects
alike were to be free, and Catholics, Jews, and Turks as well. The
Independents fought, as they expressed it, not for their religion, but
for liberty of conscience, which is the birthright of man. There was
no place in their creed for a special prerogative of Englishmen over
other nations, or of Independents over other churches. All this was
in the stringent logic of the system, the immediate consequence of
their dogmas on the constitution of the Church, and this gave to their
liberalism the invaluable foundation of religion. Not every one of
them saw equally far, or applied principles with equal courage. In
the matter of tolerance they were supported by the Baptists, and,
after the appearance of Penn, by the Quakers, though their historian
deplores it as an unheard-of dogma. In 1641 there was only one
congregation in London, and it consisted of sixty or seventy members.
Ten years earlier Lord Brooke writes that there were not above two
hundred Nonconformists in all England. It is clear that the rapid
growth of numbers baffled all calculation. The Independents did not
bring on the Civil War, but they were strong enough to bring it to a
conclusion; and when all the direct effects of their victory passed
away, their ideas survived.
Charles, a better man but a worse king than his father, had none of
his insight. When, after the Petition of Right, he governed without a
parliament, the problem is whether he did it for the sake of power or
for the sake of religion. It resembles the problem of the American
Civil War, whether the confederates were fighting for State rights or
for slavery. We call him the martyr of Anglicanism. But there is one
moment in his career when, at the price of unparliamentary monarchy,
he could have saved Episcopacy. He was in the hands of Strafford and
of Laud, and they were strong men. When Charles had to think and act
for himself, it may be that his thoughts were not always clear. He
was attached to the English Church, but the religious controversy
puzzled him. There was a very able man among the queen's chaplains
who held that the Thirty-nine Articles might be interpreted favourably
to Rome. "The religion of Rome and ours," said Laud, "is all one." It
is not strange, perhaps, that he should have been suspected, when so
many of the king's ministers--Windebanke, Cottington, Weston--became
Catholics, and the same thing was whispered of others. After
Worcester, when the Earl of Derby was being taken to Newark to be
executed, a strange horseman joined the cavalcade, and rode for a time
by the prisoners side. It was said that this was a priest, who
received him, and absolved him, in the hour of death. Although the
Roman emissaries who negotiated with the archbishop, and offered him
the red hat of a cardinal, never quite understood him, and could not
explain why he who was so near was yet so far, they had no hopes of
bringing him over. There was even a time when they reported more
promising things of Ussher.
But for the religious question, the political opposition could not
have carried the country with it. The Roman agents and nuncios were
part of the religious question, and it is not prelacy alone that was
at stake. In considering the old charge of a design to carry over
England to Rome, we must remember this, that the art of understanding
adversaries is an innovation of the present century, characteristic of
the historic age. Formerly, a man was exhausted by the effort of
making out his own meaning, with the help of his friends. The
definition and comparison of systems which occupy so much of our
recent literature, were unknown, and everybody who was wrong was
supposed to be very wrong indeed.
We cannot avoid the question whether the three great victims
--Strafford, Laud, and Charles--deserved their fate. It is certain
that they were put to death illegally, and therefore unjustly. At the
same time, the superior enlightenment and wisdom were not always on
the side of parliament. But we have no thread through the enormous
intricacy and complexity of modern politics except the idea of
progress towards more perfect and assured freedom, and the divine
right of free men. Judged by that test, the three culprits must be
condemned. That is a principle which cuts very deep, and reaches
far, and we must be prepared to see how it applies in thousands of
other instances, in other countries, and in other times, especially
the times in which we live.
When war broke out, the country was divided, not unequally. North and
west were for the king; but north and west were backward in comparison
with the south-east, which possessed London and the longer purse. The
familiar line from South Devon to the Humber simplifies too much. For
Charles held Oxford and Nottingham, while the parliament had the
seaports, though not all the intervening region, from Plymouth to
Hull, and reached the Severn at Gloucester, and the Irish Sea about
the Mersey. Parties were not moved to their depths on either side, as
men are by the question of existence, and the contending armies were
generally small. Therefore, the struggle was slack and slow, and the
Presbyterian sects became masters of the situation, and decided for
the parliament. At first, through want of energy, great opportunities
were lost. In Montrose Scotland produced a soldier of genius; but in
England the Ironsides prevailed by their organisation and
discipline. German writers on military history declare Cromwell to
have been the best leader of cavalry in modern war, the master and
superior of their own Frederic, whose fame is due largely to his skill
in that arm. The end was an overwhelming victory and a crushing
defeat. But as the chief cause was the genius of one extraordinary
man, and the sudden growth and spreading of the religious party to
which he belonged, the effect lasted no longer than his life. The
fabric he had reared was overthrown without an effort, offering no
resistance to the destroyer. The soldier, therefore, was greater than
the statesman. Opinion, of late years, has become very favourable to
Cromwell, thanks chiefly to Mr. Gardiner. But until the Lives by
Mr. Firth and Mr. Morley are completed, the last word, for our time,
will not be spoken.
Those to whom the great Noncomformist is an object of admiration, have
certain conspicuous flaws to contemplate. Cromwell, by his approval
of Pride's Purge, was an accomplice after the fact. Colonel Pride
expelled the majority, in order that the minority might be able to
take the life of the king. It was an act of illegality and violence,
a flagrant breach of the law, committed with homicidal intent. In
ordinary circumstances such a thing would have to bear a very ugly
name. Nor was it an act of far-sighted policy, for the outraged
Presbyterians restored Charles II without making terms. Then, the
Protector professed to see the hand of God, a special intervention,
when he succeeded, and things went well. It was not the arm of the
flesh that had done these things. They were remarkable Providences,
and the like. There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind
than the sanctifying of success. Thirdly, he was the constant enemy
of free institutions. Scarcely any Englishman has so bad a record in
modern history. Having allowed all this, we cannot easily say too much
of his capacity in all things where practical success is concerned,
and not foresight or institutions. In that respect, and within those
limits, he was never surpassed by any man of our race, here or in
America.
As political thinkers both Vane and Harrington are more profound.
Harrington is the author of what Americans have called the greatest
discovery since the printing-press. For he has given the reason why
the great Rebellion failed, and was followed by the reaction under
Charles II. He says that it failed because it omitted to redistribute
the property of the kingdom. The large estates constituted an
aristocratic society, on which it was impossible to construct a
democratic state. If the great estates had been broken up into small
ones, on a definite plan, the nation would have been committed to the
new order of things, and would have accepted the law of equality.
Poverty would have been diminished on one side, and nobles would have
been abolished on the other. A timorous conservatism and legal
scruples made this impossible, and government, by a law of nature,
took its shape from the forms and forces of society. It is needless
to go quite so deep as this to see that the Cromwellian system, which
was the work of a minority, led by a man of pre-eminent services and
talents, crumbled when the necessary leader was gone.
The Commonwealth is the second stage on the road of revolution, which
started from the Netherlands, and went on to America and France, and
is the centre of the history of the modern world. Seen from a
distance the value of that epoch is not in that which it created, for
it left not creations but ruins, but in the prodigious wealth of ideas
which it sent into the world. It supplied the English Revolution, the
one that succeeded, the American, the French, with its material. And
its ideas became efficacious and masterful by denying their origin.
For at first they were religious, not political theories. When they
renounced their theological parentage, and were translated into the
scientific terms of politics, they conquered and spread over the
nations, as general truths, not as British exports. For a long time
to come we meet with little that goes beyond the conservatism of
Hobbes, or the liberalism of Vane, and Harrington, and Milton, and of
Lilburne in his saner moments. That is our inheritance from the Long
Parliament, the Civil War, and the Commonwealth.
We have to deal with events which belong essentially to Constitutional
History, and must treat them with a light touch, that we may not
trespass on appropriated ground. Our topic is, how absolute monarchy,
which just then succeeded so brilliantly over the Channel, was
attempted in England, under conditions of no apparent danger, failed
and failed at a great cost. And how, in the course of the struggle,
ideas were developed which proved ultimately strong enough, as well
as sufficiently lasting, to carry out an entirely new structure of
constitutional government. It is the point where the history of
nations turned into its modern bed. It is the point also where the
Englishman became the leader of the world.